A Vineyard Morning Page 2

  After closing the shutter, she turned and started across the road. “The cemetery is at the top of the hill. No one’s allowed up there unless he or she is a tribal member.”

  Annie followed. “We should have asked Winnie to come with us.”

  They came to an opening in a split-rail fence. A large boulder sat there. A metal plaque with a moss-green patina was attached; an embossed message identified the spot as the head of the path to the “burying ground.”

  “Lucy? Are you sure it’s okay to go up?” Annie did not like breaking rules, let alone on consecrated land.

  “Nobody’s around. Besides, I’m two-percent Native American, remember?”

  In Annie’s previous life, she’d been a third-grade teacher who’d maintained control of her class. But Lucy was fourteen, not nine, and not one of Annie’s students. “Okay then, but I’ll wait here. I’ll check in with Kevin to see if he and your father survived their camping trip.”

  “Whatever.” Lucy tromped up an embankment of dirt stairs that were framed by tree roots; her iPad was fixed in one hand, her three-ring binder in the other. Then she disappeared—again—this time into a stand of tall, newly budding oaks. She clearly was an island kid who knew where she was most of the time, and if she didn’t, she wasn’t afraid. After all, she hadn’t been raised in the city as Annie had.

  “This is so cool!” Lucy’s voice called down from the hilltop. “Every stone has something on top!”

  Annie cupped her mouth. “Like what?”

  “A scallop shell. A piece of wampum. A couple have coins.”

  “Take pictures!”

  “I am!”

  Annie smiled with appreciation for the girl’s enthusiasm. Then she leaned against the boulder and scanned the rustic forest, wondering if the trees were as old as the sacred site. She closed her eyes and listened to the stillness until her mind quieted and her shoulders relaxed, the stressors of her things-to-do list beginning to disintegrate like fine white sand beneath an outgoing tide. She stood, trance-like, for several minutes until a brisk rustle of leaves warned her she was not alone. Maybe it was someone who had passed that way before.

  Yup, it’s the dead guys.

  Annie’s eyes flipped open, her body jerked, she nearly buckled to the ground. Quickly righting herself, she let her gaze skim the area. Of course, there was no one. Except Murphy, her old college pal who’d died nearly two years earlier from a rare, swift-moving cancer, but whose spirit tended to show up when Annie needed sage advice or a good laugh.

  “Murphy!” Annie cried, shaking a playful fist up toward the sky. “Stop scaring me!”

  Poltergeist-like laughter was swiftly muffled by the ding of Annie’s phone. She checked the screen: it was Kevin.

  PARTY’S OVER, her brother texted. GET YOUR BUTT BACK TO CHAPPY. WE’VE GOT AN INN TO FINISH. AND—SURPRISE!—MOM IS COMING SATURDAY. SIX DAYS FROM NOW. MINUS A FEW HOURS.

  “Nooo!” Annie cried. Her birth mother was coming to the island? Donna MacNeish—the woman who’d raised Kevin but hadn’t raised her? The woman Annie had only seen three times in her life?

  Yes, my friend, Murphy whispered. Her.

  Annie’s things-to-do list blinked into sharp focus again—that time with an added entry: Donna. She braced herself, inhaled deeply, then sprinted up the embankment, traversing the tree roots, determined to help Lucy finish her research, while hoping that the souls of the Praying Indians would forgive her for tramping on their hallowed ground.

  Chapter 2

  She had no business longing for it. But it sat in the window of a small secondhand shop on Newbury Street, and she passed it every morning on her way from the T to her job. There was something about it that called to her: the supple, timeworn leather, the meticulous detail, the era in which it had been fashioned. It was a classic trunk, perhaps at home in a first-class sleeping coach aboard the Orient Express—Paris to Istanbul—in the early twentieth century. It made Donna wonder about the hundreds, or thousands, of stories stored within.

  If she’d listened to Aunt Elizabeth, the trunk might have been hers. “Don’t marry that man,” Elizabeth had said. “Instead, find one with money so your life will be more interesting.” She also had advised that if Donna only owned one sweater, she should make sure it was cashmere.

