Chapter 4
Four
My dad found me in my room that night; he’d gotten home later than expected.
His flight back from Charlotte had not only been delayed, but then the plane sat on the Philly tarmac for a while.
Maisie and Bryce, ready for bed in coordinating pajamas (more swag sent to Erica), were waiting up for him.
Bryce couldn’t wait to show off his new neon green cast, courtesy of his fractured wrist. “Daddy!” I’d heard them shout around nine, and I smiled to myself.
No matter how exhausted my dad was, he would give the twins all his energy before Erica hustled them upstairs for bed.
“Hey there,” he said later, rapping his knuckles on the already open bedroom door.
I turned to see him showered and wearing sweats with a TOP GUN T-shirt.
The United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, not the movie.
Christopher Lupo had been a fighter pilot for years before transitioning to commercial aircraft. He owned the aviators to prove it.
“Welcome home!” I wanted to hop up and give him a hug, but for some reason stayed put on the floor. “How many cold brews are powering you?”
“Upward of three.” He smiled and leaned against the doorframe, salt-and-pepper hair shining in the light. My dad wasn’t old, but I knew he was considered an “older dad” among the elementary school parents. He’d turned fifty last month.
But there had been no one more willing or happy to get down on the ground with the twins when they were younger.
He was always rolling around with them on the family room floor.
I couldn’t really remember him doing that with me; my mom had been the one who tickled me until I was nearly breathless, with a widespread smile and shining eyes.
In hindsight, I knew it was because the fighter pilot lifestyle consumed him.
Things being different with Maisie and Bryce made me happy, but I still sometimes felt a small sting.
“What are you appraising today?” he asked, noting that I was looking through Annie’s jewelry. I didn’t want to call her collection mine yet, because if it were mine, that meant…
I held up Annie’s favorite ring: a gold band with two beautiful sapphires flanking a diamond.
She’d worn it almost every day, as often as her engagement ring.
My dad had brought back the sapphires from a postgrad trip to Thailand, but I actually didn’t know where Annie had gotten the diamond. Maybe it’d been her mother’s.
“We should talk,” my dad said before I could ask. He gave me a long look. “I heard about today.”
“Mmm,” I mumbled, suspecting I was about to be admonished for basically ripping off Erica’s head at lunch.
“It sounds like you were pretty tough on Erica, Liv,” he continued. “You know she cares deeply about you; she’s just trying to wrap her head around your perspective.” He sighed. “Jumping down her throat, right in front of her friends, definitely wasn’t the smoothest move.”
I nodded. I didn’t have anything to add.
My dad waited for me to respond.
“I’ll apologize,” I assured him, then took a deep breath.
“But do I really have to come to Martha’s Vineyard in July?
I barely know these people, and Erica obviously doesn’t want me there.
” I straightened my shoulders. “I don’t mind staying home.
You wouldn’t have to stop the mail or pay someone to water the plants—”
“Well, that’s very generous,” he cut me off. “But I mind, and Erica would too.” He half-smiled. “This is a family reunion, and our family isn’t complete without you.”
Then why haven’t I ever made the cut for Erica’s family shots on Instagram? I thought, but kept my snark to myself. My dad didn’t deserve it.
All I did was nod.
He nodded back before shifting subjects. “Elkins also called me,” he said. “They left a message about this afternoon.”
Something thickened in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I know I shouldn’t have left her, but I didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know me, then suddenly she knew me, and sounded so desperate…” My voice quieted. “I feel so guilty for abandoning her, but I had to get Maisie.”
“No.” My dad shook his head as I rose from the floor.
“No, you did the right thing—please don’t beat yourself up over leaving.
” He opened his arms, and I walked into them for a hug.
“Everyone there knows how devoted you are to her and are amazed by your composure and stamina. They’ve told me you visit more often and for much longer than the average family member.
” He hugged me tighter. “You are such a wonderful granddaughter, and I am so proud of and impressed by you.”
“I’m doing my best,” I replied, my eyes welling up a bit.
