Chapter 2
Two
Kara Ballard stood on the bow of the huge ferry conveying her from mainland Rhode Island to Gansett Island, fourteen miles off the southern coast of the smallest state.
The brisk, chilly autumn breeze felt good after more than five hours in the car.
Every mile she covered took her farther from the drama she’d left at home.
It was such a relief to get out of the place where the man she’d thought she was going to marry had told her he was in love with her sister.
Matt had broken the news in a restaurant so she wouldn’t make a scene after finding out her boyfriend and sister had been cheating behind her back.
Kara had made a scene, anyway, tossing a glass of Merlot in the face she’d once found handsome.
Matt and Kelly were given a big, fancy wedding put on by Kara’s parents, who didn’t seem to realize the magnitude of what the two of them had done to her.
Kara wasn’t sure what was worse—what Matt and Kelly had done or the way her parents had acted like it was no big deal.
Whatever it was, Kara had had enough of all of them.
Three days ago, she’d gone to her father’s office at Ballard Boat Works and told him he would give her the assignment on Gansett Island, and he would pay for her to relocate, or she’d go public with the story of why Matt had “traded” Ballard sisters.
There’d been a lot of talk about that in Bar Harbor, and a lot of people would love to know the truth.
With eleven children, Chuck Ballard had witnessed the full gamut of issues with his kids, but he’d never seen Kara as furious as she was that day. She was one of the “easy ones,” or so Chuck and Judith had always said.
“What am I supposed to do without my director of business development?” Chuck had asked.
Kara had worked for the family business since college but having to see people who’d disappointed her so profoundly every day had gotten to be too much for her.
“That’s your problem. I want Gansett.”
“What’s this really about, Kara?”
She stared at him the same way she’d look at an alien who’d landed on the front lawn of Sea Swept, the home where she’d been raised. “Are you for real asking me that?”
“I guess I am. You’ve been doing a great job for years in development. It makes no sense to leave that now.”
“It makes all the sense to me to relocate away from here, where there’ll be no chance of me running into my sister and her husband in the grocery store or at a family event.”
He got up and came around the desk to sit next to her. “Sweetheart, I understand you were very disappointed about Kelly marrying Matt.”
“Disappointed? Is that what you think I was? I was outraged over being deceived by two people who should’ve had my back, not to mention you and Mom throwing her a big fancy engagement party and wedding. Nothing says, ‘we approve of what you did to your sister’ like that did.”
“We were very upset about how this happened, and we told her so.”
“And then you paid for the fancy wedding. That doesn’t exactly say ‘upset’ to me.”
“We tried to make the best of a difficult situation.”
“For whom? Not for me.”
“We were thinking about the entire family, the business…”
That, right there, was why the threat of her going public with the Ballard family dirty laundry was such an effective volley.
All he cared about was his reputation and his business.
Sometimes she suspected he loved the business more than anything—including his family.
“Did anyone think of me? Did you think about how I thought Matt was going to propose to me and instead he told me he’d fallen in love with my sister while he was pretending to be in love with me? ”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Tell me I can have Gansett, or I quit, and I write a social media post about the truth of Kelly’s marriage.”
“Don’t be dramatic. This is your life’s work. You love this place.”
“I used to love it. I don’t anymore. I want to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.”
“What about your grandmother? Won’t you miss her?”
Kara’s maternal grandmother, Bertha Lively, was her best friend in the world, and everyone knew that. “Very much so, but she’s the one who encouraged me to push for Gansett as soon as we heard you were planning to open a launch service there. She wants me out of here, too.”
Chuck sighed and ran his fingers through thick white hair. “If this is what you really want…”
“It is.”
“All right, then.”
Kara stood to leave the office. “I’m going to Gansett in the morning to work out the details on the island.”
“Make sure you speak to your mother before you go.”
“I will.”
She headed for the door, waiting for him to stop her, to tell her he was sorry it had worked out this way, or that he loved her and was proud of her, but he didn’t say anything. That was fine. She’d gotten the one thing she wanted most from him and was excited to go home and pack for her trip.