  Years earlier, Donna had made the mistake of believing in true love, so she should have known to listen to her aunt. But though Jack was only a salesman of home cleaning products, he had proposed. At the time, he’d said he didn’t mind that Donna had once lived in a home for unwed mothers, then given up her baby for adoption. He’d said he didn’t mind, but after they were married and had a child of their own, he apparently felt otherwise. He left Donna with very little money and with Kevin, who by then was four. The pittance of child support that Jack provided trickled off after a while, though Donna didn’t let Kevin know that. She took a job as a receptionist at a radio station where the pay was low, but her boss had suggested that one day she might be made office manager.

  Aside from keeping Kevin healthy, the promotion became her only wish. That, and to own the Louis Vuitton trunk, which Donna knew had been made in Paris. After all, she’d paid close attention during countless hours of browsing for antiques with Aunt Elizabeth, until Alzheimer’s had shoplifted her aunt’s mind. At the store on Newbury Street, the tag read $400, so it was doubtful the storeowner knew the trunk’s worth. Still, the price was equivalent to a month’s rent. Out of Donna’s league. Unless she found a way.

  Then, on an ordinary Tuesday morning when she passed the shop, the Louis Vuitton was gone. She tried to tell herself it was just one more loss. And that, like other losses she’d endured, it must not have been meant for her.

  * * *

  After dropping Lucy off at John’s town house in Edgartown, promising to join them for dinner the next night, then sharing a quick kiss with him before he left for the night shift, Annie headed home. Though she was always sorry when their schedules left them little time to be together, the spark of anticipation kept the embers glowing. This time, however, as she drove the mere two blocks to the Chappy ferry, the glow gave way to trepidation about her birth mother’s impending visit.

  Annie hadn’t seen Donna since the fall when she’d arrived on the island after a months-long world cruise. The timing had been wrong: renovations to the waterfront mansion had begun; bedlam had enveloped them. And when Donna had offered a few design suggestions—art deco chairs, hand-knotted Mondrian rugs, a few pieces of enchanting art in the storytelling style of Hugo Mayer—Annie had politely (she’d hoped) rejected them due to (she’d said) budget constraints. And though she could not dispute that Donna had terrific taste, Annie knew her choices weren’t right for the Vineyard. Donna had left the next day, albeit with a smile. Annie had been too busy to be upset. She had, after all, only seen Donna twice on the Vineyard and once in Boston when Annie had gone there on her birthday. But unlike their jubilant first meeting, the last visits had felt strained. And despite monthly phone calls filled with pleasant anecdotes, Annie didn’t know what Donna wanted from her—or what she wanted from Donna.

  It hadn’t been that way with Kevin. Their first meeting had only lasted as long as it had taken him to devour a Reuben and a beer at Annie’s birthday lunch—yet from the instant she had seen him, she’d been comfortable. Then, when he showed up on the island and didn’t leave, getting to know him had been seamless, natural, fun. Having been raised as the Suttons’ only child, Annie liked having a sibling. And now, as she drove onto the inimitable ferry, she realized it was even easier to build a relationship with John’s daughter than with her own birth mother. If Murphy were still alive, she’d have a heyday with that.

  As the ferry chugged its ninety-second chug across the channel, Annie supposed she should try harder to get to know Donna—if only she knew how. Her adoptive parents had been great . . . well, mostly great. And though Annie had always known she’d been adopted, she’d never felt the kind of loss that she’d re
ad many others did; she’d never been curious about her birth parents.

  Lifting her eyes toward the sky, she said, “A little help would be appreciated.” Murphy, however, didn’t reply. Some things, Annie supposed, her old friend knew she had to figure out herself.

  In a few short minutes, Annie was home—the Inn, as she now liked to think of it. She parked next to Kevin’s pickup and wandered down the sloping lawn to the cottage that Earl and Kevin had custom designed for her and where Kevin was sitting on the porch in an Adirondack chair. He was gazing at the harbor, smiling.

  “I love it here,” he said, without glancing at her.

  “Yeah, me too.” She sat down beside him and followed his gaze. The water was calm, as if waiting for the boats to start their summer procession. “The Inn is going be spectacular.”

  “And you can’t beat the view.”

