by Jean Stone
With a nonchalant shrug, he said, “It’s only for the pitch. We’ll be back with a crew if Simon gets approval.” Then he held up the waxed paper envelope, said thanks again, and disappeared back into the great room. A moment later, she heard his footsteps ascend the stairs.
Pouring a glass of wine, Annie discerned that Bill had a name that was as nondescript as the man himself. He was average height, average looks, average everything; his hair was a dull shade of brown, same as his eyes. She supposed, however, she should have told him he’d spoil his appetite if he ate a cookie before dinner. It could have opened the door to casual camaraderie that she might be able to use later to gather information as to why Simon was really there. If she at least had that, maybe Annie could relax.
Then an afterthought jumped into her mind: the cookies. Because Mary Beth hadn’t been at the breakfast table, she’d missed out on the packet of freshly made sugar cookies that Annie had wound up giving the guests as a thank-you in advance for helping pitch in with the pre-Simon housekeeping.
She inserted two cookies into another envelope and put away the wine. Then she made her way through the great room and climbed the stairs for the second time that day, though she rarely went up there. Annie knew that, celebrity or not, all of their guests deserved privacy. For some unknown reason, Mary Beth seemed like an exception.
Chapter 10
Someone was crying. Actually, it sounded more like a whimper.
Annie had reached Mary Beth’s door and raised her hand to knock, but paused it in midair. She waited a moment, then knocked anyway.
The whimpering stopped.
Annie knocked again. “Mary Beth? It’s Annie. I forgot to give you something.”
There was no response for a few seconds, then Annie heard footsteps approach the door. The handle turned slowly; the door creaked open.
“I’m sorry,” Mary Beth said, “I was napping.” But her eyes told a different story: thin, jagged red lines laced the white areas around her pupils, and mascara was smudged on her lower lids.
“Are you all right?” Annie asked.
She nodded and started to close the door. Which was when Annie did what she’d read about thousands of times in books and seen in films and on quirky TV cop shows: she wedged her foot inside the door.
“Please,” she said. “I brought cookies.” She held up the small bag. “I’m told they do wonders for curing sadness.” She smiled with what she hoped looked like empathy.
Closing her eyes, Mary Beth said, “Okay. Come in. But you might regret it.”
If Annie were anyone but Annie—like if she were someone with half a brain left in her head—she would have handed Mary Beth the cookies, bid her well, and left her the hell alone. Instead, Annie gently pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Mary Beth went to one of the small boudoir chairs by the window and sat down. Annie shut the door behind her and joined her guest by settling on the matching chair. She placed the cookies on the round tea table between them.
With her small chin tipped down toward the hardwood floor that still gleamed as it had gleamed when it was installed three months earlier, the young woman said, “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.”
The declaration sounded portentous; it skated on the edge of mystery as Annie had imagined. Perhaps she hadn’t been wrong.
Purposefully keeping her voice low, Annie asked, “This isn’t how what was supposed to happen?”
“It’s messed up. Don’t you see? I’m worried about Simon Anderson. When I heard he was going to be here, I knew it could be a problem for me. So I figured I only needed to stay out of his way. But when I saw him reading your book . . . and I wondered if he was somehow connected to you . . . well, I don’t know either one of you, you know?”
Yes, Annie thought, she knew that. She also knew that she did not know beans about Mary Beth or about what she was trying to tell her. But Annie said, “I know,” in order to keep the conversation going.
“When I read your note I was terrified that he’d start asking me questions about stuff I don’t know anything about. I knew it wouldn’t take long for someone like him to figure out I was lying.”
“Lying?” The question shot from Annie’s mouth before she had a chance to soften it.
Mary Beth nodded. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Once he knows I’m lying, he’ll start digging around. That’s what reporters do, isn’t it?”
Annie tried to choose her words more carefully. After all, as Mary Beth had said, they did not know each other. She suppressed a fleeting concern that the woman might need professional help, that she might be in danger either to herself or others. Pressing her lips together, hoping to garner courage, Annie asked, “If Simon starts, as you said, ‘digging around,’ will he learn something so terrible?”
