Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
G ale buzzed all the way back to her mother’s bungalow. My sister’s name is Lilian. My sister might be alive. Furrowing her brow as she drove, she thought about everything else Lucas had mentioned—going through adoption records and reading old newspapers from Providence and Nantucket. He’d even said he was going to “ask around” to see if any of the older residents from Nantucket remembered two little red-headed twins from the early eighties. “This is a small island,” he’d reminded her, gazing at her in a way that made her suspect he was falling in love with her. “Somebody remembers something. That’s the way history works.”
Evelyn’s car was in the driveway, which surprised Gale. Evelyn had avoided her ever since Gale had asked her about the photograph and subsequently had a well-timed asthma attack. Gale’s stomach tied itself into knots. She got out of the car and walked around the side of the bungalow to find Evelyn on the veranda with her face tilted up to catch the sun and her fingers crossed over her stomach. Beside her was a glass of iced tea. She looked serene. Beautiful. This is a woman who lost one of her daughters. It was so difficult to see the truth on anyone’s face. Gale knew that better than most right now. She’d gone to bed every night with a man who was lying to her.
Gale watched her for what felt like a long time. She imagined dropping into the chair beside Evelyn, drawing her arm around her shoulders, and saying, Whatever happened back then, I want to help you carry it. But there was a wall between them. There had always been a wall. Had Gale built the wall after Lilian had left? Or had Evelyn built it between the two of them in order to protect herself after the loss of Lilian?
Gale was a mother. She’d always wanted to be a mother and had wept on the morning the girls had been born healthy and beautiful. “It feels like I finally discovered myself,” she’d told a friend at the time. “It feels like I’ve been waiting for my girls to come all this time.” But still, that echoing emptiness had remained, lurking far beneath her love for her daughters and husband. A part of me has always missed Lilian to my core.
Gale knew all about twins because she’d watched her own grow in her stomach. She knew that they often shared a placenta. She knew that they often developed their own language before they were verbal. Did she and Lilian have a shared language when the photograph was taken?
Then another thought rocketed through her. Is Lilian with our father?
Gale was suddenly riddled with doubt and fear and anxiety. She didn’t want to approach her mother with all of these questions plaguing her. She didn’t want to push Evelyn into another asthma attack.
Quietly, Gale walked around the side of the house, entered through the front door, grabbed her things from upstairs, and returned to her car. Within ten minutes, she was pressing the button to Hilary’s iron gate and parking next to Hilary’s Porsche. Hilary breezed out in a cloud of expensive perfume and wrapped her arms around her. “You can stay as long as you want,” she told her when Gale explained what was going on. “There are no time constraints. You can take over as many rooms as you need.”
Many of the Salt Sisters were eating a cheese plate and talking about their days on the veranda. Gale sat quietly with them for a while, not eating or drinking anything. Finally, Stella asked if she’d approached Lucas with the photograph, and Gale said she had. She explained what they’d learned thus far from the records office. Stella raised her eyebrows. “Wow. I think that means Lucas is on the case.”
Gale couldn’t suppress a soft smile. “I get the feeling he’s becoming obsessed.”
“That’s Lucas,” Stella agreed. “He throws himself into everything one thousand percent.”
Tina, who’d just told Gale she didn’t need to worry about the bits and bobs she’d asked her to do for the Whaling Museum Festival, filled a glass with wine and grimaced. “You said he’s going to ask around the island for information?”
“That’s what he said.”
“I wonder about these Nantucket secrets,” Tina said. “People can be so tight-lipped about things like this.”
“East Coasters have a secretive sensibility,” Hilary agreed because she wasn’t an East Coaster, not to her bones. “People die with their secrets.”
“You’re saying people won’t want to talk about this?” Gale asked.
Katrina twirled a curl around and around her finger. “I just think Nantucketers protect one another. And there’s no greater way of showing respect than keeping someone’s secrets close.”
“And I have to respect it in a way,” Ada said. “It’s not like I would tell anyone outside of the Salt Sisters circle about anything we talk about here.”
The other Salt Sisters nodded vigorously. That was expected.
“But Lucas has his way,” Stella offered, giving Gale a soft smile that meant don’t give up hope just yet. “He’s a historian. He knows the innermost workings of how societies operate and how they’ve always operated. I have to imagine he knows right where to find the source of Nantucket gossip.” Stella laughed at herself. “It’s just a hunch.”
Gale retired to her bedroom at Hilary’s place earlier than expected. By eight thirty, she was already in her pajamas and curled up under the blankets. The thousand-count sheets beneath her made her delirious, but she wasn’t sure she could fully slip into dreamland just yet. She removed the photograph from her wallet on the bedside table and inspected it for another five minutes. But there was nothing to be gleaned from staring.
Somebody remembers something were the words Lucas had left her with. She knew he was right. But the Salt Sisters were right, too. Somebody remembers something. But plenty of people take those somethings to their graves.
Suddenly, her phone buzzed. It was a text message from Piper.
PIPER: Mom? Can we call you?
Gale called her immediately. Piper answered on the first ring and put the phone on speaker. Her voice warbled, proof she was crying or about to.
“Mom?” Piper began. “We have something to tell you.”
Gale sat upright in bed and shoved herself against the wall. Her heart thudded. Was one of them sick? Had they gotten into a car accident? Pregnant? What?
“We saw Dad today,” Anna whispered. “He was out with someone.”
Gale’s heart dropped into her stomach.
“With, like, a woman,” Piper cried. “A young woman!”
Gale rubbed her right temple and tried to smile into the phone. She wanted to make her voice seem bright and happy. “My darlings, your father should be able to do whatever he wants.”
“But Mom!” Anna cried. “You’re going to reassess when you get home!”
“You’ve barely been in Nantucket for five minutes,” Piper said, then stuttered, “He’s not respecting you!”
Gale closed her eyes. She was grateful, in a way, to have so much other stuff to think about. Peter dating Margaret in broad daylight didn’t bother her as much as it might have before she’d discovered Lilian. Maybe my heart is already too broken to feel.
“I understand it must have been awful to see him out like that,” Gale said quietly. “It must have been so painful. But your father is a grown man. He can see whoever he likes.” A tear ran down her cheek, and she was grateful her daughters couldn’t see.
Anna and Piper were stumped. They couldn’t understand why their mother wasn’t as upset as they were.
Finally, Anna asked, “Mom? Are you dating, too?”
Gale’s mind’s eye filled with the image of Lucas, his adorable smile, his historian glasses, his thick head of hair. She thought about how they’d held hands beneath the Nantucket sun as she’d wept and laughed. She hadn’t been so vulnerable with someone in what felt like years. When did Peter and I stop showing one another our true selves? When did we become too tired to be honest?
“I’m dealing with quite a bit of chaos here,” Gale finally said.
“With Grandma?” Anna clarified.
“Yes,” Gale said.
“Do you need any help?” Anna asked.
“We know how she is,” Piper said. “Or, how she can be.”
“We love her,” Anna was quick to add.
“But she can be hard. Bitter,” Piper commented.
Gale’s limbs flooded with warmth. I don’t have my mother or my sister. But I have my daughters.
“I’ll be fine,” Gale told them. “I just want you to focus on yourselves this summer. You’re both at the very beginnings of your careers. I know how stressful that can be.”
The girls were quiet for a moment until Anna said, “You know what I’ve been thinking about recently?”
“What is it, sweetheart?” Gale asked.
“Dad never talked about your screenplays,” Anna noted. “He always changed the subject when your work came up. I never considered why before. But I think I’m finally starting to understand.”
Gale closed her eyes. Her heart swelled with a thousand emotions—gratefulness, love, fear.