Chapter 25
When Candice and Lindsey returned to the Harbor House, they found only Henry on the veranda, drinking wine.
They’d been gone a little more than a week, but Candice was surprised at how achy and good it felt to be back “home” at the Harbor House, the place where their mother had escaped to so many years ago.
Henry popped up to grab two glasses and gush with happiness that they were back. “I got a little lonely, to be honest with you,” he said bashfully.
Now, Candice and Lindsey sat with their brother and explained what had happened in Tennessee.
They showed him photographs of Sally and Stella McGee, and newspaper articles.
They finished with the final photograph of Carrie, Heidi, and Calvin Kimpel in the backyard of that mountain shack.
Henry was speechless. He couldn’t stop staring at the last photograph of their mother as a child.
“I can’t believe I never wondered why she didn’t have baby photos of herself,” he said then.
This had occurred to Candice, too. Stella Vanberg’s entire life now felt like a magic trick. She’d only let them see what she wanted them to.
After nearly two hours of filling in the blanks, Candice realized something. “Where’s the construction crew?” She remembered that Gwen had hired men to fix up the place for the women’s transitional home.
Henry looked deflated now. “Like I said, I told them to leave. I’m still contesting the will.”
The three Vanberg siblings kept silent for a long time. Candice listened to the shifting waves down below. She imagined her mother, brokenhearted and pregnant and terribly alone, sitting on this very same veranda with Greta Vanberg.
It was clear, then, why Stella Vanberg wanted the Harbor House to become a women’s transitional home. She wanted Greta Vanberg’s kindness to be extended to future generations of women. She didn’t want to hoard her wealth, her property, and all the beauty surrounding them.
“We need to call Gwen,” Lindsey said softly.
They surrounded the speakerphone. Candice’s pulse was quick in her neck. Gwen answered on the third ring, her tone sharp, as though she were preparing for yet another battle with the Vanberg children. “This is Gwen Harper speaking,” she said.
“Gwen, hi,” Candice said. “We’re all here. All three of us.”
“Hi,” Henry said.
“Hi, Gwen,” Lindsey offered.
“What can I help you with?” Gwen asked.
Candice closed her eyes. She felt a thousand memories float through her mind’s eye: dancing on the sand, sailing along the coast, dining at this very table, laughing. There had been difficult times, and there had been too many secrets. But Candice couldn’t blame her mother for any of that.
“We don’t want to contest the will anymore,” Candice said. “We’re sorry about everything, and we’re ready to step aside and let you do your thing.”
Gwen was taken aback. She stuttered, then asked, “Are you messing with me?”
“We’re not,” Henry said.
“Well, thank you. Thank you for understanding,” Gwen said. “I don’t know what to say. Except… your mother would be really happy.”
Candice felt her heart open. “You should come to the Harbor House while it’s still the Harbor House. We should spend a little time together, if you want to. I know you were close to our mother. We’d love to know her through your eyes, too. If you’re up for that.”
Gwen sounded flummoxed. But she said, “I’d like that. I’ll be on the island soon.”
The day after they returned, Candice met Frank at the harbor and climbed aboard his sailboat.
They’d arranged this via text message, but that didn’t make it any easier.
Candice set to work, untying the ropes and slipping into an easy rhythm with him.
She remembered when they’d done this as teenagers, teenagers who’d known so little about the world but who’d known more than enough about sails and wind and ocean waves.
They’d known about kissing, too. They’d done quite a bit of it back in the day.
Candice wondered if they’d make time for it now.
After they dropped anchor, Candice rifled through her bag to find a bottle of champagne—an expensive brand that made her feel she was celebrating something. She poured two glasses, and they clinked, gazing into one another’s eyes.
“It felt like you were gone a long time,” Frank said.
“We were, sort of,” Candice affirmed, settling in beside him. The sunset was a pink and orange ooze along the water. I love it here, she thought to herself. “We dove into my mother’s past and got a little lost along the way. But we couldn’t have done it without your mother.”
Frank smiled sadly. “She’s lost so much of herself. It was beautiful to see her that night, remembering.”
“It’s strange. We’re made up of memories,” Candice said. “I don’t want to lose them. When I look at you, I feel every memory we’ve ever shared, humming between us.”
“I think my mother feels something between us, too,” Frank said sadly. “But I think it’s more that she feels love for me and decides to accept it as fact.”
“Love is a fact,” Candice affirmed, smiling.
She felt a rush of love. Maybe it was for Frank, or maybe it was for her future on the Vineyard.
Just that morning, she’d been looking at houses for sale on other parts of the island.
She wanted to maintain her connection, even if she couldn’t live at the Harbor House.
“Can I ask you a question?” Frank asked.
“Yes.” Candice didn’t want secrets anymore.
“How do you see your future playing out?”
Candice considered this. Already, she’d begun to draft an email to NYU, telling them that she needed to take the semester off to write her own novel.
Peter was going to be a junior in high school, and she had no plans to move him away from the city.
But she and Nathan were getting divorced, which made things like parenting and apartment-sharing tricky.
Candice would have to be in the city 50 percent of the time. But the other 50 percent, she could spend here in the Vineyard. She told Frank that. She loved how it made his eyes shine.
“My divorce was a long time coming,” Candice said, shifting so that her shoulder pressed against Frank’s arm. “He stopped seeing me as a person, I think. I was just his wife. His less-successful wife.”
Candice thought of her mother, back when she’d been called Heidi.
She thought of her mother, sleeping next to that monster Harvey, hardly daring to dream about a future of freedom.
And then, she thought of her mother Stella McGee, who’d soon changed her name to Stella Vanberg.
She thought of Stella Vanberg, giving birth in the Martha’s Vineyard hospital while Greta Vanberg held her hand.
She thought of Stella and Greta, returning to the Harbor House to raise Candice on their own.
“I’ll love her as though she’s my granddaughter,” Greta had written to her best friend Rita in one of the letters from 1981.
“I already feel closer to baby Candice than I do to almost anyone in the world. She’s my greatest hope. ”
“What are you thinking about?” Frank asked. He touched her hair gently.
“I’m thinking about how glad I am that things went the way they did,” Candice offered, raising her chin so that she could kiss Frank Delaware properly—for the first time in almost thirty years.