She swallowed. “I don’t know how to start planning a small memorial service for my grandmother. What to do. Who to invite. I’m hoping that Brandon gets the death certificate this week, so we can have the service while my son’s here.” She didn’t realize until then that having Rafe there for moral support would be wonderful. “I know you’re busy planning the wedding, but . . .”
“I appreciate you asking, dear. And though I’d be honored to help you, I have a better suggestion.”
Maddie waited.
“Ask someone else,” Evelyn continued. “Someone who knows much more about how you should do this, about the way your grandmother would want it.” She paused again, giving Maddie time to digest what she’d said.
“Joe?” Maddie asked.
“Exactly. Joe, after all, was her half brother. And he knows how to follow Wampanoag traditions. I think Nancy would have liked that.”
Maddie lowered her voice. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I’m embarrassed that I didn’t think of him first.”
“This is all new to you, dear.” Then Evelyn said that when she spoke with Brandon in the evening, she’d ask him to rattle whomever he needed to rattle to get the certificate. And she asked Maddie to keep her posted if Joe needed her help, because she’d love to be given a chore or two, to help make the memorial service special.
Then they said goodbye. And Maddie called Joe.
* * *
“I’ll be honored to help,” Joe said, and added that he could stop by the cottage the next afternoon so they could get started.
Tomorrow?Maddie wasn’t sure how to respond.
“How about after four?” she asked quickly. “I have a lunch thing earlier.” A lunch thing? Well, that sounded childish.
“Let’s make it four thirty,” he said, and thanked her for thinking of him.
He was helpful. And kind.
They rang off.
Then Maddie called Lisa but got voice mail. So she left a message, asking if Lisa could pick her up something for dinner; a fish sandwich from the Galley would be fine. Then she added, “And I’d love a vanilla frappe, too.”
After all, like Joe, Lisa was helpful. And kind.
With those calls out of the way, Maddie stared out the window at the sky and dunes, her thoughts reverting to Evelyn’s comment about her intuition, that her ancestors would tell her to listen to it.
Little did Evelyn know, Maddie’s intuition had been gnawing at her since she’d sensed that her grandmother’s fatal fall might not have been accidental. And though everyone was, indeed, helpful and kind, she still couldn’t stop wondering if they were merely hiding something from her. Like what about her feeling that she was being watched?
If her ancestors would tell her to listen, they might also suggest that she act on her suspicion. So she decided to call Brandon. To be honest with him. To ask him, point-blank, if she might be right. She hoped he would laugh and say she couldn’t be more wrong, that everyone there was just as they seemed, and everyone had cared about Nancy.
Brandon, however, was in Boston and didn’t pick up.
She did not leave a message.
With a disheartened sigh, she knew she had one more call to make. But in order to do that, she’d feel better if she were dressed. And acting like a professional.
* * *
“Professor Jarvis, please,” Maddie said once she was fully dressed and back at the kitchen table, a glass of iced tea in front of her. She also had a spiral-bound notebook, open to a blank page, and she was holding a pen—all out of habit.
“This is Madelyn Clarke,” she added.
The receptionist in the faculty department must be new; she obviously did not recognize Maddie’s voice or her name.
While waiting to be connected, Maddie doodled in the notebook. Flowers had always been a favorite doodle; she loved swirling loops into petals, creating a round blossom, then putting a dime-sized dot in the center and adding a stem and two leaves, only two, never three or four. It was the same doodle she’d done throughout her school years, as both student and teacher. But now, as she glanced at the finished picture, she froze. Her eyes drifted from her notebook up to the mantel and the pottery bowl. It was the same flower. For her whole life, Maddie had unknowingly mimicked the flower Evelyn had taught her how to draw.
“Madelyn? Hello?”
