Chapter 8
Present Day
Afew days after the reading of the will, Candice called Nathan to check in on things back in the city.
Again, he told her that the writing was going well, that he’d already written nearly a quarter of the first draft and felt “more creative than I have in years. Even with The Human Agenda, I felt more stumped than I do now.” Although this put a sour taste in her mouth, Candice tried to tell herself to fall in love with his excitement.
She told herself that his joy was her joy, since they were still married and hadn’t discussed divorce in the slightest. But her heart felt shadowed.
What’s going on with Janie? She didn’t ask because she was too frightened. And she wanted to believe it was over between them. She needed to.
Candice explained to Nathan what had happened with the will and what her mother planned to do with the Harbor Estate.
Nathan was surprised. “I thought that house would be perfect for future writing retreats,” he said, reticent.
“I was thinking about going there this fall, you know. After you started up again at NYU.”
Candice felt a jolt of anger. Nathan couldn’t use the Harbor House as a writing retreat. She was the one who needed one. “The transitional women’s center is what she wants,” Candice said instead. “But maybe it isn’t over. Henry wants to contest the will, and Lindsey is backing him up.”
“And what do you want?”
Candice gazed out at the water, rolling up along the white sand. “I don’t know. Her assistant’s right, in that it was my mother’s dream to open this place up. It was her vision. I don’t feel comfortable saying no to that.”
“But you don’t want to give the place up. You love it there,” Nathan insisted.
“Yes. I suppose I do.” Candice was quiet. By accident, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and remembered she hadn’t washed her hair in far too many days. It was stringy and strange, plastered against her cheek and forehead. What would Nathan say if he could see her now?
“But I was thinking, you know. Maybe you and the kids want to come out to the Vineyard sometime this month? We can sail and picnic and hike. Gosh, I can’t remember the last time we had a family vacation.
Lindsey and Henry will probably be here, too, but I’m sure they’ll be busy with their own stuff. ”
In truth, Candice and her siblings saw so little of one another during the day. Candice had no idea what they were up to.
“I’ll have to think about it,” Nathan said. “As I said, I’m in a flow state, and I’m scared to leave that. But the kids should definitely come! I think Peter’s basketball camp ends pretty soon…”
“It ends on June seventeenth,” Candice said.
She knew there was a window between sports camps.
She knew that Sarah could make time, given her schedule and what she was needed for in the city.
Like most mothers, she had her children’s schedules tattooed to the back of her mind. She couldn’t forget if she tried.
They decided to make arrangements for Peter and Sarah to come to the Vineyard to spend time at the Harbor House before it was no longer their family’s property.
After a strange couple of weeks of waiting, a time of long walks on the beach, of jotting down notes to herself that didn’t lead to any novel, of trying and failing to bond with Lindsey and Henry, and of failing to go through any of the so-called memorabilia in the Harbor House itself, Sarah and Peter arrived, having come by bus from the city and by ferry to the Vineyard port.
Candice picked them up and threw her arms around them.
She’d physically ached, not seeing them.
She could hardly believe it, but in a week it would be July.
When Sarah and Peter got to the Harbor House, they grabbed the rooms they usually had the few times they’d visited, then put on their swimsuits and went immediately into the sea.
Candice and Lindsey were on the veranda, drinking wine, while Henry ordered takeout from their favorite Vineyard burger place.
There was a coziness to this arrangement, Candice decided.
Although she and her siblings hadn’t spoken much, they’d sat on this veranda for countless hours.
They’d eaten together plenty of times. Maybe they were acting like a real family—the sort of “real family” that didn’t tell one another anything.
“Is Nathan going to come later on?” Lindsey asked. Sunlight glinted in her red wine.
“Probably,” Candice lied. “But he says he’s working a lot right now.”
Lindsey arched her eyebrow. “Have you written anything while we’ve been here?” Implied in what she was saying was that there had been nothing but time.
“I’ve been jotting down some ideas,” Candice said. “What I keep coming back to is the mystery of it all. Of Mom. Of how little we really knew about her. Like how she’s still a mystery, giving away this house like that.”
“She was always obsessed with ‘giving back,’” Lindsey said, using air quotes.
“Yes. True. But you know, when I think about her, about the grand story of her life, there is so little specificity,” Candice said.
“She was secretive,” Lindsey agreed. “I think that’s where I get it from.”
“What secrets are you keeping, Lindsey?” Candice smiled, teasing her.
Lindsey threw her hair behind her shoulders, just as Henry came out to say that the burgers would be there in twenty-five minutes. Lindsey changed the subject swiftly. It was beautiful, the way she could so easily avoid the subject of herself and whatever she was hiding from.
When the food arrived, the five of them sat around the table on the veranda, eating french fries and burgers and sipping soda and wine.
Henry had developed a healthy tan, and although he didn’t know Candice’s kids very well, he took to asking them questions about their lives, about Peter’s commitment to sports, and about Sarah’s upcoming freshman year at NYU.
“We all went to NYU!” Henry said joyfully.
Sarah beamed. “I’ve always wanted to go. And Mom and Dad are obviously faculty, so. Maybe they let me in because of that?”
“No way,” Lindsey said. “They don’t let just anyone into that school. Mark my words.”
“Well, they let in Gavin Bell,” Henry said, raising his eyebrows.
Lindsey whacked him on the shoulder playfully. Gavin was her ex-boyfriend and sort of an airhead, although he’d gone on to found a tech company and had more money than any of them.
“If only I could have put up with him,” Lindsey said wistfully. “Imagine what my life would have been like!”
“I think it turned out pretty okay,” Henry said, gesturing at the glorious view before them, the purple and pink sunset, the burgers and fries.
