A Vineyard Morning Read online

  Annie poked around the cottage, straightening things that did not need straightening, killing time until John would be awake after he’d worked midnight-to-eight. At five o’clock, she called him.

  “I’ve been up for hours,” he said. “I slept three and a half.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “Yeah. My daughter.” He went on to tell Annie that Taylor had banged on his door just after noon, shaking the whole damn house and rousting him out of bed. “She found out about the video. I swear, my daughter is going to be the death of me.”

  Annie knew that if she ever wrote that line in her manuscript, Trish, her editor, would mark it heavily with blue pencil and write cliché in the margin. Then she blinked and wondered why she was thinking about her editor when John was waiting for a response.

  “Lucy’s a curious kid with a vivid imagination, but she still has some growing up to do. She’s only fourteen; she’s not going to get everything right.”

  He sighed. “Maybe I should have left her with her mother.”

  That was a statement Annie didn’t want to touch. “She’s happy here, John.”

  “Maybe for the wrong reasons. I don’t give her as much supervision as her mother did.”

  After the mess that Lucy had been in last year, Annie hadn’t seen a single sign that John’s ex-wife was a parental guru with all the answers. At least no more than John—or any parent—could be in the world today. “Kids today don’t have it easy . . .”

  “Lucy’s not just anybody’s kid. She’s mine. I’m responsible for her. I thought she got the message about not posting stuff that might hurt other people. I thought she was smarter than that. Now I can’t stop worrying about what’s going to happen next. And why the hell is she hanging out with a twenty-two-year-old boy, anyway? Even worse, why is he hanging out with her? Never mind. Please don’t answer those questions.”

  Annie forced a small laugh and said, “I don’t think it’s ever smart to try to think like a teenager. Mostly because you’ll probably fail. Besides, she and Jonas weren’t alone, John. Maggie was with them.”

  “Right. Another fourteen-year-old. And don’t forget the dog.”

  Annie knew not to argue. She also knew it wasn’t the right time to share Kevin’s supposition that Lucy had told Jonas that the old, handwritten letters—the only proof he had that his mother probably had not killed his father—might have been faked. By Taylor.

  “Can I see you in the morning?” John interrupted her thoughts. “Breakfast at the diner or something?”

  “Sorry, but I have to pick up Donna. Kevin can’t take the time off work. My great archeological dig has left them stranded for help, but the Inn still needs to be finished. In case it’s allowed to open.”

  “I didn’t hear that,” John said. “I’m sworn to uphold the law, remember? Which includes the part about stopping construction on the property. Which refers to all construction. By anyone. My father and your brother included.”

  “Right! How silly of me. Kevin is not working on the Inn at all. Neither is Earl. I must be mistaken.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “It’s part of my charm.”

  They talked a few more minutes, and Annie tried to sound upbeat. She was, however, grateful that John hadn’t asked what boat Donna was coming in on. The noon boat would arrive in Vineyard Haven at twelve forty-five. Which meant there would be plenty of time for Annie to see John before she had to leave to get her. Maybe Kevin wasn’t the only one who needed time to breathe.

  * * *

  Saturday morning it was raining. Not just a few drops, not even a steady shower, but a relentless downpour. Annie’s short trip on the On Time from one side of the harbor to the other was like being stuck in a car wash. Visibility was awful, and the wind was picking up, so she hoped the big boats would be running. High wind was typically the first thing that caused ferry service to be canceled on the eight-mile voyage between Woods Hole and the island.

  Craving more time alone before picking up Donna, Annie took the beach road instead of the shorter, faster, less scenic route that cut across the island, east to west. But as soon as she went right at the infamous Edgartown Triangle and crawled toward State Beach, she knew it had been a mistake; mixed with all the rain, the high-tide surf had blown onto the road, leaving puddles the size of salt-water ponds.

  For the umpteenth time, she was grateful that she’d traded her Lexus for a Jeep. She hoped Donna didn’t mind the less luxurious ride.

