Chapter 4
Chapter Four
L ucas Elston had begun his career at the Nantucket Historical Society with a rule to never make house calls. But being a Nantucket local—and a self-described mama’s boy—meant he was easily swayed. It seemed that everyone had his number, both metaphorically and literally speaking. So when Rhonda Goggins called him up that Wednesday morning to say she had a “little project for him,” he said he’d be there that afternoon. He even picked up freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, Rhonda’s favorite. He missed his mother so much. Rhonda had been her best friend.
Rhonda lived in a little house in the Nantucket Historic District, just like her mother and her mother’s mother before that. All of them had ended up widows. Lucas checked his reflection in the mirror of his car to remember what he looked like: thick head of salt-and-pepper hair, sturdy cheekbones from his Scandinavian roots on his mother’s side, and horn-rimmed glasses that colleagues had said made him look more like a historian. “I didn’t get them for that reason,” Lucas maintained, although he had to agree that it gave him a professor look.
He was forty-eight years old. Most days, he felt twenty-five. He wondered when that would go away.
Rhonda opened the door to a crack because that was all her weak arms could manage. She was already eighty years old, a few years older than his mother had been before she died last year, and osteoporosis had riddled her weak and small. But mentally, she was as feisty as ever.
“There he is! A few minutes late. I thought you wouldn’t make it.” Rhonda gave him a sneaky smile and a light punch on the arm.
“You got me. I guess I can’t use the excuse that I got caught in traffic.”
Rhonda cackled. “Not till the tourists come!”
It was the end of May, which meant that tourists would soon come to Nantucket in droves, boosting the fourteen-thousand population to a whopping seventy thousand. It was often difficult to find a familiar face in Nantucket crowds during the summertime. After September, Lucas often joked that he knew every person at the grocery store so intimately that he could remember their birthdays. That was when Nantucketers breathed a sigh of relief and took their island back.
Rhonda had made tea. Lucas set the cookies alongside the kettle and cups and said, “Voilà,” in a way that made Rhonda laugh. His mother had never been so quick to giggle, but they’d always had too much baggage between them for it to come that easy.
Rhonda and Lucas made light chit-chat and sipped their tea. Rhonda had an aching back and arthritis in her hands, but she told him she “hated to complain about all that” because it made her sound like every other old person.
“Nobody would confuse you for every other old person,” he said.
Rhonda’s eyes sparkled. She still hadn’t told Lucas why she needed him to come by for a “history-related question.” A part of him guessed that she just wanted company; wanted someone to sip tea and eat chocolate chip cookies with; wanted someone to pass the time with.
But Rhonda got down to brass tacks soon after.
“I want to have a celebration,” she announced.
Lucas tilted his head with surprise. Rhonda was never one to make a big fuss about anything, and her birthday wasn’t till December.
She clicked her knuckles on the table. “It’s nearly the one-hundredth anniversary of when my father founded the Whaling Museum,” she explained. “And I think we ought to honor his memory.”
Lucas felt himself smile. “Our records indicate that the museum wasn’t founded till June 30, 1925! That makes this year ninety-nine.”
People were always trying to correct Lucas and the Nantucket Historical Society. They were always so sure they knew history better than he ever could.
But this time, Rhonda had proof. She reached for a manila envelope on the coffee table and produced yellowed records that Lucas had never seen before.
“Uh-oh. Have you been keeping something from us?” Lucas asked.
Rhonda’s eyes continued to sparkle. “I just discovered them in an old suitcase that belonged to my father,” she said. “I can’t believe I never opened it before. After all these years! Just goes to show you that life can still surprise you.”
In the envelope were records of a previous location for the Whaling Museum. It was originally held in the old Victorian home that now belonged to the Miller family three blocks away from the current Whaling Museum. The papers were signed with Rhonda’s father’s name and dated June 17, 1924. Behind the documents were old photographs of that fateful day. Ornery-looking men and women stood in front of the Miller Victorian home with their faces straight to the camera. It always tickled Lucas how people were in old photographs. They were serious, but you could sometimes catch their true personalities behind their stoic expressions.
Being a historian, Lucas had probably pored over hundreds of thousands of old photographs. If he could say one thing about them, it was that people never changed. Not really. No matter how much the world around them tended to.
