Marilyn’s heart seized with terror. She placed her hand over his cheek and brought his face up so that he stood tall once more.
“I nearly lost you,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “I wasn’t going to let that happen. But the hotel, it’s gone.”
As the safe house was entirely too loud, a chaotic collection of bodies screaming over one another, nobody had heard Robert’s somber tale. But suddenly, James appeared between others’ heads. His cheeks were bright red, the stuff of an alcoholic’s face, and he leered at the two of them until Marilyn dropped her hands to her sides. Again, horror latched around her heart. How could she describe the reason why she’d flung herself toward Robert without pause and placed her hands over his cheeks?
“I can see it all over your face,” James seethed then, his voice low.
But he didn’t speak to Marilyn. He spoke instead to Robert.
“It collapsed, didn’t it?” James’s words were sinister, laced with alcohol. One of his hands formed a fist.
Robert’s eyes were rimmed with tears, but he wouldn’t allow them to fall.
“You knew this would happen,” James breathed then.
“No. How could I have possibly known?” Robert demanded.
“You knew. And you didn’t just want to rob me. You also wanted to make a fool out of me. Go to hell, Robert.” He then turned his eyes toward Marilyn, who quivered, essentially there between them. “And you. You ignorant, foolish woman,” he grumbled. “I’m taking you back to the city where you belong. I don’t know what kind of fantasy you’ve built up in your head. But you and me, we’re two peas in a pod. If you don’t see it, you’re much stupider than even I thought.”
Marilyn gasped. Robert lifted his fist. Overwhelmed with emotion, with James far too drunk to make any rash motions or react instinctively, Robert barreled his fist into James’s chin. James was tossed back into the table directly behind him. A lady screeched as her wine flew over her dress and across her blonde hair. James collapsed in a heap; his legs coiled over themselves as he fell into some kind of stupor.
“Get him up! Get him up!” Marilyn cried.
Two waiters hurried over and lifted poor, foolish James from the wreckage. They splayed him in the corner as Marilyn sat alongside him and attempted to stop the bleeding on the side of his head. She demanded water, and Robert shot forth with a bucket of it. But when she discovered that James was very much alive and very much too drunk to be more conscious than this, she placed a pillow under his head and returned to Robert’s side.
Robert glared at the ground. He tossed his foot to and fro beneath him. Slowly, Marilyn slipped her fingers through his and heaved a sigh.
“You can’t go around punching people like that, Robert,” she told him.
“I’ve wanted to punch him since I met him, to be fair with you,” he returned.
Marilyn’s heart lifted. She couldn’t glance up to find Robert’s eyes. The intensity of holding hands in this public space, with her husband sleeping off his drink only a few feet away, was electrifying. She felt she might rise off the floor very soon.
“How long do these hurricanes last, anyway?” she asked.
“Hmm. Sometimes twelve hours. Sometimes twenty-four. Sometimes more,” Robert reported.
Marilyn buzzed her lips. “I suppose it’ll be a very, very long night.”
Robert wrapped his arms around her and held her against him. His hand wrapped over her head as tears slipped down her cheeks. She knew now that she would never leave Martha’s Vineyard— not without Robert beside her. She would manage to find a way to send money to her family. If there was a will and enough love to go around, there was a way.
Chapter Nineteen
When Kelli and Lola pulled up at the Montgomery house a little while later, they found themselves facing more than ten vehicles, all of which belonged to either family or friends. Lola muttered, “I swear, every day in this family is a day of celebration. Can’t they just give it a rest? Aunt Kerry’s slaved away in the kitchen all summer long.”
Kelli laughed. “I can’t imagine taking on that role. All those barbecues we’ll have to plan in the future just to keep this big Montgomery-Sheridan ship running?”
“I’m going to pass it on to Audrey and Lexi and Amanda,” Lola affirmed. “No way am I making endless varieties of snack trays for hungry islanders. Not even if I love them to bits.”
