But something about the strange man in the house was distracting her mother, Minnie realized. The air was different, and there was a franticness to Hannah’s movements.
Was this what her mother looked like when she was flirting with someone?
“I didn’t feel well,” Minnie said simply. “I asked him to bring me home.”
“Oh, honey. Can I make you some soup?”
“I’ll be fine,” Minnie said. She eyed the man, who raised a thick, calloused hand.
“This is Julien,” Hannah said. “He’s going to help us fix up the house.” She stuttered briefly, then added, “Although he really doesn’t have to.”
Julien smiled at Hannah, his face a mix of confusion and adoration. “It’s my pleasure, really. I’ve always loved this old place.”
Minnie nodded at Julien, who nodded back.
“Good to meet you,” Julien said finally. It was clear that he didn’t know how to handle a dynamic like this any more than she did.
With nothing else to say, she escaped upstairs, where she burrowed beneath the comforter and tried and failed to call her father three times. Where was he? Why was he in Nantucket? How had he found them?
It wasn’t till the next afternoon that Minnie got any sort of answer. Sitting in the convertible, waiting for Viggo outside the gas station, she spotted a man in a baseball hat, moving swiftlyacross the parking lot. When Viggo’s back was to them, the man who could only be her father, Kendall, threw a wad of paper into the convertible, so that it landed on Minnie’s lap. Minnie was too frozen with surprise to do anything. She gaped at Kendall as he disappeared around the side of the gas station. Then, before Viggo left the gas station, she flattened out the note to read in her father’s handwriting:Waterstone Hotel @ 8 p.m. tomorrow, Room 344, don’t be late.She shivered, then balled the note into a fist and threw it into the nearest trash can, right before Viggo came out into the parking lot with two sodas and a bag of chips.
Minnie had the feeling that she was hiding something enormous. But she knew better than to share this news with Viggo, who couldn’t possibly understand who her father was and all Minnie had lost when Kendall had been forced away. Maybe, after Minnie spoke with her father, she could convince Kendall to start a new life in Nantucket. She could continue dating Viggo, and her father could rebuild his business from this very island. She could spend half her time with her father and half her time with her mother, like the kids she knew back in Miami whose parents were divorced. She reasoned that if her parents didn’t have to stay married, they could finally be honest with one another. They could stop trying to ruin each other’s lives.
Maybe she could be the catalyst for all that joy. Maybe she was brave enough to make it happen.
“What are you smiling about?” Viggo asked, driving them out of the parking lot and toward the beach where they’d decided to snack on chips and cheese and sip beer.
“I’m excited about summer,” Minnie said, her chest expanding. “That’s all.”
18
For the second day in a row, Julien went to Hannah’s place after work. He felt guided by a force he couldn’t understand, something beyond him. He simply couldn’t stop thinking about her, about everything he could do to help her repair the old house, about her long, slender arms and wild hair, about the way she looked at him.
Guilt had nothing to do with returning to her place so soon. However, this couldn’t have been completely true. After all, yesterday, when he’d first gone to Hannah’s to “check on things,” as per Eleanor’s request, he’d stolen four letters from the kitchen table. Letters, as it turned out, that were addressed to Georgia Kaiser from various residents of Nantucket Island. Some of the people who’d written them were living, and some were dead.
Now, as Julien and Hannah heaved the rotted slats from the staircase to reveal the skeleton foundation beneath, Julien scanned Hannah’s face for signs that she knew he’d taken the letters. He hadn’t yet passed them along to the Legacy Club. When Eleanor had called to inquire about Hannah, he’d said that he was still digging around the property, trying to figure out what Hannah knew. “I’m going back tonight,” he’d said. Eleanorhad told him she was proud of him, that she was grateful she had one of the “best men on the case.”
Gasping, Hannah stood and assessed the work they’d done so far. Sweat glinted on her forehead and on her chest. She grinned broadly at him. “I never could have done this on my own,” she said. “But I’m falling apart. Do you want something to drink?”
Julien followed her into the kitchen, where they grabbed beers from the fridge and took them on the back porch. They sat in rocking chairs, clinking their bottles.
“I can’t believe you worked all day and came out here again,” Hannah said, eyeing him.
“It’s different work,” Julien said. “I’ve been a harbor master for so long that I barely have to think about it anymore. It’s all like clockwork to me.”
“That’s even more impressive,” Hannah said.
Julien let his eyes drop. What he was thinking—that his first wife had never appreciated his work at the harbor—wasn’t helpful. “What did you do today?” he asked, because he couldn’t think of anything else.
Hannah tilted her head. She seemed unsure. “I’ve been looking into that story. I think I mentioned it? About the Legacy Club?”
Julien’s chest heaved, but he tried not to let it show on his face. “Right.”
“You said you didn’t know anything about it?”
“No.”
Hannah’s eyes were slits. But she turned to gaze back at the house, muttering, “I think the woman who lived here was associated with them in some way. Well, more than that, I think the club maybe murdered her ex-boyfriend? I know that sounds crazy.”