“I’ll be dipped,” he said to Rhonda now. “One hundred years of the Whaling Museum!”
“The official one hundred years,” she said proudly.
“I guess we’d better get started on that celebration,” he said.
“A street festival,” Rhonda blurted. It was clear that she’d thought this through since discovering the pages. “I want whale-themed everything. And food trucks! And wine. My father just loved Nantucket. I want this party to echo his love.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I want everyone to remember him and say his name.”
Lucas took a breath, feeling tentative. June 17 was three weeks away. It seemed unlikely he could throw together a full-on street festival in such a short time. Then again, the look in Rhonda’s eyes told him he had to make it so. She didn’t have family on the island. She didn’t have children of her own—a result, Lucas’s mother had told him, of health issues that had side-lined her as a teenager. Her only link to the world was through the past. Lucas, being a historian and a man who’d gone through heartache himself, had to understand that.
Lucas promised Rhonda he’d do everything he could. He then took a big bite out of a chocolate chip cookie and closed his eyes. This is impossible, he thought, even as he said, “This is going to be great. A perfect way to start the summer.”
Lucas returned to the Nantucket Historical Society after that. His assistant, Jefferson, sat at the desk across the office from Lucas’s, labeling old birth certificates and whistling a song that had been popular on the radio five or six years ago. Lucas placed the Whaling Museum documents on the desk and tapped them with his knuckles.
“We have a festival to plan,” he groaned.
Jefferson went through the documents. “Three weeks?”
“We have someone for this, don’t we?” Lucas asked. “An event planner?”
“I knew one, but she moved West,” Jefferson admitted. “We could just call a few vendors and throw something together ourselves?”
“I don’t want it to look taped together haphazardly,” Lucas said. “I once arranged a birthday party for Monica and told everyone to come on the wrong day.”
Jefferson barked with laughter. “Point taken. I’ll look around for someone to take over.”
“But we don’t have much cash,” Lucas reminded Jefferson for what felt like the hundredth time that week.
Jefferson waved his hand to indicate he understood. Money wasn’t allocated to the Historical Society. Money was only allocated to the future of Nantucket—to more hotels and prettier beaches and anything to please tourists and their seemingly endless supply of cash.
Lucas couldn’t believe he’d printed the incorrect dates on Monica’s surprise birthday party invitations. The surprise was his, in the end, when the party guests began to arrive one by one on the day before Monica’s birthday. The first guest was Stella, one of Lucas’s best friends from high school. She’d carried a big birthday present in one hand and held her dog’s leash in her other. Her dog at that time was the golden retriever, Jasper, the love of her life. That was maybe a year or two after her husband and sister were killed in the crash.
When Stella walked up the driveway, Lucas’s face melted. And she’d said, “You got the date wrong, didn’t you?” She’d laughed because she’d known Lucas since they were children. She’d witnessed him forget nearly everything there was to forget: school lunches, homework, what time high school graduation started, and what day to pick up his suit for various weddings or special occasions.
Lucas locked up the Nantucket Historical Society for the night and breezed over to Stella’s art store down the block. She was stationed behind the desk with her reading glasses on, making notes to herself on a yellow pad of paper. Lucas watched her, noticing the little ways she’d aged over the years. Did she ever inspect his face in a similar way? Did she ever think, look at those wrinkles on Lucas’s face. Look at the way he’s changed.
Lucas entered the art store. Stella raised her chin, and a smile crept across her face.
“I was just about to yell at you to get out of here,” she joked. “We’re closed!”
“What if I wanted to buy your most expensive painting?” Lucas quipped. “Would you kick me out, then?”
“Should I wrap it up for you, sir?” Stella teased, gesturing toward a painting that filled the entire right-hand wall of the shop. The painting was of a violent storm, a night sky practically purple with angry clouds, and a boat fighting for its life in the waves. The tag read thirty thousand dollars.
Lucas grimaced. “Do you take credit cards?”
Stella giggled and ran around the register to give him a side hug. Neither of them had ever had more than just enough to get by. Well, he hadn’t. Going into history didn’t exactly make for a jet-setting lifestyle. But Stella’s net worth had grown since she’d opened the art store.
