by Grace Palmer
Brent, it began in a loopy scrawl. It’s a big world. Bigger than even I thought, as it turns out. There are so many beautiful corners of it. You really do need to come see them all one day.
I found my corner, though, I think. The water here is so blue. Bluer than Nantucket, even. And it’s warm all the time and there are coconuts to drink on the beach and the locals all smile and wave whenever you walk past.
I found someone to share my corner with, too. He’s nice. You’d like him. I do. We’re getting married soon. Barefoot on the beach, and then I’m gonna run into the water in my dress, just like I did that night with you last summer.
I just wanted to you to know that I’m happy. I hope you are, too.
With love and affection,
Ally
Brent smiled and looked up into the sky. If she was in Bali, that meant that she was pretty much on the exact opposite side of the earth. It’d be night there right now. He wondered if she was looking up at the sky. If she was, then the sun he was seeing now was bouncing its light off the moon. So they were sharing that, in a roundabout way. That made him happy for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.
Everything worked out for everyone. She had a man and she was going to get married on the beach with bare feet. That was perfectly Ally.
He had a woman and they were going to move into the house his father had built. That was perfectly him.
Good for her. Good for him. Good for them.
22
Eliza
Eliza fell back asleep after Oliver called. She’d been worried sick about him, of course. She knew that he had gone on a mission that lived somewhere in a dark, sealed box in his heart that he never opened for anyone, not even himself. She couldn’t pretend to know what it was like to be him. His struggles were about family, manhood, his place in the world. She, on the other hand, had been born rich with family. She had siblings who looked up to her, parents who loved her. She knew her place in the world.
Or at least, she used to.
She’d spent the last two years learning that maybe the things she thought about herself weren’t always true. That maybe it was just a story she’d told herself or that other people had told her. Golden Girl Eliza. Perfect Child Eliza. Eliza the Chosen One. Sara was responsible for the bulk of those nicknames, but Eliza knew that pretty much everyone she crossed paths with shared the same sentiments as her sister. People thought her life was easy. For a long time, it had been.
But things were harder now.
Maybe she just used up all her luck in her first three decades. Because it sure felt like she was getting horribly unlucky lately. First, the storm, now Oliver’s departure. Both things left her feeling the same way: completely and utterly helpless.
What was she supposed to do to stop a hurricane? She couldn’t exactly go down to the beach and scream at the oncoming clouds to go away please. What she told herself was that the storm’s arrival still wasn’t a sure thing. Some indicators said it might stall offshore instead of sweeping through Nantucket tomorrow. But as much as she wanted to believe in those predictions, she knew that getting herself hopeful and then suffering the crash if the storm came anyway would be way worse. So she just chewed her nails and fretted.
That was pretty much the same approach she took with Oliver, too. She had slept most of the night—as would any sleep-deprived mother of a young child, no matter the circumstances—but she’d woken up at the stroke of midnight feeling like there was a giant, invisible vise squeezing the air out of her lungs. When she reached over to Oliver’s side of the bed for comfort, she found it cold and remembered that she was alone. It was a nasty shock for someone already on edge. It took her a long time to fall back asleep after that.
But eventually, she had. Until her phone started buzzing a little after seven in the morning. She’d slept with it in her hand just in case Oliver called. She hadn’t really expected him to call, though. Truth be told, she didn’t know what to expect. This wasn’t exactly the kind of errand that fit into a neat little box. This was a man going to find the father he never knew still existed. Who could say how long that would take?
Less than a day, apparently. Oliver sounded tense on the phone. She knew at once that something bad had happened. But she knew she shouldn’t ask him just yet, either. There would be a time and a place for that, when he was back home in her arms. Now wasn’t the right moment.
Still, when they hung up after exchanging I love yous, she was wide awake. Winter was still sleeping and probably would be for a little longer. Eliza thought about checking the weather reports, but she decided against it. No news was better than bad news. She couldn’t handle another blow right now. Better to just start some coffee and ease into her day.
But as she took to her feet and put her feet into her slippers, she got rocked with a sudden wave of nausea. Fortunately, it was only a few quick steps to the bathroom. If it was much farther, she wouldn’t have made it. She reached the toilet, collapsed, and vomited until her stomach was empty.
When she’d finished hurling up last night’s dinner, she sank to her knees on the tiled floor. She knew with a sudden and shocking certainty that she was pregnant again.
Her mind flashed back to the last time she’d been in this position. It was so much like this, and yet so different. Both times, she’d been floored by morning sickness. Both times, she’d realized before she was even done vomiting what the cause was.
But this time, there was love to catch her. Not like before, when she’d been alone in the bathroom of the Goldman Sachs office, ensnared in a life and relationship she hated. It wasn’t anything to be feared now. It was something to be celebrated.
A baby. With Oliver.
She stood up to brush her teeth and smiled when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. “Let the storm come,” she whispered to her reflection. “This time, I’m ready.”
23
Mae
Friday at dawn.
