Chapter 18
“That would have been two years after Greta bought the Harbor House,” Henry said, fidgeting with his glass of wine.
“Good memory,” Candice said, smiling at her little brother. She’d never imagined that Lindsey and Henry would help her out with this so much, nor that they would get so invested.
Lindsey began to read. “My darling Rita, I want to thank you again for the invitation to the Fourth of July party. After two years on Martha’s Vineyard, I have so few friends that I’ve begun to wonder if I’m too strange to build a life for myself.
I apologize if that’s too forward. Being from Germany, we were taught always to tell the truth, no matter what.
You asked me at the party what my husband might have thought of Martha’s Vineyard if he were still alive, and I’ve thought about that a great deal.
I really loved that question. Asking it brought Hans back alive again, if only for a little while.
To answer you, I’d like to say that Hans would have loved Martha’s Vineyard.
He would have loved sailing and hiking. He would have loved the food and the white beaches.
He would have thought the house was far too big.
Although he came from money, he was never keen on having too much space.
He said that having space meant you simply accumulated more things. Probably, he was right.
Lindsey’s eyes widened. She set the phone down and shivered. “I feel like I just walked through the past,” she said.
“Is this too invasive?” Henry asked.
Lindsey and Candice considered this quietly.
“If it leads us to Stella, I don’t care,” Candice said finally.
“And isn’t it better to know about Greta?” Lindsey asked. “Isn’t it better to know that she existed, that she loved and lost her husband Hans, that she came to this island and felt very lonely before she met Rita? Isn’t it better to keep the past alive, like Greta said?”
Henry nodded and folded his hands. “Keep going.”
They did. Candice read the next letter, which showed that Greta and Rita were becoming fast friends.
In many of the letters after that, Greta wrote about how desperately she wanted to get married again, if only so she could have a child.
She desperately wanted a family and wanted to know what it was like to raise a baby.
But all of her dating efforts were fruitless.
“I don’t know how to please these American men,” Greta wrote in the early fifties.
“I don’t know what to talk about or what to look like.
I feel my looks fading, anyway. Maybe I need to make peace with being alone.
” Rita urged her to keep trying, but it was hopeless.
“I’m so glad I didn’t have to date back then,” Lindsey breathed.
“I guess that will be me soon,” Candice said, then shivered. The last thing she wanted was to go on random dates with strangers. Was that what her future looked like?
For hours, they read Greta’s letters. They wound up back at the Harbor House—Greta’s old home—where they continued to read deep into the night.
They found themselves falling in love with the woman, a woman lost to time, a woman who’d loved and lost. Candice had nearly forgotten about Greta’s connection to Stella when, out of nowhere, Greta mentioned to Rita that she was going to Nashville, Tennessee.
“Nashville!” Candice and Lindsey cried in unison.
Henry couldn’t believe it either. But there it was in the letter. “I’ve met a man who’s invited me to Nashville. He’s a country man, a Southerner with a funny drawl, but I’m captivated with him. His family’s from around there, and he wants to take me to some shows.”
The letter was from the year 1980, forty years after Greta escaped from Germany during the war. There still hadn’t been a single mention of Stella. But Candice could feel it at the edge of this story.
Henry asked to take a break, which was probably essential given how late it was. They’d been reading letters for hours and hours. Henry had a call to make, and Lindsey wanted to head out to meet friends. “You’re welcome to come,” she said to Candice, raising her eyebrows.
Candice felt herself saying no, then hesitated. She didn’t have the energy to write tonight, not after all of this. And she itched to be outside, beneath the starry sky. She wanted to talk about things that had nothing to do with the past. She wanted to feel the future, rushing out before her.
So she said yes.
Because there had been a little too much wine with the letter-reading, Lindsey called them a cab, which whisked them off to a beach house close to Edgartown.
There, friends from their old high school listened to music on the back porch, their still-youthful faces glowing in the moonlight.
Candice spotted Frank right away. She hadn’t seen him since they’d gone to see his mother together and spoken about the country-western album.
That was before Nathan had come to the island and she’d decided to break things off.
Frank was sipping a beer at the far end of the veranda, chatting with another guy they’d gone to high school with.
Candice felt immediately drawn to him, although she cursed herself for indulging in any kind of fantasy.
Frank had been kind to her. He’d let her ask his sick mother for details about the past. But after that, she’d sort of dropped him. She needed to apologize for that.
Lindsey followed Candice’s gaze, then smiled. “I’m sure he wants to talk to you.”
“I feel like I messed things up,” Candice offered. “Even friendship-wise.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Lindsey said. “It’s still early July. Summer ain’t over yet.”
Candice laughed, then crossed the veranda to be in Frank’s orbit. His eyes flickered over to hers, and he offered her a confused yet handsome smile. “Just a second,” he said to the guy he’d been chatting with, before he turned to her. “Hey, stranger.”
Candice’s stomach flipped over. She went over to him, taking the spot of the old friend, then crossed her arms over her chest. “I want to apologize,” she said.
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t have asked your mom for help,” she said. “She’s been through enough already.”
Frank laughed gently. “Are you kidding? She loved listening to that old record. She hasn’t been able to stop singing those songs. I don’t know if she always knows where they came from, but they’re in her head. The brain is a funny thing.”
Candice couldn’t believe it.
“How have you been?” he asked. “It’s been a minute. Lindsey said your husband was in town.”
“It’s been complicated, I guess. My husband and I broke up,” Candice said. Before Frank could say anything else, she hurried to add, “It’s all right, though. I think it’s for the best. Or it will be for the best.”
Frank grimaced. “It sucks.”
“It really does.” Candice smiled despite everything. “But I have this feeling that everything is about to begin again. Like, I get a fresh start. Is that naive?”
“I think naivety is a superpower,” Frank said. “We have to trick ourselves into finding beauty in change.”
“Spoken like someone who’s been there before.”
“I’m about as naive as they come.”
Candice laughed, throwing her head back. It felt delicious to hear herself laugh, if only because it reminded her of how little she’d been able to laugh when Nathan was here.
“Let’s celebrate your freedom,” Frank said, raising his beer.
“To freedom,” Candice echoed. “To change.”