Lola retrieved Max from his carrier as Kelli assembled her folder of the old deed along with the blueprint and the old book from the library. She had within her a seed of information that, when planted, could generate a plethora of emotions, especially within her mother. How lucky Kelli now felt, suddenly, that she’d been able to have her mother all these years. Kerry had lost Marilyn far, far too early. They’d been robbed of decades of love.
“There they are!” Lexi hollered from the side of the living room, where she sat with her cousin, Jonathon, who was Steven’s oldest. She beckoned for her mother and then, when she was in earshot, said, “I sold another top-ticket item from the boutique today. One of those stewardess suitcases from the seventies.”
“Honey, that’s fantastic,” Kelli breathed. “I can’t believe it. You’ve already sold more in the past week than I managed to sell all summer long.” She dropped and kissed her daughter on the head, suddenly overwhelmed with love for her.
Lexi’s nostrils curled upward. “What’s up, Mom? You look pale.”
“Guess I just haven’t eaten,” Kelli said. “Have you seen your grandmother?”
“She’s in the kitchen, of course,” Jonathon interjected. “With Charlotte and Claire.”
Although she loved them deeply and felt protective over them, Kelli had always felt a kind of distance from her younger sisters. Charlotte and Claire were chummy and had always been. Decades earlier, Kelli had scolded them for giggling deep into the night when she and her older brother had needed sleep for various high school tests or high school competitions. They’d had an energy and a liveliness to them, even all those years ago, that Kelli had coveted.
“Hey there, big sis!” Claire greeted her as she sliced through an onion. “Everyone wondered where you were. I said you were off doing what you do best. Being superwoman and all that.” Again, she sliced the knife through the vegetable.
“Have you made the final deal yet?” Kerry asked from the fridge. “With Xander, I mean. Or did you manage to—” She grimaced as her eyes fell. “You haven’t sold it. You let your feelings get in the way, didn’t you?”
“Feelings?” Charlotte demanded. “What feelings?”
“She’s been seeing this client of hers. I told her it would get her into all sorts of trouble, but what do I know?” Kerry asked as she flung her hands back. She then scurried for the bottle of wine, which she flipped upside down over a wine glass.
“Mom! It isn’t about that,” Kelli insisted. Her cheeks flushed, annoyed.
“So you haven’t been seeing him?” Claire asked, her eyes mischievous. “And Mom. Why wouldn’t you want Kelli to see someone? She’s been through hell and back.”
“Please, don’t say curse words to your mother,” Kerry scolded, clearly exasperated.
It was just the same sort of dynamic they’d always had. Kerry had fallen into a state of exhaustion.
“Besides, you know how we feel about that old property. We’ve longed to sell it for as long as we’ve been in the real estate business. You got this close, Kelli. This close!” Kerry’s eyes widened with shock. “I just can’t believe you—”
“Now, wait just a minute,” Kelli balked. She’d had another memory of Mike from long ago, using the same exact tone with her— belittling her in ways she had never assumed she would allow herself to be belittled. Was it possible that this initial accosting had come from her mother? And she’d just allowed it to go on with her husband?
Maybe, in the slightest way, Kerry had created the first tear that had allowed the floodgates to open upon Mike’s arrival in
to her life. But parents weren’t perfect; Kelli knew this after her own pitfalls as a mother.
And suddenly, Kelli whipped out the old book and tore through the pages until she found the old photograph. She pointed at the image and followed her mother’s gaze.
“What on earth is this?” Kerry demanded.
“Just look. And read the description,” Kelli insisted. “Before you belittle me again.”
Kerry turned her eyes over every face until she stopped short at the image of the woman off to the right.
“Mom,” she breathed, for she naturally recognized the woman’s face in an instant. “Wow. Look at her. She looks so beautiful here. So regal and powerful.”
Kelli’s heart shattered. There was such love and curiosity behind her words.
“And look, Mom,” Kelli pointed at the description beneath. “She was married. To someone called James Peterson.”
