Before the Storm (The Salt Sisters #6)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

December 2001

T he day Tara dropped out of Massachusetts University was the day her life began.

At least, that was what she was trying so desperately to believe. It was what she whispered to herself in the mirror that morning, fresh off a conversation with the dean, a conversation that had ended with him shrugging and saying, “Sure. Anyone can drop out. It’s a free country. You can always come back if you want.” But Tara could tell he didn't really care. He was a man in a man’s world, and to him, Tara had no future.

Maybe Tara didn’t believe she had a future, either, no matter how many times she said it to herself in the mirror. You’re meant for something, Tara Steiner. You really are.

But was she?

With a washcloth, she wiped the tears that had dried to her cheeks and pulled the corners of her lips into a half smile. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to her reflection. But then a sob escaped, and she was back to crying in the apartment she shared with three girls and a terrier that barked at everything. Very soon, it wouldn’t be her apartment anymore; she’d already found a girl who wanted to take over her part of the lease. But she still hadn’t told her roommates. She hadn’t told anyone. She felt so alone.

She could hardly admit her reasoning to herself. Speaking her secret was another matter. She was terrified.

That morning, she wasn’t fully alone in her apartment, unfortunately. In the living room sat her roommate’s boyfriend, a history major named Steve, who always made Tara feel like an idiot. She had to pass him to get to the phone.

“What’s the matter, Tara?” he asked mockingly. “Did you fail your final exams?”

Tara glared at him and flared her nostrils. Her gut was roiling. The last thing she wanted was for Steve to overhear her phone conversation with her older sister—the conversation that revealed her as a failure. “How long are you hanging around here, Steve?” she asked.

“As long as I like,” Steve said. He put his feet up on the coffee table and flicked through the channels on their television—a television he didn’t pay for but monopolized all the same.

“It’s just that I have a few things to do,” Tara said, hoping he’d get the hint.

But he just shrugged and said, “You can do whatever you want. It’s a free country.”

It was a free country. That was what everyone was telling Tara today. Why did it feel like such an insult?

What could Tara do but wait? What could she do but sit in her bedroom by herself and think and stew? There was so much to consider. There were so many failures to list. She’d worked herself to the bone at university for the past two and a half years. She’d changed her major eight times: from education to nursing, science to art, political science to literature. But nothing struck her as the right thing.

She’d always been wayward. But she’d always been passionate about too many things, her heart ballooning whenever she learned something new.

But now? Now that her life had changed forever, what could she do but go home?

She certainly couldn’t call Donnie. She hadn’t seen him in over a week, and she was pretty sure things were over between them. She was also sure that people would think she was dropping out because Donnie broke up with her. But she didn’t care what people thought anymore. At least, she hoped she wouldn’t when she reached Nantucket Island.

Steve finally left the apartment a few hours later, which gave Tara enough time to scurry into the living room and call her sister at work. Josie was a receptionist at the front desk at a year-round hotel in Nantucket. She initially answered with a formal tone, “Nantucket Sunset Hotel!”

“Josie?” Tara’s voice immediately gave her devastation away. She crumpled into the chair directly next to the landline.

“Tara, what’s going on?”

Tara couldn’t explain everything at once. All she said was, “I need someone to pick me up.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow morning,” Josie said without hesitation. “I’ll get someone to cover my shift.”

Tara was too embarrassed to tell her roommates what was going on. That night, over tea, she mentioned she was “going to take a semester off” to help her parents on Nantucket. Her roommates were stricken. “What about your career?” they asked. “We’re juniors! This is an important year!”

One of them even asked, “What about Donnie? You two are in love!”

Tara had to bite her tongue to keep from bursting into tears. “We’re going to try long distance,” she lied.

Maybe she could lie her way through the rest of her life. Perhaps that was the most comfortable way forward.

That night, Tara smiled and laughed and lied to them about coming back soon. And in the morning, when Josie arrived, she hugged each of them close and said, “I’ll see you soon! I’ll visit!” She knew she wouldn’t visit; she knew she wouldn’t come back.

Josie was older than Tara by twelve months, but she was stronger and broader than Tara, so much so that she could carry twice as many of Tara’s belongings to the car at once. It made Tara feel even more pathetic than she already did.

When they packed up the car, Josie hugged Tara for a long time. They were standing in front of Tara’s apartment building as soft snow whirled from thick New England clouds. Somehow, having Josie pick her up like this felt inevitable. It felt like she was always going to fail and have Josie come bail her out.

But Josie didn’t say anything like that.

In the car, Josie drove them back to Hyannis Port with the radio and the heater on full blast. Tara fell into the confident rhythm of her sister’s words and tried to get excited about the coming months.

