Prologue
Amped. Pulsating. Ready for fun. The sun was warmer; the sky, clearer; the water, bluer. It was the day before Memorial Day weekend; the place was Martha’s Vineyard.
Scanning the tiny harbor of Menemsha, Maddie surveyed the cluster of pleasure boats bobbing in their moorings, the perfectly sculpted dunes sprinkled with tall, waving seagrass, theRosa rugosabushes thick with fragrant pink blossoms—all prepped for the new season, all awaiting the onrush of tourists that would start the next day.
She winced.
It was supposed to be her first full, beautiful summer on the island, though after returning nearly a year ago, she often felt as if she’d never lived anywhere else. Her Wampanoag heritage whispered that her soul had never left.
But as she sat at the café table on the deck of her brand-spanking-new bookshop, Maddie feared if she clenched the handle of her teacup any more tightly, razor-sharp porcelain splinters would slice up her palm.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled a shallow breath of sea air, wishing she knew what to do, now that her hopes and dreams and every risk that she’d taken to reboot her future had exploded in a single, vicious, gut-wrenching twist.
And she wondered if, dear God, she should tell Grandma.
Chapter 1
October
Seven months earlier
“Wake up!” Grandma Nancy bellowed, jostling Maddie from sleep.
Maddie, however, was done grading students’ papers and had earmarked a few days for taking a break to have fun. She hadn’t expected it would start so soon after dawn.
“I hear a car out on the road!” Grandma prattled as she stood in the bedroom doorway, her frail, wiry frame lightly bouncing in her ancient slippers that might have been as old as she was. Her dark eyes were wide with joy, her chestnut-shaded skin multiwrinkled yet radiant, her stubborn white hair only partly corralled by a beaded headband.
The dirt road wasn’t often used off-season; the vehicle on it most likely was a taxi, with Maddie’s son, Rafe, in the passenger seat. To have caught the first boat, he must have left Amherst in the middle of the night; he’d planned to get a cab at the ferry terminal because, as a college senior, he’d said he did not need his mother to trek down to Vineyard Haven on a Sunday morning simply to greet him.
Oh, how Maddie loved her kid.
“I bet he’s excited about Cranberry Day!” Grandma’s ninety-year-old body seemed exhilarated, as if, like Maddie and Rafe, this would be her first time taking part in the centuries-old tradition.
Maddie rubbed her eyes. “I’m excited, too, Grandma. I never expected I’d be part of a cranberry harvest.” Her voice was still filled with sleep; she hadn’t intended to sound snide.
“You have much to learn, Granddaughter.” The old woman pretended to huff as she spun around and probably smiled as she faced the front door where Rafe would enter. After all, Nancy Clieg’s great-grandson was a gift that had resurrected her gusto for life. Maddie was grateful for that.
And though she was looking forward to the festivities, she was even more thrilled to have time with her son, a luxury that had been scarce since she’d come to the island last summer and stayed to look after her grandmother.
Pulling herself from beneath the quilt, she grabbed her clothes and headed for the bathroom to perform her ablutions—a favorite old British expression for grooming that her father once said was appropriate since they lived on the second floor of a nineteenth-century Victorian mansion in Green Hills, as far west in Massachusetts as one could get before falling into Upstate New York. Maddie had been born and raised in that house; it also was where she’d returned after her divorce, toting her then three-year-old son, and where she’d become determined to reinvent herself as a single mom and career woman. So she and Rafe had lived in the house with her father, Stephen Clarke, a retired professor at the local college where Maddie wound up teaching, too, though she now did it remotely. Life in Green Hills had been quiet, predictable, safe; their home hadn’t burned down the way that Grandma’s almost had two months ago.
Maddie sighed, then quickly bundled into an alpacasweater and yesterday’s jeans. The cabin, where she and Grand ma were staying until renovations to the cottage were done, was cozy and well heated. One drawback, however, was the persistent autumn wind that often swept up from Vineyard Sound and circled around and around the compact but somewhat drafty two-bed, one-bath structure that had been built fifty years earlier and was mostly used in summers.
Bang, bang, bang. A fist hammered on the bathroom door.
“Hurry up!” Grandma barked. “They’re pulling into the driveway!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Maddie saluted because Grandma couldn’t see her.
Dabbing light blush on her coppery-burnished cheeks (a shade lighter than Grandma’s) and a touch of gloss to her lips, she heard Grandma open the front door and shout: “You’re here!” which was followed by Rafe’s jubilant laugh.
Maddie slipped into the living room as her six-foot-one, or maybe -two now, one-and-only child stepped inside and nearly swallowed her grandmother into his long arms. Though Grand ma was, indeed, spunkier since they’d reconnected last summer, sometimes she looked tinier by the day.
“Hi, honey,” Maddie said after waiting her turn, then hugging Rafe, who, though seven or eight inches taller than his mom, did not swallow her. “How was the trip?”
“Long.”
He looked even more handsome than when she’d last seen him. If nothing else, Maddie’s ex-husband, Owen, had given their son a few decent genes, though she was proudly accountable for Rafe’s shining charcoal hair (identical to hers) and his perfect, coppery skin (lighter than Maddie’s)—testaments to their Indigenous ancestors. But though she’d also like to lay claim to Rafe’s clear blue eyes (a shade of the island sky), Owen’s eyes also were blue, so she supposed it was a draw. At least Rafe had Maddie’s father’s sharp mind and her sensitivity,the latter of which was why, when Rafe had come to the Vineyard for the first time in August and learned of his true heritage, he’d wanted to stay. Thankfully, Maddie convinced him to return to college and finish his degree. With his academic focus on economics and environmental studies, she knew he’d be able to contribute a lot to the island and the Wampanoag tribe—now that he knew he was one of them.
