Then Annie remembered: Francine was at Jonas’s. Was Annie supposed to make breakfast for everyone again that day? Wasn’t Francine going to come back this morning? What time was it, anyway? She ran her hand through her hair and glanced up at the ship’s clock in the kitchen.
“Good job,” Annie, she said aloud. It wasn’t yet six thirty; breakfast didn’t start for two more hours. Still, it didn’t leave much time to pull something, however basic, together.
That’s when she heard a low rattling from the chef’s room. Tiptoeing toward the door, she jumped back as Francine emerged, carrying a large oblong pan and heading toward the oven.
“Good morning,” Francine said. “You’re up early.”
Annie rubbed her eyes and tried to will her heart to stop racing. “I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to make breakfast or not. I slept so soundly that my brain’s still fuzzy.” Francine glided the pan into the oven and set the timer for fifty minutes. “I don’t suppose that could be connected to the empty wine bottle in the recycle bin?”
“Good grief,” Annie said, “did we drink the whole thing last night?”
Francine laughed. “Don’t include me in the ‘we.’ Was John here? Or did you spend the evening with dashing Simon Anderson?”
Then Annie remembered her phone. She dug it from her bag, found a charger in the electronics drawer, and quickly plugged it in. “No. I was not with a man. I was with . . . Mary Beth. Mary Beth Mullen. She’s a little shy, but very interesting.”Well, Annie thought,that sounded lame. So she quickly added, “As long as you’re on breakfast duty, I’d better go get cleaned up for the day.”
“Where? Is there water in the workshop?”
“There’s an unfinished bathroom downstairs with a shower. It isn’t pretty, but everything works.”
Then her phone rallied back to life, pinging, pinging, pinging, like a xylophone let loose in a kindergarten class. She snatched it off the counter; the screen lit up. She had missed eleven texts. All of them from John. They’d started not long after midnight.
“Ugh,” she said. Instead of reading them right then, she simply typed:ALL IS WELL. LOTS HAPPENED YESTERDAY. WILL CALL LATER THIS MORNING. She looked at Francine and gave her half a grin.
“Something is going on with you, Annie Sutton,” Francine said. “I’ve known you long enough to be able to see through that silly smile. You’re up to something, aren’t you?”
“Not at all.”
Francine rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe you for a minute.”
“Excellent. It’s good to give the imagination a healthy workout once in a while. Which is especially fun when there’s no good reason.” She left the phone to charge and skipped out of the room, back toward the meadow and the workshop, where she hoped that her brain would recharge as quickly as her phone.
* * *
Talk around the breakfast table centered on Illumination Night, which would take place that evening in Oak Bluffs, known to islanders simply as OB.
Ginny Taft, the Indiana retired schoolteacher, announced that she’d done her homework and now made it her mission to enlighten the others. “The first illumination celebration was to honor a visit from the governor in 1869. Imagine that! Over one hundred fifty years ago. The Camp Meeting Association was actually started in 1835 when Methodists came here and slept in tents before they built cottages and added pretty filigree that makes them look like gingerbread creations.”
Toni nudged her sister. “Get back to the illumination thing.”
“Oh, right,” Ginny said. “Well, in 1869, in honor of the governor’s visit, people decorated their gingerbread houses with colorful lanterns. Today, the festivities start at the Tabernacle, in the center of the campground, with a concert by the Vineyard Haven Band and a community sing, followed by lighting the ceremonial first lantern. Then all the houses follow suit and light their lanterns that are all different colors; it sounds delightful. Everyone must go. Toni and I brought Victorian hats for the occasion.”
Toni smirked. She didn’t seem as enthusiastic as her sister was.
“You’re right on all counts,” Annie chimed in. “It’s wonderful to watch all the people strolling along in the glow. Something you might not have learned, Ginny, is that whenever someone sells their gingerbread cottage, they leave the lanterns for the next owners. It’s helped keep the tradition alive.”
“I’ll bring my camera!” Meghan chimed in, and Annie smiled. She was glad that Meghan had joined them that morning, but wasn’t surprised that neither Simon nor his assistant was there. Last night, when Annie had been crossing the lawn toward the workshop, she’d noticed that the lights were on inside her cottage; she’d heard low, male conversation. Perhaps Simon and Bill had worked late and now were sleeping in.
After clearing the table, she knew she’d better get in touch with John before he thought she’d run away with their celebrity guest, assuming that, yes, by then he surely would have heard Simon was there. She quickly cleaned the plates, loaded the dishwasher, turned it on, then took her phone outside.
Lucy answered, not John.
“Dad’s asleep,” she said. “He didn’t get home until four this morning. He left me a note—he said there was a wedding reception that, in his words, ‘got out of hand.’ Anyway, he told me to answer his phone if I saw it was you.”
“Well, then, hi to you. How are things going on over there?”
“You mean with my stupid sister?”
“Lucy . . .”