“Mom and Dad are busy with church, as usual,” Josie was saying as they went, “and I haven’t seen much of them. But you know, I’ve been busy myself.” She winked at Tara.

Tara slapped Josie lightly on the shoulder. “You have a secret!”

“Maybe I do!” Josie cried, throwing her head back.

Tara knew what her sister was like when she fell in love. She was always louder and brasher than usual. It was as though she existed at the outer limits of herself. In high school, Tara had watched her sister anxiously, quietly, wondering if she would ever fall in love like that—with her whole body and soul. Of course, Josie’s boyfriends came and went, but that was sort of how men were. Unreliable.

“Who is the guy?” Tara asked her now.

Josie pretended to zip her lips and throw away the key.

Tara groaned. “Why the secrecy?”

Josie raised her shoulders. “I don’t want to ruin it.”

Tara giggled and crossed her arms over her chest. Nausea bubbled in her stomach, but she swallowed it down and set her mind on not getting sick before they got home.

“What do you think Mom and Dad will say when I tell them I dropped out?”

Josie raised her eyebrows but remained quiet.

“I mean, you never went to college. Why should I?” Tara pointed out. “Maybe it won’t be a big deal?”

Josie’s smile dissipated. For the first time, Tara realized she didn’t know why Josie hadn’t gone to college after high school. Josie’s grades had been pretty good, or good enough to get her into a state school, at least. Why had she skipped out? Why hadn’t Tara ever thought to ask?

“Have you ever thought about going?” Tara asked, sounding tentative.

But Josie waved her hand. “Let’s not talk about boring things like school,” she said. “You’re coming back to Nantucket. Mom and Dad will handle it, or they won’t. You know how they are.”

However, their parents’ attitudes alternated depending on which sister they were talking to. Tara knew that although she’d never brought it up with Josie. With Josie, their parents were impatient. They picked fights with her over trivial matters and refused to help her when she needed it, which led to her never asking again. Tara had previously thought that Josie had just made a mess of things. But now, she wasn’t so sure.

Why was Tara the “favorite” daughter? Josie was more beautiful; she was more vivacious; she was more “alive” in so many ways.

It didn’t make sense.

But Tara decided to put it out of her mind for now. She had the rest of her life to figure out.

Josie had offered Tara the guest bedroom at her apartment in the Historic District of Nantucket. Tara had leaped at the chance to maintain her sense of freedom. It meant she could start “from scratch” outside the boundaries of her parents. It also meant she could plan how to tell them what was going on.

Josie parked in a snowy lot behind the old antique shop. It was three in the afternoon, and the sun had been tucked behind a thick blanket of clouds all day. Tara got out and stretched her arms over her head, craning her ears for the sounds of the Christmas Festival, the music of the carousel, and the laughter that always punctuated the air of downtown this time of year. But right now, there was nothing. Was it too early?

Josie sensed her unease. Heaving two suitcases out of the back of her car, she grimaced. “It’s canceled this year.”

Tara gaped at her, opening and closing her hands at her sides. “You have to be kidding me.”

“Mindy had a stroke,” Josie explained, turning away.

“Mindy?” Tara was stricken. Mindy had been in charge of the Nantucket Christmas Festival for as long as Tara and Josie had been alive. Every year, she’d dressed up as an elf and announced the best Christmas Festival floats and the Christmas Festival queen. “When did this happen?”

“It must have been early November,” Josie said. “But the stress of the festival is way too much for her this year. She needs to rest.”

“Why didn’t anyone step in?” Tara asked.

Josie shrugged and led Tara up the steps to her apartment. Tara was handling three bags at once, one slung over her shoulder, and she nearly tumbled back down the stairs. That would really add insult to injury , she thought. Try not to fall down the stairs!

Josie unlocked the door to reveal her little apartment: a living room, a kitchen, a kitchen table, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. It was a far cry from the large beachside house they’d been raised in. But it was all theirs.

“I just can’t stand it,” Tara said after they threw all her suitcases into her new bedroom and collapsed on the sofa with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Nantucket needs the Christmas Festival. It feels illegal.”

Josie laughed and handed her a full glass of wine. “Why don’t you plan it?”

Tara gaped at her. It was December tenth, and usually, the festival was in full swing by now. “People would laugh me out of town,” she said. She put the glass of wine down and tried to figure out a way to pour it down the sink when Josie wasn’t looking.

“Would they? I think they’d just see their beloved Tara Steiner trying to do something good around here,” Josie said. “People love you, Tara. They’ll say yes to whatever you ask.”

Tara squinted at her sister, trying to figure out if she was making fun of her.

“I’ll help you, I guess,” Josie said, rolling her eyes into a smile.

Tara laughed. “You guess?”

“I’m just thrilled to have you back,” Josie offered, her voice quiet.

