When she returned to the hotel room, she was thrilled to find that Reese was up and smiling. “How did it go?” he asked, kissing her. “Did you arrest Larry for murder?”
Oriana laughed and drew her arms around her husband. “Turns out he’s probably just a kind, lonely artist.” She told him about the interview and how he’d answered everything “perfectly.”
“What does Isabella think?” Reese asked.
“She wants to do a little more digging,” Oriana answered. “But she’s curious like that. She can’t hold herself back from cracking something wide open, even if that something turns out to be hollow.”
Two days later, Reese and Oriana flew back to Boston, grabbed their car from overnight parking, and headed back to Martha's Vineyard. The leaves on the East Coast were even brighter and more autumnal than they’d been a few days earlier, but it was warm, lower sixties, so they cracked the windows and breathed in the oceanic air.
“I could never live in the mountains long-term,” Oriana said.
“It’s pretty, though,” Reese declared. “Spooky and mystical, but pretty.”
Oriana laughed and laced her fingers through his. “Thanks for going out there with me.”
“Thanks for letting me tag along with you,” Reese said. “Sorry I’ve been so tired. Maybe I need to try out a few new vitamins. Perhaps I need to look into afternoon espresso. If it’s good enough for the Italians, it has to be good enough for me.”
Oriana listed out a few potential vitamins they could pick up from the pharmacy on their way home. Reese wrote them down in his phone, nodding, his brow furrowed. Oriana guessed that this spell of fatigue would be such a distant memory that they wouldn’t remember it.
When they returned home, they showered and watched television for a little while before heading to bed. Tomorrow would be busy. Reese had a number of meetings, Oriana had calls with the Manhattan warehouse and potential buyers of Larry’s paintings, and afterward, they were invited to the Jessabelle House on Nantucket Island, where Roland’s daughter, Samantha, lived with her husband. Located on the bluffs of Siasconset, the house was extraordinary. Samantha had taken to having Coleman family parties not only on the traditional June Solstice but also “whenever she felt like it.” Oriana hadn’t seen her extended Coleman family in a while. It was time.
The following afternoon on the boat from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket, Reese and Oriana finished up their last emails, closed their laptops, and prepared their hearts for their big, boisterous family. Their daughter, Alexa, and their grandson, Benny, were at the railing, watching the island grow closer and closer. Benny turned around frequently to call out, “Grandpa! Look! It’s the island!” Reese finally got up and walked slowly toward their grandson, wincing when Reese picked him up. The toddler had gotten heavier recently, Oriana knew. But it surprised her that Reese struggled with his weight. Reese had always been strong, built up from years of working out at the gym.
When they reached the Jessabelle House, Oriana’s sister, Meghan, scrambled down the veranda steps to hug them first. It was clear she’d already had a margarita, because she was smiling in that joyous and tipsy way she so often did at family parties.
“I want to know everything about your new discovery!” she cried, leading Oriana back up to the veranda, their arms laden with bottles of wine and snacks Oriana had brought for the party.
Samantha, Hilary, and Hilary’s daughter Aria were standing in a circle on the veranda, sipping wine. They hugged Oriana in greeting and begged for details about the “mysterious painter.”
“I was reading about him this morning,” Aria said conspiratorially. “It’s strange that he’s been up in the mountains by himself all this time. I mean, it’s captivating!”
“Right? He must have gone years without saying a word to anyone but the mailman and the odd cashier,” Samantha said.
Samantha’s husband, Derek, came out to take Oriana’s groceries and bottle of wine. A moment later, Sam’s daughter Darcy appeared with a glass of wine for Oriana and for herself. She announced that she recently stopped breastfeeding, and she was so grateful to have her body back to herself.
“But it’s bittersweet,” she admitted, taking a sip of wine. “They were special, special hours.” She went on to say that, of course, she was considering having more children, that she knew there would be future breastfeeding sessions, and future beautiful times. “But it’ll never be the same. Not exactly. Never again.”
Oriana remembered her countless hours breastfeeding her babies, how she’d refused to take too much time off from work and had spent many of those hours on the phone with clients, buyers, and artists. All the while, exhaustion had made her head foggy, and her body had felt stretched thin and meant for something else. Mothers were superheroes, she knew. But theydidn’t always feel like superheroes. Sometimes they felt dried up and at the end of their ropes.
It was often hard to get women to admit that.
Reese disappeared into the house to chat with some of the men of the family about whatever it was they liked to talk about: sports, maybe, or work, or travel. Oriana watched him go, her heart aching at how slowly he walked. She’d watched him take four vitamins just that morning. Maybe they’d kick in by the end of the week.
At that moment, Oriana’s phone buzzed with a call from Isabella, the journalist. She excused herself to the end of the veranda to take it. “Hey!” she said. “Thanks again for the article. It did everything it needed to do!”
“I take it you have interested buyers?” Isabella asked.
“I have so many missed calls and emails to respond to. I might go crazy in the next few days,” Oriana said with a smile.
But she knew it was rare for Isabella to call her out of the blue just to talk about how successful something had been. Isabella cut to the chase shortly after that.
“Don’t you get the sense he’s not telling us everything?” Isabella asked, speaking of Larry, about his wife.
“Maybe he really doesn’t remember,” Oriana suggested. She’d bought what he’d said about feeling like he’d lived so many different lives, that he couldn’t always find himself in all of his memories.
“But what about all the gossip in Nederland?” Isabella asked. “I can’t get it out of my head. People think he murdered her. I mean, murder is a big leap, don’t you think?”
“I think they’re bored up there and don’t have anything else to talk about,” Oriana offered, although she wasn’t sure if she believed that either.
