Page 52

Nantucket

There was an upright wooden piano in the living room overlooking the inlet, a scatter of picture frames arranged without pattern on top.

The loveliness of the space’s decoration, with its mix of colors and patterns and wide-plank floors taunted her.

Whose home was this? Betsy and her sister sat straight on the velvet green sofa, though Betsy felt as though she was riding on a train with an uncertain destination.

“What a lovely view,” Louisa said, gazing out the windows.

“Every once in a while, we get lucky and see a seal,” the woman said. She handed Louisa a hulking pair of binoculars. “You’re welcome to take a look.”

“That’s okay,” Louisa said, handing them back to this woman.

This perfect stranger who seemed to know who they were as soon as she’d cautiously opened her door.

After introducing herself as Melody Fleming, the three of them shook hands.

She invited them in for iced tea while James waited in the car.

“Aren’t you Mom’s friend from the wedding album?” Louisa looked as confused as Betsy felt, and she dreaded, without any knowing at all, how these dots would connect. She noticed that Melody didn’t wear a wedding ring.

“I am an old friend of both of your parents,” the woman said, carrying a pitcher into the living room along with three glasses on a serving tray. She poured each of them a drink.

So far no one had touched theirs.

Louisa cleared her throat. “We’re here because we have reason to believe that this land is our father’s, Charlie Whiting’s, and we need to understand if you’re here as part of a legal contract.” She might as well have been wearing power heels and the tailored suit she wore at the firm.

“Okay.” Melody wore no makeup, not even blush, and her reddish brown hair was pulled into an elegant bun, like she was on her way to dance class. She spoke slowly and deliberately. “You seem like you have many questions, and I’m happy to answer all of them.”

Betsy glanced at Louisa to see where she wanted to begin, but her sister seemed to be cataloging the features of the woman’s face: the dark outlines of her almond-shaped eyes, her long slender nose, and the way it all came together with a kind of brilliance.

Sensing she was being studied, Melody self-consciously adjusted her denim skirt, then drummed her fingers together.

She looked from one sister to the other, waiting.

“It was you,” Louisa whispered as though she were the only one in the room. Then, louder, “Dad denied it, but I always knew I was right.”

“Knew what?” There was a prickling in Betsy’s scalp as she waited for Louisa to answer her.

Outside the window, Betsy spied a gnarled oak tree in one corner of the yard.

There was a familiar curve of hedges underneath, and she stood from her place on the couch, drawing closer to the oversized picture window.

Turning to face the statuesque woman, Betsy said, “I’ve been here before, haven’t I? There was a tire swing on that branch.”

The woman opened her mouth to say something, then closed it.

“Have I been here?” Betsy returned to sit beside Louisa, the formal sofa pushing against her like it wanted her to leave.

“Yes, you were here once.” Melody didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, but they finally settled in her lap, her palm clutching the other hand’s fingers. “Vera was about ten then, and I think she took you outside to play so your mother and I could talk.”

Betsy remembered swinging on the rubber tire with James, the child named Vera running in the back door and crying that they were hogging the swing.

Betsy’s mother had marched outside in her pale blue jacket and skirt and scolded them for being unkind, her face angry and impatient.

She’d sighed, told them that if they behaved themselves, she would get them ice cream in town.

Why had James come at all? She remembered more then, a flood of scenes surfacing at once.

“My mother was so upset that afternoon when we left here.” Betsy felt her throat constricting at the memory.

“She’d promised to get us ice cream, and when we parked in town, she hit the bumper of another car, denting it, and some man with big thick black glasses started yelling at her, calling her a stupid woman, and she screamed back, I am stupid, I am a very, very stupid woman and I hate myself for it.

James and I were so embarrassed we hid in the back seat of the car.

Then she disappeared for hours. We hunted the shops and taverns for her, and I was crying, and James kept telling me it would be okay, but then we finally found her.

She was back in the car, fully composed, and asking us if we were ready to get off this godforsaken island. ”

Melody stacked a set of coasters on the coffee table, small round circles made of glass with paintings of the beach set inside. Once she’d made a small tower with them, she took the tower apart one by one and made another stack. “That day may have been the hardest of my entire life.”

