“Great!” she said. “Never better!” After all, Maddie always found it easier to tackle any problem once she had a plan.
Splashing water on her face, and then running her fingers through her hair, it occurred to her that what she’d thought were cramps were gone now. Which was good. Because she now had a bookshop to think about … and a party to organize. And maybe menopause wouldn’t turn out to be so bad.
Chapter 10
“No,” Grandma Nancy declared later that day after Maddie returned to the cottage and broached the subject of a party. The woman was sitting at the new table, a cup of tea and a cookie set in front of her, her head bent as she perused a print edition of theMV Times. She made no reference to her hissy fit the day before. “I’ve never much cared for Taylor Winsted. I don’t want her in my home.”
Joe and Rafe had been and gone from scalloping and were out somewhere in search of lunch. So they weren’t there to plead Maddie’s case.
“But you like Rex, don’t you?” Maddie already knew that Grandma had adored him since he’d been a kid.
“Rex’s sister isn’t one whit like him.” With that, she set down the paper, deserted her refreshments, and went into the living room. After dropping onto the sofa, she clicked on the remote, neither acknowledging the new 55-inch plasma Maddie had bought, nor admitting that Rafe had showed her how to turn it on—because surely he had.
Obviously, the discussion was over, so Maddie retreated down the hall. As she reached Grandma’s old bedroom, she peeked in and saw suitcases open on Grandma’s old bed thatJoe and Rafe must have dragged out of somewhere and returned to its rightful place. All of which confirmed that the woman had refused to claim the lovely en suite. So, praying for patience, Maddie tromped off to the lavish new room that apparently was now hers.
Dropping onto the hydrangea-covered rocker, Maddie wondered if Taylor also would prefer not to be in Grandma’s house. Hadn’t Joe once said Nancy could be cantankerous? Maddie hadn’t remembered her that way, but, yes, sometimes she was snarly now. Maybe she’d changed after Hannah was killed. Surely such heartache could do that to a person.
As Maddie sat, quietly rocking, her eyes were drawn to a corner of the room where Joe had stacked what he’d called the “boxes of junk that were stashed in Orson.” Maddie had hoped Grandma would go through them—especially the one that held memories of Hannah that Maddie had loved browsing through when she’d been a little girl. In truth, she, too, hadn’t been ready to look again.
Until now.
Slowly standing up, Maddie inched toward the cartons; the one with her mother’s things was on top, as if Joe had set it there on purpose. She reached down and lifted it; it didn’t weigh much, it never had. “It’s nice to keep old things,” Hannah once told Maddie. “But it’s more important to hold your memories in your heart.”
It was one of those comments that came as a surprise when Maddie remembered it.
Moving the box onto the bed, she ran a thumbnail through the packing tape that was yellowed and crinkled, as if Grandma had sealed the box right after the accident and did not open it again. Perhaps she’d thought it was better to hold her memories of Hannah in her heart, too.
Peering inside, Maddie started by lifting out old ticket stubs, a pressed flower, a pink ribbon. Then she found thehigh school yearbook. Maddie remembered how she’d loved looking through it because her mother’s drawings appeared on many pages. Opening the book now, she thumbed through it, smiling at Hannah’s recreations of island venues: the Flying Horses Carousel, the Capawok movie theater, the redbrick lighthouse up-island at the cliffs that had since been moved back from what had become a ledge due to erosion. And then, there was her mother’s graduation picture, her high cheekbones, her gleaming dark eyes, her shining black hair. Island people often told Maddie how much she resembled Hannah, but Maddie knew that her mother was more beautiful.
Her eyes now damp, she closed the book and set it aside.
Next were handmade tribal ceremonial clothes: a beaded, fringed skirt, similar to Grandma’s; two colorful shawls, neatly folded; traditional deer hide moccasins; and a small box. She lifted the lid: inside were a pair of oval drop earrings, each with a polished purple-and-white piece of wampum framed in silver. They were the earrings her mother wore every day in the summer when they were visiting Grandma.