What do you have to hide? Murphy would have added if she’d been in the vicinity.
“He’ll find out who I really am,” Mary Beth said.
Annie knew that as a writer she was naturally curious about people, places, situations. Mostly people. How they thought. Why they did the things they did. In short, what made them tick. Because of that, Mary Beth’s reply was one of the last things anyone should tell a mystery author if they neither wanted nor expected the next question. “Who are you, Mary Beth?”
“No one you know. No one you’ve met.”
No, Annie thought. She would have remembered that exotic bronze skin and those cornflower eyes.
“Help me out, here, okay? You’re not Mary Beth Mullen? You’re not here to study the leatherbacks to try and get a job at the Marine Biological Lab?”
Mary Beth sniffled; she inhaled, then slowly exhaled. “I’m someone who has a story. The kind of story Simon might jump on. Especially since I’m from Boston like he is.”
Annie stared at the cookies that sat innocently on the table. She had a feeling she needed to brace herself for whatever was coming next. “Would you like to tell me about it?”
Mary Beth lifted her eyes; they were sad, sorrowful. The last time Annie had seen someone with that kind of look, it had been on Francine. And she’d been in big trouble.
“Can I trust you to keep it a secret?”
“Yes.”
Sighing again, Mary Beth turned her gaze toward the striking island-crafted, felt-appliqued pillows scattered atop the bed. “My real name isn’t Mary Beth Mullen.” She paused again. Then she said, “My name is Meghan MacNeish. I am your brother, Kevin’s, wife.”
* * *
It took Annie a few moments to grasp the situation. Mary Beth was Meghan? Kevin’s wife? But Meghan had traumatic brain injury from that horrible accident . . . the last time Kevin had seen her she hadn’t known him . . . the doctors had little hope . . .
Annie drew in a long breath. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. Some days I don’t, either. But it’s true. Here I am. Almost totally recovered. And properly discharged from the rehab facility in Stockbridge where I spent the last few years. I still get headaches, but otherwise . . . like I said, here I am.”
Annie tried to quickly sort through the information as if she were a professional and would not be personally affected by any ramifications. “Did you come to the Vineyard because you found out Kevin lives here?”
She nodded. “I wanted to surprise him. Mary Beth Mullen was one of my nurses; I used her name when I made my reservations, and I sent a cashier’s check because the only credit card I have has my real name on it. I thought I had all my bases covered, until I saw you on the ferry, and I overheard you tell that little girl about your brother going to Hawaii. To see a friend.” She paused, lowering her eyes. “A lady.”
“Ahh,” Annie said. “Right.” But how had Meghan known that Kevin was her brother? Annie had only known about him for a couple of years, and they hadn’t exactly advertised it—well, not off the island, anyway.
“I made up the part about seeing someone I knew on the ferry, so I could get away from you. I wa
s going to stay on the ferry and go back to Woods Hole. But then I decided it didn’t matter,” Mary—Meghan—continued. “I decided that even if he had another woman, he still had the right to know that I’m better. Which I wouldn’t be if it hadn’t been for the trust fund he set up for my care.”
“He sold his business to do that.” Annie hoped that hadn’t sounded harsh.
“I know. Your mother told me. Your birth mother.”
Of all that had transpired in the past few minutes—or, for that matter, in the past few days—Meghan’s last comment shocked Annie the most.
“Donna?” Annie asked. “Donna MacNeish?”
“Yes.”
Annie stood up. “I could use a glass of wine. Follow me, please. I need to hear details, and I need to hear them now.”
* * *
They sat cross-legged on the floor of the chef’s room. To avoid interruptions, Annie had closed the door. Then she’d uncorked the Chanel Bordeaux; they drank it out of pottery mugs from Morning Glory Farm because the good crystal was in the kitchen cabinets, and she didn’t want to chance running into anyone out there in the open.
