Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
I t was the strangest thing. After Margot discovered Vic reading her mother’s diaries, she’d toyed with the possibility that Vic was, in fact, her father’s love child with a mystery woman, but Vic didn’t come around again. After two weeks went by, Vic almost felt to Margot like a dream she and her mother had both had. Or a shared nightmare , she thought.
Sam’s quest to hunt him down via friends and acquaintances led to nothing. “It’s like he vanished into thin air,” Sam said.
Margot had scoured the diaries for more information about her father’s affair and had found only this:
March 4, 1984
I saw her at the grocery store with the baby. I left my cart in the aisle and went to my car, but I had a twenty-minute panic attack.
Frank told me he hadn’t seen her. He told me she’s not in his life.
I’m starting to think I should have a baby. One that will cancel out that other one.
One that will make Frank forget.
But it seemed that, mostly, Lillian had wanted to cancel out all memory of Frank’s affair. Margot was surprised that Lillian hadn’t thrown those particular diaries out.
Another week passed, and Lillian and Margot fell into a sort of routine: breakfasts, lunches, dinners, The Cooking Channel, movies they’d once loved that they decided to love again, and doctor’s appointments. With the help of a phone alarm, Lillian took her medication right on time every day. The doctor said there were real improvements, and Margot wanted to say she already knew. After all, she lived with her mother and witnessed her mother’s healthier patterns.
“The clouds are parting just the slightest bit,” the doctor said. “I think it’s because her daughter came home. If you keep up a good routine, there’s no telling how long she’ll be able to live comfortably.”
Margot’s heart felt light.
Throughout the end of February and into March, Noah was a frequent visitor at Margot’s childhood home, as were Avery and Sam. Over unlimited snacks and grilled cheese sandwiches, Avery spoke about her high school classes and about how she’d signed up to take the SAT that summer. When Margot asked where she wanted to go to university after her senior year, Avery thought for a moment and said, “I don’t want to go anywhere! I just got back to Nantucket! Why does everyone want me to go somewhere?”
Margot and Noah laughed and said teasingly, “Don’t go anywhere! We want you here for good! Stay forever!”
But Margot understood what she meant. Avery still wasn’t comfortable; she’d lost her mother and her Boston-based friends. Change was her middle name. Maybe she was tired of it.
In private, Margot and Noah said they hoped Avery would find a way to embrace the change that inevitably came with early adulthood.
But after they said it, Margot asked, “Did you ever embrace change?”
Noah admitted he hadn’t. “I’d be kidding myself if I said yes.”
Margot said, “I pretended to embrace change. But life was so hard on me. I was permanently frightened.”
Noah hugged her hard and murmured, “You never have to be afraid again.”
It was April and a week before Hilary Coleman’s wedding that Sam called with news. “I think Vic Rondell is back on the island.”
Margot was standing in the sunlight of her mother’s kitchen. At the table, Lillian was trying to do a crossword, a puzzle the doctor suggested to keep her mind “more agile.”
“Who told you?” Margot asked, trying to keep her tone normal so as not to arouse suspicion in her mother.
“It’s weird. I saw his name on the guest list for the wedding,” she said. “I asked Hilary about him, and she said she thinks he’s friends with her fiancé.”
“Wow.”
Sam explained that Hilary’s fiancé had lived in San Francisco for many years and had business contacts all over the world. “It tracks,” she said. “Marc’s made of money, and so are all his friends. Vic smells of that world.”
“You should ask Marc about him!”
“Good idea,” Sam said. “I’ll call you back right away.”
A half hour later, there was a knock on the door. Margot and her mother were in the spring sunlight on the back porch, drinking tea and watching the gulls sweep over the waves. It took a while for Margot to hear the knocking, and when she did, she hurried around the side of the house to find Sam, switching her weight and peering through the window, waiting for Margot to answer.
“Over here!” she called. “We’re outside!”
Sam sprang off the porch and hurried to hug Margot. “I’m sorry to just come over like this. I should have called.”
Margot grinned. “You know you’re welcome any time.”
Sam cupped her elbows. They were standing in the newly lush April grass. From where they were, Margot could just barely see her mother, tilting gently in the rocking chair, her eyes on the horizon. Margot wondered what she was thinking about.
“I called Marc,” Sam said. “He told me everything he knows about Vic.”
Margot steadied herself. From Sam’s expression, she sensed a doozy of a story.
Sam said, “Marc worked with Vic in the mid- to late-2000s out in San Francisco. Marc said he originally thought Vic was from San Francisco but learned later that he’d moved there from the East Coast as a little kid. Marc tried to bond with him about their East Coast connections, but Vic didn’t want to discuss it. To describe him back then, Marc used the expression ‘closed off.’
“Anyway, in the span of four years, Vic mentioned a few things about himself. Number one: his mother died. Marc thinks she died when he and Vic were working together, and he thinks, too, that Vic’s mother also lived in San Francisco.
“Number two: he never knew his father.
“Number three: in about 2007 or 2008, Vic got married and had a son who died a few months after birth. It was around that time that Vic quit the company and started his own business. Marc’s pretty sure the marriage didn’t survive.”
Margot had both hands over her mouth. She felt she couldn’t breathe.
Sam’s eyes echoed her own confusion and empathy. “It’s a lot to take in. I know.”
Margot’s thoughts whirred. “Poor Vic.” And then she asked, “Why was he invited to the wedding?”
It didn’t sound as though Vic and Marc had a particularly close relationship. It didn’t seem to merit a wedding invitation.
But Sam waved her hand. “Apparently, they’re better friends now. But they’re the type of male friends who never talk about anything besides business and travel and sports. Marc said he knew Vic had been spending time on Nantucket, but Vic had told him it was related to a business venture rather than anything personal.”
“Did you tell him about my mother? About me and my father?” Margot asked, suddenly stricken.
“No. I didn’t.”
Margot breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to spill the beans before she understood the full truth.
Sam pulled her blond hair into a ponytail that she let fall back to her shoulders. “None of this is my business. But I think you should go see him. Marc says he checked into the Regent Hotel.”
Margot pictured Vic on the balcony of the Regent Hotel, watching the waves roll over the spring sands.
Did he want to see her?
“I’m sure your arrival to Nantucket confused him.” Sam shrugged. “Maybe he thinks you hate him because of what he represents in your family. But it seems like he has some answers for you. Maybe you have some for him, too.”
Margot threw herself forward to hug Sam. But when she closed her eyes, all she could see was that handsome, charming forty-something man who looked surprisingly like her father.
He was her brother. That had to be it.
But why had he come back to Nantucket to see her mother?
What was his angle?
She felt she had to know.