17. Meredith
MEREDITH
The house is quiet. Not the kind of quiet that invites sleep, but the kind that makes every floorboard creak feel like a scream.
I haven’t slept. Not really. I drifted for maybe twenty minutes sometime after two, still fully dressed—the stains of the day still marring my clothes and probably beginning to seep into my clean bedsheets.
But I can’t bring myself to care, not when the letter is clenched so tightly in my hand that the paper threatens to cut into my palm.
It’s strange how easily you can convince yourself of something when you need to believe it.
For fifteen years, I told myself his death was an accident.
A freak storm. An early morning mishap on a solo sail.
Dad knew the water—he loved the water—and he loved us more than anything else in the world.
That’s what I believed, what I held on to.
Even on that fateful night all those years ago, when Richard suggested as much out loud, I couldn’t allow myself to even consider that line of thinking.
I closed that door completely, even when the logical part of me wanted to explore the idea, if only to rule it out as a possibility.
In truth, I hated the way Richard said it, as if he knew something we didn’t.
Like our grief was incomplete because we were too na?ve to see the truth.
But now I have the letter. Now I have his words.
This is an apology. I never wanted to hurt any of you.
There’s no way to read it and not feel the ground tilt beneath me. Even lying down, even when my body is begging for sleep.
If he really did walk onto that boat knowing he wasn’t coming back…
How could I not have noticed it? I was twenty-two.
Old enough. Close enough. I was still living under this roof, still working shifts at the Shack, and coming home to eat dinner with him and Mom as if nothing was falling apart right in front of me.
He must have been falling apart. And I didn’t see any of it.
How do you forgive yourself for that?
I sit in bed for hours, staring at the same sentences, watching the sky go from black to the softest blue. The sun slips over the horizon like it has no idea what it’s shining on.
That’s when I remember the joke.
“You girls are my greatest treasures—aside from the chest I have buried out on Wauwinet Beach.”
It was his favorite line—a dumb dad-joke kind of thing that wasn’t funny the first time, and definitely wasn’t by the hundredth. We’d roll our eyes at his attempt to hide sentimentality, knowing he meant every word. It was never meant to be taken literally.
It couldn’t possibly be literal. Wauwinet Beach is over ten miles long. He surely wouldn’t be that ridiculous. But the letter mentions money. A college fund. Something he left behind.
I trust you’ll know where to find it.
Maybe it’s grief making me irrational. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation. Or maybe it’s that desperate need to believe there’s something left of him that wasn’t swallowed by the waves. Something buried. Something intentional.
Because if he did this? If he did hide away tens of thousands of dollars, then that means there was never anything nefarious going on.
My dad was still my dad. He was hurting and scared, and I didn’t see it, but he was still Aiden Holloway.
A man who supported local businesses and crowned himself king of the grill.
A man who wore headbands because they were practical and saved money for his kids to go to college.
If he did this, there’s nothing more happening than some terrible financial choices.
If he did this, I don’t need to check flight records, contact local loan sharks, or let the other sneaky conspiracies keep me awake at night.
And I can barely cope with the reality that his death wasn’t an accident. But this? This I can cling to.
Before I even realize I’m moving, I throw on a sweatshirt and step into a pair of old boots by the door. They’re too big, but I don’t care. I grab a flashlight, just in case, and slip outside without waking Sophie, my mother, or—God forbid—Richard.
The dunes are damp with early morning dew as I stumble over them. I cross the path I’ve walked a thousand times, past the grasses, past the edge of the world, and I drop to my knees in the sand.
This is crazy. I know that.
But I start digging anyway.
Because I want to believe he left something. That this wasn’t all just pain and apology. That maybe, in some small way, he wanted me to find something more.
Because maybe, if I find it, I can stop feeling like I lost him all over again.
My body protests. I’m running on fumes, and I can’t remember the last full night of sleep I had. But the push and pull of the sand beneath my fingers draws me into a trance.
