Rex shot Maddie a glance.
Then Nancy added, “Oh, never mind. I’m fine. And it’s too hard to fuss with that now that I only have one arm that works.”
If Maddie suggested she’d help her, it would spoil the rest of the plan. Besides, in her pocket was a small, tissue-wrapped package that she needed to deliver.
Rex pulled into the parking area, and Maddie got out and made her way to the whitewashed building that typically had a long line on a summer day. But with dusk imminent, most people were at the beach. Except Lisa. Who was waiting inside.
“Got it?” Maddie asked as she hobbled in.
“Got it,” Lisa replied. She opened a bag that Rex had dropped off at her house the day before. “And it doesn’t smell like smoke.”
Maddie wouldn’t have cared if it did.
Quickly removing her denim skirt, she stepped into the beige one with the hand-beaded diamond pattern around the hemline. Then she bent her head, and Lisa slipped the three strands of purple-and-white wampum around her neck. Maddie glanced in the mirror, liking the way the necklaces looked against her white top. The way they’d looked for her picnic with Rex.
“Did you bring the other thing?” Lisa asked.
Maddie tucked the small package into Lisa’s hand. She’d retrieved it from one of the metal boxes the night before.
“You know what to do with it, right?”
“Absolutely,” Lisa said. “I’ll see you on the beach. Give me a head start, okay? I want to see the look on Nancy’s face when she realizes the crowd is there for her.” Then she snuck out the side door and darted out of sight.
Maddie took another look at her reflection and was reminded how much the outfit suited her. In so many ways.
* * *
“You’re wearing my skirt,” Grandma Nancy said when Maddie returned to the pickup and Rex drove toward the water.
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Nancy grinned but didn’t ask if Maddie had changed in the ladies’ room—perhaps she thought she hadn’t noticed it when they’d still been at the cabin. She was, after all, almost ninety. And deserved to forget a thing or two.
In a minute, Rex parked again; they got out and stepped onto the pavement. Which was when the crowd came into view.
“Oh,” Nancy sighed, “there are too damn many people here. We should go back.”
“Not a chance,” Rex said. He looped his strong arm around her good one, and the big man—accompanied by an old woman with one arm in a sling and her granddaughter with one leg in a cast and walking with crutches—approached the crowd.
As they drew closer, Nancy slowed.
“Oh, look,” she said. “Is that Lisa and Mickey? And their kids?”
“Huh,” Rex said. “What a coincidence.”
“Are they with what’s her name? That real estate girl?”
“CiCi,” Maddie said, “CiCi Cochran.”
“Come on,” Rex said, gently tugging her arm. “Let’s see who else is here, even though they, too, have probably seen the sunset nearly every damn day of their lives.”
And then the others stood up from their beach towels and chairs, while more slipped from their hiding places between clusters of tall beach grass. Most of them had known Nancy for years: Vineyard artisans who, like Nancy, sold their wares at the island fairs; neighbors—even Jeff Fuller, who it turned out was, indeed, the grandson of the long-ago ice cream man; and a bevy of islanders who Evelyn said had learned a thing or two from Nancy—from basket making to herbal remedies, from foraging wild berries to preparing recipes from the crops they grew.
Best of all, a large contingent of Wampanoags was there; some wore colorful, cultural attire, a culmination of traditions from the thousands of years the tribe had been on Martha’s Vineyard.
As the group moved closer, a few tribal members started drumming, and everyone cheered:
“Nancy! Nancy!”
