Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
G ale returned home after meeting Lucas and Jefferson with a mile-long to-do list and the beginnings of a migraine. Her mother’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Ever since that first night, she’d avoided all signs of Evelyn. It allowed her to shove the memory of that photograph into the back recesses of her mind. Maybe I’m overreacting. Probably it’s nothing.
In the kitchen, Gale filled a glass with ice water from the Brita filter and took a peach from the wicker basket in the center of the round wooden table. Based on long-ago memories of her mother’s stories, she knew that Evelyn’s father had made the table with his own two hands. Gale wove the tips of her fingers over the wood lovingly. Tears sprang to her eyes. Pull it together.
Gale looked through her mother’s calendar for signs of doctor’s appointments and even flitted through the open mail on the counter to see if there was any indication her mother’s health was declining. But it seemed Evelyn’s newfound youthful exterior echoed her interior health. She was sixty-nine going on fifty-five. She had enough vitality to yell at Gale about leaving Peter. She had no soft and open arms to help carry Gale’s grief.
Gale sat outside on the veranda in her summer dress with water, a peach, and her computer. Maybe she’d do some work for Tina and the street festival. Or perhaps she’d put together a few notes for the romantic comedy screenplay. But the photograph she’d discovered two nights ago burned a hole through the wallet in her purse. After she cleaned her fingers of peach juice, she removed the photo to analyze the plump little faces and their surroundings.
It was then she noticed the tree.
Behind the two little girls—a minuscule Gale and a toddler who could only be her twin—was a spindly little oak tree that looked like it was fighting for its life at the edge of the sand. Gale raised her chin to look out across the beach in front of the bungalow. There it was: the giant oak, with limbs that arched and wove to the cerulean sky and nutritionally green leaves. The tree was maybe ten times the size it was in that photograph, but there was no mistaking it for any other tree.
It means the photograph was taken right over there.
Gale shot up from the table and hurried to find the exact spot in the sand. Once there, she slumped down to the hot sand and spread out as though she wanted to make snow angels. Her heart thudded loud and slow. The photograph was still in her hand, and she whispered, “ Who are you? Where are you? What happened? ”
It occurred to her she’d come to Nantucket to discover who this other little girl was. She wasn’t here to get over Peter, write a screenplay, or bond with her mother. She wasn’t here to be a Salt Sister. She wasn’t even here to have a sweet little romance with that Moby Dick -obsessed historian with the kind eyes.
This photograph was her calling.
But suddenly, she heard a familiar voice rattle out across the water. “What on earth are you doing?”
Gale sat up and gazed across the rolling white sands to find Evelyn at the edge of the veranda with her hands on her hips. She wore a beautiful black dress, and her blond hair caught the sunlight in such a way that she looked like a lighthouse. Gale was reminded of being a little girl and having her mother call her in for dinner. Evelyn had always left her feeling like she had done something wrong. Even now, she felt it.
Gale got up, set her jaw, and headed for her mother. The photograph felt terribly heavy in her hand. It felt like carrying lead. Gale stopped five feet away from her mother. It was better to just spit out the question and face this head-on.
“Who is this?” Gale raised the photograph so that it faced Evelyn.
Immediately, Evelyn’s hard exterior melted. Her face was ashen. Both of her arms fell to her sides. “Where did you get that?” Even her voice sounded like it belonged to a much older woman.
Sweat bubbled along the back of Gale’s neck. Had this been the wrong tactic? She suddenly felt as though she’d injured her mother. Evelyn stumbled back and fell into a chair, where she pressed the tips of her fingers to her forehead and breathed deeply. Now, they had matching migraines.
“Mom?” Gale stepped gingerly to the table and sat beside Evelyn. Every mother-daughter instinct told her to take her mother’s hand, but Evelyn shook it off and stretched both palms across her thighs.
“I’m sorry,” Gale muttered instinctively. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” But was she sorry? All she’d done was stumble onto a secret. All she’d done was demand answers to something that seemed her right to know.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Evelyn muttered to her shoes.
“Mom.” Gale tried to find Evelyn’s eyes, but Evelyn looked stricken and pale. “Just tell me who she is. Tell me her name.”
Evelyn began to heave. Her breath rattled through her, and her throat looked tight. Gale wondered if she’d really done it this time. If she’d really done lasting damage to her mother’s health.
“Please. My inhaler?” Evelyn whispered.
Gale shot up. Her migraine rocketed through her, and she thought she was going to throw up across the veranda. “Where is it?”
“Bathroom. First drawer.”
Gale hurried to the bathroom. She couldn’t move quickly enough, but she felt as though she were running in slow motion. The inhaler was in the third drawer, not the first, and by the time Gale returned to the veranda, her mother’s breathing was louder and frenzied. Her mother’s asthma had been a mainstay during Gale’s youth, but it was nothing she’d thought about in a long time. Now, handing Evelyn her inhaler, Gale was reminded of hundreds of afternoons when her mother had said, It’s up to you, Gale. If you don’t save me, I won’t make it. The pressure had instilled something in Gale. Had it helped her grow up? Or had it forced her to grow up too quickly?
