No Love Like Nantucket

by Grace Palmer

  “Mae, dear! How are you?”

  “Up to my eyeballs in stuff to do, as always,” Mae replied, though Toni could hear the hint of a smile on the edge of her voice.

  “You wouldn’t have it any other way,” Toni said with a laugh.

  “No, of course not. But I reserve the right to complain.”

  “Hey,” Toni said, “you’re the one who chose to marry my brother. I could’ve told you that he wouldn’t exactly be fumbling all over himself to help you with the household stuff.”

  Mae laughed at that. “Oh God, no, I don’t let him anywhere near the chores. Last time I told him to do the dishes, he scrubbed all the finish off my best cast iron skillet. I darn near made him sleep in the doghouse for the night.”

  “Head in the clouds, that one,” Toni agreed. “How’re the kids?”

  “Let’s see. Give me one sec, I just have to remember their names…”

  Toni chuckled. “How you manage four of them is beyond me. Especially a little terror on wheels like your youngest.”

  “Brent is a devil with an angel’s smile,” Mae agreed. “It amazes me to this day how quick he took to running. He crawled for all of three steps before he decided it wasn’t fast enough for him. Come to think of it, Sara was much the same.”

  “The two of them have a lot of fire. It’s a good thing your older ones balance them out a bit.”

  “That they do,” Mae said. “Although that’s hard in its own way. Eliza is fourteen, and she is certainly proving that everything folks say about teenage girls is true.”

  Toni furrowed her brow. “Have you two been butting heads?”

  “No, not quite. She’s so…inwardly focused, I suppose. Does very well at school, so it’s not that. Does well at everything, actually. But she keeps things quite close to the chest. I just worry about her, is all.”

  “That’s your job, hon. But Eliza is a smart cookie. She’ll be just fine. I have no doubt about that.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “And Holly?”

  “Sweet as molasses. Loves her momma, loves her daddy, loves her siblings, loves her life.”

  Toni grinned. “Truer words have never been spoken. That one is heaven-sent.” She could hear the clatter of plates in the background. Mae must be making dinner. “What’re you serving up tonight?”

  “I’m tired, so I took the easy way out and made meatloaf,” Mae said absentmindedly.

  Toni rolled her eyes. “I know darn well what that means, Mae. You aren’t fooling anyone. You’ve probably been in the kitchen all afternoon, sculpting a meatloaf made by the angels.”

  “Shush,” Mae scolded playfully, “you don’t know that.”

  “Somehow, I think I hit the nail on the head.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Mae with a laugh, changing the subject, “the reason I was calling in the first place was because Henry told me you had news about the Fourth. Are you and Jared still coming up?”

  “Oh!” Toni exclaimed, feeling suddenly guilty. “That blockhead didn’t fill you in? Lord, I could bop him sometimes. I’m so sorry for the last-minute change, Mae, but Jared and I are going to get a little cabin up by Lake Lanier for the weekend instead of coming home to Nantucket.”

  “That’s a bummer!” Mae said sadly. “We’re going to miss the two of you here. The fireworks show is not the same without Aunt Toni and Uncle Jared around.”

  “I know, I know. But I think—I think we need this.”

  Mae must’ve picked up on the shift in Toni’s tone, because all she said was a soft, “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” Toni said, gnawing at her lip again, just like she’d been doing all day. The traffic in front of her had hardly budged since she’d gotten on the phone with Mae. Suddenly, she felt uncomfortable in the car, like she wanted to get out right this instant. Gone were the happy vibes she’d felt upon leaving the office, the certainty that this lake-house plan was the remedy for the niggling doubts she had done her best to ignore for months now. In their place, she just felt clammy and itchy and impatient.

  “Is everything okay with the two of you?” Mae asked carefully.

  Toni thought about unloading the blabbing stream-of-consciousness anxieties she’d kept bottled up for so long. It still wouldn’t make any sense, and there was no telling if it would make her feel any better. But she felt the urge to do so nonetheless.

