Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
L ucas and Gale pulled into the Arrivals area of the Boston Airport and waited no longer than three minutes before Gale’s identical twin pulled her suitcase into the bright East Coast sunlight. Gale leaped out of the car and hurried to hug her. People on either side of them murmured to each other. “Twins!” one of them said. “They’re identical!”
All the way through Gale’s drive across the continent, she and her twin had texted and called one another, mentally and emotionally preparing for the next phase of their lives. Already, Gale had begun to think of her twin as a necessary lifeline. She imagined calling her when she had a bad day. She imagined complaining to her via text message about bad clients and silly problems within the film industry. Rant away, Lilian might say. I have a rant ready to go for after you’re done.
An exciting idea Gale had was to maybe—maybe—write a screenplay about Gale, Lily, Evelyn, Johnny, Catherine, and Bethany. They’d already labeled their story “stranger than fiction.” But maybe if Gale and Lily wrote it together, they would find a way to heal. More than that, Lily explained that her boys would spend an entire month with their father that summer, which meant Lily was available to stay in Nantucket for longer stretches of time. This would be a common thing going forward until her boys left the nest for good. It means Lily wants to reconnect with Nantucket.
Gale insisted that Lily sit up front with Lucas. It was the first time they met, and they shook hands as Lucas said, “You really do look just like her!”
Lily laughed. “I’ve heard so much about you already.”
They drove to Hyannis Port and got there just in time to board the ferry and head home. Lily, Gale, and Lucas stood on the top deck and watched the island come closer and closer. It wasn’t hard to imagine Bethany and Johnny taking Lily away on a different ferry forty-three years ago. Gale wondered if Lily had cried and cried because she’d missed Gale. She knew she’d been home, crying and crying about her lost sister, her only friend.
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s a wound we can ever overcome,” Lily had said over the phone the other night. “We don’t even remember it happening, but it’s obviously affected us.”
The Whaling Museum Festival was slated to begin at four that afternoon. It was only eleven thirty when they reached Lucas’s cabin by the water. Gale felt a heaviness in her stomach and chest at the prospect of saying goodbye to him. It felt as though they’d traveled through many lifetimes. She got out of the car and held him so tightly; so tightly as tears ran down her cheeks. She then rose on her tiptoes and kissed him with her eyes closed. She fought the urge to tell him she loved him. That obviously wasn’t true yet.
But it would be. Someday. She knew that.
“It was a brilliant adventure,” she told him.
“I hope we can go on many more together soon,” Lucas said.
Gale returned to her car and backed out of the driveway. Lucas remained in front of his cabin, waving goodbye. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was crying.
“Wow,” Lily said when they turned the corner and were out of sight.
“What?”
“That man is something special,” she said simply.
Gale puffed out her cheeks. “Those were the strangest few weeks of my life.”
“They’re not over yet,” Lily said.
Gale grimaced. She knew she was right.
A few nights before their return, Gale had written Evelyn to tell her she was coming back to the Nantucket beach bungalow.
GALE: Mom, I’m sorry about what happened a few weeks ago. I didn’t mean to accost you like that.
GALE: I know you’ve had a difficult time. And I can’t imagine what it was like to raise me alone like you did.
GALE: I hope we can talk when I get back. I do love you.
It had taken Evelyn nearly eight hours to respond. During the wait, Gale’s heart had thudded so hard that she’d thought she was on the verge of an anxiety attack.
EVELYN: Ok. I put the key under the mat again. You can let yourself in if I’m not home.
It was Evelyn’s way of metaphorically letting Gale back into her life. With a very real key.
Gale knew better than to think her mother would be emotional over text. Yet still, it disappointed her. She was still naive. Still hopeful.
Now, as Gale drove Lily through Nantucket Island for the first time in their adult lives, Lily wept quietly and wiped her cheeks with her sleeve. They were nearing the border of Siasconset and the beach house that had been in the Dobbs family for generations. Gale had already told Lily about their grandparents’ deaths; about Johnny Samson; about the hurricane and the coma and the raucous way Evelyn had tried so desperately to get Johnny back.