It was clear that Evelyn wasn’t going to tell her who was in the photograph. Not right now. Her asthma attack wasn’t fake. And there was no telling how bad it would get if Gale forced it. Heavy with a mix of anger and sorrow, Gale helped her mother to her bedroom, unzipped her dress, and watched her slip under the covers. Gale made her tea and set out crackers and cookies on her side table. Her mother’s eyes were half open. You will tell me the truth before summer is over . But Gale wasn’t sure how to force an old, secretive woman to unleash her truths. Maybe there was another way to get to the bottom of it.
Gale drove back to Hilary Salt’s place to sit with the other Salt Sisters on the veranda and ask their advice. Just like always, Hilary’s iron gate acted like a revolving door, bringing beautiful women carrying bottles of wine into the glinting sun of the final hours of the first day of June. Tina wasn’t there because she was caught up phoning various vendors for the Whaling Festival. Gale didn’t feel any guilt for tending to her tasks later. There at the table, she flipped the photograph from 1981 out for Hilary to see, and the other Salt Sisters crowded around.
“You have a twin,” Hilary breathed.
Gale felt the heaviness lift off her shoulders. Sharing something like this was incredible. It meant you didn’t have to carry it alone.
Katrina agreed it was an earth-shattering moment. “Your mother had an asthma attack? And refused to tell you anything?”
“It’s not that she refused,” Gale said. Am I standing up for my mother? “She just doesn’t know how to tell the truth. She never really has.” She rubbed the back of her neck and added, “It occurred to me that I married a man a lot like my mother.”
The Salt Sisters glanced at one another with knowing smiles.
“I think it’s common,” Ada said after a pause. “We’re drawn to the people in our lives who’ve wronged us. We instinctively want to make things better with them, so we create similar dynamics with others and hope to ‘win’ them the second or the third time over.” She paused, laughed gently, and added, “Sorry. I heard that in a therapy podcast and always remembered it.”
“It’s interesting,” Gale admitted. She was suddenly nervous. Now that she’d stepped away from Peter, would she attempt to recreate that relationship with someone else as a way to “win” it? She hoped not. But was anyone really ever capable of controlling themselves? Are we all at the mercy of our innermost desires?
Maybe that was why Peter had to cheat.
No. Don’t give him an easy out.
“Look,” Hilary said, splaying her hands out on the table. “This photograph clearly set off alarm bells for your mother. She’s panicking.”
Gale’s heart thudded with recognition. She understood what Hilary was saying.
“Something awful happened,” Gale said quietly.
The Salt Sisters bowed their heads in agreement. Whoever Gale’s twin was, she probably wasn’t around anymore. A disaster had befallen her.
What if I was beside her when she died? What if I saw the whole thing happen, and I blocked it out? What does something like that do to a little girl? Have I been so inherently damaged my entire life without knowing it?
Gale’s mood was sour.
“I still don’t think she should have kept it from you,” Hilary said quietly. “It’s just that it’s clear she can’t talk about it.”
Stella piped up from the opposite end of the table. “Where were you born? Providence?”
Gale tilted her head. “I was born in Nantucket.” We. We were born in Nantucket. “My mother was here for the late spring and summer that year.” When did she get the house in Providence? The timeline was suddenly so unclear.
Stella brightened. “You met Lucas today, right? You should take this up with him. He has buckets of records at the Nantucket Historical Society. There’s nothing he likes more than mysteries and family secrets.”
Gale’s heart opened like a window. “And Moby Dick , apparently.”
“Really?” Stella furrowed her brow. “He’s reading that? Sorry. I’m just so worried about him.” She tugged a blond curl. “He wants to escape his life.”
Gale didn’t think anything was wrong with staying home to read a colossal novel by yourself. But she was a writer and a reader and always had been. Perhaps Lucas was something of a soulmate. A shiver ran down her spine when she recalled the outline of his face to her memory.
“You should really chat with him about this,” Stella urged. “He needs more to do with his free time.”
“I can’t believe women aren’t throwing themselves at him,” Gale said.
The other Salt Sisters peered at her curiously. It was as though she’d just declared that the sky was green.
“You don’t think so?” Gale asked. She felt breathless.
“He’s handsome,” Ada admitted.
“It’s just that he’s been through a lot,” Stella added. “It’s hard for us to think of him that way after everything that’s happened.”
Gale’s heart felt bruised at the indication that Lucas had been through the wringer. But she couldn’t shake the memory of the glint in his eyes when they’d discussed books and fantastical stories. It was as though they’d dove deep into the abyss of a world they’d spontaneously created. Gale couldn’t remember ever feeling that way with anyone—especially not with Peter or her mother.
She resolved to ask Lucas about her twin. Even if the truth destroyed her.