Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Present Day
S ylvie couldn’t remember whose idea it had been for Graham to come with her to Alabama.
One minute, the plan was for him to stay at The House on Nantucket and prepare the inn for the season, and the next, they were throwing their bags into the trunk of his electric car and making their way to the ferry.
With Graham at the wheel, Sylvie felt taken care of.
At least I have this, she thought. She was terrified.
Graham parked the car in the belly of the ferry and looked at her. The air was filled with tension. Why did his hair have to look quite this good? Why did he have to be so handsome?
“Do you want a cup of coffee?” Graham asked.
Sylvie nodded and followed him upstairs to the little on-board café, where they sat with lattes and tried not to look at one another too closely.
When Graham glanced at his phone, Sylvie took the opportunity to do the same and found several messages from the Salt Sisters—all of whom knew the gravity of her trip to Alabama and how nervous she was.
HILARY: How is it?
SYLVIE: I saw you twenty minutes ago!
HILARY: I know! But have you and Graham told one another everything on your mind yet? It feels like there’s so much unspoken tension…
ROSE: Girl, grab him and tell him you’ve missed him all these years!
SYLVIE: It isn’t that simple. And he’s sweet for coming on this work trip with me.
HILARY: Did you forget? You’ve been teammates since the beginning. He wants to help you!
SYLVIE: I don’t know.
On Hilary’s veranda last night, Sylvie had told the Salt Sisters that Graham was going to come with her to Alabama, but she hadn’t fully told them why. The why felt too enormous to speak aloud.
But it had to do with her mother’s journals.
All of those journals remained in the attic of The House on Nantucket. She couldn’t find the strength to open them. They’d shaken her to her core.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Graham said now, his eyes lifted toward hers.
Sylvie’s lips parted. She knew he wanted to say something kind, but she didn’t really know what he meant. I’m not doing anything right, she wanted to say.
She’d wanted to know what was on her mother’s mind all her life. She’d wanted to know who she was. And now, faced with that opportunity, she was too frightened. She was running headfirst toward Alabama and an alligator farmer.
But she had Graham by her side.
After they drove off the ferry at Hyannis Port, the silence felt thunderous.
Sylvie turned on the radio, searching for a station that might drown out her anxiety.
When she flicked past a song Graham had loved when they were sixteen, Graham protested.
“Come on,” he said. “Do you still know all the words?”
Sylvie knew all the words, of course. It was “Smooth” by Santana, featuring Rob Thomas, and it had been on the radio approximately ten times an hour from the years 2000 to 2004, it felt like.
Graham began to sing, and Sylvie found herself joining him, time-traveling through music.
Tears spiked in her eyes. If the radio station played exclusively songs from their past all the way to Alabama, she might have a heart attack.
After “Smooth,” the radio station cut to a commercial break. Sylvie breathed a sigh of relief.
It was a twenty-hour drive to Birmingham, Alabama. There was no question about the way they would travel. Driving electric was the way to go. Flights were environmentally wasteful and best to avoid if possible.
It would be a long trip. But they’d charted a course based on where they could recharge the car and where they could sleep comfortably. They’d decided ten hours per day was just fine with them as long as nothing went wrong.
“This is sort of what we used to dream of as kids,” Graham said when they were about an hour outside of Hyannis. “We always wanted to go on a road trip.”
“Until we figured out how wasteful that was,” Sylvie said. “Gosh, we were idealistic, weren’t we? We must have been the most annoying kids in the world.”
She wondered if they were the most annoying adults, too. But at least they were together in that. Ha.
“But now we can really do it! We can really road trip! On our own terms!” Graham snapped his hand on the steering wheel. He hadn’t yet asked Sylvie if she’d read the journals. He hadn’t yet asked her why she’d been so frightened when he’d told her about them.
But that was the thing about Graham. He didn’t pry when he sensed you didn’t want him to.
Around one thirty, they stopped for lunch at a diner and expressed their pride at the ground they’d already covered.