Gale had already told Lily she didn’t think Evelyn would be home when they arrived. She was always out somewhere doing God-knew-what. They would have to be patient if they wanted to approach Evelyn.
But when Gale pulled into the driveway, Evelyn’s car sat just where it always was, shining brightly.
Gale cut the engine and stared at it. Her head throbbed. Lily sensed her unease.
“That’s hers. Isn’t it?”
Gale bit her lip and bowed her head. “That’s hers.”
Lily reached over to take Gale’s hand. In a wobbly voice, she said, “Whatever happens, I’m so thrilled you found me. I’m so thrilled we know each other now.” She laughed as tears came down her cheeks. “Your screenplays felt like the voices inside my head. It felt like you knew a language I thought I only spoke.”
Gale couldn’t believe Lily had put it that way. Her heart opened.
Gale and Lily walked up to the front door. Again, Gale assessed the roof and the peeling paint on the shutters and remembered all the ways she’d considered repairing the old place this summer. It would all have to come later. But there was time for it.
Lily wrung her hands and muttered, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous.”
Gale understood.
Instead of knocking on the door, she flipped the welcome mat over to retrieve the key. She didn’t want to ask for permission to come into the house that was her birthright. She wanted Lily to feel like she belonged there, too. She wanted her to stride through the front door like she owned it.
Gale turned the key and gestured for Lily to go through first. Lily did, with her chin held high. Her body was tense. Strange. Her eyes were alert. Gale followed her and shut the door behind them. She watched Lily’s eyes scan the old photographs of long-dead Dobbs family members, paintings of lighthouses, beaches, and rocky coastlines.
It was surreal to have her twin here. But it was also where they’d been brought home after their birth. It suited them.
“Mom?” Gale called.
A frail voice came in from the living room. “I’m in here.”
It was odd not to hear the television. As they approached, Gale realized her mother was listening to classical music on her grandfather’s old record player. It twinkled and then broke into a momentous fanfare.
Lily hung back, but Gale stood in the doorway to find her mother sitting in the shadows with her head bent. She looked far older than she had a few weeks ago.
It occurred to Gale that finding that photograph had forced Evelyn to acknowledge certain uncomfortable truths about herself. It had forced her to recall just how cruel she’d been—all because of money or jealousy or fear or rage. She gave up her baby, and she has to live with the knowledge that she did that for the rest of her life.
How awful. A nightmare.
“Mom, I want you to meet someone,” Gale breathed. She tried to make her voice calm.
Evelyn raised her eyes to Gale. They widened to saucers when Lily stepped up beside Gale and took her hand. Silence thudded. Evelyn’s eyes filled with tears. Slowly, she got to her feet and crept toward them.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked softly.
“No, Mom. You’re not dreaming,” Gale said.
Evelyn stood in front of her daughters for the first time in forty-three years. She looked captivated by them. Tenderly, she touched Gale’s cheek, and then she touched Lily’s. A sob escaped her throat.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
Lily reached out to take Evelyn’s hand. “It’s me, Evelyn. It’s Lily.”
Evelyn’s legs shook beneath her. Gale led her to the sofa again, and Evelyn sat with her hands on her thighs and her back forward. She looked on the verge of another panic or asthma attack. But instead of gasping, she simply gazed at Lilian.
Lily and Gale sat on either side of Evelyn. Gale hadn’t been so close to her mother in a very long time. But Evelyn seemed so meek. So frightened. So willing to acknowledge her past.
The past is all we have, Lucas had said.
“I’ve regretted it,” Evelyn whispered, looking back from Gale to Lily. “Every day, I’ve regretted it.”
Gale’s throat was tight.
It was Lily who asked what she needed to ask. “Why did you do it?”
