Chapter 34
It was fully dark when Maddie left the cottage and started walking up the hill toward where she’d left Orson.
The night air was chilly for the end of May; when she’d taken a flashlight out of the hall closet, she should have also grabbed a jacket.
But if she turned back to get one now, she might lose her nerve to drive to Chappy; her tunic would have to do. Besides, Orson had that new heater.
So Maddie kept walking, swinging the flashlight from side to side. Which was how, as the lot came into view, she noticed that a pickup was parked next to Orson. It was Rex’s.
She stopped. If he was inside, he no doubt had seen the beam from her flashlight. But she couldn’t see anyone in there. At least, no one who was moving.
She stepped closer.
Still nothing.
Then, tipping the beam toward the ground, she moved up to the driver’s window. And saw Rex’s silhouette behind the wheel.
And he wasn’t moving.
Either he was asleep … or he was …
Maddie wouldn’t let herself think the next word.
With her heart racing, she held the flashlight just below the window; with her free hand, she tapped twice on the glass. Then three times.
He stirred.
She sighed.
She reached for the handle and whipped the door open.
“What are you doing?” she whispered into the night. “You scared me half to death.”
He sat up, his eyes quickly scanning the pickup’s interior as if he’d forgotten where he was. And why. Then he looked at Maddie.
“Oh,” he said. “Hi.” He rubbed his palms over his face.
“Get out,” Maddie said. “We need to talk.”
“Or you could get in here, where it’s more comfortable.”
She almost said no to him again. But her dad was right. She needed to hear him out. So she crossed around to the passenger side, climbed in, and closed the door.
“Who sent me the notes?” It seemed a good place to start, seeing as how he’d announced that he’d found the culprit.
Without hesitating, he said, “My sister.”
Maddie froze. “Taylor?”
“Yup. The only sister I have.”
“Seriously?” Her thoughts flared in what felt like hundreds of directions. “I don’t understand.”
“She wanted to explain it to you herself, but I thought it would be easier if you heard it from me.”
“Are you sure she did it? But why …?”
“It was partly my fault. And Kevin’s. She overheard us talking about your idea for the bookshop, and it freaked her out. She decided to try and stop you.”
“But why …?” Maddie repeated, but Rex hushed her.
“First, you need to know how I figured it out. I thought about how you said the notes were printed in felt-tip black markers; Taylor uses those to track what she does at the properties she takes care of. And, unless a signature’s required, she prints.
Block letters. The non-cursive stuff. With that bit of deduction, I looked for my father’s yearbooks. ”
“And you found them,” Maddie said. And then she knew he must be right. “And the picture of my mother wasn’t there.”
“Class of 1972. Yup, Hannah’s photo was clipped out.”
She closed her eyes, grateful, at least, that the culprit who’d sent her the notes didn’t turn out to be anyone else, especially Evelyn, since Stephen now seemed to enjoy the woman’s company.
“But Rex,” Maddie said, “I don’t understand.
Taylor was always standoffish with me, but I thought she just didn’t like me.
Then, when you were at Windemere, she came to see me.
She said she wanted to apologize for shutting me out.
It was clear she was afraid she might lose you.
She even told me Jonas’s history. Anyway, I thought she wanted to be friends.
But another note came after that. This makes no sense. ”
He toyed with the steering wheel. “Did you tell your grandmother about Bud?”
Maddie blinked. “I did. She thought I was accusing her of being a conspirator in my mother’s death. Then she stormed out of the room and went to bed. It was bizarre.”
He nodded and gestured toward the cottage.
“Come on. Let’s find her. She needs to tell us her side of the story, because it’s all connected.
But before that, I need to say something important.
” He shifted on the seat, reached over and lifted her chin.
“I love you, Maddie Clarke. And I had absolutely no knowledge of any of this until now. I need you to believe that, if you can.”
Grandma was awake and in the kitchen making a grilled cheese sandwich. She probably waited to leave her bedroom until she thought Maddie had left. But she looked at them without surprise.
“I figured that someday you’d find out, Rex. For what it’s worth, I never knew your father told your sister.”
Maddie struggled not to interrupt.
“Let’s sit,” Rex said.
They sat at the table. Grandma brought a mug of tea along with her sandwich as if she was ready for a friendly evening chat.
“It was an accident,” she began. “It was dark. Back then, the corner by the water was narrower than it is now. And it wasn’t well lit.
After it happened, Stan wasn’t sure if he should cover up the truth or come clean.
I was in shock. So I said telling anyone wouldn’t bring Hannah back.
My family was ruined. But, Rex, if people learned the truth, it would have ruined your family, too. ”
Maddie watched while Grandma took a bite of the sandwich and chewed.
“Because of your affair,” Rex interjected.
Maddie’s jaw went slack.
Grandma closed her eyes, then swallowed.
“It wasn’t an affair. Stan and I looked after one other for many years.
And, yes, we loved each other. No offense to your mother, Rex, but she never adapted to life on the island.
She was a city girl. If it hadn’t been for you and Taylor, she would have left Stan long before my Hannah died. ”
She looked out the window, almost wistfully, as painful memories no doubt drifted back.
“You were only a boy when I first got to know you. My husband had been dead a long time by then, but from the start, you were like the son I never had. You were kind and sweet and a good kid, and you were a whole lot like your father; he and I had already been together half a dozen years. When you got older and started getting into scrapes, I used to wonder if it was because you found out about him and me.”