Mae dreamt that night of an empty crib. Red ambulance lights piercing through the curtains. Muffled crying. She saw, clear as day, the nested blanket that had just been warm with the body of an infant. Whether it was just a dream or some kind of vision, she would never be sure. All she knew when she woke up was that her heart ached.
It ached like it had ached when she first saw Brent standing on her doorstep in the rain two years ago, come to tell her that her Henry was dead. This was a twin ache to that. Similar and yet distinct. A riff on the same theme.
When she forced her eyes open and sat up in bed, she knew that she, Dominic, and Saoirse were forever linked by that pain. She didn’t have to like Saoirse. In fact, she was certain that she did not like the woman at all. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that there was a steel cord tethering them together. The steel cord of pain. Unimaginable loss. They could merely look at each other and recognize the signs of weariness in the other. After an event like that—the loss of a husband, of a child—gravity seemed to pull a person more heavily towards the ground. No matter how many days passed, the extra weight would never leave. You just had to hope that you were strong enough to bear the load.
That was grieving. That was loss. That was life.
Mae saw all those truths in Saoirse’s eyes on the beach. In some ways, it made her own burden feel heavier. It reminded her of the moment it was first dropped on her shoulders. So unexpected, so harsh, so sudden. She had done her best to forget about that night in the days and weeks since. But the sadness that emanated from Saoirse was impossible to ignore or to forget. It was Mae’s own sadness, reflected in another person.
In another way, though, it made Mae’s burden feel lighter. She wasn’t the only one who had been cut down by grief. There was someone else out there who knew what Mae knew. She could look at Saoirse—this woman she didn’t know, this intruder, this threat to the fragile domestic happiness she’d cobbled together for herself in the wake of tragedy—and she could hate her. But that would be missing the point. In her, Mae had fou
nd someone who understood. Saoirse didn’t just understand how it felt to lose a loved one. People all around the world lost loved ones every single day. That was part of life. No, Saoirse understood everything. She understood what Mae felt when she looked in the mirror and saw an older woman who refused to give up on life. She understood how it felt to bring a child into this world and to love and be loved so intensely by a good man.
So, try as she might, it was impossible to hate Saoirse. Mae was Saoirse and Saoirse was Mae. Different nationalities, different experiences, different women altogether.
And yet, in all the ways that mattered, they were the same.
Those were the thoughts that rushed into Mae’s head when she woke up from her dream in the still-dark hours of Friday morning. They were all there at once, like she’d just brushed off some dirt and found them buried intact below the surface. Dinosaur bones. Ancient truths. It was a bit disconcerting to think that there were all these things she felt that she hadn’t even been aware of. What else was lying down there, waiting to be unearthed? Who could say?
She tried to go back to sleep after that. But the bed was empty and the room was dark. For some reason, that unsettled her. Dominic had disappeared into his writing nook as soon as the three of them returned from the beach. Mae had heard him typing long into the night, and he hadn’t come to bed.
Until now.
She looked up at that exact moment and saw him standing in the doorway. He froze when he saw that she was awake. They gazed back at each other, or at least in that general direction. It was too dark to tell exactly where his eyes were. Mae wondered, not for the first time, what he was thinking about. So many things happening in that man’s mind. More than she’d ever suspected.
It made her wonder what it meant to truly know a person. Why did she feel like she knew Saoirse, this woman who’d been in her world for less than a few days? And why did she feel like this man, with whom she’d shared a home and a bed and a life for almost two years … why did she feel like he was such a locked box of secrets? Would he always feel that way? Could she accept that reality?
“You should be asleep,” he said.
“As should you.”
He sighed and stepped forward into the beam of moonlight that had penetrated through the skylight set high in the wall behind the bed. She watched as he took his glasses off, closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose like a migraine was wreaking havoc on his skull. “I had to write.” He settled his glasses back on and looked at her again. “The words were yelling at me.”
She saw that he was trying to smile at her, but it looked more like a grimace. She nodded solemnly.
The truth was that she was still mad at him. She’d always be a little mad at him after this week, she thought. He’d permanently stained what was supposed to be a happy week in her life. She wouldn’t ever be able to look back on her eldest daughter’s wedding without thinking of Saoirse, of the irritation her arrival brought. And also of the pain she revealed in Dominic.
But she also had that urge in her soul to reach out and comfort him. Maybe it was because she was a mother. Maybe it was because she was a nurturer by nature. Maybe it was because, now that Saoirse had pointed it out, she could see how profoundly sad her boyfriend was. She wanted to pull his head into her lap and stroke his hair until he sighed and fell asleep. She wanted to hold his hand or make him laugh or cook him a midnight treat, if only to see a slight smile cross his face.
It should be impossible to feel this many things at once, she thought. Anger and sorrow and anxiety and the powerful need to make things right in the life of another person. How could one person hold all these feelings inside at the same time?
She had always coped by staying busy. But right here, in this dark and silent bedroom, with the saddest man in the world standing in a shaft of moonlight and sighing because he had a throbbing headache and a broken heart, there was nothing to do to occupy her mind. She had to face her feelings. She couldn’t run.
