She had no idea why she was angry with Evelyn. Or angry with Joe, her great-or-whatever-half-uncle.
That night, she could not get to sleep. She knew she needed to talk to her father. But the initial shock at the news had simmered into anger at him, too, and she hated being angry until she knew if it was justified.
Whoever had or had not lied to her, there must be answers in the clutter in the cottage—old letters, documents, newspaper clippings that were scattered, stacked up, or burrowed in those rickety walls—there must be documentation that would reveal the truth. God knew, Maddie didn’t have the patience to wait for a DNA test.
She closed her eyes; she tried to keep her breathing steady, meditative. Again, the exercise wasn’t working, but what little she was doing might keep her from losing her mind.
The strangest part was if she were half-Wampanoag, and if her father had known all these years, why had he concealed it? Had he hesitated to accept a Native American into hisMayflowergenealogy? Evelyn’s family—and her late husband—were White. Yet Evelyn had grown up among the Wampanoags. Some islanders might be of mixed blood—perhaps descended from the first, uninvited immigrants who’d traded a few beaver pelts and a meager amount of wampum for the land. The land that had belonged to Maddie’s ancestors.
Then another thought emerged: Had Hannah Clieg turned her back on her heritage in order to gain the husband whom she wanted? Had Maddie’s father also been duped? Hannah Clieg and Stephen Clarke were married in the early 1970s. It was hard to believe that sort of racism was still going on. And yet . . . Maddie was educated; Maddie knew differently. She knew that things weren’t always as they seemed. Or as they should have been.
If she could have tossed and turned, she might have worn herself out enough to sleep. But tossing and turning was hardly doable encumbered as she was by the cast.
Lying awake, mulling over what might be the big lie of her life, Maddie heard the ship’s clock in the drawing room chime eight bells. At one of the college teas she’d attended, she learned that the ship’s clock did not chime the hour but signaled the four-hour shift changes of a sailor’s watch: eight bells in the morning at four o’clock, eight, and noon; in the afternoon the eight repeated at four o’clock, eight, and midnight.
The eight bells now must mean it was midnight.
At twelve thirty, the chimes rang once; at one o’clock, twice; at one thirty there were three chimes; at two o’clock there were four; at two thirty, five; and on and on every hour and on the half hour in a repetitive configuration until it returned to the eight bells for the next watch. To Maddie, it was positively confusing. In his study in Green Hills, her father had a long-case clock that he’d inherited from his father, who’d inherited it from his father, none of whom were Native Americans. Maddie had never liked that he’d turned off the chimes.
“The trouble with clocks that gong,” he’d explained, “is that when you wake up during the night and hear the chime, you have absolutely no idea what time it is. So you wait for the next half hour, thinking you’ll be able to figure it out. By then, however, you’re awake for the rest of the night. At least I am.”
Now, when she heard the clock strike again, it chimed four bells. She calculated that it was either two o’clock, six o’clock, or ten. The pale light that leaked around the edges of the drapes and snuck into the room suggested that the sun had recently dawned. Six o’clock, then. In the morning.
Time to get up and activate her plan.
She started by popping a pain pill.
* * *
The house was quiet. Evelyn must still be asleep.
Maddie quietly packed her cross-body carry-on bag. Rafe had given it to her the previous spring, hoping she’d fly to Philadelphia to watch him row in the Dad Vail Regatta. “You have to come, Mom!” he’d exclaimed as she’d unwrapped the gift. “It’s the biggest—and the coolest—college regatta in the country; it’s a nearly seventy-five-year-old tradition.” Maddie had hardly traveled—she’d been too wrapped up in school, either as a student or as a teacher. She’d gone to England once with a group from the college; another time she went on a cruise up the Mississippi River with some old high school friends. And when her father retired, he took Rafe and her to Scotland to learn about their ancestors. They spent two weeks in the Highlands, visiting castles, ancient ruins, and quaint hamlets; they trekked through lavender-covered hills and silent, ancient battlefields, and enjoyed boat tours on peaceful glacial lochs. It was a wonderful bonding trip, and her father discovered things that he hadn’t known, including that the Clarkes had descended from Clan Cameron.
He’d never mentioned that on her mother’s side there was another, even older clan.
As for the regatta, Rafe had been so excited that she wouldn’t, couldn’t, say no. It had been fun; she was glad she’d gone. And now she was really glad he’d given her the carry-on, which, like the pockets in the skirts Evelyn had bought, would enable her to keep her hands free for the crutches.
Zipping the last of her things into the bag now, she wondered if, after her inheritance came through, she would travel more. Maybe she could find one of those interesting groups that combined learning with sightseeing. She’d like that, especially since she’d recently read that many trips catered to singles. After all, her friends would still be working. The thought of which made her sad.
Enough of that, she thought, expelling a tired sigh.
Thankfully, notations about the regatta events remained in a side pocket of the bag. Maddie turned it over to the blank side and scribbled a note to Evelyn.
I’m getting a ride back to the cottage, she wrote.I’ll be in touch later. Thanks for your help and your kindness.She signed it a simple “M.” Then she stuck the note in the pocket of the new denim skirt she’d put on, and cross-bodied the carry-on.
Walking tenuously so as not to trip on an edge of one of the Oriental rugs or, worse, make too much noise while traversing the polished wood floors, she slipped out of the guest room and maneuvered her way down the hall, one unsure step at a time. She made it to the front door at last, relieved.
But the door was locked.
Of course it was, she thought. Grandma Nancy must have been the lone islander left who thought that tourists were the only ones who locked their doors.
Examining the lock more closely, Maddie saw it was a dead bolt, the kind that needed a key to open, even from the inside. She thought those had been banned in case of fire or God knew what else, so no one would be trapped inside the way she was right now.
She tried not to panic. For all she knew, Evelyn was an early riser, someone who liked to stroll through her gardens first thing in the morning before the dew was off her much-beloved blossoms.
Letting out a whimper, Maddie wondered why she felt she needed to escape before the woman caught her. After all, Evelyn—like everyone else there—had been nothing but nice to her. But, unlike what Maddie had told Rafe, none of these people really were her friends.Noneof them. She supposed she needed to be less trusting of strangers, less stupidly naive. But at the moment, she apparently had no choice but to stay put: she was definitely locked in. A prisoner in Chilmark.
Resigning herself to wait for Evelyn to rise and allow her to leave (perhaps offer to drive her?Dream on, she mused), Maddie decided she might as well make coffee. But as she began to hobble toward the kitchen, she spotted something shiny on a side table in the foyer: a key. It rested in plain sight at the base of a lovely floral arrangement that stood in an exquisite crystal vase.