  Crawling past the jumping bridge—the site of a million photos of kids jumping into the channel that connected the ocean with Sengekontacket Pond, which had provided a scene in Jaws that even today induced audience gasps—Annie tried to stay focused on her driving while thinking about Donna. Though Annie had stayed on the Vineyard over Christmas instead of going to Boston with Kevin, she hadn’t regretted it.

  The truth was, Annie had preferred staying on the island to spending the holiday with Donna. Lucy had gone to Plymouth to be with her mother and sister, so John—and Earl and Claire—would have been alone. Besides, Annie knew all of them better.

  Life is like that sometimes, Murphy suddenly whispered from the empty passenger seat. If you recall, I once knew you better than I knew my own husband.

  Annie winced. Yes, she remembered. Murphy and Stan had been a love match envied by many in the early nineties, the fun-loving, talented, family behaviorist and the brilliant Boston neurosurgeon. They’d wanted badly to have a family; they’d tried very hard, followed all the biological “rules,” but nothing happened. Then they went in vitro. Several times. Suddenly, Murphy was pregnant. They were elated. Even more elated when they learned that twin boys were heading their way. Stan doted on her every move, her every mood. The love match continued until . . . until the boys were born prematurely. Maternal twins—identical. Rare with in vitro fertilization. The day they found out Stan laughed nervously and asked, “Are you sure they’re mine?”

  Needless to say, the bubble of joy burst.

  In a postpartum frenzy, Murphy metaphorically kicked him out of the house. It was weeks before they got back together, before Stan admitted he had always been jealous because Murphy was, after all, the most beautiful woman in the whole freaking world, and he had no idea why she’d bothered to marry old, nerdy him.

  While Stan was gone, Annie spent hours with Murphy every day in the neonatal unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. . . every day for the nearly twenty days until both twins were pronounced “out of the woods” and released. Murphy would not cry; only once did she reveal self-pity by saying, “I thought I knew my husband. Even worse, I thought he knew me.”

  Annie wondered how sure Kevin really was—really could be—that Taylor hadn’t killed her boyfriend. Maybe, after the trauma with his wife, Kevin didn’t want to deal with reality again. Maybe he thought La-La Land was a better place to live.

  As for Annie, she knew she‘d never get close enough to Taylor to voice an educated guess.

  Maneuvering the Jeep into Oak Bluffs now, more than halfway to the harbor, Annie wondered if Donna had needed to believe in fairy tales when she’d learned that she was pregnant with Annie. Maybe she’d given Annie up for adoption because she’d convinced herself that Annie’s birth father didn’t want her (or Donna didn’t want him), and that Annie would go to a wonderful home with two wonderful parents who would be able to raise her in a wonderful world—much more wonderful than Donna could have given her back then.

  Then Annie realized maybe it was time to ask: about her birth father; about the grandparents she’d never known; about how it happened that she’d been born and then adopted. It might be nice to know something other than that her birth mother had been in the antiques business and that Annie had a half-brother. Maybe, if she knew a little more about her background, she’d ask Lucy to do her genealogy.

  Rounding the curve, driving up and over the drawbridge, Annie headed toward the pier, deciding that, yes, while Donna was there, th
ey would have that conversation. Perhaps when they were hunting for sea glass on a beach—any beach, other than the one on the shoreline of the Inn.

  With her plan in place, Annie felt relieved until she reached the last leg of the road, where five spokes of four streets merged tenuously together—and were flooded.

  * * *

  A U-turn. Back to Oak Bluffs. Cutting through back roads of which she was unsure. Noting the time that rapidly ticked toward the arrival of the Island Home if it had not been canceled. Why hadn’t she checked before she’d set out? Too late now, Annie thought. She didn’t want to waste time pulling over to call the Steamship Authority. And the number she had for Donna was a Boston landline.

  When she finally reached the roundabout, she turned onto Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road as the rain pummeled her windshield. She passed the alpaca farm, the campgrounds, and the unofficial wild turkey crossing. Once on State Road, she slowly headed down the hill toward the boat, avoiding those infamous five corners by turning onto Main Street and then cutting down Union. She was glad it was still April so few cars were on the road; after all, even tropical storms did not deter tourists from visiting in season—not even Annie’s dad. Her dad, Bob Sutton. Not the dad she knew nothing about.