Sylvie confirmed her appointment with the alligator farmer for two days from now, and she and Graham laughed at how ridiculous it would be down there, how hot and sticky.
They discussed finding a good vegan barbecue place and searched online.
Unsurprisingly, there weren’t many options.
Most everyone down south wanted the real deal when it came to barbecue.
“But isn’t barbecue all about the sauce?” Graham asked, mystified.
“I think we’ve been vegetarian for too long to know for sure,” Sylvie said with a laugh.
“Were you ever tempted to eat meat again?” Graham asked.
“Never!” Sylvie said.
“Me neither,” Graham said. “Hannah sometimes ate meat, though. She felt guilty, but she said there were some flavors that she would have missed too much if she went full vegetarian all the time.”
This was the first time Graham had brought up his wife in a while.
Sylvie took a bite of her grilled cheese and chewed slowly.
She hated how easy it was for her to picture Graham and Hannah, cozy at home in Chicago, wearing pajamas, watching television, exchanging funny stories, and talking about going to the store.
Had she and Mike ever been so easy with one another?
There was a moment of silence. Sylvie put down her sandwich.
“I’m sorry,” Graham said. “I shouldn’t have…”
But Sylvie interrupted him. “I want you to be able to talk about whatever you want to talk about. I don’t have many friends. But I want to be your friend. I want to hear you and know you and carry your pain.”
It was earnest. It was a lot. But the way Graham looked at Sylvie now made Sylvie feel cherished. He reached out to touch her hand.
“I want to hear you and know you and carry your pain,” he echoed. “Right back at you.”
Sylvie wondered if she was playing with fire. She questioned if they both would regret this. But she held his hand for another few minutes, her heart pounding.
Just let me feel all of it, she begged the universe. Don’t let him slip away. Not yet.
But on the second night of their trip at around 6:30 p.m.—a couple of hours from their final hotel destination—everything ended in near disaster.
Low on power, Graham had routed them to a nearby electric vehicle charging station.
But when they drove out to it, they realized it was out of order, with grass and plants growing through it.
This far south, the air was as thick as a milkshake.
The charging station itself looked like it belonged to a long-gone time.
Graham searched online for another charging station, but the next one was many miles away, and they weren’t sure if they would make it. They certainly couldn’t make it all the way to their hotel. Sylvie watched the light drain from Graham’s eyes.
A strange thought occurred to her. These are the kinds of mini-disasters that married people go through all the time.
What did it mean that they were taking this on together?
“Let’s just get a different hotel,” she said. “We can get a headstart tomorrow and make up for lost time.”
Tomorrow at ten in the morning, Sylvie was supposed to meet the alligator farmer. It meant they’d have to leave here by five o’clock. But after an exhausting two days of driving, resting up and preparing for tomorrow felt like the best possible solution.
The nearest hotel with an electric vehicle charging station was forty-five minutes out of their way.
Sylvie felt a sense of dread in her gut until they reached it.
Graham whistled with relief and got out to plug the car in.
Sylvie went in to grab two rooms for them, both of which she expensed with the magazine she was writing for.
She and Graham agreed to freshen up and meet at the hotel restaurant for dinner and drinks.
When Sylvie went to her room, she spent far too much time on her lipstick and eye makeup. Why am I acting like this is a date?
Downstairs, she found that Graham had dressed in a black button-down and a pair of black jeans.
He looked sleek and cool and mysterious.
A shiver ran down her spine. The server led them to a back corner table with a flickering candle and told them their specials.
When they sat down, Graham put his hands on the table and said, “I lied to you.”
Sylvie felt a shot of adrenaline. “I’m sorry?”
She couldn’t fathom what he’d lied to her about. His wife? His past? Maybe he’d never loved Sylvie at all. Maybe he’d wanted her to stay gone from his life.
Maybes rolled through her until he spoke again.
“About the vegetarian thing,” he said.
Sylvie’s anxiety dissipated. “What do you mean?” She laughed.
“I ate a ham sandwich in jail last week. I was hungry and feeling so bad for myself, and I broke my moral code,” Graham said. “I feel so ashamed.”
