Page 2 of Summer on Lilac Island

Georgiana Jenkins, or Gigi as everyone but her mother and grandmother called her, had managed to avoid Mackinac Island for

ten consecutive summers.

She was not so fortunate for the eleventh. Here she was, seated atop the upper deck of a Shepler’s ferry, skirting back across

the Straits.

Fresh water spritzed her face and cast a film over her eyes. Gigi found herself missing the harrowing snowmobile rides across

the ice bridge during her winter trips when the lake froze over. The five-mile path was marked by a line of Christmas trees

dug into the ice to guide travelers and keep them from plummeting to their death. Then at least there was some danger to distract

from the dullness.

She hadn’t yet managed to cleanse herself of enough daughterly guilt to boycott coming back for Christmas. That level of liberation

was something she aspired to. Perhaps after this summer was over she would have overdosed on the island enough to strengthen

her resolve to decline all future visits. Not that she had exactly been invited this time—it was a bit of the reverse, technically

speaking—but the principle held.

On her lap, her journal was open. The pages were largely blank, with a two-year gap from when she’d last flung words down, at that time venting about how everyone in LA spent more on skincare than she could afford on rent.

This was before she had tried her first microcurrent sculpt facial and promptly become addicted herself, thus blowing through her meager paychecks and winding up destitute, with no choice but to move back in with her mother.

There may have been some contributing factors that led to her current predicament beyond the facials. The inconsistency of

the gig economy, the egregious cost of rent, the criminally high tax rate. Summer back on Mackinac Island would be a time

to reset, to take a breather and figure out where to go from here. In no way was it a permanent return. Gigi would never settle

for such a dull, insular life. Not like her mother had.

She was writing in the journal again at the recommendation of her therapist, Renata. Renata wasn’t technically a therapist

(Gigi couldn’t afford anyone with real qualifications), but she’d completed a course on energy healing so Gigi figured she

was close enough.

She usually preferred to treat her emotions like she treated her socks—stashing them messily into a drawer and telling herself

she would fold them later.

But she had seen Renata several times in LA, not because of her tense relationship with her mother and sister, nor any unresolved

trauma caused by her absentee father. No, far more pressing was the problem of Gigi’s crash-and-burn romances that had been

trailing her like a cloud of bad karma. She’d hoped therapy might be a quick fix, a way to have someone else validate that

her exes were the problem, not her. It hadn’t turned out to be quite so affirming.

Gigi was now making a list of her exes, part of the homework. Upon completion, she counted the names by twos, then threes.

The total came to thirty-four. Gigi had thirty-four ex-boyfriends. Thirty-five if she included Benjamin Hall, the rascally

towhead who’d been Gigi’s first high school boyfriend before he swiftly exchanged her for Lillian Tong. Gigi did not, in fact,

include Benjamin. It seemed like a suitable, if petty, form of vengeance for a teenage snub, and the list was already too

long.

Eyeing the roster, she looked for other exes to cross out.

Her handwriting was sloshy, thanks to the jostling ferry returning her to her horse-and-buggy hometown. Everyone said Mackinac Island was a step back in time. Gigi preferred moving forward, not backward, and tensed up as the shoreline sharpened into view.

She’d hoped the gusty air might settle her stomach, which was coiling terribly, whether due to the rocking waves or the prospect

of spending an entire summer in a place she’d thought she’d escaped, she couldn’t be sure.

Even the late-middle-aged man seated next to her seemed to notice her discomfort. “You all right there?” he asked Gigi in

a thick Scottish accent, offering up a crinkled paper bag. It reeked of bananas and peanut butter.

Gigi declined but changed her mind moments later when necessity struck. Snatching the bag, she ejected the iceberg lettuce

salad she’d purchased at the dinky airport in Alpena. She managed to avoid splattering her boho outfit. Her journal was not

so kindly spared.

This, too, the Scotsman seemed to notice. Gigi got the sense he was trying to read what she’d written. She clamped the journal

shut.

“Sorry,” the man said. “Didn’t mean to snoop.” There was a youthful bounce about him despite the fact that he was about Gigi’s

mother’s age. “What were you working on, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Gigi stared him down. His cornflower-blue eyes were bright, the whites remarkably clear. “Nothing.”

