by Grace Palmer
No Home Like Nantucket
A Sweet Island Inn Novel (Book One)
Grace Palmer
Contents
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No Home Like Nantucket
I. Spring
1. Mae
2. Brent
3. Sara
4. Eliza
5. Mae
6. Sara
7. Brent
8. Eliza
9. Sara
10. Brent
11. Mae
12. Holly
13. Brent
14. Eliza
15. Mae
16. Mae
II. Summer
17. Brent
18. Sara
19. Eliza
20. Holly
21. Mae
22. Brent
23. Holly
24. Mae
25. Eliza
26. Brent
27. Holly
28. Sara
29. Eliza
III. Autumn
30. Brent
31. Sara
32. Brent
33. Eliza
34. Brent
35. Sara
36. Holly
37. Brent
38. Mae
Coming Soon
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No Home Like Nantucket
A Sweet Island Inn Novel (Book One)
Nantucket was their paradise—until reality came barging in.
An unexpected pregnancy.
A marriage on the rocks.
A forbidden workplace romance.
And a tragedy no one could have seen coming.
* * *
Take a trip to Nantucket’s Sweet Island Inn and follow along as Mae Benson and her children—the Wall Street queen Eliza, stay-at-home mom Holly, headstrong chef Sara, and happy-go-lucky fisherman Brent—face the hardest summer of their lives.
Love, loss, heartbreak, hope—it’s all here and more. Can the Benson family find a way to forgive themselves and each other? Or will their grief be too much to overcome?
* * *
Find out in NO HOME LIKE NANTUCKET.
Part I
Spring
1
Mae
Mae Benson never ever slept in.
For each of the one thousand, two hundred, and eleven days that she’d lived at 114 Howard Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts, she’d gotten up with the dawn and started her morning the second her eyes opened. It wasn’t because she was a busybody, or compulsive, or obsessive. On the contrary, snoozing for a while was tempting. Her bed was soft this morning. The first fingers of springtime sunlight had barely begun to peek in through the gauzy curtains that hung over the window. And she was in that perfect sleeping position—warm but not too warm, wrapped up but not too tightly.
But force of habit could sometimes be awfully hard to break. So, being careful to make as little noise as possible, she slid out from underneath the comforter, tucked her feet into the fuzzy slippers she’d received for her sixtieth birthday last year, and rose.
Her husband, Henry, always called her his little hummingbird. He’d even bought her a beautiful handblown hummingbird ornament for Christmas last year from a glassblower down by the wharf. It had jade-green wings, little amethysts for eyes, and a patch of ruby red on its chest. She loved how it caught and refracted the winter sunbeams, and she always made sure to put it on a limb of the tree where it could see the snow falling outdoors.
“Flitting around the house, are we?” Henry would say, laughing, every time he came downstairs from their master bedroom to find Mae buzzing from corner to corner. She would just laugh and shake her head. He could make fun of her all he wanted, but the fact remained that each of the little projects she had running at all times around the house required love and care from the moment the day began.
She ran through the list in her head as she moved silently around the bedroom getting dressed for the day. She needed to water the plants on the living room windowsill, the ones that her daughter, Sara, had sent from her culinary trip to Africa and made her mother promise to keep alive until she could retrieve them on her next visit. Crane flowers, with their gorgeous mix of orange- and blue-bladed leaves; desert roses, with their soft blush of red fading into the purest white; and her favorites, the fire lilies, that looked just like a flickering flame.
She had to check on the batch of marshmallow fluff fudge—a Mae Benson specialty—that she’d left to set in the freezer overnight. Her friend Lola, who lived down the street, had just twisted her ankle badly a few days prior and was laid up at home with a boot on her leg. Mae didn’t know much about ankle injuries, but she had a lot of hands-on experience with fudge, so she figured she’d offer what she knew best.
She should also start coffee for Henry—lots of cream and sugar, as always. Henry had an outing planned that morning with Brent to go check on some fishing spots they’d been scheming over for the last few weeks. Mae knew he was excited about the trip. He’d been exhibiting trademark Happy Henry behavior all week long—eyes lighting up with that mischievous twinkle, hands rubbing together like an evil mastermind, and the way that he licked the corner of his lips, like he could already taste the salt air that hung on the wind and feel the bouncing of the boat as it raced through the waves.
Just before she turned to leave the bedroom and start her day, she looked over at her husband. He was sleeping on his side of the bed, snoring softly like he always did. It was never enough to wake her, thankfully. Not like Lola’s ex-husband, who’d been a snorer of epic proportions. Henry hadn’t bothered a single soul in the six and a half decades he’d been alive on this earth. Matter of fact, she couldn’t think of a single person who disliked him—other than Mae herself, whenever he took the liberty of dipping into the brownie batter, or when he insisted on sneaking up behind her while she was cooking, nipping at the lobe of her ear, then dancing away and laughing when she tried to swat him with a spoon and inevitably sprayed chocolate batter all over the kitchen.
