She paused. “How do you know about Rex?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Do you know the address?”
“No. It’s in Aquinnah.”
“Never mind. I’ll find out from Evelyn. And I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“What?”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
He disconnected.
And, once again, Maddie became a statue, dazed.
* * *
Rafe and his grandfather arrived at the cabin at the same time. Stephen explained that he’d never left the island, that he couldn’t leave with her there. Rafe was carrying her cross-body bag and her laptop; he wheeled her suitcase into the bedroom.
“You were at Evelyn’s?” Maddie asked her father.
He nodded and sat next to the bed. “I was. At first I considered staying in the storage unit at the airport—I remembered that the code to get into the unit was your mother’s birthday. But I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep well enough on the seat in the pickup. In fact, that’s where I was, at the restaurant in the airport when you phoned—I’d hitched a ride there. Hitchhiking used to be popular on the Vineyard. And I wanted to see Hannah’s paintings again.”
Her heart pinged a little. “How did you end up at Evelyn’s?”
“I had to go somewhere. And she has a very nice guest room. But you already know that.”
She never dreamed that her proper, stoic father could be so exasperating.
“Did she tell you what’s been going on?”
“She only suggested that I wait for you to call. That you’d know when it was time to leave, and that chances were, you’d call. Or you’d have Rafe call.”
“Well, it isn’t time yet. But before I explain, I need you to brace yourself. You, too, Rafe.”
Her son looked bewildered; he sat on the edge of the bed while his grandfather took the only chair in the room.
“So . . . ?” Rafe asked.
She smiled. “Okay. I’ll start with the best part. My grandmother is still alive.”
As evidence of the curiosities of genetics, Rafe and her father suddenly wore the same expression: their mouths fell slightly open, a small vertical line appeared between their brows, and their foreheads scrunched in a way that made them look as if they wanted to say, “Huh?”
“You’re joking,” Rafe said.
“Madelyn,” her father interrupted, in his best professorial tone, “we need more information.”
She laughed.Laughed?She had no idea where the humor came from, other than she finally realized that the whole situation was, and had been, absurd.
“So, Evelyn didn’t tell you.”
“No. She only said you’d be fine. Eventually.”
Maddie laughed again. “Well . . . once I found out that my grandmother didn’t die when I was ten”—she was careful to try and say that without accusation—“I never questioned that she’d recently passed. Why would I? At almost ninety, it wasn’t surprising. Well, it turns out that because her ninetieth birthday was approaching, and she feared she’d die soon, she wanted to see me. She no longer drives, so she and Evelyn devised a plan to get me to come here. Which, of course, worked. Grandma Nancy had lost both her daughter and her granddaughter; the least I could do was show up and fulfill her last wishes to scatter her ashes in the ‘bight’ at sunset.”
Rafe looked at his grandfather. “The bight is where the water from Vineyard Sound follows the curve from Lobsterville Beach to Menemsha Basin. Most of the land there belongs to the Wampanoags.” He must have learned that from Joe.
Maddie nodded and continued. “Obviously, my grandmother had a few more helpers to pull this off, but apparently, none of them did it maliciously.”Or for profit, she could add but didn’t want to put that idea into their heads.