Sylvie didn’t know what to say. She was touched by how gentle and sorrowful Graham was about something so small. She said, “You don’t need to worry about that, Graham. You were hungry. You’ve been fighting for so long.”
Graham bent his head. The server came to take their order, and Sylvie ordered a full bottle of wine, not wanting to mess around.
“Are we in confession time now?” she asked.
“Not till the wine gets here,” Graham said, his eyes electric.
Sylvie grinned and put her chin on her fist. Another text dinged into her phone.
ROSE: Have you kissed yet
Sylvie made sure to hide her phone so that Graham couldn’t see.
They got through the first glass of wine without any real confessions.
They laughed, exchanging stories from the past, reminding one another of various “mini disasters” that had occurred at one protest or another.
Graham talked about the numerous trips he’d taken around the world, traveling by freight from one protest to another.
Apparently, he’d been gone from Chicago for many months at a time, a fact he now regretted.
Sylvie told him not to regret anything. He’d been fighting.
Midway through their second glass of wine, Sylvie heard herself make the heaviest confession she could think of. It was one she hadn’t told anyone.
“I don’t know how my mother died.”
The words echoed. Graham’s face transformed.
“Oh,” he said finally. “That’s why you don’t want to read the diaries.”
Sylvie raised her shoulders. “I’m terrified.”
Sylvie went on to explain that she’d tried to learn how her mother had died. She’d made phone calls and dug around. But it seemed that someone—probably her father—hadn’t wanted anyone to know the truth. It had left Sylvie in the dark for a long time.
“People in Nantucket must know,” Graham said softly. “Gossip like that doesn’t remain in a vacuum.”
Sylvie was struck with the realization that maybe everyone she’d talked to the past week knew secrets about her family’s past that she didn’t. She filled her mouth with wine.
“Should we ask my mother first?” Graham asked.
“I don’t know.” Sylvie groaned.
“Let’s order food,” Graham hurried to say, waving for the server.
But it was too late. Sylvie was emotionally downtrodden and exhausted. They ate slowly, both heavy with thoughts, and didn’t bother to finish the bottle of wine.
A part of Sylvie was relieved that Graham knew. But another part of her felt that him knowing gave the journals even more power.
“I can’t believe my father would do this to me,” Sylvie whispered. “I can’t help but think he knew about the journals and put me in charge of the inn so I’d read them.”
Graham looked thoughtful. “I’m not so sure about that. It looked like the attic hadn’t been touched in a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if your father never opened the journals himself.”
Sylvie realized Graham was probably right. Her father had been the type of guy to look away from the problem at hand, to distract himself, to pretend that everything was all right until it all blew up. It had made it impossible for Sylvie to understand him.
But now, as she drove as fast and as far away from the journals as she could in the span of two days, she began to wonder if she wasn’t more like her father than she’d thought.
This terrified her.
After dinner, Graham and Sylvie got on the elevator and rode it to their fourth-floor hotel rooms. Sylvie was exhausted to the core. But she also didn’t want to be alone.
Graham seemed to sense this. At his door, he said, “Do you want to watch something?”
Sylvie’s legs shook beneath her. She wasn’t sure what would happen on the other side of that door.
So many years ago, Graham had asked his mother if they could take sick Sylvie home to care for her. Now, that same Graham wanted to make sure she was all right. The look in his eyes was the same.
She whispered, “Why are you so forgiving?”
She meant I left you without saying goodbye. I broke up with you—my great love—because I didn’t know how to handle myself. I hurt you. I hurt us both.
Graham raised his shoulders. “It’s all we can do. We have to forgive the ones we love.”
Sylvie’s heart rate spiked. Graham flashed his hotel card in front of the scanner and popped the door open.
Sylvie felt her legs carry her inside, where she lay on his bed fully clothed and watched him set up the television to a streaming channel with plenty of films and shows.
They picked something both of them had been meaning to watch and then immediately turned it off to watch reruns of The Office .
They belly laughed until they fell asleep, holding one another’s hands.