In a very strange way, things were starting to make sense. The split between her father and grandmother. The fact that Maddie hadn’t been told that she was Wampanoag. The reality that her father had tried to do all he could to shield his little girl from the horrible tragedy.
Her grandmother blamed herself for what had happened. Her father probably blamed her, too.
After a bit more conversation, Maddie asked if Evelyn had any more surprises.
“I think this is enough for now, don’t you?” the woman replied.
Yes, Maddie had heard all she needed to hear, all she could digest.
After they hung up, she hobbled back to Rex’s guest room and crawled between the covers, not caring that tomorrow she’d be a wrinkled mess. If she had a pain pill, it might help her sleep. But the pills were in her purse, which was in the living room. Too far to have to walk again.
Turning onto her side, too sad now to cry, Maddie wished she’d never received Brandon’s letter, wished she’d never known what happened to her mother, wished her grandmother had simply bequeathed everything to the tribe.
More than anything, Maddie finally understood why her father hadn’t wanted to come back to the island. Why he’d protected her. And now, she wanted to go home to Green Hills, to hug her father and not let him go.
But as Rex knocked on the guest room door, she was reminded that life often just sucked, and she could either shove the awful things into those deep recesses of her mind or buck up and get on with it.
This time, she chose to buck up and resolve. “Come in.”
The door opened.
“Rafe went back to the cottage to try to get your things. Apparently, the bedrooms aren’t damaged, so your clothes and whatever is in his backpack should be okay. And your laptop.”
She briefly closed her eyes. “Great. Thanks.”
“Still no hint as to what caused the fire.”
“It’s okay,” she said quietly, pulling herself to a sitting position, arranging the pillow behind her.
He pulled up the chair and sat.
“Maddie,” he said, “I’m so sorry about everything. This has gotten way out of hand.”
“What has?”
Was he going to say that she should leave, that he didn’t want her to get the wrong impression of how much time he wanted to spend with her?
He rubbed his bald head as if killing time.
“Right from the start,” he finally said, “I didn’t like it . . . I knew it was a mistake . . .” He averted his eyes.
Maddie recognized his hesitation as coming from someone unaccustomed to lying. She often saw it in her students, when they tried to conjure a reason why their papers were late, or why they hadn’t read the assignment.
Then Rex stood up and went to the bureau. He opened one of the bottom drawers. He took out what looked like an artist’s canvas and handed it to her.
She froze. Again. Yes, it was a painting. Of a beach. A sunset. And two silhouettes—a woman and a child—walking along the shoreline. It was the painting from the mantel in the cottage. Or one that looked an awful lot like it.
Maddie started to tremble. She tried to reassure herself that her mother often painted the sunsets, some replicas of others. Her father once said she sold them at island fairs. Studying the painting now, every shade of orange, every gentle wave, every ripple of soft sand, Maddie ran her finger across the artist’s signature:Hannah Clieg. Then she turned the canvas over. There was an inscription: “My mother, Nancy, and my daughter, Maddie. Menemsha Beach. 1983.” She hadn’t looked at the back of the painting over the mantel until now.
Her stomach flip-flopped. She looked back at Rex, who still stood at the dresser.
He leaned down, and removed something else from the drawer. Something small. And round.
She set down the painting as he handed her the object. But before she took it from him, she knew it was the pottery bowl. The one with a daisy painted by what looked like a child’s small hand. Inside the bowl, the quahog shell quietly rested.
Which was when Maddie knew the rest of the story.
* * *