But the truth of the matter was that she could never bring herself to stay irked at him. It wasn’t just his physical looks, although he certainly wasn’t hurting in that department. The same things she’d fallen in love with at that Boston bar forty-plus years ago were still present and accounted for. The long, proud nose. Full lips, always eager to twitch into a smile. Bright blue eyes that danced in the sunlight when he laughed, cried, and—well, all the time, really. And that darn shock of hair that was perpetually threatening to fall over his forehead. She reached over and smoothed it out of his face now. Time had turned his sun-drenched blondness into something more silvery, but in Mae’s eyes, he was all the more handsome for it.
But, even more than his good looks, Mae loved Henry’s soul. He was a selfless giver, an instant friend to every child who’d ever come across his path. He loved nothing more than to kneel in front of an awestruck five-year-old and present him or her with some little hand-carved trinket, one of the many he kept in his pockets to whittle whenever he had an idle moment. She loved that he laughed and cried in all the wrong places during romantic comedies and that he knew how to cook—how to really cook, the kind of cooking you do with a jazz record crooning through the speakers and a soft breeze drifting in through an open window.
She let her hand linger on Henry’s forehead just a beat too long. He didn’t open his eyes, but his hand snaked up from underneath the sheets and threaded through Mae’s fingers.
; “You’re getting up?”
“Can’t waste the day away.”
It was a ritual, one they’d been through practically every morning for as long as either could remember. For all that he’d become a proud father to four children, a state-record-holding fisherman, a much-sought-after contractor and builder on the island of Nantucket, Henry loved nothing so much as to stay in bed for hours, alternating between sleeping and poking Mae until she rolled over and gave him the soft kisses he called her “hummingbird pecks.” There was a perpetual little boy spirit in him, a playfulness that another six or sixty decades couldn’t extinguish if it tried.
“Stay with me,” he murmured. “The day can wait a few more minutes, can’t it?” His eyes were open now, heavy with sleep, but still gazing at her fondly.
Mae tapped him playfully on the tip of the nose. “If it was up to you, ‘a few more minutes’ would turn into hours before we knew it, and then I’d be scrambling around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to get everything done before Holly, Pete, and the kids get here tonight.”
Holly was Mae and Henry’s middle daughter. She and her husband, Pete, were bringing their two kids to Nantucket to spend the weekend. Mae had had the date circled on her calendar for months, excited at the prospect of spoiling her grandkids rotten. She already had oodles of activities planned—walks downtown to get rock candy from the corner store, sandcastles at the beach, bike rides down to ’Sconset to ogle the grand houses the rich folks had built out on that end of the island.
Grady was a little wrecking ball of a seven-year-old boy, and Mae knew that he’d love nothing so much as building a massive sandcastle and then terrorizing it like a blond Godzilla. Alice, on the other hand, was still as sweet and loving as a five-year-old girl could be. She let Grandma Mae braid her long, soft hair into fishtails every morning whenever they were visiting the island. It was another ritual that Mae treasured beyond anything else. Her life was full of those kinds of moments.
“It ain’t so bad, lying in bed with me, is it?” Henry teased. “But maybe I just won’t give ya a choice!”
He leaped up and threw his arms around Mae’s waist, tugging her over him and then dragging them both beneath the covers. Mae yelped in surprise and smacked him on the chest, but Henry was a big man—nearly six and a half feet tall—and the years he’d spent hauling in fish during his weekend trips with Brent had kept him muscular and toned. When her palm landed on his shoulder, it just made a thwacking noise, and did about as much good as if she’d slapped a brick wall. So she just laughed and let Henry pull her into his arms, roll over on top of her, and throw the comforter over their heads.
It was soft and warm and white underneath. The April sun filtered through the bedsheets and cast everything in a beautiful, hazy glow. “You’ve never looked so beautiful,” Henry said, his face suspended above hers.
“Henry Benson, I do believe you are yanking my chain,” she admonished.
“Never,” he said, and he said it with such utter seriousness that Mae’s retort fell from her lips. Instead of poking him in the chest like she always did whenever he teased her, she let her hand stroke the line of his jaw.
He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. “Stay with me for just a few more minutes, Mrs. Benson,” he said. She could feel him smiling as he kissed her. She could also feel the butterflies fluttering in her stomach. Forty-one years of marriage and four children later, and she still got butterflies when her husband kissed her. Wasn’t that something?
“All right, Mr. Benson,” she said, letting her head fall back on the pillows. “Just a few more minutes.”