  The cottage was down the hill toward the water and, as Earl said, “within shoutin’ distance” of the Inn—the old Littlefield house that was being restored, updated, and transformed for the twenty-first century. Adhering to the same top-quality workmanship that they were putting into the main house, the brand-new cottage had wide-plank floors in the small, but sunny living/kitchen combination; a porcelain-tiled, pristine bath; a cozy bedroom shaded by a multi-armed, thick-trunked scrub oak that stood outside the window; and, best of all, a writing room with space for Annie’s laptop and her books and her imagination. The writing room also had two big windows that faced the harbor and the lighthouse and were designed to catch the eastward summer breezes. Originally, she’d wanted to have an apartment attached to the Inn. But she’d traded that idea for solitude. The cottage felt more like a real home, especially since she’d decorated it with a few childhood treasures: her grandmother Sutton’s braided rug; the special quilt her mother had made; her mother’s rocking chair. Her mother Ellen’s things, not Donna’s.

  Annie wondered if she could hide there during Donna’s visit. Then she cleared her throat and, as her dad would have said, she “came back down to earth.” She tapped Kevin’s arm. “Donna’s going to be wicked impressed with everything you and Earl have done.”

  Kevin ran a hand through his dark hair. A shade lighter than Annie’s, unlike hers, it only showed a few strands of silver; he’d joked that as the younger sibling, he had plenty of time to catch up. “But it’s the worst possible time,” he said. “We don’t even have a decent bedroom for her.”

  Annie felt a pressing sensation on her chest, followed by a flash of hope that he’d tell their mother not to come. Then she felt guilty about wanting that. “How long will she stay?”

  “She didn’t say. If things were normal, it would be fun for us to be together, but I don’t have time to entertain her. Neither do you. You’re writing a new book, you must have more soap to make, and you have to start pulling things together to decorate the rooms and common areas. There isn’t time for Mom. But she doesn’t take the word ‘no’ very well.” His brow furrowed; his eyes squinted as if he were in pain.

  Annie remembered that Kevin’s life had not been perfect. After his father left, aside from Donna and her parents (who’d died when he still was young), Kevin had had no family. Not like Annie, who’d had her adoptive parents, two aunts, one uncle, and four grandparents. They were all gone now—had been gone for some time—but she’d never felt alone during her growing-up years.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m busy, too.” She didn’t dare say she’d forgotten about choosing the touches of art and decorative items for the Inn. When she’d agreed to do it last fall, the deadline had seemed far into the future. After hesitating a moment, she added, “But my book’s not due for months, Kevin. And I’m only going to do a couple of the festivals this summer. I’ll need to make more soap for those, but maybe I can enlist Donna to help.”

  “Our mother? Making soap? Wow. You really don’t know her, do you?”

  An unexpected needle pierced Annie’s heart.

  Kevin’s cheeks turned ivory, the color of the natural stone that Annie had selected for her kitchen counters. “Oh, God,” he groaned. “I’m sorry. I am the stupidest person in the world.”

  Annie knew he hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d become important in her life, and she knew the feeling was mutual. So she laughed. “You’re right! I hardly know her!” She stopped herself from reminding him that it was partly her own fault, because when Donna had first contacted her, Annie hadn’t responded. It had taken years for her to be ready.

  “Well, now you know her son’s an ass.”

  “I’ve known that for a while.” Annie got up, bent down, and gave him a hug. “But you’re the only brother I have, and I won’t trade you for anyone. Now,” she added, standing up and squeezing his shoulders, “let’s talk about dinner. Did you come back with outstanding fish from your camping adventure?”

  His shoulders drooped. “Nope. Turns out I’m a crappy fisherman, too. Freshwater ponds are open. But nobody told the fish. Or maybe somebody did, so they swam away. Squibnocket maybe. Or Ice House Pond. Anyway, we spent most of our time wrapped in our sleeping blankets in front of the campfire drinking beer.”

  Annie laughed again, mostly because Kevin seemed to have taken on Earl’s gift of over-gab. “And John has a twelve-hour shift ahead of him. Well, I hope you had your fill of beer because I don’t have any. And how does frozen pizza sound?”