  The problem was that Mae wouldn’t understand. That wasn’t her fault—it was just that she and Toni’s brother, Henry, were so head-over-heels in love with each other that there wasn’t even the slightest bit of room for doubts to creep in.

  It would be wrong of Toni to be jealous of that. It was such a sweet thing that a love like theirs could exist in this world. Whenever she saw the two of them holding hands under the dinner table or glanced at a family picture and saw Henry’s protective arm draped over Mae’s shoulders, her heart softened a little bit.

  But it always hardened up again right after. Because, as much as she wanted that from Jared, it wasn’t forthcoming.

  Yet.

  Maybe things were going to change. Maybe, like a good wine, her marriage just needed some time to mature into something delicate and beautiful, like what Henry and Mae had.

  The story sounded convincing enough that she decided not to answer Mae’s question honestly. So, instead of opening up, she blew a stray hair back from her forehead and said with a laugh in her voice, “Oh, we’re lovely. Better than ever, actually. Jared just got hired for a big project that starts the week of the holiday, though, so we couldn’t find a way to make the travel work. This was the next best thing.”

  “Oh, well, that’s fabulous then!” Mae said cheerily.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Toni said, still clinging to the bravado she’d mustered up. “Anyway, sorry to cut you off, but traffic is a bear right now, so I should probably focus on driving.”

  “Of course. Love you, Toni. Talk soon. And if we don’t speak before then, have a lovely trip to the lake!”

  “Love you too, Mae. Tell my oaf of a brother and your sweet little kids I said hello.”

  “Will do. Buh-bye.”

  They hung up, and Toni let the phone fall in her lap. Part of her was sad that they wouldn’t be going to Nantucket. There was no place quite like her home. But after the phone call with Mae, she suddenly wasn’t sure that going there would be a good idea either.

  Mae loved her husband and loved her kids, and they all loved her. They had a happy home, a full home.

  And that, more than anything, was what Toni was missing.

  She and Jared had chatted about having children on and off through the years, though it had never led anywhere. Jared hadn’t ever said it outright, but Toni got the feeling that he had no intention of raising a family. At least, no intention of raising a family with her.

  Perhaps it wasn’t fair to him to add that last part, since he’d given no indication that it was something wrong with Toni in particular that stood in the way of their having kids together. But she just had a feeling. And, like the feelings of doubt creeping into her relationship, it wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it.

  The lake would fix things. She looked in the rear-view mirror and said it out loud, as if to test the truth of it. “The lake will fix things.”

  Say it again, she whispered internally. One more time, with feeling.

  “The lake will fix things.”

  She wanted so badly to believe it. But in the musty silence of the car, it didn’t sound convincing at all.

  2

  Nantucket, Maine—April 6, 2018

  EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER

  Toni isn’t sure how she is supposed to feel.

  Perhaps Mae said it best of all: “I’ve never felt quite so useless.” That feels partially right. In any case, it captures something of what is happening in Toni’s head and in her heart and in the pit of her stomach.

  She feels adrift in a way, like a buoy out at sea cut loose from its moorings, reduced to
nothing more than a metallic jellyfish at the mercy of the wind and the tides. She hasn’t been able to do much of anything for days now, because as soon as she starts a chore—takes a shower, makes her bed, cooks a meal—she immediately loses all energy for it. Getting ready for the funeral yesterday morning felt like the most Herculean struggle she’d ever faced.

  It has been like this since she first got the news about Henry. How could that have been only three days ago? It feels like a lifetime. A phone call from Mae, three little words—Henry is dead—and just like that, home is no longer the place she once thought it was.

  Because what is Nantucket without Henry? Nantucket is Henry, and Henry is Nantucket. He’s a sailor with a Southern twang, he’s friends with the bartenders at every watering hole on the island, he looks good in Nantucket red. He laughs loud and shakes the neighbors’ hands and can tell just by cocking an ear to the wind which of the two ferries is pulling up to the docks.

