Chapter 17
Although Candice and Nathan hadn’t yet told Sarah and Peter about their breakup, there was a strange air over the breakfast table the following morning, as though the kids had figured it out on their own.
Both Sarah and Peter decided to return to the city with their father, Peter to attend another sports camp, and Sarah to do a little film project before she started college in September.
Candice sat on the bed of her daughter’s room and watched her pack her things, trying and failing to find the right words to explain why Candice herself needed to stay on the Vineyard for now.
“I’ll come back to the city as soon as I can,” Candice said.
Sarah paused halfway through zipping her suitcase and gazed up at her mother. “You seem happy here,” she said gently, as though she were speaking to someone younger than her. “I haven’t seen you this happy in a while. I mean, were you happier here before Dad came? I don’t know.”
Candice raised her eyebrows in surprise. Kids really did notice everything. But usually, those same kids didn’t have the bravery to say what they thought aloud.
“Honey,” Candice offered, her voice shaking, “the past eighteen years of raising you have been the most wonderful of my life. Thank you. For all of it.” She got up and scooped her daughter into a hug.
Sarah shook a little, but soon calmed down.
“You’re going to be so brilliant at NYU. They’re lucky to have you.”
“I’ll see you around campus, I guess?” Sarah said, stepping back and crossing her arms.
Candice struggled to imagine herself back on campus next semester. She struggled to see herself in her old life at all. She smiled and said, “Probably.” But she knew that wasn’t so.
Candice, Lindsey, and Henry stood on the front porch of the Harbor House with their hands raised, waving as Nathan drove the kids away.
Peter and Sarah kept waving till they were completely out of sight.
But Nathan kept his eyes straight ahead, as though wanting to shove the Harbor House as deeply back into his memories as he could.
When Henry turned to head back inside, Candice burst into laughter. Henry and Lindsey gaped at her.
“What’s going on?” Lindsey asked.
Candice pressed both hands over her mouth. She couldn’t believe it. “It’s over,” she said. “We’re going to get divorced.” A rush of euphoria came through her.
Lindsey’s jaw dropped. Henry pulled his fingers through his hair, then smiled.
“The guy’s a freak, Candice,” he said, throwing the door open.
Lindsey threw her arms around Candice, cradling her. “He’s the worst,” she agreed. “Was it because of that book he wrote? Human Agenda?”
“Honestly? No,” Candice said. “Although the book did make me realize that he could be honest with absolutely everyone else but me.”
All that morning over coffee and croissants and tea and mimosas, Candice explained the story of her marriage to her siblings. She explained that their mother had never liked him, that she’d warned Candice not to marry him. “But I didn’t listen,” Candice said, laughing.
“Who listens to their mother?” Lindsey asked. “It’s biologically incorrect.”
Candice and Henry cackled. Henry raised his glass and made a toast to the future. “We’re all single!” he cried. “I wonder what Mom would say about that?”
Candice shook her head. “There’s still so much we don’t know about her.” But she reasoned that now that she’d cleaned up the mess of her marriage (and thrown it away), she could focus better on her mother’s past. She knew where she needed to start.
“I know what I want to do today,” she announced.
“Bar crawl. Winery. Fish tacos,” Henry listed them out on his fingers.
Candice cackled. “No! I mean, maybe food later.”
“I know. You want to see Frank Delaware!” Lindsey tried.
Candice gave her a look that meant, don’t you dare.
“I want to go to the library,” Candice said.
Both Lindsey and Henry were immediately deflated.
“Sis, that isn’t how you get back out there,” Henry said. “People don’t go to the library anymore. You have to change your tactics.”
Candice rolled her eyes, then got up to take a shower and pull herself together.
Reluctantly, Lindsey and Henry got ready as well, promising themselves and each other that they would celebrate properly after Candice did her thing at the library.
Suddenly, it felt as though the three Vanberg siblings were in cahoots. It had never felt so good before.
During the drive to the public library, where all the records from the past few centuries of Vineyard living were kept, Candice updated Henry on everything they’d learned about their mother so far, including what Frank’s mother had said about Stella being a “ragamuffin.” About how she’d crawled out of a honky-tonk.
“Frank’s mom was saying there was another woman who owned the Harbor House.
He said maybe it was her idea to change Mom’s story when she got here?
To say that she was from the Vineyard, that she’d been born here?
But he said that everyone else knew the truth. ”
Candice cut the engine in the parking lot of the library and turned to look at Henry in the back seat. His eyes stirred with questions. “She’s not a Vanberg?” He asked. “But that’s our last name. Mom gave us her last name because she said it was important to her.”
“I always wondered what Dad thought about that,” Lindsey said quietly.
