Chapter 33
With less than a day until the opening, Maddie planned a quiet afternoon.
Instead of futzing around the shop, tweaking this and that, or driving to Chappy to see Rex again, she decided to rest and store up her energy for the days to come: the grand opening of the bookshop and the whirlwind trip back and forth to Amherst. Sometimes, it was still difficult to believe that the unsettling days of winter were behind her and that only good things lay ahead.
Sitting at a tea table on the back deck of the bookshop, she knew the island was ready. The air felt electrified. Pulsating. Ready for fun. The sun was warmer; the sky, clearer; the water, bluer. The season was poised to begin, waiting only for the starting gate to open.
With a soft smile, Maddie closed her eyes and listened to the gentle splashes as small motor boats were launched, one after another, into the harbor.
All week, she’d heard the music of summer preparation and its rituals of energy.
Even as she now heard footsteps clomping on the narrow walkway that joined the backs of the shops and boathouses, she wasn’t disturbed by it. Until she heard a man’s voice.
“Afternoon, Miss Clarke.” The tone was gruff, grating, and oddly familiar.
Maddie winced. She opened her eyes to the unwelcome sight of curmudgeonly Bud Erikson.
“Mind if I join you?” he rasped.
More than anything, Maddie wanted to say, “Yes, I mind. Now go away.” Instead, as the new shopkeeper on the harbor, she smiled and said, “Please do. Would you like a cup of herb tea? We’re not officially open until tomorrow, but I could make one—hot or iced—for you.”
He frowned, his thick eyebrows meeting head-on at the bridge of his wide nose. “Not much of a tea man. But thanks for the offer.”
How on earth did he have a son as nice as Dave?
Shaking off her distaste, Maddie sat up straight and tried to look halfway pleasant.
Then she remembered his comment when he’d stopped by the shop before: “I’m still here,” the grumpy man had said.
The same words that appeared on the second note on New Year’s Day.
She folded her hands in her lap and tightened her grip of her fingers.
Bud’s eyes were busy scanning the glass doors that served as the rear entrance to the bookshop. “Did my son do a respectable job inside?”
“He sure did.”
“He used to be a fisherman like me.”
“Yes, you mentioned that before. It’s nice that he found something else that he’s good at.” She couldn’t believe how calm and controlled her voice sounded when inside she was quivering.
The man guffawed. “I didn’t say he was a good fisherman.”
“Well, he’s a good painter. And he helps Kevin with other things, which are very much appreciated.” For some ridiculous reason she felt she should sing Dave’s praises to his father.
“You’re the one who cleared the tables at the potluck, right? On Cranberry Day?”
She felt her eyes open wide as she said yes, surprised he’d paid her any notice, what with him having been deep in conversation with a Wampanoag man about Arnie’s Bait & Tackle.
“I’ve been wonderin’ something. Did you hear what we were saying about Arnie’s? Is that how you wound up with this place?”
Maddie wasn’t sure how to respond. “Let’s say it gave me the idea.” She forced a smile, unsure what he was trying to get at, if anything.
“Well, I’ll be.” He scratched his bristly chin, then skimmed his gaze across the back of the shop again.
“I wish you all the best. God knows you’ve done wonders with the place.
For starters, it smells better now. And though I’m not much of a reader, summer folks will lap it up. Up-islanders will, too.”
It was difficult to tell whether he was being nice or wanted something. Not that she cared. She only wanted him to leave.
“Your grandmother’s Nancy Clieg, right?”
Has he stopped by just to grill me? And if so, why? Maybe he wanted to make her nervous the day before the shop opened, though why on earth would he do that?
The baby did a somersault inside her. Maddie stiffened.
“Yes,” she said, “Nancy’s my grandmother. She’s made some of her traditional baskets that we’re going to sell at the shop.”
Like herbal tea and reading, baskets did not appear to interest him.
“So, Hannah was your mother, right? You going to sell any of her paintings?”
Maddie grew cautious. “No,” she said.
“Huh,” Bud continued, once again scratching at his stubble. “Damn good artist, she was.”
“You knew my mother.” It came out as a statement, not a question. She started to perspire.
“Sure. Everybody knew everybody back then. I was a couple of years ahead of her in school. A right pretty girl, that Hannah Clieg.”
And then things seemed to make sense. The notes.
The yearbook. Was Bud Erikson the mystery man who, as Rex suggested, might have had a “thing” for her mother?
