“Good. And the key’s right there on my key ring.” She pointed to the jangle he’d set on the table.
In spite of GPS, they got turned around and wound up back in Menemsha. They laughed at themselves, two PhD college professors, who couldn’t find their way around an island.
“Or probably out of a paper bag,” Maddie said, and they laughed again. It felt good to laugh with him; maybe laughter would help her forgive him.
Once at the storage facility, he was startled to see the pickup.
“Good Lord,” he said. “I remember this—your grandmother drove it everywhere. I think it was old even then.”
Maddie told him about the note Grandma left inside and that she’d stopped driving when she turned eighty.
He guffawed. “She was a realistic old bird.”
Then they went to the cabinet, and Maddie showed him the paintings, one by one, sliding each one back into its slot after he’d studied it; sometimes he quietly nodded, other times he muttered, “Uh-huh” or “Mmm.” Then she showed him the one of the old man with the bronze skin and the wampum arrowhead on the rawhide cord.
He stopped. He took it from her. And stared at it. “It’s Isaac Thurston. Your great-grandfather.”
She caught her breath. “What?”
“No doubt about it. It’s Nancy’s father.”
“But . . . he died before you met Mom, didn’t he?”
“Yes. I never met the man. But your mom had a photograph of him. Exactly like this. She must have used it for reference. Wow. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
Warmth flooded into Maddie’s face; it moved to her heart, her stomach, and down to her feet, even the broken one.
“Are you sure?” Her voice squeaked as it often did when she was nervous.
“I’m sure. Your mother kept the photo. I could always see him in her. Rafe looks like him, too.” He smiled a quick, sad smile. “The picture your mother used is somewhere in our attic. I put it away with a few other things when . . . well, it was all part of what I’d planned to give to you one day. When you were a grown-up.”
She couldn’t tell whether he was lying again. She tried to convince herself it didn’t matter, that the only important truth was that she now knew her heritage. On top of that, she had a portrait of her great-grandfather—her mother’s grandfather—another man Maddie had never known.
Wasn’t that enough?
As badly as she wanted to believe that, she couldn’t pretend that not knowing her history all these years had no impact on her, that it hadn’t been a huge loss. Then grief, anguish or just plain anger took over. And a wave of silent fury came thundering into her, the way an incoming high tide crashes onto a beach in a storm.
She no longer felt sorry for him.
Snatching the portrait from his hand, she said, “I’ll keep this.” Her words were sharp and biting. “I’ll show it to Rafe. If you talk to him before I see him, do not say a word about any of this.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and patted it, the way he’d done when she was young and told him a secret. Like when she’d found a tiny goldfinch lying by the brook behind the house; she dug a small grave and buried him, then placed wildflowers on top to mark the spot. Or the time she told him Jimmy Hastings had kissed her on the playground and she was so scared she ran back into school and told her teacher she needed to use the girls’ room, where she promptly threw up. A pat on her shoulder was her father’s way of saying that everything would be all right. And it always was.
But this wasn’t about a dead goldfinch. Or a childhood kiss.
And this time, it felt condescending.
She jerked her shoulder from his hand, her indignation spilling out.
“How could you do it, Dad? If Rafe looks so much like his great-great-grandfather, how could you look at him—look athis face—and not tell us that we’re Wampanoag?”
“Half Wampanoag, for you. Only one quarter for him.”
His answer fueled her ire.
Locking the cabinet and yanking out her keys, she clung to the portrait while navigating her crutches toward the door. “Go. Back. To. Green. Hills,” she shouted, panting between each word. “And close the door on your way out. It will lock behind you.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer.
