What was going on?
And why with her?
Shaking her head, Maddie groaned. “Stop it, stop it, stop it.” She quickly stood up, her phone sliding to the floor. “Nothingis wrong!”
The notes had been a kid’s prank.
The unknown call was a mistake.
With both hands planted on her hips, she moved into thekitchen and poured a glass of wine, which she carried to the big windows, and looked out toward the harbor where the sun was beginning to set. Soon she’d hear from Rafe, a call or a text, saying he’d made it back to Amherst in one piece.
After that, she’d refocus on the bookshop and what she’d learned that afternoon, all while telling herself that Rex would be home in a few days, and wouldn’t be toting Annie on his arm.
She took a short gulp; the wine somersaulted down her esophagus into her stomach, where it landed like a smoldering ember from the fireplace.
“Yuck!” She bolted back to the kitchen and dumped the remaining contents in her glass down the sink, hoping the seesaw of emotions—an up, a down, an up, a down—wasn’t due to a couple of silly notes and a single breathing call. Maybe it was part of menopause. Which, weird as it seemed, was preferable to something sinister.
So maybe Maddie didn’t need to worry that someone was out to get her. Maybe what she needed was a gynecologist. If there was one coincidence in her life, it might be that Rex had taken Taylor’s place and gone to California, because he wouldn’t have been any help with her current dilemma. But maybe his stay-at-home sister would.
“Taylor?” Maddie asked when the woman answered the phone. “It’s Maddie. I hope I’m not bothering you.” In truth, she didn’t care if she was.
“You need something?” the husky female voice replied.
Rex once admitted that his sister, who had been a curious, fun kid, had turned into a tough adult, and he had no idea how Kevin had pulled her down off her high horse and got her to marry him. Or why he had. Though Maddie had only been in Taylor’s company a few times, she knew that chitchat wasn’t one of her strong suits.
“Actually, yes, I do need something,” Maddie asked hernow. “It’s time I got hooked into the medical services here. Can you recommend a good primary care, a dentist, and maybe a gynecologist?” She figured she might as well go for a trifecta.
“Dr. Gagnon for a primary; Dr. Naylor for a dentist. I have no idea about a gynecologist. I had a hysterectomy when I was thirty. And that was up in Boston, not here.”
Maddie scribbled the names Taylor gave her, but stopped, pen in air, after the wordhysterectomy. She didn’t know if she should say she was sorry or if Taylor would rebuke her for trying to be kind.
She decided it would be safest to say, “Oh. Well, thanks for these. And how about a good hairdresser?”
“Patti in West Tisbury. I’ll text you her number.”
“Thanks.”
“Anything else?”
“Only to say we missed you at the party the other night. It was a good time.”
No response.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Good. And thanks again.”
Taylor hung up without saying good-bye.
Maddie slipped her phone into her pocket and wondered which of the parents Taylor took after. Definitely it wasn’t the one that Rex did, because the siblings’ personalities were polar opposites—the Arctic and Antarctica of Chappaquiddick.
Returning to her laptop, Maddie googledgynecologists, Martha’s Vineyard: four names popped up. Rather than picking one based on the number of stars after their names, she jotted them down. Maybe she should ask Grandma about someone from the tribe. The Wampanoags had lived on the island over ten thousand years; maybe the methods of the tribal women would be more to Maddie’s liking—more natural, with herbal remedies instead of prescriptions.
Glancing at the clock, she noticed it was nearly five, long past sunset. She decided to wake up her grandmother, or the woman would not sleep well later. But first, Maddie put the kettle on again so they could have tea together.
Surveying the containers of Grandma’s herbs, she selected lavender; when the water was ready, she poured two mugs. While the herbs steeped, their soft aroma filtering through the kitchen, Maddie smiled, thinking that the scent could gently waft throughout the bookshop. With that happy thought, she picked up both mugs and began to carry them down the hall toward Grandma’s bedroom.