Now, with the cool ocean breeze in her face, Kara felt like she could breathe for the first time in almost two years.
She should’ve left when she first found out about Kelly and Matt, but shock and grief and a million other emotions had kept her rooted in place, close to her grandmother and the friends who’d gotten her through the worst time in her life.
When she heard about the Gansett expansion, she’d finally found the strength to make a new plan for herself.
So what if she’d never been to Gansett Island? What did that matter? It wasn’t Bar Harbor, Maine, so it would be perfect.
After she left work the day before, she went straight to her grandmother’s cottage next to the water on Mount Desert Island, where Kara had been living since the day Matt told her he was in love with Kelly.
Bertha’s home was one-tenth the size of the palace where Kara had grown up, but the palace had never been the home to her that Bertha’s tiny house was.
They’d shared a special bond since the minute Kara was born, or so her grandmother told her, and any time she’d been unable to handle the madness of ten siblings, she’d escaped to Bertha’s.
At eighty-two, Bertha was still a full-time lobster fisherwoman who ran her own boat, The Big B, and the business that’d sustained her family after her husband was killed in an accident on the water when he was just thirty-two.
Left with six children to raise on her own, she took over the boat the day after his funeral and had rarely missed a day on the water during the season since.
There was no one Kara admired or loved more than Bertha.
Their close bond had only added to the animosity between Kara, her parents and most of her siblings, who’d never understood why she’d rather be at Bertha’s little house than at home with them.
Kara was relieved to see Bertha’s 1970s-era pickup truck in the driveway when she arrived. “Big B, where are you?”
“Out here.”
Kara followed her grandmother’s voice and the sound of barking dogs to the backyard, where Bertha was playing fetch with her two black Labs, Flotsam and Jetsam.
The boys came rushing over to greet Kara before going back to their game.
“How’d it go?” Bertha asked.
“I got the job on Gansett.”
Her wrinkled face lifted into a big smile as her curly white hair fluttered in the breeze. “Did you now? That’s great news.”
“He wasn’t at all happy about it.”
“Because you’re excellent at business development.”
“Probably. He certainly doesn’t care about what they did to me.”
“He’s an ass. I’ve told you that for years now.”
Bertha hadn’t approved of her daughter Judith marrying Chuck Ballard, whom Bertha viewed as a shameless social-climbing capitalist who cared more about his bottom line than his family.
He was all those things, but Kara had always thought he loved her more than he loved his business or his status. She was no longer certain of that.
Bertha had waited until Kara was fifteen to tell her how she really felt about Chuck—and Judith—who’d become someone Bertha barely recognized after marrying “up.” Since she finally came clean with Kara about her true feelings, Bertha hadn’t held back, especially during the fiasco with Kelly and Matt.
Their grandmother had refused to attend the wedding and hadn’t spoken to Kelly, except to express her profound disapproval.
She was the picture of loyalty to Kara, and Kara loved her for it.
She loved Bertha for so many reasons, but the support she’d given Kara over the last two years had saved her in so many ways.
On days when Kara hadn’t wanted to get out of bed, Bertha had kicked her ass back to life, reminding her there were many worse things that could happen besides finding out your sister and boyfriend were assholes.
Bertha was a typical swamp Yankee when it came to overt displays of affection, but that didn’t stop Kara from hugging the older woman from behind. “I’ll miss you so much.”
Bertha patted Kara’s hand. “I’ll miss you, too, love, but this is a good move for you. It’s time for you to get out of here and see what else is out there for you.”
“You really think there’s something waiting for me?”
“I really do, and I can’t wait for you to find it.”
“Thanks for piecing me back together.”
“You did that on your own. I just gave you a kick once in a while.”
“When I needed it most.”
“You’ll always have a home with me, Kara.”
“That means everything to me.”
Kara wiped away tears that she couldn’t blame on the brisk breeze.
She already missed her grandmother so much but would take her advice to go forth and prosper and not worry about anything back at home.
Bertha promised to call if anything came up, but she also promised that she’d be fine and wouldn’t go and die on Kara or anything equally dramatic.