Then Grandma’s voice dropped. “I’ve been afraid you would find out. I’ve been afraid I’d lose the both of you, now that you’re together.”
Maddie glanced at Rex then back to Grandma. “That won’t happen, Grandma,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
After a while, Rex made Maddie and him sandwiches, which they ate quietly, drained of energy and emotion. Rex mentioned that his neck was hurting; Maddie didn’t want him to travel back to Chappy, especially in pain. So she asked him to stay the night.
As they went to bed, Maddie turned off the nightstand lamp and pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Rex?” she whispered in the darkness.
“Yes?”
“I love you very much. And what’s more, I’m ready now.”
He didn’t need to ask her to elaborate.
At three o’clock the next morning, nestled against the man she loved, Maddie woke up with a cramp. She remembered the feeling. She was in labor.
Maddie knocked on my bedroom door a few minutes ago.
“Grandma?” she whispered. “We’re going to the hospital. I think the baby’s coming.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Then she asked if I wanted to go with them.
I thought about it for half a minute, then declined. I’d have plenty of time to see the baby. This time was for them.
But it was nice to know that, in spite of everything, they still love me. And that they forgave me.
Come to think of it, forgiveness might be one of the most important things in life. I wish I’d learned that sooner.
Epilogue
Liliana Fawn Clarke-Winsted was born at four o’clock Friday afternoon. Maddie and Rex named her Liliana, because they both liked the name, and Fawn—in honor of Maddie’s great-grandmother, Spotted Fawn—so their daughter would carry a piece of her Wampanoag heritage with her forever. Mostly, they’d probably call her Lily.
Grandma wasted no time scampering down the hill and hanging a sign on the bookshop door: GRAND OPENING POSTPONED DUE TO BIRTH IN THE FAMILY.
Weighing five pounds, Lily was healthy for a baby who was seven weeks premature, and she was beautiful.
Grandma said she had her Hannah’s perfectly shaped nose and mouth.
Stephen said she had Maddie’s pretty eyes.
Taylor said she had Rex’s mischievous smile and looked a little bit like him, too, except that Lily had beautiful, coppery-burnished skin, and, more important, she had hair.
At one point, when Maddie was alone with Taylor, Taylor thanked her for her forgiveness. She also admitted that her life had been scarred from bearing the guilt that her father killed a woman—a secret she’d never told anyone, not herbrother, not her mother. She was not even sure that her father remembered that she knew—the night he told her, Taylor was only ten, and he was quite drunk as he often was in those days; she found him in the backyard, behind the shed, bawling his eyes out like he was a kid. That’s when he blubbered out the hideous story, and young Taylor withdrew into ahush, hushworld.
She also told Maddie that the day she’d gone to the cottage to see her, she’d planned to tell her that she’d sent the notes because she’d been afraid that, with Maddie becoming an island presence, the story would somehow come out, and people would wind up being hurt after all, and angry over all the lies they’d believed.
Once the word spread from up-island to down, questions arose as to whether Grandma, Taylor, and, of course, Bud should be arrested for their parts in the cover-up. But with Grandma nearly ninety-one, and Taylor having been so young when Stan told her the truth, Chief Lawrence suggested that, after forty years, there had been enough suffering and that few islanders, if any, would be inclined to want to see Grandma or Taylor incarcerated. Especially when Taylor admitted she’d become an EMT so she could help islanders in trouble—a small way that she hoped would help make up for what her father had done.
As for Bud, his son revealed that his father was dying. “Stage four melanoma,” Dave said, and handed over the medical records that indicated he had only a few months to live. Bud said he told Maddie because he wanted a clear conscience before he died, and it seemed like the time to do it. Chief Lawrence, however, still needed to follow protocol and arrest him. It went without saying that Bud would most likely be released on bail, and probably be dead before his trial.
As for Maddie, she’d known for years that life didn’t always go the way you wanted. It was, however, hard to acceptthat Liliana’s arrival time prevented Maddie from going to Rafe’s graduation. But, baby or not, Grandma and Joe made the trip off-island, to America.
Unknown to Maddie, Rex had arranged for Maddie to stay at the hospital through Sunday—where the internet was always dependable, unlike up-island. As graduation began, Owen—of all people—FaceTimed Maddie so she did not miss a moment of the Amherst College ceremonies.Maybe, she thought as she watched Rafe accept his summa cum laude diploma—his Wampanoag ancestor’s wampum arrowhead proudly around his neck—maybe Owen isn’t all bad, after all.
Then she warned herself to stop being a Pollyanna, that she had a little girl to raise now in a very different world from the one that even Rafe had been born into.