Louisa seemed to be calculating something, counting her fingers.

When she spoke, her speech was exacting, precise, full of accusation.

“I won the debate in April of my sophomore year, and that’s when I went to his office to tell him.

That was the summer he barely visited the Vineyard, the summer I thought he and Mom were getting divorced. ”

The saliva in Betsy’s mouth thickened to paste, her voice soft and trembling. “How do you know our father?”

Melody pushed the coasters away and tucked her palms under her thighs on the burgundy chaise opposite them.

“I knew you would come back here someday.” She cleared her throat, offering Betsy a sympathetic look.

“Your parents and I, as I said, we were friends. Old friends from Washington.” The woman’s face contorted into an ugly knot, like she might cry.

“I made a mistake being with your father, and there was a part of me that believed I would take the secret of my baby to the grave. That your mother would never know. I said a prayer for her the day she found out, that she would be okay.”

For the last few minutes, Louisa had been lost in a stupor of puzzle pieces she was snapping and unsnapping in her head, but now, she sat up with attention, her gaze narrowing to a sharp point.

“You said a prayer for my mother? Did you say a prayer for my mother when you bent over the desk in my father’s office? ”

Betsy furrowed her eyebrows. “Louisa!”

“Thank you for gifting me the worst possible image of my father, you stupid bimbo.” Louisa inhaled a deep breath.

The memory remained sharp. That day she’d skipped a celebratory outing with friends to go to the Hill and tell her father that she’d won the debate.

His secretary was gone for the day, but she could hear voices from inside his office.

“I was a kid, so I didn’t knock, bounding inside to tell him my good news.

I saw her and dad stretched out across his desk, and when I came in, he jumped away like she was on fire, his eyes locking with mine.

That’s when I saw her, adjusting her dress while holding her hand out, like she wanted to shake my hand. I took off running.”

Betsy tried to picture it. The wide hallways and dim lighting of the Senate offices, her sister racing past the American flags outside. “Did Dad catch up to you? What did he say?”

Louisa paused, remembering. “He came into my bedroom that night, saying that he was sorry. He hugged me and swore it wasn’t anything ‘bad.’ He said a crazy constituent had tried to kiss him, and he’d been trying to get her off him when I walked in.

I knew it wasn’t true, though, or he would have told Mom.

Instead, it became this twisted secret that neither of us acknowledged ever again. ”

Melody blanched, nibbling on her pale lower lip.

“I think you’re describing the one and only time I visited Charlie in his office.

When my daughter was in grade school, I went to Washington with her, and after, I sent her down the hall with the rest of her field trip and I hung back to see him.

It had been years since we’d spoken. I don’t know what you think you saw, some kissing, but Charlie was my one great love, and we were hugging, and I was telling him how challenging it had been, being a single mother, and then… ”

If Louisa heard her, she continued her story as if she hadn’t. “I hated my father after that, and so many days I hated myself for expecting anything at all from him, for thinking he’d care about my accomplishments. Gosh, how I wish I never opened that door.”

“What?” Betsy stammered, trying to unsee it herself.

“But Dad always looked at Mom with so much adoration. What he wouldn’t do to please her.

” It left her with an uncomfortable thought.

Was it possible that no one really knew anyone in this life?

That we simply projected onto individuals the versions of them that we wanted, rather than ever seeing who they really were.

All those years, when Louisa’s relationship with her father was frosty, she wasn’t being difficult; she was angry at her father for cheating on her mother.

Her father had known that all along, and instead of admitting as much, he accused Louisa of being moody and disrespectful.

“You’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell anyone.” Louisa had a wounded expression. “It was simple. I was afraid Mom and Dad would split up.”

“I’m terribly sorry.” Melody had inched closer to the sisters, so she was beside Betsy.

Louisa was in the final points of her argument, the moment on TV when the lawyer drove a stake through the defendant’s heart. “You’re sorry. What kind of person does that to her best friend? You were her maid of honor.”