“But why would she give us her fake name?” Henry demanded. “Candice, this doesn’t make any sense. Didn’t you say Frank’s mom has Alzheimer’s?”
“I just want to do a little digging,” Candice said. “I want to see who owned the Harbor House before Mom did.”
“Her parents! Our grandparents!” Henry said.
“What are their names?” Candice asked, cocking her head.
Henry stuttered, then went quiet. They knew nothing about their grandparents. Why had they never considered how strange that was before?
One of the librarians led them to the basement, where the Vineyard records were kept.
A light bulb flickered in the corner, giving the space an eerie feel.
The librarian pointed them to the files regarding house ownerships, who’d owned property on the Vineyard going back generations, and it took them no more than five minutes to discover the name of the woman who’d owned the Harbor House before Stella Vanberg.
“Greta Vanberg,” Henry read aloud. “Maybe that’s our grandmother’s name?”
“Maybe,” Candice said doubtfully, before digging deeper into the years of the house’s ownership.
By the looks of things, Greta had purchased the house in 1946.
On one of the ancient-looking contracts, she’d written herself as a “widow.” She’d also written her date and place of birth: April 18, 1920, Munich, Germany.
“We’re German!” Henry said.
“I don’t know,” Candice said again. “I really don’t think Greta is our grandmother. Mom was born in 1958. That would have made Greta nearly forty.”
“Women can still have babies at forty,” Lindsey said, narrowing her eyes.
“Okay. Well. If she did give birth to Mom, the certificate would be here, right?” Candice realized.
Henry popped over to the birth certificate area with incredible energy. He went back to 1958, rifling through the files, before shaking his head. “It’s not here,” he said.
Candice and Lindsey double- and triple-checked, just in case. But it was true.
Henry grimaced. “This is freaking me out.”
“I think we should learn everything we can about Greta,” Lindsey suggested. “When did she come to the United States?”
“And who was her husband?” Henry added.
“Maybe there’s a record somewhere,” Lindsey said.
It took a little while to find this. Eventually, they had to drag the librarian back downstairs to dig into old visas and old passport information.
More than an hour after that, they discovered that Greta Vanberg had come to the United States in 1940, one year after Germany began the Second World War.
The passport photo was black-and-white, showing a beautiful, frightened-looking woman of twenty.
Her eyes were enormous. At the time, she was listed as married.
But because she’d been married back in Germany, there was no marriage certificate.
“She ran away from the war,” Candice breathed.
“Was she Jewish?” Henry asked.
There was no mention of her religion on the passport.
“Maybe she pretended to be something else,” Lindsey suggested, although it was impossible to know.
They were stumped again. At this point, the librarian had taken an interest in their story, and although her shift had already ended, she remained in the basement, searching through files.
Candice checked her phone to see that they’d been down here for more than three hours.
Already, Sarah had written that she, Peter, and Nathan had returned to the city.
Candice wrote back that she loved them. “Glad you’re safe. ”
Suddenly, the librarian snapped her fingers.
“Over the years, when prominent people from the Vineyard died, diaries and journals and old letters were donated to the library for us to go through. It was up to us to put together a history of the Vineyard, you know? Not everything was important, not to the island. But we kept just about everything. An intern a few years ago categorized everything, saying who the letters were to and who they were from. Maybe, if your Greta Vanberg wrote any letters to anyone on the Vineyard, you can get a better feel for who she was.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. It was also their last hope.
The librarian led them to a computer to show them the system the intern had put together.
An easy search led them to more than forty letters written to and from Greta Vanberg.
Most of the letters were correspondence between Greta and a woman named Rita Taylor.
From a cursory glance, it seemed to Candice that Rita and Greta had been the best of friends.
“I can email these letters to you,” the librarian suggested. “You can peruse them at your leisure.”
“And outside of this basement,” Henry said.
“We need to get out of here,” the librarian agreed. “We're going to get swallowed up by the past.” She let out a cackle, then typed out Candice’s email and sent Greta’s correspondence.
Candice, Lindsey, and Henry walked wordlessly out of the library and wound their way through downtown.
Nobody knew what to do with themselves. But it was a gorgeous evening, with the sunset casting its orange light across the beautiful Victorian homes and along the cobblestoned streets.
Eventually, Henry steered them onto a beautiful veranda, where the three of them ordered a glass of wine.
Henry let out an ominous sigh. “World War II,” he said finally.
“It’s heavy,” Lindsey agreed.
“Let’s get into it,” Henry said.
Candice burned with excitement and fear about what they were set to encounter. Her questions were numerous. Who was Greta Vanberg? And if Greta wasn’t their grandmother, why had Greta come into Stella’s life? Why did Stella have her last name?
And who were the McGees?
“All right,” Candice said, opening the file filled with old letters on her phone. “Who wants to read the first one?”