“But you’ve made it this far,” Elena protested.
Natalie raised her shoulders. “Maybe this is as far as I can go. Those people in Cranberry Cove scare me. But you’ve been to Syria, Elena. You’ve seen the world and all the evils in it.” With that, Natalie turned on her heel and left the office.
Elena collapsed back in her mother’s chair, her thoughts spinning. Corruption in Cranberry Cove. It wasn’t so hard to believe, she guessed, especially given the tremendous wealth of that place and the slightly sinister people who lived there. Entirely un-Millbrook-like people. After writing about Christmas parties and Christmas cookies and upcoming Christmas festivities, a story like this fascinated Elena, as it demanded of her the intellect and drive she’d thought had died out in Syria.
Maybe it was nothing. Perhaps it would lead her nowhere interesting.
But it didn’t hurt to dig around.
Many ofThe Millbrook Gazette'sprevious articles had been archived on the internet, which allowed a quick search on her mother’s computer. She typed “Cranberry Cove.” Immediately, more than 300 articles appeared, written from 1957 onward, when the first of the mansion plans was proposed to the community. Focusing on the more recent articles, Elena slid past topics like community gardens, Cranberry Cove parties, swanky rebuilds of already swanky homes, and Millbrook visitors who’d had their pictures taken at one of the gaudy mansions. Elena seethed. There had to be some mention of what was really going on in Cranberry Cove. There had to be something to sink her teeth into.
Maybe there was nothing. Perhaps Elena was on another wild goose chase.
Maybe Elena was not the incredible journalist she always thought she was.
Who had told Elena that she was good enough to be a war correspondent? Maybe she wasn’t even good enough to write about Christmas baking competitions.
It took a little more than three hours before Elena stumbled into anything of value. Most of the articles seemed like propaganda, propping up the “beauty” of the Cranberry Cove mansions rather than echoing the sentiment of greater Millbrook (who resented that their beautiful cove had been privatized and, in their eyes, destroyed).
The first article that cited Cranberry Cove as the monster it so clearly was had been written by a familiar woman.
Incredibly, it was written by Rosa Tompkins.
Elena’s heartbeat quickened. She hadn’t realized she’d gotten to her feet. Outside, the sky was inky black, and she knew it was nearly time to head home for dinner. Jemma couldn’t sit with her mother forever. Carmen might turn on her, like she turned on everyone. It was probably the disease talking. Or it was just Carmen’s classic arrogance, which seemed to hide a broken heart.
But Elena couldn’t resist reading through the first of seven articles written by Rosa, all citing the Cranberry Cove as a “poisonous building idea that could very well unravel the fabric that stitches this community together.”
Rosa wrote:Cranberry Cove has been a favorite place for my family going on thirty years. Sundays in the summer, we picnic at the water; we swim and sail. In fact, there’s a photograph of all five of us at the cove—my mother, my father, and my two brothers—taken when I was no older than one or two. The idea of ripping our favorite place away from us to build extravagant mansions is not in support of the greater good of Millbrook.
Elena sat back, her ears ringing. It was bizarre that she’d only just read an article from her grandmother for the firsttime last night. Now, she was up to her ears in Rosa’s writing and discovering a fantastic truth. Rosa had been a revolutionary woman who stood for what was right.
Could Elena do the same?
Still, it was strange that Rosa’s story of Cranberry Cove seemed to echo what was going on now: the corruption, the fraud, the seediness. It all seemed to have roots in Cranberry Cove, even so many years after its 1957 beginnings.
Time isn’t linear, Elena thought, reaching for her coat.It’s like my grandmother is trying to speak through her articles, telling me something.
Chapter Eight
Five minutes before Friday morning’s grief therapy session was set to begin, someone knocked the coffee maker to the ground and spilled dark, frothy liquid all across the linoleum floor. The clumsy person was a woman in her thirties who’d lost her daughter last year to a horrible illness, and she immediately burst into tears and fell into the nearest chair, clutching her donut. Everything broke apart. Steven and Gina sat on either side of her, talking her down, as James hurried to the hall closet to find a mop. When he returned to the larger room, he found that even more of the grief therapy participants were weeping, as though the first woman’s tears had activated something in them.
James was stricken. The session hadn’t even started yet, and he’d lost control. Slowly, he slid a mop through the coffee and inhaled. “Why don’t we sit down, everyone?” he said, fixating on the mop as it swirled the coffee. “Let’s take some breaths! Everything’s all right. It’s just a little bit of spilled coffee.”
It was at this moment that Elena and Carmen entered the community center. James froze with surprise. He remembered inviting Elena to come, but he hadn’t expected her to show. She wore a pained expression, surveying the coffee spill and the weeping participants. Beside her, Carmen wore a look thatmeant it had taken a lot of Elena’s strength to get her out of the house.
“It’s a mess, Elena,” Carmen said. “First, you don’t let me work, and next, you drag me into this chaos?”
James finished mopping the coffee and hurried over to try to calm Carmen down. He knew that Carmen was experiencing the effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s, which could manifest in numerous ways—none of which were comfortable for the people around (nor for Carmen herself, of course).
The woman who’d first knocked over the coffee stopped crying and watched the three of them, captivated from behind her hands. James felt exposed, as though the onlookers would immediately catch that James had a not-small crush on Elena. (Not that a crush mattered when you were in your forties. He didn’t think it did, anyway. He wasn’t thirteen years old anymore, for crying out loud. He could control himself.)
Oh, but now, as he approached Elena and Carmen with a heavy heart, he was thinking about crushes. He was remembering his son’s first crush, how nervous the young boy had been when he’d first told James about the girl at school. His cheeks had turned fire engine red, and he’d stuttered. What had James said? Something like,You’re going to have so many crushes in your life. You’re going to fall in love so many times!
But his son hadn’t fallen in love numerous times.
He’d barely been allowed to have any crushes at all. Maybe three or four, if that. A single girlfriend, who’d moved away shortly after everything had happened.
Elena was looking at him nervously. Carmen continued to rattle off a list of things she’d rather be doing than attending this “silly workshop, or whatever it is.”
