Up on the boat, they sat under an overhang and watched as the waves crashed and the rain splattered across the deck. Their thighs were touching, and Minnie didn’t dare move, for fear that Viggo would realize it and shuffle away. She had the sense that this was his private place, a spot where he came to think. She couldn’t believe he was showing it to her.
It felt sacred.
Suddenly, Viggo unzipped his raincoat and removed a package of peanut M&Ms. It was so funny, so charming, that Minnie had to smile. She’d half-expected a can of beer or maybe some liquor in a flask. She held out her hand, and he let five M&Ms fall into her hand.
“Peanut M&Ms are the best,” he said.
Minnie agreed.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said after a soft moment of silence, her mouth filled with chocolate.
“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” Viggo said.
“I thought it was awful when we first got here,” Minnie said. “But it’s just cold, really. I’m not used to that.”
Viggo sniffed. “You’re weak.” But he didn’t say it to be unkind.
“Maybe.” Minnie smiled. “I’ve heard Nantucket summers are legendary.”
“They are,” Viggo said. “This will be the best, since I can finally drive. Before, I had to wait around for my mom to drive me everywhere, and it sucked.”
Minnie nodded, remembering her own previous summers in Miami. The difference was, she’d known all her neighbors. They’d had so much space to roam, so many mansions to traverse.
“You know, I didn’t move here because I wanted to,” Minnie offered.
“Nobody moves because they want to,” Viggo said. “Not at our age.”
Minnie nodded. It felt like he already understood. “My mom did a bad thing,” she said. “She destroyed our lives, and we had to abandon everything and come here. I can barely look at her.”
Viggo turned to look Minnie in the eye. “That’s heavy.”
Minnie nodded. She felt a sob come up her throat and swallowed it down. “When I saw her at the wake, my first thought was that she was up to something again. She’s going to destroy our lives again. I sort of panicked.”
Viggo furrowed his brow.
“I mean, I remembered what you said about Nantucket secrets,” Minnie continued. “My mom can’t resist a secret. It’slike she has to rip it apart and figure it out, and in the process, she ruins everything. She doesn’t think twice about what it might do to me.”
Viggo took another M&M into his mouth and sucked on it thoughtfully. Minnie wondered if she’d said too much or brought too much drama to his life. But finally he said, “Nantucket isn’t a place where you can ruffle feathers like that.”
Minnie felt a spasm of fear. “Neither was Miami. Like I said, my mom basically got kicked out of town.”
Viggo sighed. “It could get worse here. Worse than being kicked out of town, I mean. People in Nantucket don’t exactly play by the rules. Laws are sort of beside the point.”
Minnie couldn’t fathom what he meant. She watched as a piece of wood crashed from the waves and onto the sand, before the waves scooped it back up again. It was getting colder, the weather more violent.
“Tell your mom to stay out of things, if you can,” Viggo said. “One guy already died. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her. Or to you. You know?”
Minnie filled her lungs with air. Was Viggo messing with her? Was he trying to get in her head, to control her somehow? She’d read about guys like that. But just then, he reached out and tucked one of her curls behind her ear, an act of tenderness that made her heart ache.
How could she know who to trust?
10
Julien didn’t know what to make of Hannah. As he filled his plate from the buffet at the wake, he kept tabs on her, watching her as she watched the crowd, a glass of red wine in her right hand. She seemed focused and ill at ease but not in a way that suggested she was family to Thomas Bard. In fact, the minute Hannah told Julien that she was Thomas’s second cousin, Julien knew not to trust it. Thomas Bard didn’t have family on Nantucket. Everyone knew that.
But Julien couldn’t begin to figure out what Hannah’s angle was. He believed that she was from Florida. She certainly wasn’t from around here, and Florida could fit the bill, given her sun-kissed glow. It wasn’t common for people like Hannah to up and move to Nantucket without family connections, without knowledge of the rainy, chilly spring that awaited them. From the look of things, Hannah seemed frozen and underdressed on their walk to the wake.
At that moment, Natalie Johnson approached Hannah with a grim expression. In low tones that Julien couldn’t make out, she said something to Hannah. Hannah smiled sweetly back. Butit was clear they knew each other. This intrigued Julien all the more.