  Past tense, Toni reminds herself. He’s gone. You have to start using the past tense.

  God, the air feels so heavy. Is it unseasonably humid, or is she right in her suspicion that the breeze itself is trying its best to pin her in place, grabbing onto her like clammy fingers, mussing her hair and prodding a thumb in her eye?

  Her thoughts are jumbled and senseless. She put on a brave face at the church yesterday, of course. That goes without saying. Toni Benson has spent a lifetime putting on a brave face, through everything that happened with Jared and the inn and in between. Now does not seem like the appropriate time to stop. It just suddenly feels much, much harder to keep doing what she’s always done.

  But her family needs her bravery. The kids need it. Mae especially needs it. Toni and her sister-in-law—though really, she’s been more like a true sister for a long time now—hugged each other at the funeral after everyone else filed out to the gravesite for the actual burial. And that hug felt like it lasted a thousand years. Hugging Mae is as close as Toni is ever going to get to actually laying hands on the sorrow of losing her brother. When she hugged Mae, she could feel in the rustle of their clothes and the tremor of their bones that they were going through the same sadness together.

  That was the first moment in three days that Toni felt there might yet be a light at the end of the tunnel.

  When Mae asked what Toni would do now, Toni said out loud what she’d been thinking since the moment she first received the phone call: “I can’t stay here.”

  Nantucket is Henry. Henry is Nantucket. So if Henry is gone, then so is the island, or at least, the island as she has always known it.

  She may have been born here, she may have grown up here, but she can’t stay here. She needs to be somewhere else right now. As far away as possible, ideally.

  She feels guilty for that. Is this running away again? She’s done that before, and it worked out for her back then, but she’s harbored a sneaking suspicion ever since then that she may have just gotten lucky that one time. Rolling the dice again could spell disaster.

  What choice does she have, though? Staying here is wallowing.

  That does it, then. No more delaying what must come next. She needs to go.

  Sighing, she finishes locking the door to the Sweet Island Inn, her home of the last eighteen years. She drops the key into the envelope waiting in her other hand, seals it, then hides it behind the lavender hydrangea that sits to the left of the front entryway. Mae will know where to look.

  She turns and rolls her suitcase down the walkway. There is a taxi at the end of the drive, waiting to whisk her away to the airport. Toni makes a promise to herself that she will not look back.

  But the promise does not last. How could it? This is her home that is receding in the distance behind her. This is her life’s work, her heart and soul. She built this from just a few rotting boards and a caved-in roof. Poured everything she had into it and watched it bloom.

  So halfway down the drive, she stops and turns back.

  The house looks calm and stoic. It is strange to see the lights turned off everywhere. The sight is made stranger still by the chill in the air and the bleak grayness of the dawn. The weather matches her mood, though, as if the island is mourning for her brother just as she is.

  “Goodbye,” she whispers to the building. “See you…well, I’ll see you when I see you.”

  Then she turns, walks up to the taxi, and hands off her suitcase to the patiently waiting driver, who loads it into the trunk and then opens the rear door for her. “To the airport, right, ma’am?” he asks once they’ve both clambered in.

  “Yes, please,” she says softly.

  As they pull onto the road, he asks, “Headed out for business or for pleasure?” He’s gnawing on a toothpick and taking sips of a steaming hot coffee cup.

  Toni considers the question for a second. She settles on an answer that isn’t quite true, but may become true soon if things shake out the way she hopes.

  “For adventure,” she says.

  The man chuckles good-naturedly. “Adventure is a good thing. Where’s this adventure takin’ ya?”

  That is the million-dollar question. She told Mae yesterday that she might go on a cruise, if only because that required the bare minimum of thinking and planning from her. But when Toni went to find one, none were leaving soon enough to suit her. She wanted to be gone ASAP. It would have to be a flight, then.

  But where to?

