“Does that mean that you don’t want to be on the island? Does it mean you want to leave?” Amelie asked, sniffing.
“No,” their mother breathed. “I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. I’m here with you.”
Much later that day, long after the fudge store had closed and the fireworks had exploded over the Straits of Mackinac, Willa and Amelie were in Amelie’s room, brushing their hair and listening to the boom box. Their house was up the hill from downtown, a fifteen-minute walk from the fudge shop. They hadthree bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a backyard that stretched into the woods. It was their paradise.
They hadn’t talked about their mother since that morning. They’d been consumed by work, helping their father and their mother tirelessly until they’d been “let go” for the day around four. They were exhausted. They’d avoided their friends and returned home, where they’d eaten popsicles and walked through the shade of the woods. Now, their parents were both home, winding down in the living room, watching television.
“Do you think Mom was lying today?” Amelie asked then, pausing with her hairbrush halfway down her red wall of hair. “About wanting to stay here?”
“I guess she wasn’t born here, like Dad was. Right? She moved here when she was, like, sixteen or something?” Willa said. “Maybe she wanted something else before she met him?”
“But she loves Dad,” Amelie pointed out.
Willa nodded, thinking about Derek at school, about how his parents had gotten divorced. His father moved to Detroit, and his mother worked three jobs to keep up the payments on their house, which was down the road from theirs. Derek suspected that they’d have to leave the island soon.
How did any kid know if their parents were really in love? Willa had never been in love, not really, not if you didn’t count her obsession with James Mills, who sat three seats away from her at school and had a poof of curly hair that she wanted to run her fingers through. She was thirteen, and she imagined that true love would come her way sometime soon.
Their mother and father had met when their mother had moved to the island. At the time, they were sixteen years old and immediately decided to spend the rest of their lives together. If that wasn’t romance, Willa didn’t know what was.
When Willa went down the hall to brush her teeth, she overheard her parents talking in soft tones downstairs. Sheoverheard both her name and Amelie’s and snuck to the top of the stairs, listening hard. She knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but she also knew that knowledge was power.
“I know your mother isn’t happy. I know that,” her own mother was saying about her grandmother. “But I couldn’t help it. I don’t know what came over me. I panicked. You know how I feel about the girls. I want them to have everything better than I had it. I want them to know every experience. I want them to love life in ways I never could.”
“I don’t want to read too deeply into that,” their father said quietly.
“I love you! You know I love you,” their mother said, too loudly.
“Please, keep your voice down.”
“I do, though,” their mother whispered.
“My mother is asking if it’s happening again,” their father asked.
Their mother was quiet. Willa tried to picture her face and couldn’t.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” their father said.
“It is,” their mother said.
They changed the channel.
Willa decided she’d heard enough. She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth for a full two minutes, thinking all the time about her mother, wondering what she was thinking. Had her mother wanted something else for herself? Had she had dreams beyond the fudge shop? It was true that her mother had never had an idea for a new fudge recipe, and she never lit up when she entered the shop.
For the first time, Willa wondered if the fudge shop—a paradise for Willa and Amelie—was a kind of prison for their mother? Had she known she’d be working there when shemarried their father? Had she known this would be the extent of her life?
Willa closed her eyes and tried to imagine her own future. But just as she and Amelie had said, all she could picture were their husbands (handsome, sort of like James Mills), the fudge shop, and their babies (sort of peachy blobs). She told herself that once they took over the fudge shop, she’d send her mother on a trip. She’d help her explore the world.
But right now, Willa was only thirteen years old. She didn’t know how to save her mother. She could only hope that she wouldn’t need saving. Not really.
Chapter Six
Amelie
December 2025
Amelie couldn’t believe it. There she sat in the window of a coffee shop on Lake Shore Drive, her pen poised over a notepad, her eyes to the mighty window before her. On the opposite side of the snow-filled street stood her sister, Willa, with a suitcase and a bag beside her. Incredibly, she’d just gotten off the six thirty ferry.
Amelie and Willa Caraway were back on Mackinac Island after nineteen years away.