Lindsey sighed and pushed her food aside. “Sure. But we’re here to say goodbye to the good life. We’re here to say goodbye to all this.”
Henry didn’t know what to say to that. He took a bite of a fry.
Later, around ten, when her kids had been alone in their rooms for more than an hour, Candice went upstairs to check on them.
Because Sarah’s light was on, she tapped at the door until Sarah offered a soft, “Come in.” When she entered, she found Sarah bundled up in bed wearing a big T-shirt and watching a video on her phone.
She smiled, then turned it off, but not before Candice heard the sound of Nathan’s voice.
“What was that?” She asked, sitting at the edge of Sarah’s bed.
“Oh, it’s just that interview Dad did last week,” Sarah said. “I told him I’d watch, but I forgot till right now.”
Candice’s heart twinged. Why hadn’t Nathan mentioned his interview? “Can you show me?”
Sarah turned her phone around to show Nathan, seated beside one of the popular late-night comedian talk show hosts, who asked him questions about The Human Agenda.
“I understand that this book hits pretty close to home,” the comedian said, smiling.
“Tell me. Does your wife chase you around the house, asking you if what you’ve written about is what you’re really up to?
Because I could imagine that writing ‘autofiction’ can get you in a world of trouble. ”
Nathan smiled that sensational smile of his. “My wife’s a writer, so, you know, she gets it. Everything is content! Passing thoughts about strangers can work their way into all kinds of writing. Nothing is off-limits.”
“So you’re saying that even if something hurts your wife’s feelings, you’ll still write about it?” the comedian asked.
“If it serves the story, sure. Why not?” Nathan laughed again.
Unable to stop herself, Candice raised her finger and paused the video. She was shaking, but she hoped that her daughter couldn’t see.
“It’s a good interview,” her daughter said. “Dad’s killing it.” But her daughter looked at Candice as though frightened she’d just done something wrong.
“He always does,” she said. “Good night, sweetie.”
When Candice left her daughter’s room, she couldn’t calm herself down enough to go to bed, so she returned to the kitchen, made herself a mug of tea, and roamed the halls until she found herself at the door of her mother’s study.
Even back when her father was alive, Stella had spent long hours in the study by herself, reading and taking notes.
As far as Candice knew, she’d never written anything, not essays or poems or stories.
But she’d needed a private space, she’d said, so that she didn’t become a stranger to herself.
Candice entered for the first time since coming to Martha’s Vineyard, surprised that it seemed that neither Lindsey nor Henry had come in, either.
A maid still came to the house once a week, so the study was spick-and-span, of course.
But it still felt haunted, as though her mother might appear near the window, a book pressed against her ghostly chest.
Something that surprised Candice about the space was the record player.
She hadn’t remembered her mother having one, nor a collection of so many old records.
Feeling nostalgic, she flicked through the vinyls, remembering songs from long-ago days.
One of them, an old Dolly Parton album, reminded her of her mother singing in the kitchen.
Her mother had had a wonderful voice, although she’d very rarely sung in front of anyone.
Her kids knew, and their father probably did. That was it.
Stella Vanberg hadn’t exactly been the type to go out for karaoke.
Lost in her own nostalgia, Candice put the Dolly Parton album on the record player and played the first track, her eyes closed as she visualized her mother at the kitchen counter, singing, her hips swaying from side to side.
Before Candice had gotten older and more self-conscious, she’d danced in the kitchen, often with Lindsey’s hands in hers.
They’d wanted to perform with their mother. They’d wanted to be in on her game.
Toward the back of the stack of vinyls was an unlabeled record in a dusty blue jacket.
It looked mysterious next to the others.
Although Candice had once been very accustomed to blank CDs, she’d never seen what she assumed to be a “blank” record.
She wondered if something was on it, something special to Stella Vanberg and Stella Vanberg alone.
But before she got a chance to put the record on the record player, she heard the sound of cackling from the foyer. It was Lindsey.
Abandoning Dolly Parton and the mysterious record, Candice hurried into the foyer to find her sister slipping into her leather jacket and laughing, still, with someone on the phone.
She’d shaded her eyes in coal, and she looked gorgeous and wild and free.
For a moment, Candice forgot that they were in their forties.
Lindsey acted as though she were sneaking out.
“I’ll be there,” Lindsey said, then lifted her eyes to find Candice in the doorway. “Oh! You’ll never guess who just walked in,” she added to whoever she talked to.
Candice shivered. Whoever Lindsey spoke to was someone Candice clearly knew, too.
“That’s right,” Lindsey said. “My big sister. Should I ask her to come?”
It seemed there was affirmation on the other end. As soon as she was off the phone, Lindsey grinned and said, “You have to come out with us.”
“I can’t,” Candice said, searching her mind for an excuse, anything. But her children were old enough to stay home by themselves, and it wasn’t like she was going to get any writing done tonight.
“What’s stopping you?” Lindsey asked.
“Who is it?”
Lindsey’s grin widened. “A few old friends from the Vineyard. People we grew up with who never left. But there’s a rumor that someone is coming who you might really want to see.”
Candice widened her eyes, pretending not to know what Lindsey meant. But of course, there could only be one person she’d tease Candice about: Frank Delaware.
“Lindsey, come on. I’m married,” Candice reminded her.
“I’m not asking you to divorce your husband,” Lindsey said, giving Candice a look that Candice found difficult to decipher. It seemed to say to her: Your husband doesn’t keep his marital promises to you, so why do you have to keep your promises to him?
It took only a half-minute more of convincing, but eventually, Candice was upstairs, changing into a sundress and putting on a touch of lipstick (not her most provocative red shade, but something deep and quite hot, she knew).
Even Nathan hadn’t been able to stop kissing her when she’d worn it—even Nathan, who’d grown tired of her.