“I know.” He pulled back to kiss my forehead. “But I can see the emotional toll it is taking on you, and I wonder if you should ease up on yourself. Elkins isn’t right around the corner, and I’m now worried about you driving down and back home when you’re exhausted.”
My stomach lurched. “What?”
My dad’s face was somber. “You are a real trooper, Liv,” he said.
“You’ve gone through and done some things no kid should ever have to do.
” He hesitated, and I knew we were both thinking about taking Annie’s jewelry from her when she began misplacing things, confiscating her car when it was no longer safe for her to drive, and the other ways I’d deceived her.
It had been necessary—for her own good—but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel like shit for it.
“I am so impressed,” he repeated. “But we can tell you’re burned out and restless…
Maisie told me how upset you were earlier, and snapping at Erica like that isn’t you.
Plus, every time I come home these days you’re up here in your room.
Things need to change.” He cleared his throat.
“I plan to lighten my schedule for the summer so I can spend more time with Mom.” He paused.
“I know three weeks with Erica’s family might not be your dream vacation—to be honest, I don’t think it’s Erica’s dream vacation—but I think it’ll be good for all of us, good for you.
” He gave me a long look. “You need to take some time off from the bookstore and get out of Haddonfield for a while.”
Blood coursed through my ears. He actually wanted me to leave? Leave Annie? That was already the plan, of course, but when he phrased it as something I needed to do rather than something I had to do…
Even if I was a little tired, how would leaving Annie be good for me?
“I’m going to raid the fridge for leftovers,” my dad said after a few seconds of silence, no doubt to lighten the mood. He gestured downstairs. “You want anything?”
“No, thanks,” I whispered, but when he was three steps from my bedroom door, a thought popped into my head. “When did you and Annie go to Martha’s Vineyard?”
My dad stopped. “Hmm?” He turned around, brow furrowed. “She said she went to Martha’s Vineyard?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She mentioned it today. She said it has a special place in her heart, and that you two went there together.”
An odd expression crossed my dad’s face, one so confused that I wondered if Annie was mixing up Martha’s Vineyard with someplace else. Or maybe it was a vacation she’d wanted to take but the puzzle pieces had never fallen into place.
“She also said she first went there with Kathy…?” I tried.
The fog seemingly lifted, my dad now nodding.
“That sounds familiar,” he said. “The only place those two didn’t go was the moon.
” He lovingly rolled his eyes. “Erica introduced me to the Vineyard, though. I think Mom’s mistaking it for Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island.
I was the twins’ age, maybe? It was one of the last vacations Dad came on with us, before his anxiety really ramped up…
” He trailed off. “Anyway, I remember not especially loving it. That New England water was freezing.” He pretended to shiver.
“If I were you, I’d pack a wetsuit for the reunion. ”
I laughed. Every summer, we drove ten hours south to spend the last week of July in the Outer Banks. The ocean felt like bathtub water there.
But Martha’s Vineyard… I still thought, and wished Pops or Kathy Ryan was still alive to corroborate. Did Annie have any pictures?
Sadly, I doubted it. Because as much as my grandmother loved seeing the world, she didn’t love documenting it. Most of the photos we had of her adventures were taken by Kathy.
“You sure you aren’t hungry?” my dad asked again. “Erica told me there’s something called a ‘blueberry ricotta pudding cake’ in the garage fridge.”
I snorted. “Are you serious? Her friends didn’t eat it?”
“I know, absolutely unbelievable.” My dad shook his head, then smirked. “But how lucky are we?”
“Very,” I admitted, smirking back. “Very lucky.”
* * *
After my dad and I’d eaten two slices of Erica’s cake (each), we fell into such food comas that we mutually agreed it was bedtime.
Swede was softly snoring at the foot of my bed, but I was wide awake.
My mind kept bouncing between my dad suggesting I take a step back from visiting Annie…
and Martha’s Vineyard. Why am I obsessing over it?
I chewed on my pinkie nail. Because it feels like there’s a secret there?