Henry grinned and fell in next to her, pulling her into his embrace. She could feel his heartbeat thumping in his chest. Familiar. Dependent. Reliable. Hers. “You just made my day.”
“But I’m warning you,” she continued, raising one finger into the air and biting back the smile that wanted to steal over her lips. “If you start snoring again, I’m smothering you with a pillow.”
“Warning received,” Henry said. “Now quit making a fuss and snooze with me for a while, darling.”
So Mae did exactly that. Sara’s plants could wait.
2
Brent
Dang tourists.
Nothing made Brent’s life quite so hard as the sightseers and summer residents who flocked to Nantucket as soon as the weather turned warm. When the island was quiet, the waterways were empty, or close enough to it that Brent didn’t have to worry about navigating around drunken partiers or the overly serious amateur fishermen who liked to come through the no-wake zones blazing all four engines at full tilt and causing a big stir.
But this time of year—with a sunny, clear weekend on the horizon and the sun lighting up the water with a warm blue glaze—was prime time for everybody to head to the docks and the boats.
Naturally, that meant chaos.
Not that he minded too much. Brent was a people person if ever there was one. He might get a little annoyed with some of the more excessive drinkers or first-time fishermen out on the water, but he loved meeting new folks and hearing stories about where they’d come from. Other people’s homes always amazed him—the more exotic, the better. Twenty-two years of living and he could count on three fingers how many times he’d ever left the state of Massachusetts. Eliza, his oldest sister, always rode him for it, saying that he was Nantucket’s version of a homegrown hillbilly, but the truth of it was that Brent didn’t really see a reason to leave. Eliza called him hardheaded, but their dad just said Brent was like a husky dog—if you want him to do something, you had to show him why—otherwise, no luck. If Brent didn’t see a reason for something, he more or less just didn’t do it.
Which was part of the reason he wasn’t going to wait too much longer for his dad to get his rear end down to the dock. He’d been waiting on him for nearly twenty minutes. But Brent knew as well as anybody that Henry Benson did things on his own time. It was Dad’s world, and they were all just living in it.
So far this morning, it had all been the usual suspects at the docks—other charter fishermen, the marina employees—along with a few ambitious go-getters from out of town trying to hit the water early. But the traffic was starting to pick up, slowly but surely.
Brent looked around. The marina was old and worn but still charming in its own salty dog kind of way. The building was crying out for a fresh coat of white paint, though Brent knew that Roger, the marina owner, was in no rush to do anything of the kind. The concrete boat ramp sloped down into the waves, which lapped gently at dock pilings, boats, jet skis. Overhead, the sky was a crystalline blue, nary a cloud in sight. It was a good day for fishing. Maybe even a great one. If only his father would get his rear in gear.
Just then, right on cue, Dad’s truck came trundling around the corner, spewing smoky exhaust, just like it had since Brent was a little boy. Brent spied his father in the driver’s seat, arm hanging relaxed out the window, whistling a happy tune. Henry never changed for anybody. The only person who could get him to fall in line for even a minute was Brent’s mother, and even she had to try awfully hard to get that much done.
Dad was an ex-Marine, but some of the habits he’d learned in the military had stuck better than others. He still made the bedsheets every morning tight enough to bounce a quarter off of, and he still wore his dog tags around his neck on a chain. But when it came to the Marines’ sense of timeliness—well, Dad had left that in the rear-view mirror. Brent smiled ruefully to himself. He could already picture how it would go if he tried to lecture his dad on punctuality. He’d make a few choice sarcastic remarks about his lateness, and Dad would just laugh them off. That was how the man operated. “Life is meant to be enjoyed, isn’t it?” he’d inevitably say. When he said it like that, it was sure hard to disagree.
“Nice of you to join me,” Brent said wryly as Dad parked and clambered out of the truck. Dad’s boat, Pour Decisions, was tied up on the slip next to Brent’s. The boat was his father’s pride and jo
y. He loved nothing more than to while away the hours tending to every nick, scratch and tiny blemish on the craft. God help any barnacle who dared consider Pour Decisions a potential home—Pops was ruthless in keeping the hull spic and span.
“Ah, my youngest son, here to greet me as we go to conquer the wide-open ocean!” Dad boomed royally in the worst British accent Brent had ever heard. Always, always, there was a hint of laughter in his voice. He didn’t take much seriously. In his presence, it was hard not to do the same. “What more could a father ask for?”
“I’m your only son, Pops,” Brent shot back with a grin. “And I don’t know what a father could ask for, but a son could certainly ask for his dad to be on time!”
“What’s the rush? Fish ain’t going anywhere, are they?”
“Every Joe Schmo in the Commonwealth is coming to catch fish today,” grumbled Brent. “We’ll be lucky to reel in someone else’s chum at the rate you’re going.”