Kerry’s eyes widened. “No, that can’t be. That’s Dad right there.”
“But it says here that she is James Peterson’s wife, Marilyn.”
Kerry balked. “It’s impossible. It must be a typo.”
Kelli then whipped out the old deed as she attempted to explain the events of the previous weeks. “I don’t think that old place really belongs to our family, Mom. Look. A lawyer who represents the family of James Peterson arrived to give me this— proof that we can’t legally sell it.”
Kerry stuttered. “Dad always said it was up to us to take care of it. He’d hired that guy, Dexter, to keep it up after his father passed. I just can’t understand this, Kelli. I really don’t know what to say.”
“We just spoke with Dexter at his nursing home,” Kelli said hurriedly as she pointed out toward Lola, who nodded from the living room as she bobbed baby Max around. “And he said James had a wife with him— an unhappy wife. He never even realized she was the same woman that Robert eventually married.”
Kerry continued to shake her head. “I don’t understand. I can’t even...” She trailed off.
“I think we should look at her diaries,” Kelli suggested then. “It’s the only way to really know what happened.”
Kerry’s chin quivered slightly. She reached out for Claire’s hand and clutched it hard so that Claire let out a strange animal sound of pain.
“My darling mother died far too young. And then, my father followed in her footsteps. Wes and I weren’t sure what to do without them. I’ve never felt like that diary was mine to read, you know? I never wanted to invade her privacy. But I suppose it’s time to really dig in. Find some answers.” She closed her eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek. She then glanced toward the unprepared food, the sliced onions and the water, heating on the stove.
“And we’re ordering pizza, for anyone who asks,” Kerry announced then before she ducked into the hallway and headed for the stairs.
En route to the attic, Kelli nearly ran headlong into her brother, Andy. She’d hardly seen him throughout the past few weeks since his engagement. Here, she threw her arms around him, heaved a sigh, and said, “I have so much to tell you. There are some pretty crazy family secrets coming to a head.”
“Uh oh. Some skeletons in our closet?”
“Something like that,” Kelli affirmed before she hustled after her mother.
Despite her seventy-two years, Kerry scurried up that ladder and headed straight for the chest before any of her daughters could reach it.
“Don’t bother coming up! I’ll just grab it and come back down,” Kerry called. “And did someone call for pizza, or do I also have to do that, too?”
Claire disappeared to ask Russell to take orders and make the call. After that, Kelli, Kerry, Claire, and Charlotte all piled onto Kerry and Trevor’s bed with the diary between them. It felt fitting that it was the four of them— the daughters of the daughter of the woman in question— the mystery woman of their past.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Kerry whispered.
“I think we should head to the time right after the storm,” Kelli suggested. “Around mid to end of September 1943.”
Kerry flicked through the pages as tears formed in her eyes. But when she reached September, the diary pages stopped from September 16 to September 30.
“What! No,” Kelli cried.
This felt like the pulsing heartbeat of everything else, the era when her grandmother had made some of the biggest decisions of her life. Yet perhaps, those sorts of decisions didn’t always make their way onto the page. Perhaps they existed only in the heart.
“Maybe start where she begins again after the hurricane?” Claire asked.
“Okay. Sure.” Kerry cleared her throat and began to read.
September 30, 1943
You can’t imagine how pleased I am to have been rid of so many of the fine clothes James forced me to wear as his high-society wife. The storm ensured they were gone for good and in their wake, I have only a smattering of things I’ve collected, mostly from Robert’s sister and mother. One dress is something his mother wore when she was pregnant with him, and it’s monstrous on me. I look like the country tom-girl I always knew myself to be. I asked Robert if he finds me less attractive, now that he sees me in such rags. He says, on the contrary, he always knew me to be rough around the edges. At this, I always give him a little punch on the arm.