Since they’d both been raised in the proverbial sticks of Nantucket Island, they looked at the world in a similar way. They understood what it meant to hear the echo of an empty bank account. And regardless of how far from that empty bank account you got, you still remembered what it sounded like.
“You want to grab a drink?” Stella asked.
“Only if I’m not taking up too much of your time.”
“For you? I have all the time in the world.”
Lucas waited out front for Stella to lock up the store. He watched a little girl eat a strawberry ice cream cone and burst into tears when it melted all over her hand. It reminded him of painful memories, ones that cracked his heart open, and he turned his head away when the little girl’s father picked her up and carried her away to comfort her. Stella jangled out of the front door and wagged her eyebrows. For a split second, Lucas imagined they were seventeen again, lost in the throes of teenage hormones and with nothing much to do but have a good time. He’d crushed hard on Stella during that time, but he was now grateful that it had never gone anywhere romantically. He’d been sure to tell Monica about that teenage crush, and she’d giggled and said, “Who wouldn’t be in love with Stella?” Monica was immune to jealousy. It was like a superpower.
Stella and Lucas grabbed the last table in the corner of the wine bar veranda. A chilly wind swallowed their shoulders, and Stella tugged on a jacket and ordered a glass of red wine. Her cheeks were crimson. Lucas ordered the same thing because he thought Stella’s taste was almost as good as Monica’s. When it came, he listened as Stella described it as “oaky.” He nodded and said, “I think I know what you mean.”
They both missed Monica at that moment. Monica would have launched into her own opinions about the wine. She would have talked a little too much, then apologized and said, “There I go again!”
Lucas and Stella chatted easily about their days. Stella had discovered a brand-new local artist who’d moved to Nantucket two years ago to become a sculptor. “They’re abstract,” Stella said of the art, giggling. “I think you’d hate them.”
Lucas laughed. “Don’t be so sure. I can be ‘with it.’”
“Lucas, get real. You’re entrenched in history. You have no idea how to appreciate modern art.”
Lucas threw his head back. “Sure! I don’t get it. It’s just a bunch of lines and colors and squiggles to me. Sue me!”
Stella smiled wider. They’d had this discussion numerous times, going as far back as tenth-grade history class. Stella sometimes agreed with him on some modern art elements, but she often fought for the nature of modernity—the fact that we have to move forward as a culture rather than continually look back. Being a historian, Lucas couldn’t have disagreed more. He said we have to learn from the past to never repeat our mistakes .
But that was when Lucas remembered Rhonda. He asked Stella if she remembered her, too.
“Of course! I love her,” Stella said. “She used to come into the shop. Gosh, she and your mother were inseparable back in the day.” She furrowed her brow as though trying to remember the last time she’d seen her. But Rhonda was older now. She couldn’t necessarily walk around downtown on her own.
Lucas explained what Rhonda had wanted to talk about today. Stella’s eyes lit up.
“You promised that adorable old woman you’d throw a street party in honor of her father in three weeks?” Stella laughed. “You’re crazier than I thought, Elston.”
Lucas hung his head. His thoughts raced. He imagined Rhonda’s sorrowful face when he told her he couldn’t manage it. He imagined telling her maybe next year.
But then Stella said, “You know, I know a pretty good event planner.”
Lucas raised his chin. “I’m listening.”
Stella laughed. “You know my Salt Sisters always deliver.”
“Of course. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. The Salt Sisters always deliver.”
“Just about always,” Stella agreed. “I’m heading to Hilary’s later. Tina will be there. I’ll pitch the idea.”
“I’m sure she’s too busy to throw something together that quickly.”
Stella’s eyes sparkled. “For you and Rhonda? Come on. You’re Nantucket royalty. We’d do anything for you.”
“Royalty, huh?” Lucas felt a blush crawl up his neck. He wanted to make a joke about his less-than-adequate bank account or the fact that he probably wouldn’t be able to retire before he hit Rhonda’s age. (He’d made his peace with that, anyway. He loved his job too much to quit.) Didn’t Stella remember what his house looked like these days?
But Stella continued to grin. “We’ll work it out.” What could Lucas do but believe her?