Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
S ylvie and Graham stayed up till two in the morning discussing the best possible strategy to take down Next Generation Nantucket Designers.
“We can attack from the inside!” Sylvie cried again and again, making notes, imagining the gala in a different light.
It was extra exhilarating to realize that the gala would be the first to bring her and Graham together as a team again.
They’d continue to fight as long as they could.
She felt sure that was why they’d been put on this earth in the first place—to save it.
She didn’t want to waste her time.
When Graham and Sarah realized how bleary-eyed and fatigued they were, they stretched brand-new silk sheets over the biggest California King the inn had to offer, sleeping like kings and queens in the “honeymoon” suite of The House on Nantucket.
As Sylvie drifted off, she thought about how sad it would be when the inn was filled with strangers, when it wasn’t just Graham and Sylvie in this big place by themselves. It felt like they were playing house.
When Sylvie woke up the following morning, she heard the birds twittering and smelled the salty air and the particular musk of Graham, and she felt elevated, sure. She was in love.
But when she got up and padded downstairs to make coffee, she remembered her mother’s diaries.
Did she want to know how it all had ended?
I’ll deal with it later, she told herself. She felt her mother waiting for her in the attic. She felt it like a nag.
Graham came downstairs a second later and caught her by the coffee maker. He kissed her and wrapped his arms around her. He whispered, “That was the best sleep I’ve had in ages.”
They poured coffee. They sat on the porch and felt the sun on their faces.
There was so much to look forward to.
With a plan in place for the upcoming gala, Sylvie and Graham threw themselves into continued preparations for The House on Nantucket.
They worked diligently, finding solace and peace in daily tasks, and welcomed a full-fledged and warm spring to the island.
By May twentieth, it felt like summer, and plenty of tourists were already milling about, eating ice cream cones and kissing on the boardwalk.
Sometimes Sylvie and Graham joined them, pretending to be tourists on the island where they’d been born and raised.
Sylvie wondered if her mother and father had ever kissed like this.
It troubled her endlessly to know that her father hadn’t ever really had love. Sylvie thought the love he had with his first love wasn’t a shared love. He only ever had love for my mother, who couldn’t love him back.
It felt like a tragedy.
One evening, sitting on the front porch of the inn with light beers, Sylvie asked Graham, “What do you think my father thought of us when we were teenagers?”
Graham sniffed. “Based on everything you learned in the diaries? I have to think our relationship reminded him of Sarah and Wally’s.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Sylvie said. “Like Wally and Sarah were meant to be. James was always jealous of that. But when he tried to recreate it, everything fell apart.”
“I can’t help but feel bad for your father,” Graham admitted.
Sarah bowed her head. “I wish he would have told me.”
“I think he’s trying to tell you now,” Graham offered. “He didn’t know how to tell you in life. But he left the journals and diaries right where they were for a reason. And he demanded that you work at the inn.”
“He wanted me to find them,” Sylvie agreed. “He wanted to be understood. Everyone does.”
They fell into a silence that was interrupted a few minutes later by a phone call from Hilary Salt inviting Sylvie out to her place for a spontaneous Salt Sisters wine-and-cheese party.
“I don’t know if we have time,” Sylvie told Graham.
But Graham waved his hands. “We’ve been working ourselves to death. The trip’s already in a few days. Go say hi to your girlfriends. Tell them what’s been going on.”
“I have to tell them I’m head over heels for my high school sweetheart?” she teased, pressing a kiss onto his forehead.
But Sylvie and Graham had talked about it.
If they were going to stay on the island for a while—tending to The House on Nantucket and tending to their love—they needed people.
They needed community. They’d agreed that had been one of James and Sarah’s biggest downfalls.
When they’d come to Nantucket, Sarah had kept herself isolated, writing in her diary about how unhappy she was without actually getting out there and living.
Sylvie didn’t want to be like her mother.
And having girlfriends like the Salt Sisters felt nourishing.
It felt like swimming in calm waters. It felt like being understood in an entirely different sphere.
When Sylvie reached Hilary’s that evening, she found Rose, Hilary, Tina, Robby, and Stella on the veranda, dressed in silk tank tops, their shoulders tanned and sculpted from yoga and Pilates, sharing orange wine and eating olives and soft cheeses.
“There she is!” Hilary popped up to hug her. “When was the last time we saw you?”
“It’s been a week, at least. Where have you been?” Rose said, pretending to be hurt.
“Oh, she’s been falling in love,” Stella said, her eyes dancing.
“Falling back in love,” Hilary said, her voice lilting. “You need to tell us everything.”
Sylvie sat with a glass of wine and recounted bits and pieces of her beautiful love story.
She was careful to keep enough to herself, to keep what was meant to be private in her heart.
But she said enough for the girls to squeal and ask more questions and say, “It’s so romantic. I can’t believe it.”
“Are you going to stay in Nantucket?” Tina asked, her eyes widening.
“I was wondering that, too,” Rose said. “You were pretty adamant early on that you wanted to get out of here.”
Sylvie allowed herself a momentary reflection on Manhattan, that city that had etched itself onto her soul over the past twenty-three years.
But she said, “I think Manhattan was done with me. I don’t think I was ready to accept that. Maybe I would have dwelled in that city, all by myself, nursing broken heart after broken heart for a whole lot longer.”
Maybe Mike knew it was done with me, too, she thought. She could only think of him fondly, now—like a man who’d helped her get from one place to the next in her journey.
“But Graham saved you from all that,” Stella said.
“I think you saved yourself,” Hilary said with a crooked smile. “Graham had nothing to do with it.”
“I had to be able to accept what he was offering,” Sylvie said thoughtfully, remembering Graham's look of earnest and open love when they’d gone to Alabama. “I think it took more strength than I realized it would.”
The Salt Sisters nodded in understanding. They told stories of their own lost loves and their fights for acceptance. Sylvie felt protected and warm.
Later, when Sylvie updated the Salt Sisters on her mother’s diaries, they echoed her worry.
But the first thing Rose said was, “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. You can’t blame yourself for the fact that she didn’t get help.”
“It sounds like she was really sick,” Stella said. “She went from fertility issues to her husband having cancer to dealing with his death. She was young.”
“And it was the eighties,” Hilary agreed. “We didn’t know enough about mental health back then.”
They were quiet for a moment, considering how Sarah’s generation had failed her.
“I need to keep reading them,” Sylvie said finally. “But I’m terrified of what else they’ll show me.”
But the Salt Sisters agreed that she could handle it if she really wanted to know.