Rex lowered his head and shook it. “Nope. That was just me, acting out because my mother was … distant … to Taylor and me.” He glanced at Maddie. “I figured that part out when I was in jail and didn’t have much else to do.”
Maddie reached over, took his hand in hers, and stroked it with her thumb.
“So what happened the night my mother died?” she managed to ask.
Grandma stared at her plate. “Stan thought you and your mother had already headed home to Green Hills—he knew you were supposed to have left that day. He didn’t know you’d stayed an extra day so I could take you to the fair.
Hannah didn’t come with us because she had a headache, but later, when she felt better, she went clamming so she could make chowder.
She always liked to make chowder to bring home to Stephen.
” She paused and pushed the plate away with more than half the sandwich still on it.
Maddie remembered that. At the end of each season, it was her job to set the container that held a pot of chowder with ice packed around it between her feet on the floor of their car and keep it steady all the way home. She closed her eyes for a moment now, then opened them when Grandma continued.
“Stan had been at his cabin,” she said. “He decided to surprise me by coming over to spend the night before he went back to Chappy. But when he came around the curve on West Basin Road, well, that’s when it happened. He wound up hiding out in Menemsha Hills all night.”
She paused and sipped her tea. “He waited in the hills until the next night, then he left his truck there and walked here by way of the beach. I was still in shock. I had a houseful, what with Stephen arriving, the cops coming and going, and what felt like the whole tribe convening here. I went outside to see him; he told me what happened. He said someone had seen him and called the cops … but Stan talked with him before the cops arrived. As for his truck, Deke took care of it—it probably wasn’t the first time the auto body guy helped out an old chum.
So the cops decided a summer visitor had done it.
They checked the boat schedules and other stuff, but came up empty. They had nothing to go on.”
Rex and Maddie watched her, waiting for more.
Grandma shrugged. “We decided to leave it be. It not only would have hurt too many people to learn the truth, especially if a trial dragged it out with publicity and reporters and everything. ‘Fisherman on Martha’s Vineyard Kills His Lover’s Daughter,’ the headlines would have read.
What made it worse was that Ted Kennedy was still a senator, and there were rumblings about him running for president, so the press had been bringing up all the Chappaquiddick stuff again.
The Vineyard didn’t need more bad publicity. ”
She frowned, then continued. “As for me, well, after Stan told me what happened, I never saw him again. How could I? I still loved him, I always have. But …”
She stopped, wiped her eyes, then said, “As time went by, I heard he was drinking and was no good to anyone. But it wasn’t my problem or my fault. I’d lost my baby girl. And in a different way I lost my beautiful granddaughter, too. Until last summer when she came back.”
The three of them sat quietly.
“Was Bud Erikson the guy who found her?” Maddie asked.
Grandma Nancy sighed heavily. “For years, I didn’t know who it was.
But right before Stan died, he wrote me a letter saying he didn’t have long to live.
He wanted me to know that Bud—who wasn’t much older than Hannah—had been at the pier working on his dad’s fishing boat.
He saw Stan driving too fast down West Basin.
He heard the crash. He rushed over and saw Stan standing there, crying.
That’s when Stan asked Bud to call the cops, and to say it was a hit-and-run.
Which is what Bud did. He told the cops a woman was lying dead in the road. ”
Maddie winced.
“Bud’s a talker,” Rex interrupted. “It’s hard to believe he’s kept quiet all these years.”
“Turns out that to keep his mouth shut, your father gave him a piece of land he owned over in Aquinnah; he did it to keep Bud’s mouth shut.
Other than Bud, I’m the only one who knew that.
The land is near one of the properties Stan gave me, and it’s where Bud still lives with Dave and Dave’s wife and kids.
Stan bought a few parcels back in the sixties when they were cheap.
I never sold the ones he gave me. I’ve said I want to give them back to the tribe because the land was theirs in the first place.
But the truth is, I never wanted it in the first place because I hate why he gave them to me—like they were his offering, his amends, for killing my Hannah. ”
They sat, none of them moving; none of them speaking.
“Even though Taylor told me,” Rex said, “I can’t believe that my father …” He didn’t finish his thought.
Then Grandma’s voice dropped. “I’ve been afraid you would find out. I’ve been afraid I’d lose the both of you, now that you’re together.”
Maddie glanced at Rex then back to Grandma. “That won’t happen, Grandma,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
After a while, Rex made Maddie and him sandwiches, which they ate quietly, drained of energy and emotion. Rex mentioned that his neck was hurting; Maddie didn’t want him to travel back to Chappy, especially in pain. So she asked him to stay the night.
As they went to bed, Maddie turned off the nightstand lamp and pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Rex?” she whispered in the darkness.
“Yes?”
“I love you very much. And what’s more, I’m ready now.”
He didn’t need to ask her to elaborate.
At three o’clock the next morning, nestled against the man she loved, Maddie woke up with a cramp. She remembered the feeling. She was in labor.
Maddie knocked on my bedroom door a few minutes ago.
“Grandma?” she whispered. “We’re going to the hospital. I think the baby’s coming.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Then she asked if I wanted to go with them.
I thought about it for half a minute, then declined. I’d have plenty of time to see the baby. This time was for them.
But it was nice to know that, in spite of everything, they still love me. And that they forgave me.
Come to think of it, forgiveness might be one of the most important things in life. I wish I’d learned that sooner.