“Okay,” she said. “Start with what I know. That the last time Kevin saw you, you didn’t remember him.”
“I’d been in a coma for something like two years. I didn’t remember him because I didn’t remember anything. Or anyone. Even after I was alert again, it was months before the wiring in my brain began to reconnect. About six months ago, I remembered everything. Well, almost everything. I don’t remember actually falling off the scaffolding at the job site. Only that I’d been determined to go up on it because we had a deadline. Donna told me the rest.”
Annie had been told that Meghan had loved working with Kevin in the commercial construction business. As the company had grown, Kevin wound up doing all the “office stuff,” and Meghan became his foreman—foreperson—doing hands-on work. Then, one winter, with a forecast of bad weather and high winds, Kevin ordered his wife not to go up on the scaffolding at the site of a new mall. But they had a deadline, and Meghan was stubborn when it came to their customers’ demands (Kevin’s words). The next thing Kevin knew he was in the back of the ambulance with his wife, who was close to death.
“Tell me about Donna,” Annie said. “How . . . when did you see her?”
“She came to see me every week. Except when she was in Switzerland having the treatment. And when she moved down here. I am so sorry she’s gone, Annie. She was a very special lady. But I’m glad you finally got to know her. She once told me that having both her children in her life was the greatest gift she’d ever been given. That knowing you made her life complete.”
Tears now welled in Annie’s eyes, her hazel—not green—eyes that were replicas of Donna’s. And of Kevin’s, her half brother, whom she’d come to adore despite that he was now being a royal pain. She took another sip of wine and waited while its warmth traveled to her heart. “Thank you. What a lovely thing to tell me.” She wiped her eyes and took another sip.
Then Meghan smiled. “You look like her, you know. More than Kevin does. But you both have Donna’s eyes.”
On occasion, when Annie was doing research, she’d come upon an anecdote or two about her subject that prompted her to get emotional. But they were always about other, unknown people. Not her. Not her family. Because she’d barely had one. She pulled herself together; she needed to hear more. “How did you find out Donna died?”
“Her doctor. She’d left word on the Vineyard that I was to be notified if—when—it happened. And that no one was to know about me. Not unless I said it was okay. It wasn’t okay then; I wasn’t ready.”
Though Annie could not recall the doctor’s name, she remembered how kind he’d been to them. And to Donna. “But . . .” she added, as hundreds of questions tumbled in her mind, “what about Kevin? He didn’t know that Donna saw you all that time?”
Meghan shook her head. “Absolutely not. I made her promise not to tell him. I wanted to be fully recovered before I stepped back into his life. Donna told me how guilty he’d felt about the accident. It wasn’t his fault; it was all mine. When I finally believed that I was going to get better, I wanted him to see me whole again, so we could cry and laugh together and hold each other and celebrate the miracle.” She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again, the traces of her earlier weeping now gone, replaced by a clear veneer that coated their lovely color. “I suppose not every miracle is meant to happen.”
They talked for a long time. Annie learned that Donna had told her that Annie was a mystery writer; she’d told her about the Inn. She’d also phoned Meghan a few times from the island and updated her on the goings-on, including telling her to keep an eye out for the episode about the Inn on Best Destinations. One of the last things she’d told Meghan was that Kevin missed her terribly.
Annie didn’t know how to ask if Meghan knew that Kevin had divorced her. So she decided not to. There were some things that should remain between Meghan and him . . . if he ever came back. And if he did not . . . well, Annie supposed she could figure out what to do about it then.
After they’d consumed over half a bottle of the wine, Annie suggested that they comb through the refrigerator to see if they could find something for dinner; they settled on making omelets and toast and ate while sitting at the marble-topped kitchen island. It had grown late by then, the guests no doubt were in their rooms, so privacy was nearly guaranteed. So Annie felt free to ask yet another question for her, well, sister-in-law.
“How on earth did you come up with the story about studying leatherbacks?”