  It is a big world, and without a home to tether her, Toni’s thoughts went back to the image of the buoy cut loose and drifting chaotically on the currents of the ocean. Whoever pulls the strings of this life—fate or God or random chance—is in charge now. She is at the mercy of the winds.

  Which is why she laughed when she pulled up the list of international flights and saw the first destination listed: Buenos Aires, Argentina.

  She’d had a guest at the inn a year or two prior, a fashion designer from Argentina. The man was a talker, so when he cornered Toni, and she inquired politely about his homeland, he gushed for nearly an hour about the city of Buenos Aires.

  “Oh, love, you have to go!” he said, clinging to her hand dramatically. “Tango and street art and culture like you have never seen it before! And the wine—oh God, my heart sings just to think of it.”

  Those things all sounded nice as Toni looked at the flight and tried to picture how it would feel to set foot there. But what sold her, when she googled the name of the city, was the very first link, a primer on all things Argentina for the novice traveler. What does Buenos Aires mean when translated? asked the heading halfway down the page.

  The answer made her laugh out loud.

  “Buenos Aires translates to ‘City of Fair Winds.’”

  That’s what Toni Benson needs right now. If she is a jellyfish at the mercy of the ocean, then a fair wind is just what the doctor ordered.

  So now she is on her way to the airport, taking the first steps of an adventure that has no end yet in sight.

  The flight goes as long flights always go, which is to say it is filled with equal parts anxiety and boredom. The mad dash through security, poking and prodding by the TSA agents, and then the stultifying tedium of sitting, sitting, sitting.

  Sitting isn’t such a bad thing for Toni right now, though. It reminds her of commuting back and forth to her job in Atlanta all those years ago. But instead of staring at the taillights of the car in front of her, she gets to gaze out the window and watch the clouds light up with the morning sun like pink and purple cotton candy.

  Nantucket to Boston, Boston to Newark, Newark to Bogota, and then, at long last, Bogota to Buenos Aires. She shuffles through each stop like a zombie, just putting one foot in front of the other. She watches bad movies, drinks lukewarm coffee, and eats reheated lasagna when the flight attendants bring it around.

  But mostly, she just does her best to sleep. It doesn’t bring her any comfort, and she feels no better when she wakes up than she did when she first closed her eyes. And yet, it’s better than thinkin
g. Anything is better than thinking.

  She wants so badly to be excited. And, in some deep part of her, she is. But that excitement sounds like it’s coming from far away, as if she has been tossed down a well, and it is hollering to her from the top, way above her. She does her best to keep her focus on that, but it’s so very hard when that feels distant and her grief feels so up close and personal.

  The tedium of flying chips away at her ability to focus little by little, so that by the time she finally lands in Buenos Aires, she can barely think straight. She follows the passengers off the plane and down the endless fluorescent hallways. It feels like they’re stuck in a labyrinth as they take turn after turn after turn. She’s starting to wonder if maybe this is more of a nightmare than an adventure. That wouldn’t be the worst thing. It implies the possibility of waking up and having her brother still be alive.

  But eventually, they’re spat out by the hallways into the lobby with the baggage carousels.

  Toni is craving a glass of wine and twelve hours of dreamless sleep. She’s got a car service arranged already, so all she needs to do is find her bag and go straight to her hotel.

  The problem is, her bag is not here.

  She stands impatiently at the back of the herd of people crowding towards the conveyor belt. One by one, they find their things and slip out to join the throng of traffic coursing past the front of the airport.

  Blue bags, green bags, huge bags with hideous checkered houndstooth fabric.

  But no black bag with a red ribbon tied around the handle.

  Until, at long last, she finally sees it spewed out through the hanging rubber flaps. She offers up a quick hallelujah and starts to make her way through the remaining crowd.

  “Excuse me. Pardon me. Sorry, I just need to…”

  She’s at that level of tired where even the glare of a stranger feels like a burden she can’t possibly bear, so she keeps her head down and keeps moving forward.