The sun is fully up by the time I hear footsteps crunching over the dunes.
I don’t look up right away—I’m too deep in the hole I’ve carved, arms sore, palms blistering, knees raw from kneeling in the sand.
Three feet wide, seven feet long, six feet deep.
In the back of my mind, something laughs deliriously at how easy it would be to bury a body in here.
“Meredith?” June’s voice slices through the salt-heavy air.
I glance over my shoulder and see her cautiously approaching in cutoffs and a hoodie, wind-tossed hair tied in a messy knot. The way she raises her hands makes me think of how she might handle a wild animal.
“Are you—Meredith, are you digging?” She comes to a stop at the very lip of my grave.
“Yes.”
She just stares. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Do you want to maybe elaborate on that?”
I sit back on my heels, exhausted, trembling, raw in ways that have nothing to do with the elements. “Remember what Dad always used to say? That we were his greatest treasures…” The rest of the quote dies in my throat.
My eyelids shut heavily. It’s cooler down here in the sand, and the sound of waves in the distance seems to echo around the walls. It’s oddly grounding.
I almost forgot that June is there, that she’s awaiting an explanation. That is, until there’s a sharp intake of breath. “You can’t be serious.”
With a sigh, I force my eyes open again. “He said I’d know where to find it.”
“What is your plan here, Mer? Excavate the entire beach?”
“If I have to!”
June exhales slowly as if forcing down her anger. “Meredith. This is… You’re exhausted. You’ve barely slept, you’re grieving, and you’re out here at sunrise digging holes in the beach like—like you’ve lost your mind.”
My stomach twists. “Wow. Thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” She crouches down, her voice softer now. “I just…I’m worried about you. We’ve got a mess on our hands at the Shack, and I can’t handle it alone. Yesterday was a disaster. We’ve got to stick together.”
“Which is why I have to find his chest!” I plead with her.
June stares at me with wide eyes. “Do you even hear yourself?”
“There are thousands of dollars missing from his accounts, June. If they’re out here in a chest somewhere, then we need to find it!”
“What sane man would even do something like that?”
“Well, clearly he wasn’t, was he!” My voice cracks over the half-screamed words, and June falls into a morbid silence.
But the words are out, with more tumbling from my mouth before I can stop them.
“He killed himself, June. Instead of facing the consequences of his own financial indiscretions. He thought killing himself was somehow better, that it would all be worth it. He thought killing himself would somehow be the best solution for all of us.” I pull the letter from the back pocket of my jeans and wave it up at her.
“Do you really think this is the ramblings of a sane man?”
“If you don’t shut up, Meredith, I swear to God, I will come down there and slap you.”
A burst of delirious laughter escapes me.
“And what did we do about it? Nothing. We didn’t even notice.
Heck, I did worse than nothing, didn’t I?
I left. I left this godforsaken island and my broken, messed-up family and the love of my life to pursue a dream that only my dead dad ever wanted for me.
I ran away, June, right into the arms of a man who, as it turns out, couldn’t give less of a sh?—”
The sting of June’s palm against my cheek is as painful as it is surprising.
I hadn’t even noticed her sliding down into the hole.
“Listen to me very carefully, Meredith.” The sheer venom that pours out of her is enough to silence me.
“You do not get to do this. You do not get to spiral out of control because you want to throw yourself a pity party. Not when I’m doing everything I can to keep this afloat.
We are all hurting. You do not get to make this about you again. ”
“Oh yeah? Everything?” I laugh bitterly. “Is that what you call sleeping with the investor?”
I should have slapped her instead.
June lunges.
It’s not graceful, not even a little bit.
There’s no cinematic precision or slow-motion elegance to the way her limbs flail as she tackles me into the sand.
It’s all knees, elbows, and tangled hair, with grunting and grabbing—both of us too exhausted to throw a proper punch but too stubborn to stop trying.