Meghan laughed. “When I was on the internet looking up the ferry schedule, I landed on information for Woods Hole. There was a picture of one of the giant turtles, his head sticking up out of the water in the Sound. Ahead of him, on the horizon, you could see the big, white ferry. The researchers had tagged the turtle and put a tiny camera on its back, so it looked like he was watching the boat. It was beautiful. And fascinating. So I Googled them too . . . do you know that the leatherbacks are the only turtles in the world that don’t have a hard shell? Theirs is more rubbery—which is why they’re called ‘leatherbacks.’” She looked at Annie and smiled. “But I guess that’s off-topic, right?”
“A little. But I love it. Writers are curious creatures.”
“Okay, then. Do you know that leatherbacks only eat jelly fish?”
Annie laughed again and took another bite of her omelet to which she’d added cheese, a few slices of mushrooms, and several sprigs of herbs from the garden Francine had sowed. “Lucky them,” she said with a small frown. “And now I completely understand why you didn’t want Simon to start quizzing you. But from what little I’ve seen of him, I doubt he would. If he asks, though, why not simply say you’re on vacation? And that you think the big turtles are interesting, but you’re not studying them?”
Meghan paused then said, “Do you think that everyone who has something to hide shies away from journalists?”
“I expect so.” Then something else occurred to her. “It was smart of you to pay for your reservation with a cashier’s check.”
She lowered her head. “I wasn’t sure I’d get away with it, but Francine was really nice and said that the Inn was flexible. It was the only way I could think of to surprise Kevin. I didn’t want to tell him over the phone.”
“You are a clever girl.”
“Not usually. For one thing, I didn’t expect I’d actually have to tell anyone my name was Mary Beth. I guess I thought I’d just run into Kevin as soon as I arrived. Like he was in charge of taking luggage or something.”
“Around here, we’re all in charge of everything.” It was easy to understand why Kevin loved her; Meghan was quick and bright and wonderful company. It would be nice to have her as a real sister-in-law, not one who was technically, legally, no longer part of the family.
“But speaking of my brother,” Annie said quietly, once their meal was done and they lingered in
the tall chairs, still sipping from their mugs. “Have you thought about what you want to do now? About him?” She knew she’d have many more questions, but she was getting tired. And so, she suspected, was Meghan . . . a name that suited her better than Mary Beth.
“No. And I don’t want to know anything about his lady friend. Not now. Okay?”
Annie reached over and patted Meghan’s hand. “Okay.” With all her heart and mind, however, Annie wanted to call her brother. But she would not. Not yet. Not unless . . . well, not unless who knew what might happen. Instead, she would be patient. And let things happen as they would.
They finished the wine; it was after midnight when they said good night.
Chapter 11
She hadn’t minded spending the night on the floor over the workshop. The sleeping bag held the scent of old campfires, which had been comforting, though Annie had never gone camping. John was probably the last one to use it when he and Kevin had gone up island overnight—ostensibly to fish—right before they’d opened the Inn. Before the season had begun and life shifted into high gear.
Pressing her face into the fabric, Annie inhaled the hint of John and felt a small purr of contentment. She wished she could glide back into sleep. But it was the third Wednesday in August, and Annie knew it would be beyond chaotic. Starting tonight, Illumination Night.
She didn’t know what time it was; she’d forgotten the charger for her phone, not that it mattered, because the electrical work hadn’t yet been completed upstairs. After crawling out of the bag, Annie went to the window. The meadow was resplendent with late summer blossoms of bridal white Queen Anne’s Lace, delicate deep salmon Wood Lilies, and vibrant orange-and-yellow Butterfly Weed. She opened the window to the early sun and the fragrant air. She was looking forward to returning to making soap once the hubbub of the season had died down, and she could harvest the flowers and herbs that grew right on their land for her sumptuous collection. Maybe Meghan would enjoy soapmaking alongside her. If Kevin came back. And if Meghan stayed.