Tara’s smile twisted. For a moment, she thought she was going to burst into tears.

It was their first night as roommates, and they did just what twentysomething roommates are supposed to do—they made each other laugh, they listened to music until their neighbors knocked on the wall between their apartments to tell them to quiet down, they told secrets, and they promised to protect each other. Josie didn’t seem to notice that Tara wasn’t drinking wine. Tara poured wine from her glass into Josie’s when Josie wasn’t looking, and Josie happily drank it.

When Tara fell asleep that night, she felt comforted. She felt at peace.

And when she woke up in the morning, her best friend was in the kitchen, pouring her a mug of coffee—a mug of coffee she drank only half of, of course.

What could be better than this life?

The Christmas Festival shouldn’t have come together as quickly as it did. But it was just as Josie suggested. When Tara asked people around Nantucket for help throwing the festival together, they agreed without thinking about it. She was beloved. And by December seventeenth—just a week after she got home—the Christmas Festival was all set up. Carolers stood on a little stage, singing Christmas songs as Nantucketers drank mulled wine and played festival games and ate decadent food, like chili and burgers and clam chowder and about a thousand kinds of desserts. Snow fell, soft and delicate, melting on the cheeks and tongues of Nantucket children. Tara watched them from the sidewalk, all bundled up in a hat and coat and gloves, and she thought, I’m giving back to my community. I’m helping Nantucket children make new memories. This feels better than all two and a half years of college ever did.

It felt like a miracle.

“There she is, Bob!”

Tara turned to find her mother and father churning through the crowd to get to her. Her mother, Cindy, was a pretty woman in her forties who always wore red lipstick and a smart-looking peacoat. Her father, Bob, was nearly six-five and domineering and quiet. But when he saw Tara, an enormous smile broke out on his face.

“There she is! The star of the show,” Bob exclaimed.

“It’s wonderful, honey,” Cindy said, hugging her. “I can’t believe you put all this together yourself.”

“Josie helped a lot,” Tara said.

Her father’s cheek twitched, but he said nothing.

Tara decided that she needed to force her father to talk about Josie more in the months to come. She needed him to acknowledge Josie. She needed to teach him to love his eldest daughter.

But there would be time for that. First, I’d handle the Christmas Festival. Next, I’d get to the rest of our lives.

“We’re going to meet Frank and Rhonda by the mulled wine stand,” Cindy said. “But come find us before the Christmas Queen performance, okay?”

“Of course!”

“You should be named Christmas Queen,” her father said. “Write your name in! You’re in charge here, after all!”

Tara laughed. “That’s not how it works, Daddy.”

“You’re prettier than any other girl around here!” Bob said.

Tara rolled her eyes.

But just then, she heard her name through her earpiece. “Tara! Can we get your help over here? Concession stand two!”

Tara sped off to help out with a billing issue. Josie sidled up to her en route and said, “I saw you talking to Mom and Dad?” Her eyes stirred with questions. Last night, Tara had asked Josie how best to tell her parents she’d dropped out of college. Josie had said, “If you need to be honest with them, just come out with it. Either they’ll deal with it or they won’t.”

“They still don’t know,” Tara explained. “I feel too stressed with everything here to deal with it.”

“Maybe you can just lie,” Josie said. “You can say you graduated early and have become an event planner now? A professional one?”

Tara raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know about that.”

“You’re good at it,” Josie declared. “Look around you!”

“This is a fluke,” Tara insisted.

“Or it’s your calling?” Josie teased. “Just think about it.”

Tara reached the concession stand to find the guy behind the counter in a spat with a customer who insisted he hadn’t given him the correct change. Tara’s head swirled. Mathematics had never been her strong suit, and when she tried to put together the numbers, she suddenly felt woozy. Or maybe she was woozy because she’d forgotten to eat lunch?

Why hadn’t she eaten lunch? She needed to take better care of herself. Especially now.

“Twelve minus three is nine,” the customer said to Tara, sneering. “Aren’t you in college, Tara Steiner?”

Tara put her hands on the counter and tried to stabilize herself. She closed her eyes.

“Hey, there’s no reason to be so cruel.” This came from a different man behind the counter. His accent was non-American, but Tara couldn’t place it. It sounded sort of like music.

Tara tried to open her eyes to look at the owner of that voice. But as her eyes split open, she was seized with a horrible pain in her lower stomach. She shrieked and grabbed her gut. Fear rolled over her.

My secrets are catching up to me.

“What’s going on?” The man behind the concession stand shrieked, “Tara? Can you hear me?”

But Tara was suddenly on the ground. Black was all she knew. The last thing she heard was her own horrible moan, then her voice begging for help. “Please, protect the baby.”