She yanks at my collar, and I shove her shoulder.
We slap instead of strike, claw more than hit, and curse each other through clenched teeth, as if we’re still teens, fighting over something now seen as trivial.
June finally gets in a good shove, and I’m sprawled onto my back. She’s already got one knee planted next to me, breathing like she just ran a marathon.
“You’re such a horrible troglodyte sometimes,” she pants, wiping sand from her face.
“You started it,” I shoot back, half-laughing from her insult and half-sobbing from…well, everything else.
“No,” she spits. “You started it, Meredith. You always start it. You start things and then leave the mess behind for everyone else to clean up. You run and you run and you act like you’re the only one who’s ever been hurt.”
“I was hurting,” I cry. “Dad was dead, and I was drowning, and you—you acted like I was just a selfish brat who didn’t care!”
“Because that’s what it felt like!” Her voice cracks.
“You left me, Meredith. You left me here. You didn’t ask, you didn’t talk to me.
You just left. You were supposed to be my sister, and you left me to deal with everything.
” She’s crying now. Fat, furious tears streak down her cheeks, dripping off her jaw.
I feel it in my throat like a punch—shame and guilt and love all rising at once.
“I didn’t know how to stay,” I whisper.
“I didn’t know how to do it without you,” she fires back, softer this time. Her face crumples. “And now he’s gone, and it’s too late to fix any of it.”
The silence that follows is heavy, broken only by our trembling breaths and the distant crash of waves on the shore. The sand is cold. The wind cuts through our sweat and tears. And for a moment, we just sit there in the middle of this ridiculous hole, two grown women crying like children.
June moves first. She leans in and wraps her arms around me, too tightly, almost desperately. I cling to her in return, our bodies folded around each other the way only muscle memory can allow.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe out, over and over again. “I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I made it worse.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t forgive you,” she murmurs.
Eventually, the sobs subside, and we sit side by side in the sand.
“I don’t think the treasure’s out here,” June says softly.
I lean over to rest my head on her shoulder. “I think you’re probably right.”
By the time we get back over the dunes, the sun is high in the sky, and our clothes are stiff with dried salt and sand. My arms are sore, my throat feels raw, but there’s a strange, temporary calm inside, like a storm has just passed.
We don’t talk much on the walk. June kicks at a piece of driftwood and half-jokes about needing a sit-down in the shower.
I mumble something about needing coffee and maybe a lobotomy.
We don’t laugh, but the space between us feels softer.
Like maybe there’s still a way to find our footing again, even on shifting sands.
The house comes into view, white clapboard shining too bright in the midday light, the screen door slapping once, twice, in the breeze.
I almost don’t notice the flashing lights.
June slows down first. “Mer?”
My stomach drops.
We break into a run.
Gravel crunches under our feet as we rush toward the back porch, taking the stairs two at a time. A paramedic appears just as we burst through the back door, speaking softly into a radio.
“Sophie?” I yell, pushing past the threshold.
She’s inside, crumpled near the staircase, face blotchy, clutching her phone like a lifeline. She looks up when she hears me, and the moment she sees us, she breaks down. “She—she collapsed,” Sophie sobs. “I didn’t know what to do. She was just—she was on the kitchen floor?—”
I don’t hear the rest. I’m already moving again, my heart pounding, just in time to see two paramedics hauling a stretcher out of the side hallway. Eleanor lies on it, strapped in, with an oxygen mask over her face, blondish-gray curls pushed back from her forehead.
“Mom!” June shouts, rushing forward.
The medic gently blocks her path. “We’re taking her to Nantucket Cottage Hospital. She’s stable but unresponsive. Are you family?”
“I’m her daughter,” I manage to say, stepping beside June and grabbing her hand without thinking. “We both are.”
They nod and load Eleanor into the back of the ambulance.
Sophie’s still crying on the porch. The medic closes the doors. The engine revs.
And then they’re gone.