Had they dated? Had Hannah dumped him for Stephen Clarke, the washashore who’d whisked her off to America?
All these years, Bud might have harbored a grudge.
Seeing Hannah’s daughter might have dredged up his old pain, might have made him want Maddie to Get off the island. And don’t come back.
“It’s you,” she said.
He flinched. “Huh?”
“You’re the one. It’s why you came here today. You sent me the notes. And you cut the picture of my mother out of her high school yearbook.” The baby was blessedly still, as if waiting for Maddie to say her piece. “You don’t want me here.”
Bud harrumphed, the way he had at the potluck. “Lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t do herbal tea or books, and I sure as hell don’t write notes to anybody.”
“I don’t believe you.” She reached for her phone to call Chief Lawrence.
Then Bud stood up and adjusted the collar of his flannel shirt that must have seen better days a few decades earlier.
“I’ll say it again,” he said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I only stopped by to extend my good wishes to you. And to ask you how it feels to have Rex Winsted as the father of your baby. Seeing as how his father killed your mother. And got away with it.”
With that, Bud marched off, disappearing among the other shops along the harbor.
And Maddie’s world came crashing down.
Several minutes passed before she could think clearly. When she did, she reasoned that Erikson’s announcement was a lie. A twisted fabrication by a man who’d been dumped by his teenage crush.
Unless … was he telling the truth?
Even worse … did Rex know?
His father killed your mother. And got away with it. Could it be true?
And … had Rex known all along? Rex … the man who was so intent on them not having secrets?
Surely others would have known. The accident was forty years ago, but, as Maddie was so often reminded, the Vineyard was an island.
She doubted that the grapevine was any less effective then, before the internet.
Secrets had a way of spilling over and spreading, the way the tidal water seemed to like flooding Five Corners.
Finally she stood up, looked out over the harbor, and held her baby belly while crying silent, aching tears. How could she pretend to live a snow-globe kind of life if her baby’s grandfather had killed her grandmother?
It was unimaginable.
Unless it was a lie.
Please, God, let it be a lie.
She had to learn the truth. But she couldn’t ask Rex. Not yet. Not until she knew more.
Which meant she’d have to confront the one person who might know more than she’d ever let on to Maddie.
After all, Grandma Nancy had been in the cottage, only steps away from where Hannah was killed by the nameless, faceless hit-and-run driver …
only steps from where, in just a few hours, Maddie would open her little bookshop.
Or not.
“Who killed my mother?” Too antsy to sit on the sofa, Maddie was standing by the fireplace, leaning against the mantel that held Hannah’s painting of Maddie and Grandma walking the beach at sunset, the tiny pottery bowl with the daisy painted by a four-year-old Maddie, and the cracked, ragged quahog shell—one of many that had spilled from Hannah’s tin bucket on impact, the lone shell Grandma had salvaged from the street corner on the harbor where her daughter had died.
Grandma sat facing her, staring into the fireplace, her eyes glossy but vacant as she squared her shoulders and postured defiance.
“How would I know? It was a hit-and-run. And why are you asking me this now?”
Maddie’s cheeks flared. “Was Rex’s father driving the truck?
Did he kill her? Has everyone on this bloody island covered up the truth?
” She had stopped trembling while she’d racewalked from the bookshop up to the cottage.
Even her voice wasn’t shaking. It was as if her determination had overridden her emotions.
But Grandma seemed equally determined. Leaping to her feet uncharacteristically fast and, surprisingly, without faltering, she barked, “It was a tourist, Maddie. You know that. Whoever it was got on the boat and slithered like a snake back to the mainland, back to who-knows-where. Nobody knew his name. But everyone agreed he must have thought his life was more important than a poor Wampanoag girl’s.
If you don’t believe me, go down to the Gazette. It’s all there in the newspaper files.”
Grandma began to pace on her toothpick legs.
“I thought you were a smart woman, Madelyn. But why are you accusing me of knowing something different, like I’m some kind of criminal?
I’m an old lady whose daughter was killed decades before her time.
Did you for one minute think about how reminding me of the worst night of my life would make me feel?
I’m ashamed of you, Madelyn. Your mother would be, too, if she’d lived long enough to see you doing this to me. ”
Then Grandma stomped off to her bedroom and slammed the door, leaving Maddie standing numb, weighted with unanswered questions and now also with guilt.
And then there was a knock on the back door.