“What did the words tell you?” she asked softly.
“What they always tell me,” he answered. “Everything and nothing at the same time.”
“Did you write about her?”
“Aoife.”
“Yes.”
He sighed again, long, pained, and slow. “Yes,” he answered finally. “I wrote about her.”
Mae nodded again. “Do you want to come to bed?” she asked.
Dominic looked at her. His eyes were sparkling behind his glasses, refracting the moonlight in their depths. Eventually, he nodded back. “I would like that.”
She patted the mattress next to her. Dominic undressed and slid under the comforter next to her. She pulled his head into her lap and leaned back against the pillows. One hand ran through his hair over and over, teasing through the curls. He held the other hand and stroked the back of her knuckles.
Neither of them said a word. When the sun came up, it found them sleeping together, breathing in rhythm, hands still intertwined. Nothing had been said, but nothing had to be said, either.
Everything they needed was right here.
Part IV
The Big Day
24
Holly
Saturday morning.
Eliza’s wedding day.
The day was finally here.
Holly was giddy. She’d been looking forward to Eliza’s wedding ever since she first heard the news. Oliver and Eliza had video called her when they landed in Bermuda. That had been a doozy of a conversation! “Hey, we quit the tour, we’re in Bermuda, and oh by the way, we’re getting married.” Eliza never did anything halfway, but still—that was certainly a lot to take in all at once.
It sure seemed like the right decision, though. Eliza was so happy these days. That was a good thing. She deserved it.
Holly sent Eliza a quick text first thing upon waking up. Just a little “Hi, I love you, can’t wait for today. XO.” She knew Eliza would be bubbly and nervous and excited.
Especially due to the news they’d gotten last night: an unexpected cold front had emerged virtually out of nowhere and stalled the hurricane offshore. Nantucket was safe, at least for a little bit longer. Pete had come bouncing into the room the night before to tell Holly about the latest update.
“You gotta be kidding me!” Holly exclaimed.
“Nope,” he replied. “Just sitting out over the ocean like it knew it wasn’t invited to the party.”
Holly let out a long sigh. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious at the storm for causing so much chaos, only to amount to a whole bunch of nothing in the end.
She barely slept. She had those little-kid jitters, like how she used to feel before the first day of a new school year. Pretty much every hour on the hour, she woke up and glanced over at the clock, hoping it was time to get up and get started.
Finally, at long last, someone in the heavens above took pity on her and fast-forwarded the hours until it was a little before seven. “Good enough,” she mumbled to herself. Pete made a grunting noise over on his side of the bed. She poked him in the side. “Gotta get up soon,” she said. “Big day ahead.”
“Mmhmmf.”
Holly laughed and went off to shower. Her husband wasn’t particularly fond of early wake-up calls, no matter the occasion.
But on a day like today, how could you not just spring out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? Okay, maybe she was being a little ridiculous, but it was her older sister’s wedding. Someone ought to be visibly excited.
By the time she emerged from the shower, Pete was sitting in bed with a cup of coffee at his side. He looked over at her and smiled.
“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” he teased.
Holly glanced at herself in the mirror. She was fresh-faced, wearing a bathrobe and a towel wrapped around her hair. Not exactly runway-ready. But it was a cute sentiment anyway. “You better get moving, bucko,” she chided. “It’s gonna take us half an hour at least to get Grady all dolled up.”
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Pete looked at her with horror in his eyes. “Don’t tell me we didn’t get him a clip-on tie.”
Holly chuckled and shook her head. “He got the real deal, same as you.”
“Oh jeez,” Pete mumbled, looking into the distance like a soldier preparing for war. “That’s gonna be a nightmare.”
“I figure it’ll be some nice father-son bonding time.”
“Yeah, well, if he puts up a fight, I’m just gonna tie the tie reaaaal tight.”
“Pete Goodwin!” Holly snapped, though she was laughing as she whacked him over the head with a pillow. “That’s our firstborn son you’re threatening.”
He ducked her follow-up blow, slipped out from under the comforter, and sidled over to the bathroom, calling over his shoulder as he went, “Then he better cooperate, if he knows what’s good for him!”
Holly laughed once more as her husband stepped into the shower. It was time to wake up the kids and get the two of them mobilized. Then she had to throw on a quick outfit and go over to Eliza’s bridal suite to finish getting ready with the rest of the girls.
She padded into Grady’s room first. He moaned something about waking up early on a Saturday, and the first Saturday of summer break, no less! He’d always been a sleeper, that one; Holly had a feeling he was going to test her limits as they ventured into his teen years. When she was confident that he was up and at ’em, she went through the Jack & Jill bathroom into her daughter’s room. Alice was a little reticent to get up, too. But there was no obstacle too large for Holly to tackle today, and to tackle with a smile on her face no less. She just kept saying, “Up! Up! Up!” in an obnoxiously sing-songy voice until both of her children were awake and grimacing at her.
