Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
After that night at the harbor, Nora and Max’s romance was back on track.
They couldn’t get enough of each other. It was tumultuous.
It was beautiful. Max blew off nearly all of his responsibilities, packing picnics and taking them on long, sunny drives across the island.
He showed her all his favorite beaches and introduced her to all his friends, his mother, and his siblings.
Nora was captivated by him. She felt sure that this man was the key to her future.
Despite all this beauty and indulgence, in the back of their minds, Nora and Max knew that they’d eventually need to address their problems with the Greenaways.
Max didn’t feel comfortable with Nora living there, and they fought about it often, with Nora reminding Max that she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“Move in with me,” Max told her. But Nora knew that Max’s family already had enough problems. His mother already had too many mouths to feed.
And she reasoned, if she stayed out of her Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Everett’s way, if she continued to make them “happy” and pretend to be their perfect niece, she didn’t think she’d have any more problems.
Often, they invited her for dinner on the veranda.
Nora was always careful to return home from her rendezvous with Max in time to shower and dress for their evenings together.
They were bubbly and witty, talking about their plans for her future and the sons of their friends, one of whom, they imagined, Nora would like and marry.
Nora knew better than to tell them that she already had a boyfriend.
She imagined Max’s last name—Spader—wasn’t one that sat well with her aunt and uncle, not after what had happened a few years ago.
Sometimes, when she and Aunt Cynthia were alone on the veranda, sipping iced tea and reading, Nora willed herself to ask her aunt why she had affairs.
She wanted to know whether she still loved Uncle Everett or if she’d always only put up with him so she could keep this kind of lifestyle.
She wanted to know what about Max’s father had appealed to her, as well—if Max’s father had a similar sense of humor, if their laugh had sounded the same.
A few days before the end of July, Stacy, the babysitter, got very sick.
Nobody knew what it was. She coughed and hacked violently, the sounds echoing through the halls of the grand estate.
In a panic, Aunt Cynthia tried to parent her children but failed.
They walked all over her. When she burst into tears, Nora was quick to volunteer to take the kids for a few days.
She’d missed having a structure to her days.
She’d missed their stories, their laughter, their songs.
Nora returned to the kitchen to pack the kids a picnic for the afternoon.
Jan, Pam, Tony, and Greg greeted her with nervous smiles, as though they thought she was one of the Greenaways now.
But Nora buttered them up, asking them questions about their family and their days.
They welcomed her back and helped her pack a sensational picnic, one filled with cheese and fine breads and gorgeous desserts of fruit, chocolate, and cream.
Before she left the kitchen, Pam squeezed her arm and asked, “You’d tell us if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”
Nora blinked at her, wondering what Pam knew about Max’s father’s death. But she didn’t want to involve any of the members of staff. She didn’t want to make their lives more difficult.
“I’d tell you,” Nora lied. “Would you tell me?”
Pam nodded and smiled. “Of course, honey.” Nora knew it was a lie, too.
An hour later, Nora was on the beach with the four Greenaway children.
Each of them was overjoyed to have her back and showed it in their own way.
Sarah told her all the “silly” things that Stacy had done over the past few weeks—how she’d always forgotten what Sarah’s favorite snack was, and how she was never able to quiet Mona down when she cried.
“Poor Mona!” Nora said, cradling the little girl.
“Mona hates her,” Sarah finished, clapping her hands before taking off for the waves.
Henry babbled to Nora, talking about the short story he was writing, which had to do with a dragon coming to Nantucket to burn it up.
Nora listened intently and asked questions about the dragon and Henry’s vision for future stories.
It sounded like he had another three stories up his sleeves.
“You’re going to be an incredible writer one day,” she told him.
Henry blushed, then followed in Sarah’s path, back toward the waves. It was as though they couldn’t take Nora’s love for them. It was as though they weren’t accustomed to it.
Not long before Nora needed to get the kids ready for dinner, a shadow fell over the sandcastle she was building with Mona.
“Daddy!” Sarah called from the waves, her hand raised.
Nora raised her chin to find Uncle Everett, standing statuesque, his hands on his hips. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said to Sarah. When Henry and Felix jumped up for his attention as well, he gave it. “How are my strapping young boys doing?”
