“It would, but, sorry to say, all of us wouldn’t fit. Especially because I’m now a blimp.”
“Good point. And I really only called to make sure you’re still set for Sunday.”
“You bet I am. I’ll close the shop early on Saturday, and we have reservations on the six-fifteen, so we should be in Amherst by ten o’clock. At least we shouldn’t have to deal with much traffic at that time of night.”
“But you’ll miss the sunset crowd at the beach,” he said.
“We’ll have lots of sunsets ahead … but only one Amherst College, summa cum laude graduation.”
He laughed, because Rafe wasn’t one to brag.
“Not to change the subject, but I forgot to tell you that our yearbooks arrived. Or, as we’ve been saying around here, ‘theOliohath landed.’”
When Owen first showed Maddie his Amherst yearbook from 2002, the year he’d graduated, he explained that the wordoliowas from the seventeenth-century word that meant “a variety of things.” He added that his fellow students said the yearbook was more like a hodgepodge than a variety, designed so they could look back at a blast of memories instead of stuffy formal portraits shot in a studio.
The wordyearbooksparked another thought. As far as Maddie knew, her mother’s was intact, along with other mementoes Hannah had treasured and Grandma had boxed up. Maddie remembered that it had been among the cartons in Grandma’s airport storage unit and was in Maddie’s bedroom now. Unless someone had sneaked into the cottage, found it, clipped out Hannah’s photo, and then trashed the book.
The thought chilled her.
“Mom?” Rafe said. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes. Sorry. I was distracted by a sheep trying to cross the road.” It wasn’t a total lie; a sheep was peering at her from a pasture, as if searching for a break in traffic. It was, however, surrounded by a fence and a gate that looked like it was locked.
“I’m not going to laugh,” Rafe said. “Instead, I’ll say good-bye so you can pay attention.”
“Good idea.” She told him she loved him and that she’d see him Sunday.
It then took every ounce of patience she had bottled up inside her not to stomp on the gas pedal. Fortunately (or not) the swell of summer traffic had begun; more vehicles were on the road now than in January, some of which might be police cars in speed traps. More important, bearing her baby in mind, she did not put Orson to the test.
When she finally reached the little lot behind the cottage, she grabbed the bags of scones, hurried down the slope, and in the back door. Carefully setting the bags on the counter, she took a deep breath, then quickly went into her bedroom, found the carton of her mother’s memories, and riffled through them until …
She found it:Martha’s Vineyard High School Class of 1972.
She flipped through the pages until she reached the senior photos: A, B, C. And there was Hannah Clieg, so young and pretty, her black hair thick and shining, her dark eyes sparkling, her whole face smiling, her image at eighteen forever captured in a formal studio photo that was anything but stuffy. Best of all, it was perfectly intact.
But as Maddie started to close the book, a photo on the page below her mother’s caught her eye: a blond girl with high cheekbones. She wore a tailored blouse and a single strand of pearls. Under the photo was the name: Evelyn Davis.Evelyn, as in Brandon’s mother; as in her mother’s childhood friend. Who, no doubt, had the same yearbook.
She forced herself to eat Grandma’s herb-roasted chicken, not because she didn’t like it—typically, it was delicious—but because Maddie had no appetite. However, the baby probably did. So she ate. At least with Grandma chattering about the upcoming trip to graduation, Maddie didn’t have to talk. Or try to camouflage the impact of having seen her mother’s photo. She only needed to stop thinking about it and erase the possibility now in her mind that, for some unknown reason, Evelyn might have sent the notes.
Dinner took forever to finish.
“When one cooks, the other cleans,” was a routine Maddie had learned while living with her father. As she stood at the sink, looking out at dusk, she supposed if she and Rex ever wound up living together, she’d have to resign to a permanentrole of washing, rinsing, drying, because she’d never dare cook for him.
Rex.
Why hadn’t she shown him the notes? Was she honestly still trying to protect him from getting upset while he was recuperating? But he was doing so much better. In fact, if he could find a way around his sister, he’d surely wrap up in a blanket and hide in Orson’s bed in order to be at Rafe’s graduation.
After drying the roasting pan, Maddie said sweet dreams to Grandma, who was toddling off to bed, and waited until she heard the bedroom door close. Then she dug the notes—and her phone—out of her purse, sat on the couch, and called Rex.
When he answered, she simply said, “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, good,” he said. “I love it when someone other than me thinks they’ve done something they have to apologize for.” He always had a way of calming her, of restoring whatever peace she might have rattled. “So, what brought this on?”
“My mother’s picture.”
“Okay. Can you begin at the beginning?”
She pulled out all the notes. “The notes. I got another one, which makes five. They’re all written in block letters using a felt-tip marker.” She read them to him, in the order in which she had received them. She told him when each one had arrived and under which rock. The only time he let out a sigh of frustration was when she added that the first one was left at his cabin, and the second at Grandma’s cottage on the day he left for California. “The others came to the cottage, too.”