Tears spilled from Evelyn’s eyes. She sputtered, searching for her reasons. But she said, “I was so sick. So tired. So overworked. So broke.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with a tissue that she’d had lodged in one of her fists. “When Johnny started calling again, I had hope again. Hope to build a family. Hope to be the kind of woman who could keep a man like that.” She shivered.
Gale’s heart broke. She remembered how heinous and dark Evelyn had seemed when she’d suggested Gale and Peter were breaking up. She only knows darkness. She only knows betrayal.
“I didn’t really come to terms with what I’d done until Gale got a bit older,” Evelyn said. “You remember the problems you had? How you couldn’t sleep? All those nightmares when you did?”
Gale furrowed her brow. How could she have forgotten that? The emotional scars were so deep. Unending.
“I talked to a therapist about what happened,” Evelyn continued, “and she was so cruel. She couldn’t believe I’d given up one of my children. I stopped going to the therapist. I stopped talking to anyone about anything. I figured eventually, I would stop thinking about Lily. I figured it would fade away like everything else.” Her voice broke. “But it never really did.”
Lily reached for Evelyn’s hand and took it. Gale followed suit with her other.
“You won’t forgive me,” Evelyn told Lily. “You shouldn’t.”
Lily pressed her lips together. Gale wondered if she always looked like that when she was at a loss for words: slightly beautiful, slightly confused.
“I like to do things I shouldn’t,” Lily said. “You would have had a terrible time with me as a teenager.”
Evelyn let out a small laugh and squeezed Gale’s hand hard. “I want to know everything,” Evelyn told Lily. “Tell me every little thing that I missed.”
Lily’s tears were bright. “I don’t know where to start.”
Evelyn closed her eyes. “Tell me what happened the minute you two came back together again. Tell me you knew immediately that you still loved each other.”
Gale and Lily locked eyes. They shared a knowing smile that meant we knew. We knew deep down in our souls.
It was rare for Evelyn Dobbs to attend a Nantucket festival. But today called for celebration.
Gale, Evelyn, and Lily piled into Gale’s car—the car put through thousands of miles in pursuit of the truth—and drove to the Whaling Museum. From the lot near the street, Gale could see Lucas, Tina, and a few other Salt Sisters milling about with glasses of wine. A little brass band played down the road, and lines wrapped around food trucks for tacos, sandwiches, empanadas, and lobster rolls. Gale helped Evelyn out of the car, and she and Lily walked on either side of her to make sure she didn’t stumble. Just today, the three of them had cried so much that they weren’t sure if they had any tears left. But they were here. They were together.
And then came the most beautiful sound in the world. “Mom!”
Gale stopped at the edge of the festival and searched the crowd for her daughters. There they were: Anna and Piper in matching summer dresses, buzzing through Nantucketers to get to her. When they caught sight of Lily, Evelyn, and Gale together, they stopped and gaped at them.
“Mom?” Anna breathed, then broke into a run. Piper tore after her. Questions were heavy in their eyes. They reached the three of them and peered at Lily, wearing anxious smiles. It was pure cinema. Gale couldn’t have written it better herself.
“Anna? Piper? I want you to meet your aunt Lily,” Gale said. She couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. “Turns out, I’m a twin, too.”
Anna and Piper burst with questions and hugged Lily so tightly that Lily cried with laughter. Gale stepped back to watch the three red-heads fold into one another.
Just fifteen feet away was Lucas. He looked dashing and suntanned and blisteringly happy. He raised his glass to Gale and mouthed, “You did it . ”
Gale mouthed back, “Not without you.”
Lucas pressed a kiss onto his palm and blew it over to her. Gale pretended to catch it and hold it against her heart. Her ears rang with her daughters’ and sister’s laughter. Evelyn’s arms were around Piper. And Gale thought, this is one of those days I’ll remember for the rest of my life. One of those blessed days. Her heart was open.