Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
G raham didn’t know how to leave Sylvie’s side. Throughout the ceremony at the cemetery, a burial of rain and sleet and chill, Graham fought the urge to take her hand. We don’t know each other anymore, he reminded himself over and over again. She wouldn’t like it.
And then, remember how it destroyed him when she left?
When the burial was over, Sylvie remained by her mother’s grave for a long time.
SARAH brUCKSON in big block letters. She’d died when Sylvie was seven—which was old enough to remember, and therefore, more of a tragedy because it had told her of everything she’d been missing out on later.
Graham hung back, waiting for her, his curls drizzling with rain.
Valerie warmed the car behind them, waiting like the dutiful mother she was.
When Sylvie turned back, Graham was struck with the feeling that she looked no different than she had at seventeen.
He also couldn’t understand why she—with all her beauty, smarts, and success in her profession—wasn’t married or at least with someone.
He was sure she’d had boyfriends since they were seventeen.
He was sure people had fallen madly in love with her.
Back at Hannigan’s, James’s party was in full swing.
Graham led his mother and Sylvie to a corner table and grabbed drinks and appetizers for them both, keeping one eye on them as he meandered through the crowd.
It looked as though Sylvie and his mother had slipped back into the beautiful relationship they’d once had.
Valerie had been like a stand-in mother for Sylvie, worrying about her endlessly when she ran away.
Valerie had cried and said, “I love that girl like a daughter. Doesn’t she know that?
” But Graham had been too brokenhearted to understand his mother’s grief that she’d stayed up nights waiting for her to come back.
James Bruckson had given the bartenders a playlist that contained five hours of music.
On it were greatest hits from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, plus plenty of jazz, which he’d loved.
Graham sat with his mother and ex-girlfriend, watching the crowd.
Hilary Salt was seated with a bunch of women in their forties and fifties, women who looked sun-kissed and glossy.
Once, Hilary gave him a little wave. What were the chances that she was here in Nantucket at the same time as him?
Graham couldn’t believe his luck. Maybe Hilary would help him fight the Next Generation Nantucket Designers.
Perhaps she’d be instrumental in maintaining the delicate ecosystem of the island.
And maybe Sylvie would agree to write a big think piece about it.
In the bathroom, Graham got up the nerve to google Sylvie’s journalist career.
It floored him. He couldn’t believe he’d never read her before.
When he reached out to a few other activists about her, they wrote back things like Sylvie Bruckson makes real waves and Sylvie is the bomb.
I met her in Thailand. Did you read that piece she just published?
Graham guessed that he’d protected his heart and mind so much from the mention of Sylvie that he’d forced himself not to notice her fame in the environmental protection sphere.
Had Hannah read her? Had Hannah protected Graham from news of Sylvie?
It sounded like something Hannah would do—not out of jealousy, but because she knew how Sylvie had broken Graham’s heart.
Graham jumped out of his reverie when he heard his mother ask, “So will you be selling that old inn?”
Sylvie’s face was heavy with shadows. “It’s what I want.”
“Of course.” Valerie nodded furiously. “I imagine you have a life to get back to.”
Sylvie flinched and took a drink. “It’s just that my father is making it difficult on me.”
“Oh.” Valerie looked as though she didn’t know what to say.
It was then Graham remembered his mother, storming up to James at the regatta, giving him a piece of her mind.
“I haven’t been back to the inn,” Sylvie explained timidly. “Or to the house.”
“Where are you staying?” Valerie asked.
“I have a hotel.”
Valerie’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “You shouldn’t be in a hotel, honey! You’re family.”
Sylvie looked as though she didn’t know what to say.
Graham might have suggested that they weren’t family because Sylvie ran away before they could get married. Or that they weren’t family because things got way too complicated, and they just couldn’t take it.
Graham took a long drink and waited for a beat of silence to pass before he said, “Do you need help going through your dad’s stuff?”
Sylvie looked surprised. “To be honest, I’ve been thinking about burning both places to the ground and running for the hills.”
Graham and Valerie chuckled, but Sylvie didn’t look like she was fully lying.
“When do you want to get back to Manhattan, honey?” Valerie asked. “We can help you speed up the process.”
Sylvie flared her nostrils. It was difficult to read her expression.
“My dad wants me to run the inn for a full year,” she explained.
“Well, that’s out of the question,” Valerie said. “You have a career to get back to. I’m sure you have someone waiting in Manhattan to return to, too.” Valerie’s eyes searched Sylvie’s for signs.
Graham knew his mother was fishing for the truth.
But Sylvie wasn’t eager to give it.
Instead, she said, “If I put the inn up for sale immediately, the funds from the sale will be donated to the Next Generation Nantucket Designers.”
Graham’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
Valerie looked livid. “I can’t believe he’d do this to you.”
“I can believe it. It’s every bit the man James Bruckson was,” Sylvie stated.
Graham rubbed his chest as his anxiety mounted.
Sylvie seemed unable to look at him. From the speakers, one of James’s seventies classics pumped, and it made Graham feel as though he was plunging through time.
How old was he? What year was it? He and Sylvie were forty, but they were also sixteen and in love.
“I’ll run the inn,” Graham said.
His mother gave him a curious smile.
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Sylvie said, waving her hands.
“I’m serious,” Graham said.
“But Graham, come on. You have a life to get back to, too,” Sylvie said.
“I don’t.” Saying that aloud felt like being struck in the chest with a rock.
Sylvie tilted her head. Her eyes were filled with questions.
We don’t know how to be honest with each other anymore, Graham thought.
“But what about your protests?” Sylvie asked.
“I’m here to fight the Next Generation Nantucket Designers. They’re enemy number one,” Graham said. “And it looks like a part of that fight will involve running an inn.” He shrugged. “Protesting takes on many forms. You know that better than most.”
Sylvie lent Graham a crooked smile.
“Come on. Let’s at least go check out the place together,” Graham suggested. “We can chase out all the ghosts and see what’s left.”
Sylvie raised her shoulders. “Valerie’s my witness. I didn’t twist your arm.”
Valerie laughed. “I never know what you kids are going to get up to.” She said it as though she were exhilarated and having just as much fun with this time travel as Graham was.
Before they left the wake, Graham stole a bottle of white wine and told the server who spotted him, “Sylvie’s his only daughter. He messed her up.”
The server didn’t say a thing. It was as though he’d worked at enough wakes to understand. Nobody left the earth without marking the ones they’d tried to love.