For as close as we were, there was a lot I didn’t know about Annie’s life.
What was her favorite game as a little girl?
Why did she drop out of college to go to secretarial school?
Where did she and Pops go on their first date?
I knew I could’ve (and, in hindsight, should’ve) asked her those questions.
Meanwhile, we’d talked about her travels extensively, and she had never mentioned Martha’s Vineyard. New England? Yes. She loved Ogunquit, Maine, and charming Essex Harbor in Connecticut, and now that I thought about it, she had mentioned a cottage on Block Island once. Its toilet had overflowed.
Yuck, I thought, and a few minutes later, I threw back my covers and tiptoed over to my closet. Who knew? Maybe she did have some record of this trip.
And hopefully it was here, not in her furniture-filled storage unit in Pennsylvania.
Quickly and quietly, I went through everything for clues.
Annie’s jewelry, records, the manila folders filled with receipts that she never threw out (her antique armoire even had a letter of authenticity), as well as a Rubbermaid bin labeled decorative glassware.
I skipped that, since I’d helped my dad pack all her vases, small sculptures, and other fragile ornaments. We’d wrapped everything in newspaper.
Interestingly enough, after I found my grandparents’ wedding album and got distracted by looking through it for the millionth time, I did find a box filled with old-fashioned slides, but my heart sank when I realized I couldn’t tell what they were without a projector. “Dammit,” I muttered.
Swede woke up and joined the treasure hunt after I’d lifted Annie’s heavy typewriter off the closet’s top shelf. The golden retriever stared at its blacked-out keyboard, then gave me a quizzical look.
I yawned. “Maybe it forced her to memorize the keys?”
He wagged his tail.
It wasn’t until I was sifting through a battered box of miscellaneous items—old birthday cards, monogrammed stationery, yellowed postcards from friends—that my heart beat with hope.
There was an elegant Hermès box at the bottom, but her other signature orange boxes had been neatly organized in another container. Why was this one on its own?
Because there wasn’t a silk scarf in it.
“Oh my god,” I breathed upon seeing its contents—a collection of Polaroids and small watercolor paintings. “Swede, look.”
Ever the Velcro dog, Swede was half on my lap.
As silly as it sounded, I felt like I’d just unearthed Leonardo DiCaprio’s long-lost sketch of Kate Winslet in Titanic.
I picked up a photo, recognizing my grandmother right away. Wearing a white tennis dress, she smiled for the camera and held a glass of white wine. Pinot grigio, I knew. She always ordered it at restaurants or had a bottle chilling in her fridge at home.
She’s barefoot, I also noted. She’s standing barefoot in the grass.
That was not Annie.
My eyebrows knitted further together at the Polaroid’s setting.
In the background was a clear sky and trees that looked perpetually windblown, along with a sandy road, but in the foreground was a tractor.
A classic green John Deere tractor, one that looked like an antique—even back then. Annie posed in front of it.
What the…? I flipped the photo over to see Annie’s handwriting. It gave me a millimeter of clarity. Summer camp, she’d written. Year 3.
She hadn’t dated the picture, but she didn’t look much older than her high school formal photo, so my guess was sometime back in the 1960s.
Huh, I thought. Summer camp?
Where?
I glanced away from the Polaroid, enough for one of the watercolors to catch my eye.
It had been painted on a small piece of thick paper, and while it had aged, its subject was still vibrant.
Whitewashed cliffs embraced by vegetation and streaked with shades of gray, burnt orange, and red that rolled into the blue ocean.
A pink-tinged sky suggested a beautiful sunset, and I could make out a coastline in the hazy distance—another coastline.
Something sparked in my chest, powerful enough that I leaped to my feet and hurried to my desk. A photo of Swede and the twins dancing in the rain greeted me when I opened my laptop, and I couldn’t open a Chrome browser fast enough. Cliffs, I typed into Google. Martha’s Vineyard.
Enter.
Aquinnah Cliffs was the headlining search result.
And its accompanying photo?
It was identical to the painting I still held in my hand.