Chapter 1
Chapter One
It was twenty-four years almost to the day since Celia Harper had last been to Bluebell Cove.
She’d lived more than half her life since then.
Now aged forty-two, her head fizzy from the flight up from Washington, DC, and her mouth dry with the taste of coffee and the vaguely cheesy crackers they’d given out on the plane, she stopped in the airport bathroom to tend to herself, to drink water and fix her face.
The last thing she wanted was for the people of Bluebell Cove to think she was anything but put together, the “perfect” oldest sister of a family torn apart.
She didn’t want anyone to see the devastation and exhaustion of her recent life stitched across her face.
Which meant, she supposed, she wanted to lie.
She’d been lying more and more lately: to her daughter, to her editors (none of whom were writing her back anyway), and to herself.
Scrabbling through the bottom of her purse, she found lipstick and tapped it on, her eyes smarting.
Pull it together, Harper, she thought, using the maiden name she’d taken back after the divorce, feigning a smile into the mirror.
Next, she added a light dusting of perfume.
The scent was nothing like her mother’s, nothing that would bring any rogue memories back.
When she finished, she took a staggered breath and turned off flight mode on her phone, nervous for what she’d find there.
Sure enough, there were messages from each of her sisters: "We’re all here," "See you later," and "Don’t forget.
" There was no warmth in the messages. Celia’s heart pounded so hard she thought she was going to collapse. Her hands shook too much to text back.
At the rental car place outside the airport, Celia slipped her sunglasses over her eyes and waited for a little man with wiry arms and a thick handlebar mustache to pass over the keys of the clunky Chevy she’d booked online.
Gone were the days of renting fancy cars on her journalism assignments.
Although the man looked nothing like her father, when he spoke, his accent was so entirely Maine, so entirely like Celia’s father’s, that Celia bit her tongue to keep from sobbing.
She hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t expected herself to be so weak.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the man asked, sliding a pen behind his ear.
“Just fine.” Celia forced a smile. Her cheeks shivered with pain.
As Celia walked around the Chevy to check for dings and dents, she noticed another woman approaching the rental place, wheeling a suitcase behind her, her stride jaunty and uncomfortable. Celia’s blood ran cold. She had half a mind to duck into the Chevy and get out of there before she was spotted.
But was that really the energy she wanted to bring with her to Maine?
Did she really want to start this “makeshift reunion,” this “final goodbye” like that?
After a career in journalism, a career in the cut-throat environment of Washington, DC, a career mostly family-less (besides her daughter, of course), she’d never been the sort of person who let fear get the best of her. Not in the past, anyway.
She wasn’t someone to be frightened of, she reminded herself as she stepped around the Chevy. Nothing that happened was her fault.
“Juliet!” Celia hardly recognized her own voice. It felt lodged deep in her throat.
Juliet froze and then lurched around to find Celia hurrying toward her.
Celia struggled to read her expression but guessed it was something like no, I’m not ready for this.
But Celia was already five feet away, her arms outstretched.
She was going to hug her sister, right here at the rental car place, because that was what you did when your father died.
That was what you did when you hadn’t seen each other for decades.
Juliet let herself be hugged. Conscious that the rental car guy was watching them, Celia counted to four and then stepped back, her smile wide. “This is funny timing,” she said.
“Yes. Funny,” Juliet said, her voice wavering.
“I got a car,” Celia said, gesturing back behind her.
“Oh. Nice.” Juliet’s nose twitched, taking her sunglasses on a funny ride. Celia wondered how much she’d spent on them and guessed somewhere north of five hundred dollars.
“You can come with me. If you want to.” Celia suddenly felt overwhelmed by her desire to tend to her younger sister, to make sure she was warm, safe, and well-fed. She did a quick calculation and realized that Juliet was thirty-seven, five years younger than Celia.
The silence between them was deafening.
For the first time, it boggled Celia’s mind that none of the sisters had called one another after news of the death of their father.
None of them had reached out beyond a logistical text message regarding what needed to be done and when.
They’d been made to sit in their private sorrows, marveling at a past that they couldn’t fully wrap their minds around.
At least, that was what Celia had gone through—marveling, broken-hearted, and alone in her DC apartment.
When she’d called her daughter, Sophie, and asked her about her day, she hadn’t been able to tell her about her grandfather’s death till the tail-end of their conversation. “Mom?” Sophie had demanded, out of sorts, “I know you don’t talk to Grandpa or whatever, but are you okay?”
Now, Julia turned to look at the rental car guy with the handlebar mustache. Celia sensed she wanted to refuse Celia’s offer of a ride into Bluebell, that she wanted to decompress in her own rental car en route to their hotels.
But Juliet surprised Celia when she shrugged her bony shoulders. “All right. I haven’t driven in five years anyway. I wasn’t looking forward to it.”
Celia felt a jolt of fear and searched for a joke. “You’re a full New Yorker, now. No driving for you, I guess?” She tried to smile.
