Page 41 of Sunset on the Solstice

“She got sick when we arrived,” Vivian explained under her breath. “The stress and the heat, it’s all getting to her. I think you should book a flight immediately, just in case she changes her mind.”

Rebecca recognized the panic in Vivian’s eyes. Immediately, she got on her phone and booked flights for all of them: for herself, Lily, Chad, the three kids, and Shelby. The flight from Bozeman Airport left that night, and they had a forty-five-minute drive ahead of them. Vivian told them to go.

Rebecca would write the owner of the rental house tomorrow, from the safety of Nantucket, explaining that they’d had to leave early, that it couldn’t be helped.

When Rebecca and Lily peeked their head into Shelby’s room, Shelby bolted upright, as though she’d been in the middle of a nightmare. Her hair was in wild curls around her head.

“Hey, honey. We booked a flight,” Rebecca said. “We’re going to head out soon.”

Shelby looked dazed. “Did Jared call?”

“No, honey,” Rebecca said. But she gave Lily a panicked look.

Lily nodded. She knew what Rebecca understood they had to take Shelby’s phone away. Maybe they had to put it on Airplane Mode or leave it here.

“He could have a tracker on her phone,” Lily said as they walked back downstairs.

Rebecca shuddered.

It didn’t take much convincing to make Shelby leave her phone behind. They wiped it clean and left it on the kitchen counter for the owner of the house to find.

“I feel so free without my phone,” Shelby said softly as she buckled the kids into their car seats and kissed them gently on the forehead. “Maybe I won’t get a new one for a while.”

“That sounds amazing,” Lily said, smiling. “I want to do a digital detox, too.”

“We should do it together!” Shelby declared.

Chad got into the driver’s seat and glanced back, making sure everyone was buckled in and ready. Rebecca was reminded of why they’d opted for the SUV. They’d known they might have to transport more people than they’d come with. But she couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

On the long road to the airport, Shelby gazed out the window as though saying goodbye to this dramatic landscape. For nearly six years, this had been her home. Rebecca remembered how much her heart had ached when she’d decided to leave Maine. But that had been different. She hadn’t been running away from anything in Maine. She’d been running toward Nantucket, where her family awaited her.

“Mom?” Shelby began, her voice thin.

“What is it, honey?” Rebecca asked. Goodness, it was wonderful to hear Shelby call her that again.

“Will you cook something when we get home?” Shelby asked.

Rebecca’s heart swelled. “I’ll cook whatever you like, honey,” she said.

Because it occurred to her, now, that over the past six years, Shelby had had to do all the cooking. She’d had to care continually for her family. Nobody had been looking out for her.

21

Shelby experienced that day of travel from Montana to Nantucket Island like a delirious blur. It was hard for her to fathom that any of this had happened, and it was as though her body took over, telling her brain, you can catch up later. We’ll get you back to Nantucket in one piece.

On the plane, Shelby was seated in the middle between Penelope and Evie, who both fell asleep almost immediately after take-off. In the aisle ahead sat Billy with Uncle Chad, and across the aisle from her were Lily and Rebecca, the women who’d come to save her life. Shelby felt a jolt of shock, yet another, then scanned the aisles nearby, just to make sure that Jared wasn’t there, waiting and watching. Again, she checked for her phone, then remembered that her mother had left it back at the house she’d rented.

Maybe because of the panic written across her face, her mother reached across the aisle to take her hand. “Breathe, honey,” her mother said tenderly. “You’re safe.”

The first plane took them across the continent, all the way to Boston. It was morning, and bright light filtered through the airport windows and illuminated her children’s sleeping faces. They were jet-lagged, their minds still in Montana. Together, she and her family carried them through the airport until they found their mini-plane from Boston to Nantucket. Shelby still searched in every corner, praying that Jared wouldn’t leap out. She hoped that her family didn’t notice how paranoid she was.

When they were called to board, Chad smiled at her and said, “It’s time to get you home.”

It was bizarre to see her little brother like this: so responsible, so eager to take control of a bad situation. It reminded Shelby of her father, Fred.

When Shelby first spotted the island far down below the plane, tears fell from her eyes. What if she was allowed to raise her children here, on the same island where her mother had been raised? What if she was allowed to be happy, really and truly happy, with family surrounding her, with people looking out for her?

A voice in the back of her mind told her again and again: you don’t deserve it. You know you don’t. You’re abandoning your husband, who needs you. You’re separating your children from your husband, because of what? Because you can’t handle a little loneliness? Is that all?