“We’re good,” Henry said, before giving his father a list of all the things they’d accomplished today. He even told him about the bad handstand he’d done in the water.
“Very good,” Uncle Everett said, although it was clear he wasn’t listening. His eyes fell on Mona, who was gazing at him adoringly. Nora expected him to greet the toddler as well. But he ignored her. “Will we see you for dinner later, Nora?”
“Absolutely,” Nora said. She felt chilled to the bone by his gaze. She couldn’t understand why.
After Uncle Everett went back to the house, Nora sat for a while, trying to make sense of why that interaction bothered her. She was sure it had something to do with Mona.
It wasn’t necessarily strange that an adult man didn’t want to engage with a toddler. Toddlers were sticky, loud, and difficult. But it occurred to Nora that she’d never seen Uncle Everett interact at all with Mona. It was as though he wanted to ignore her very existence.
Nora gathered up the kids and headed back for the house, where they all got ready for dinner.
She led the kids to the dining room, where they would eat with Pam and Jan, while Nora excused herself to dine with her aunt and uncle.
Throughout, her head buzzed with questions.
But her uncle and aunt were the same as ever—mixing cocktails, telling her stories about their faraway travels, and reminding themselves of how much Nora still had to learn about the world.
After dinner, Nora helped the kids get ready for bed, read them their stories, and kissed them good night. She then changed into a pair of jean shorts and a tank and hurried into the night to meet Max. They planned to go to a beach bonfire at one of Max’s friends’.
Max was already there when Nora arrived.
She burrowed her face into his chest and allowed herself to float through the first part of the night, drinking a light beer and chatting with some of the girls with whom Max had been raised on the island.
Many of them had initially been distrustful of Nora, since she was living with the Greenaways.
But Nora soon charmed them. She was looking forward to starting high school with them in the fall and was grateful that she’d been given a head start on this new life. She had a boyfriend. She had friends.
It was more than she could have asked for after everything that had happened.
Midway through the night, as she and Max cozied up by the fire, he smiled down at her, telling her a story from his day.
It was innocuous. It should have been normal and cozy.
But something about his smile slapped over her.
Something about it reminded her of something.
She furrowed her brow, concentrating hard on the thought.
She didn’t want to let it disappear before she figured it out.
“What is that face?” Max asked, laughing.
Nora’s smile melted. Abruptly, she got to her feet, brushing the sand from her backside. It was something about Max’s face, she realized now. Something that had just occurred to her.
Max’s smile looked exactly like Mona’s.
She couldn’t believe it. But then again, didn’t it make sense?
If Aunt Cynthia had been having an affair with Max’s father a few years ago, it meant that it was very likely Mona’s father was Max’s father.
It made sense, then, why Uncle Everett never looked at the little girl.
She was nothing to him. Nothing but proof that his wife had stepped out of the marriage and disrespected him.
Nora began to shake. Something about this discovery made everything that much more real to her.
She realized that she’d been hiding from the awful things her aunt and uncle had done, that she was taking from the situation all that she wanted to and ignoring the rest. But it wasn’t the right thing to do.
Max took her by the hand and guided her away from the bonfire. Worry was etched on his face. But it took some time for Nora to explain what was on her mind.
“Mona,” Nora whispered. “I think she’s your sister. I think she was your father’s daughter.”
All the color drained from Max’s face. He let his hands drop to his sides. And then, an awful sound came out of his throat, one of frustration and sorrow.
“I can’t take this anymore,” he said. Tears fell from his eyes. “Those people can’t raise Mona. They don’t have the right!”
Nora closed her eyes. She wondered if she’d done the right thing by telling Max what she’d just realized. That night, he begged her not to go back to the Greenaway house. But what choice did she have? “I don’t want Mona to be alone,” she reminded him. That shut him up.
The following morning, as Nora and the kids played on the beach, Max came up the sand.
He looked sorrowful and gaunt, like he hadn’t slept at all last night.
He high-fived the other kids, then bent down to look Mona in the eyes.
Seeing them facing off like that, there was no denying it.
Mona looked much more like Max than the rest of her siblings. It was uncanny.