  Surprisingly, she made it on time.

  Zipping across the street to the terminal lot, she parked just as vehicles began to slither from the mouth of the giant white boat that now was safely in its berth, its passengers huddled in an assortment of drenched slickers as they shuffled down the ramp.

  Annie grabbed her umbrella, got out of the Jeep, and gingerly crossed to the covered portico that faced the boat. She scanned the soggy crowd, but did not see Donna. Then a woman moved slowly toward her. She was stooped and thin; she carried a black-and-white polka dot umbrella; she wore a long raincoat, red rain boots, and a small grin. She was wheeling a large suitcase and a carry-on that was almost as big. Perhaps she was planning on a lengthy visit, or maybe she lived on the island and was coming home. Annie grinned back and continued to scan the crowd.

  “Annie!” the woman called from beneath the polka dots. Her voice barely rose above the splats of unrelenting rain, the cries of puddle-jumping people, and the stop-and-go insistence of cars and trucks and slapping windshield-wiper blades. Annie tipped her umbrella, allowing a better view. The woman’s face was thin—no, gaunt. But it was Donna.

  “Oh! Here you are!” Annie was both startled and embarrassed that she hadn’t recognized her. Years ago she’d read that the first few seconds when connecting with someone set the emotional tone for the entire meeting. She hoped it was one of those common internet lies. “I’m so sorry. With the rain and all the umbrellas . . .” Awkwardly, she stepped aside so Donna could squeeze under the covered entrance.

  “I’m sure you’re not accustomed to seeing me in red boots. Neither am I!” Donna gazed around at the confusion. Her hazel eyes seemed as glazed as the horizon, making her appear strangely befuddled. She had aged over the winter.

  “Follow me,” Annie said. “I’m parked in the lot.” She took the suitcases without asking. Then she wondered if she also should reach for Donna’s arm to steady her.

  No. Murphy’s voice slipped through the raindrops. Give her space. Annie heeded the advice; Murphy had never steered her wrong.

  When they reached the Jeep, Donna said, “How about stopping somewhere for a cup of hot tea? And getting the hell out of this rain?”

  Annie laughed. And finally began to relax.

  * * *

  She had started keeping secrets in 1956, when she was seven years old and pretended that she was a princess who lived in a castle on the Mediterranean Sea instead of a nobody who lived in a triple-decker in the heart of the Neponset area of Dorchester. It wasn’t Boston’s finest neighborhood, but with three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room, the apartment was big enough for her parents and her and her brother, Donald, who was five years older than she was. At least she had her own room; some of her friends did not.

  Then, right before Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier and was destined to live happily ever after, Donald was horsing around with some of his friends on their way home from school, and he tripped over a rail and fell into the path of a streetcar. He had just finished presenting his sixth grade science fair project that he’d titled “Building America’s First Subway,” because Boston held the honor of having developed it and gotten it up and running in a heralded engineering feat. Donna’s father said it was ironic that Donald’s life had been snuffed out by public transportation after he had studied it. It was nice, though, that the judges awarded Donald first prize, “posthumously,” her mother said and wept. Donna had to look the word up in their big dictionary.

  Her parents never talked about her brother after that. One night, Donna saw her father take the science project and dump it in the metal trash can in the alley. After everyone had gone to bed, she’d crept outside, lifted the clanging lid, retrieved the blue ribbon, and sneaked back into the house. She brushed it off and hid it in the small metal chest that Aunt Elizabeth had given her for her birthday and was designed to hold doll clothes.

  She soon added another treasure to the chest—a picture that she’d torn out of her grandmother’s Life magazine of Princess Grace in her wedding gown. Over time, Donna had had to remove things that once had belonged there—her doll’s pink dress, then her blue one, a pair of high-heel shoes, a gold vinyl purse. But Donna had needed to make room for the newspaper clippings when a man named Alan Shepard was the first American to go up into space; the dance card and dried corsage from her junior prom; the back page of a Howard Johnson’s menu where her first boyfriend, Joe, had scribbled: Love you always.