“I’ve been there since I was eighteen years old,” Juliet reminded her. “A lot can change in nineteen years.”
Celia wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she offered, “It’ll be great to catch up.”
Celia opened the trunk of the Chevy and slid Juliet’s suitcase beside hers.
When she closed it, she took a moment to look back at the airport, wondering if Wren, their other sister traveling in from elsewhere, was coming out to join them.
They hadn’t coordinated their flights, but maybe, just maybe, they’d all come in at the same time.
Perhaps fate was on their side for once.
The door flashed, and out came a family of four in puffy coats that suggested they thought Maine was frigid at all times of the year.
The littlest kid unzipped his coat and wailed, “Mom, it’s hot! ”
Celia started the rental and drove out, following the signs for the highway.
Juliet had removed her leather jacket and was rubbing lotion on her long, slender hands.
She smelled expensive, like the people Celia interviewed who were in charge of destroying mass forests to support the fashion, tourism, or film industry.
Celia imagined that, like them, Juliet would call Celia an idiotic idealist, the sort of person who spins around in circles, trying and failing to make the world a better place.
Sometimes she really did feel dizzy with the fact that after everything she’d done, nothing was getting better.
She often wondered if she’d picked the wrong career.
Nothing about her career was going well right now, but it would pick up. It had to.
“How was your flight?” Celia asked Juliet.
“Fine,” Juliet said. “And yours?”
“It was okay.” Celia searched her mind for ways she could elevate this conversation. “I mean, I just keep wondering what we’re getting into.”
Juliet sniffed. “Did you know he was sick?”
“No.” Celia squeezed the steering wheel till her knuckles turned white. “But that’s how Dad is, right? He’s always too proud to tell anyone what’s going on with him.”
As soon as she said it, Celia felt a pang of remorse.
She’d used the wrong tense, the present tense.
Now, Dad was, or had been, she reminded herself.
Past tense. Per his wishes, he’d already been cremated, which meant that their father didn’t exist in the world any longer.
The man who towered over Celia’s past was gone.
“And Ivy, well. I mean, she keeps everything to herself,” Celia said.
Juliet made a throaty noise and looked at her phone. She seemed not to want to talk much. “Well,” she pointed out, typing something, “she stayed, I guess.”
“She certainly did,” Celia stated.
After a brief exchange about Juliet’s career in fashion and Celia’s work as an environmental journalist—polite, surface-level talk that revealed nothing of who they really were—the conversation ebbed.
Silence settled in as the sweeping highway carried them forward, the landscape shifting between rocky stretches and pockets of lush green on either side.
Celia’s heart lifted into her throat. Sometimes she couldn’t believe she’d ever lived in such a mesmerizing place, that the background of their childhood memories was other people’s screensavers and vacation photographs.
She wondered what Juliet was thinking, then decided Juliet would never tell her what was on her mind anyway, so maybe it was better not to ask.
We’ll spend one day together, Celia thought, and then we’ll go our separate ways. She had to be strong enough for that.
The meeting with their father’s lawyer, Randall Hopkins, was set to begin at four thirty that afternoon, giving Celia and Juliet four hours to prepare.
Coincidentally, Juliet had booked a room for herself at the swankier hotel across the street from Celia’s, one with a seaside view, several tennis courts, and an outdoor and indoor pool and sauna.
Celia opted for the cheaper hotel with a poor Wi-Fi connection and a television that couldn’t be switched away from The Cooking Channel.
Celia lay on her back and watched an Italian man sauté a head of garlic while drinking from her water bottle.
When she’d asked Juliet if she wanted to have lunch before they met with Randall Hopkins, Juliet had said she wouldn’t be hungry till dinner.
What she meant, probably, was that she didn’t want to be alone with Celia, and she wanted to dilute the drama with all the sisters involved.
Celia prayed that her sisters would want to eat together tonight.
If they each went their separate ways after the meeting, she thought she might break down.
Not that I can afford a nice restaurant, she thought darkly. She wondered whether she was the biggest failure among the Harper sisters. She pondered if they could see it written on her face.
Celia’s phone pinged with a message from her daughter, Sophie.
SOPHIE: Hey! Did you make it?
Celia felt her position in the world solidify. She thought, My daughter, my love. Sometimes it felt as though Sophie was the only person Celia had left. Celia never wanted to put pressure on her daughter, never wanted to make Sophie feel like she needed to take care of her. She texted back.
CELIA: Sure did. Met up with your Aunt Juliet at the airport. She asked about you and sends her love.
As soon as she’d written it, Celia felt dread mixed with confusion.
She couldn’t understand what had possessed her to lie to Sophie about Juliet asking about her.
Maybe it was wishful thinking. Perhaps a part of her ached to have her entire family back together again.
Although now that their father had died, it was too late.
You can’t rewrite the past.