He’s sad, to say the least, about the hotel. We went up last night to see how the clearing of much of the wreckage has gone. Some of the rubble and stones will be used in other areas of the island; others will be taken to a scrapyard. It’s strange to see over one hundred years of history torn apart like this in just one day.
I asked Robert if he might like to use the property to build something back up. But he says that old place was always too much for him, anyway. The Sunrise Cove was built by his parents, and he longs to take it over one day. It is a quaint little place, beautiful and cozy. I’ve already asked his mother if I might be able to help with some of the cooking duties at their little restaurant. She was surprised, as she’d heard I was a high-society girl from the big city. I explained that in reality, I am a farm girl, unafraid of hard work. I think she’s pleased Robert found himself someone like that.
I do wonder what will become of James.
At this, Kerry screeched and flung the diary down. Her cheeks were lined with tears.
“I just can’t believe this,” she breathed. “So much about my mother I never knew— this whole other life. High society! What on earth and for how long? And what did she actually think of this James fellow?” Kerry continued to shake her head as Claire splayed her hand over her shoulder and began to massage it.
“Maybe we can take turns reading from it?” Charlotte offered.
“She’s such a beautiful writer,” Claire agreed. “I just love hearing her words.”
“But where on earth is this James Peterson? And why did she leave him?” Kerry asked as her voice broke.
Charlotte flipped a bit forward in the book to an entry from mid-July.
August 14, 1943
We’ve been married for only a month now and already I see the cracks in our union.
Mother told me I had to remain strong in the face of whatever duties James insists for me to do. I find myself studying his face as he sleeps, dreaming of ways to slip out in the middle of the night. Perhaps I will run to Times Square and scream up at the sky— scream and scream until someone takes me away to the psych ward and I am freed from this horrible nightmare that I can’t wake from.
For I’ve never met a more childlike man. His way is the only way. He imagines I think of nothing, attributes no sense of creativity within me. I haven’t laughed since I walked down the aisle.
Yet, I remind myself that this is what my life’s work is. I am a woman, and thusly, I must pledge to care for my family. I say their names as I slip off to sleep at night and again when I awake in the morning. They are my everything.
“Mom, she was so much like you,” Kelli said then. “Putting her family above
everything else.”
This made Kerry cry all the more. Her shoulders sagged at the tremendous weight of it all. Charlotte dropped her head onto her mother’s shoulder, and together, the two generations of Montgomery girls cried over the Sheridan girl they had lost forever, who’d given everything to save her family— and still managed to save herself and her love in the end.
Chapter Twenty
The following morning, Kelli stood in a half-daze in the hazy light of her kitchen as the coffee maker bubbled its black juices into the base of the pot. It was seven-thirty, just as it always seemed to be, and upstairs, Lexi padded around in preparation for her rush to the boutique. In some respects, Kelli could pretend that this was any other day in any other portion of her life. Sam and Josh were no longer home; Mike was far away, a labeled abuser, an actual poor excuse of a man. Time had been cruel to her in several ways— and it had tossed her into this life alone. Maybe she’d needed it to learn a thing or two.
Lexi rushed into the kitchen, a flurry of color, of vintage garb she’d hand-selected from the boutique, saying, “I need to look the part of a cool girl if I’m going to sell clothing to cool girls, Mom.” Despite the sassiness of her words, Kelli agreed with her.
“My little businesswoman,” Kelli chirped, brimming with pride.
“Ha.” Lexi paused as she adjusted her jean vest with its brightly painted buttons. She slowly dragged her eyes back to her mother’s. “Are you doing okay? After last night? I thought Grandma would never stop crying.”
Kelli buzzed her lips. “It was a whole lot of information for all of us.”
Lexi nodded knowingly. “To me, I’m just pleased to know that we have such strong women in our family. Women who reach out for what they need when they need it. And in 1943! That must have been so much harder to do. Anyway, this isn’t related at all, but I do want to say that I’ve been thinking about what I want to do this fall because, you know, I did graduate from high school.”
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