  In 1982, when Donna saw the Louis Vuitton in the window of the antiques shop on Newbury Street, she supposed it was only natural that she wanted it—it was the perfect place to hide her grown-up, special things. She wondered if it was ironic that Princess Grace had been killed the week before. And that the fairy tale of each of their lives had ended.

  Chapter 12

  Wedging the suitcases into the back of the Jeep, Annie suggested going to the Black Dog because it was close by. The walk would require sloshing through some puddles, but Donna said her red boots would protect her. Annie led the way as they traversed the twists and turns of the clamshell walkways, until they finally made it inside the low-ceilinged building that was flying its black Labrador flag despite the rain.

  “May we please sit by the fireplace?” Donna asked the young hostess. “I’ve seen enough water views to last me for a while.” Then she marched across the room with the confidence of a city woman who always seemed to know where she was going.

  “Well,” Donna said, once they sat at the table and had removed their outerwear, “that was certainly a memorable journey.” She smiled a small smile that did little to reveal her actual thoughts. Dressed in a navy cashmere sweater and gray jeans that once might have been skinny but now hung rather loosely, Donna was rail thin. She also was pale; even the finest Lauder makeup couldn’t mask the marks of time. Perhaps they would have been less noticeable if her hair hadn’t been cut shorter than Annie remembered seeing it.

  “Was it rough going?”

  “Not as bad as a typhoon in the South China Sea, but it was fairly rocky. And it’s always unnerving to be on a boat, a plane, or a train, whenever passengers fall silent, when they stop scolding their children or commiserating with their traveling companion and, instead, sit very still and white-knuckle their seats. I find that more disturbing than rowdy laughter, babies squealing, and on these ferries, dogs barking. Don’t you?” While she spoke, she fussed with the napkin—first on the table, then in her lap—then straightened the knife, the fork, the spoon, the salt and pepper, never losing her small smile.

  It was a sardonic smile, Annie realized. A knowing smile. She recognized the look, because she suspected that she, too, wore that expression when there was something she did not want to talk about. She wo
ndered if it was a trait she’d received from Donna through Lucy’s favorite topic, DNA.

  “I’m so sorry,” Annie said. “But it’s good that you didn’t bring your car over. The driving is awful. I take it you figured out where to get the shuttle in the lot?”

  Donna shook her head. “I took the bus from South Station right down to the pier. It was far easier. And less costly.”

  Annie didn’t want to ask if that meant Donna planned to stay a while. She’d leave that up to Kevin to address.

  Their server arrived, and both women asked for tea and a crock of quahog chowder.

  Then Donna drove the small talk about how much she was enjoying retirement (“It is delicious, like fresh herbs plucked from a dew-dropped garden in the French countryside, served with cheese drizzled with olive oil”); how wonderful it was that Kevin had adapted so readily to island life (“He’d never even been here before!”); and how well Annie’s next book must be coming along (“My goodness, I don’t know how you do it!”). She sounded more energetic than her frail appearance suggested. “And the Inn!” she added as their tea and chowder arrived. “How are the men doing on their own? What a shame that some of their crew abandoned them.”

  Annie nodded and savored a spoonful of chowder, then decided to tackle the elephant in the Black Dog. “Everyone’s making do,” she said, then rested her elbows on the armrests of the captain’s chair and quietly added, “Donna? Are you all right?”

  Her birth mother blinked, added a few granules of sugar to her tea, and slowly stirred. Annie wasn’t sure if she’d heard her.

  Finally setting down her spoon, Donna sipped her tea, then set the mug down, too. Without looking at Annie, she said, “I was quite ill this winter.” Her announcement was followed by a soft thump of silence.

  “I’m so sorry, Donna. Kevin didn’t tell me,” Annie said. And while illness—a cold? The flu? Pneumonia?—could explain the weight loss and the gauntness, it certainly had done an awful number on Donna.