  “Terrible. But I hate to keep mooching off Earl and Claire, so, no offense, but pizza’s better than nothing.” Kevin had been sleeping on the sofa in the elder Lyons’s house since he and Earl had purchased the former Littlefield place. With Kevin’s background in construction and Earl’s jack-of-all-trades talents, they’d been rehabbing and reconfiguring it into the Inn one hammer, one nail at a time. Their crew was competent, but small; many tradespeople didn’t stay on the island off season, mostly due to a lack of housing that they could afford. So far, the only habitable place on the grounds of The Vineyard Inn was Annie’s cottage. The workshop with her soap-making studio was close enough to being finished that she could use it, but Kevin’s upstairs apartment hadn’t yet been started.

  Right then, however, all they could do was have dinner. So Annie got up from the chair, and he followed her inside.

  * * *

  “Okay,” Annie asked as she preheated the oven, “what will we do with Mother?”

  Kevin plunked down in the rocker. “I’ll pick her up Saturday. She’s coming in on the noon boat.” He no longer called the big boat the “ferry,” a sure sign that he was settled there.

  “After that? Like, where’s she going to sleep?”

  “I have no clue,” he replied. “You?”

  “I guess she won’t want to wrap up in a sleeping bag and sit in front of a campfire drinking beer.”

  “Not unless retirement has dramatically changed her lifestyle. We could always play it safe and book her at the Kelley House.”

  “No,” Annie said. “She’s our mother. We can’t stuff her in a hotel like she’s a visitor from out of town. Besides, if I ever want to get to know her better, it’s only going to happen if we spend time together. Face-to-face.” She took the pizza from the freezer.

  Kevin looked around the room. “We can always shove your furniture against the wall and blow up an air bed for her.”

  Given the compact seven-hundred-square-feet of total space that Annie had wanted for the cottage, she knew that her queen-size air bed would be a tight fit. “How far along are the bedrooms?”

  “We’re Sheetrocking now.”

  “Is one close to being finished?”

  “Maybe the one at the top of the stairs. The bathroom’s ready because we‘ve been using it as a template for the others. So the workers can see what goes where.”

  “Can you get that room done by the end of the week?”

  “I’ll have to ask Earl. He’s in charge of the schedule. . . .”

  “Tell him we need it. I’ll bunk there, and Donna can have my place. She’ll
probably only be here a couple of nights. Especially once she hears the incessant noise that you guys make all day.”

  “Okay,” Kevin said, then glanced around again. “This place might pass her inspection.”

  “Good grief. How fussy is she?” Annie knew that before Donna had retired, she’d owned a high-end antiques shop in Boston’s sought-after Back Bay neighborhood.

  “She knows what she likes in life. Her clothes. Her material stuff. You know?”

  The first time Annie had met Donna, the woman had been stylishly dressed, as if she were in Manhattan and not on Chappaquiddick off season. Sliding the pizza into the oven, Annie wondered if getting to know her birth mother better was going to be, in reality, such a great idea after all.

  * * *

  Bang. Bang. Whirr. Whirr.

  Annie woke up the next morning to sounds of construction puncturing her ears, and a headache squeezing her temples. She closed her eyes again. How would Donna deal with the commotion? Annie supposed it depended on exactly how fussy the woman was. Just because Annie looked like her birth mother—the same long-legged body, the same careful stride, identical hazel eyes (same as Kevin’s)—didn’t mean they’d actually be anything like each other. “Nurture over nature,” her dad had often joked whenever Annie mimicked something he had done. But which had shaped her more?

  She surveyed her bedroom. Aside from the construction dust that she hadn’t yet had time to clean, the room gave her the same warm feeling that she’d had in her little childhood nest in Bob and Ellen Sutton’s modest home, the room they’d chosen just for her, the way she’d been chosen for them. But would Donna be comfortable there? If Annie had still lived in Boston she’d run out and buy new pillows, linens, everything. But, of course, there was no Bed, Bath & Beyond on Martha’s Vineyard. No chain stores except two supermarkets, a convenience store, a few gas stations. And the Edgartown Dairy Queen, though that was only open in season.