Ariel chanced a glance at Daddy, who caught her eye then turned from her.
“I didn’t think about it until now, but y’all sure wouldn’t have fit in this cart with Doreen along.” Mama turned to the bench laden with the belongings Ariel and Aunt Dahlia had carried off the plane, and then she shifted her gaze to the cart. “Not sure you will anyway. We wanted to drive you to the Grand, but I forgot you don’t travel light.”
“This is the stuff we didn’t want out of our sight.” Aunt Dahlia turned toward the pile of guitars, bags, and bears. “I should have asked Harry to come back for us.”
Dani gazed down the road toward town. “Better do something fast, Miss Dahlia, or you’ll have to wait. The island’s packed with visitors.”
Ariel stuck her hand in her dress pocket, where she’d slid the boy’s handmade business card. “I’ll text him.”
She’d no more than sent the message when the driver-boy replied, promising to return within minutes.
Mama’s phone pinged then too. She read it then looked up at Daddy, her brows raised in her old signal that said she needed—or wanted—to go home. “We’d better head back. Sam refused to do his chores again, so I’ll have to do them after supper.”
What? “Mama, he’s eight years old. You never let me get away with skipping chores at that age, so why Sam?”
Mama flitted her hand at her as she walked toward the cart, like the Tennessee State Fairest of the Fair queen she’d been as a teen. “Only until things get better.”
“They’re gonna ruin that child if they’re not careful.” Aunt Dahlia watched them take off down the road, shaking her head.
Dani nodded. “Sam started acting that way as soon as they all moved home to the farm from Port Joseph.”
Home. Then Ariel remembered. “Dani, your ride home just left.”
She pulled out her phone. “Liam will pick me up.”
Ariel slipped her arm through her cousin’s. “No, come with us. We hardly got to visit at your wedding.”
“I was disappointed that you couldn’t spend the night. But you had a concert to play.” She grinned. “World traveler that you are.”
“Mostly here in the States. Please go with us. If you get out at Island House, you won’t have far to walk home.”
“Of course she’ll ride with us.” Aunt Dahlia took Dani’s other arm as if forming a chorus line.
Harry and Mr. Campbell arrived then in a white carriage, lilac-colored streamers decorating the wheels. They’d changed their rough costumes for black pants and red coats and looked the part for driving a fairy-tale carriage.
The women piled in, Ariel carrying her own guitar as always. The change of pace from private jet to horse and carriage felt good as they rolled through the state park separating the airport from the town and the town from Sullivan Pumpkin Farm.
The weak evening sun shone down on Ariel, warming both her face and her memory, the once-far-away treetops now seeming closer to the ground, less impressive than she remembered as a child. They should have looked taller with thepassing years. Last time she took this road, she hadn’t noticed, since Dani’s wedding chatter had consumed Ariel. Today, she couldn’t look away.
If only a sense of home would wash over her and ground her in this park, where Ethan and Charlotte had taught her to ride. The road she’d walked for a box of Saturday fudge. The spot nearest the home where she’d taken her first breath. Instead, she felt only detachment from this island. Nashville had become her true home.
In a way, Ariel wished it wasn’t so.
They reached the spot where the landscape changed, the flat high ground now replaced with a steep drop to sea level—make that lake level—in a residential section of town. The sounds of a bicycle whizzing by, a few islanders visiting over a fence, and the calming staccato of the horse’s hoofbeats all melded into a sense of peacefulness she’d never known in Nashville. Not even at her and Aunt Dahlia’s horse farm thirty miles south.
Minutes later, at the bottom of the hill, the motorless streets came alive. The quiet kind of alive Ariel had never felt or heard in another town.
The moment they turned onto the street leading to Island House Inn, the atmosphere changed, with people waving and calling to them from carriages, bicycles, and sidewalks.
“It feels as if we turned that corner and stepped back in time.” Aunt Dahlia smiled at a couple coasting down the hill on bikes, each pulling a little trailer with a small child inside.
“About a hundred years.” Ariel took in the heart of the island, with its fudge shops and souvenir stores and coffee shop. “I’d forgotten how quiet Main Street is, with no motors revving.”
A sudden blast from a ferry’s horn only added to the charm.
“What does it feel like to see your face on banners hanging from every light post in town?” Dani pointed at a picture of Arieland Aunt Dahlia laughing together at their recent Charleston concert.
Ariel glanced in the direction her cousin pointed. Her favorite picture of herself and her aunt—a candid taken while they enjoyed a joke she’d since forgotten—their eyes crinkled, mouths wide open. As always, this picture made Ariel smile.