Without wavering, Maddie removed her pearl stud earrings she’d bought to celebrate receiving her PhD. Then she put on the wampum ones. Like her newfound heritage, she would honor the earrings and wear them proudly.
She thought she’d reached the bottom of the box when she noticed a large piece of cardboard on the bottom that seemed to be protecting another layer. She took it out, unveiling two rectangular parcels—each wrapped in tissue paper—that had rested beneath. Carefully, she unwrapped one: Inside was a double picture frame, each side holding an eight-by-ten-inch photo. On the left was a black-and-white image of a young woman holding a baby swaddled in a fringed blanket. On the right was a color photo, a different young woman also holding a baby. Maddie deduced that the image on the leftwas her grandmother holding newborn Hannah. And that the one on the right was Hannah—holding her. Unlike the similar photo, in this one, Hannah’s face was visible.
Maddie squeezed her eyes closed, tears welling again. She clasped the open frame to her chest. After a few minutes, Maddie dried her eyes and carried the frame to the nightstand where she stood it, open, on top. She hoped Grandma wouldn’t mind.
Returning to the box, she sat and opened the other tissue-wrapped rectangle. It, too, was a photo, but only one. It was in color, and showed a young man in a suit, standing tall, next to a young woman in a simple white dress; she was holding a pretty nosegay of lily of the valley. It wasn’t hard to tell that her skin was a couple of shades darker than the man’s. On either side of them was a pedestal, each holding a floral bouquet that looked freshly picked. The backdrop was a plain wall; an American flag stood on one side and the Massachusetts flag was on the other. Maddie undid the clips that held the backing of the frame in place. And then she saw an inscription. Not that she needed to read it; she had, after all, recognized the couple.
Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Clarke, someone—her mother?—had penned. Beneath that:September 9, 1978. Our wedding day. Nearly two years before Maddie was born.
The fact that Stephen and Hannah were not flanked by bridesmaids and ushers, not even a best man or maid of honor, implied that the wedding was simple; the presence of the flags indicated they’d had a civil ceremony, perhaps at a town hall. A civil ceremony, not a Wampanoag one, not a Congregational one, which she might have expected because her father once said he’d attended Sunday school in an old, white-steepled church when he was a boy.
Then she wondered if the reason behind the sparse settingwas the difference in the color of her parents’ skin. She was still considering that when she sensed someone standing in the doorway.
“Have the party if you want, Madelyn,” Grandma said, her eyes fixed on the box parked on the bed. “And, so you know, I changed my mind about the cottage because it does look pretty. Until it’s all yours, I’m happy to live here the way you want it. As long as you sleep in this bedroom and let me sleep in mine. Lucky for me, Joe kept my bed at his house, cuz he figured I might want it back.”
Maddie stood up. “Oh, Grandma …”
The old woman gazed around the room and shook her head. “No buts. This room will be your new hobbit house, grown up now, like you.” She turned away and garnered a small chuckle. “And you have lots of space in there for Rex. Sooner or later, back and forth trips to Edgartown will get tiring for you both.”
By the time Rafe picked up Maddie’s father on the weekend, Maddie, Grandma, and Rafe were well-acclimated to the cottage. Grandma even had conceded that the upgrades to the kitchen and hall bathroom were pretty “handy.” She was happy that Joe brought her old mattress back so she could squeak again. She was not, however, crazy about the bigger windows—“It’ll be hard to walk around my own house in the buff,” to which Rafe replied, “Go for it, Grandma. Maybe you’ll teach the summer people a thing or two.” “Don’t get your hopes up,” Grandma replied, swatting his arm. They seemed to enjoy teasing each other. And all in all, the readjustment was at last going smoothly.
On Christmas Eve, Joe joined them; he grabbed two blankets and a pillow and called dibs on the floor in front of the warm, radiant fire, not wanting to boot Rafe off the couchwhere he’d been sleeping since Stephen arrived and Rafe relinquished the third bedroom to him.
“Family shuffles show we care about each other,” Grandma proclaimed, as if the message was a traditional tribal mantra.