“‘Nothing’ is always the best content,” the man said confidently. “Most of my books have started from scribbling about ‘nothing.’”

“You’re a writer?” Gigi asked. It checked out. The argyle sweater vest, the chaotic tufts of white hair jutting out from under

a lopsided bowler hat, the loafers tapping on the ferry floorboards, as if to some bagpipe beat. Gigi had pegged him as a

professor type, but author fit the bill.

“We’re all writers, aren’t we?” A cheeky smile revealed tilted, tea-stained teeth. “But that’s right, I’ve managed to make

a living from inventing stories.” He gave a booming laugh.

In spite of herself, Gigi was liking the man and the way he seemed to be gaming the system of life.

No one had ever mistaken her for an author before. It was quite flattering. She had the creativity for it, no doubt, but the discipline was another beast. As evidenced by her inventory of failed relationships, she was as good at starting things as she was bad at finishing them.

“I’ve done an audit of all my ex-boyfriends,” Gigi said. She tended to be a fairly honest person, not motivated by morality

so much as the fact that the truth was the surest way to shock people. “I’m going back through past relationships to look

for patterns.”

This part of the assignment had taken so long that Gigi was not inclined to dive into the second and more intensive portion:

analyzing them.

Pattern = duds , she’d scrawled on the bottom of the page, circling the phrase a few times, as if after deep cogitation she’d produced a

most profound insight.

The Scotsman seemed to find this all highly amusing, a reaction Gigi enjoyed. She couldn’t stand people who took life too

seriously.

“Quite prolific you’ve been,” he chuckled.

“It’s not as scandalous as it sounds,” Gigi said. “I had my first real boyfriend at eighteen. Right when I fled the island.”

The Scotsman’s bushy eyebrows raised quizzically, but Gigi swept past the inquiry. “I’m twenty-nine now,” she carried on.

“So over eleven years, I’ve had an average of three point four boyfriends per year. Hardly an outlandish figure.”

“Three point four boyfriends per year,” the Scotsman repeated, as if tucking away the nugget of dialogue for a future book.

Gigi didn’t mind that he might plagiarize her. The prospect of seeing her cleverness in print was exhilarating.

“Want to know what I’ve learned about love?

” Gigi asked, hoping he might be inspired twice over.

She told him about how since leaving Mackinac, she’d lived in New York, Miami, Austin, Phoenix, New Orleans, Seattle, and most recently, Los Angeles.

“But men are the same everywhere,” she fumed with a blubbery sigh.

“They all make you feel like a crazy person for expecting them to put in an ounce of effort.”

The Scotsman clucked sympathetically, though he didn’t appear to find her analysis as impressive as Gigi had hoped.

“There’s nothing wrong with having high standards,” the Scotsman said. “But if I could offer a bit of fatherly advice...”

Gigi flinched involuntarily at the word fatherly .

“Don’t hold someone else to a standard you wouldn’t hold yourself to,” he continued. “Or you just might end up alone, with

no one to miss you when you vanish across the ocean. Like this old gadgie here.” He was smiling, but there was an undertone

of sadness. Regret, even.

Gigi checked his left hand. There were sunspots, moles, and wispy white hairs, but no wedding ring. She wondered about his

own roster of relationships and where things may have gone wrong. Ordinarily she wouldn’t hold back from prying, but she’d

become too fond of him to put him on the spot, so she led in with a softer opener. “What’re you doing on the island?”

He informed her that he was here to gain inspiration for his next book, which he hadn’t started writing yet, thanks to an

extended episode of writer’s block. When Gigi inquired why he didn’t post up on a Scottish island instead, he told her he

preferred the novelty of places he’d never been and people he’d never met. Gigi empathized greatly.

“And when I heard there was an island in America with no cars allowed—only horses, buggies, and bicycles—I knew that was my

spot,” the Scotsman went on. “What a romantic quirk for a story!”

“It’s less romantic in real life,” Gigi cautioned. “Trust me.”

“Have you been before?” he asked.

“I grew up here,” Gigi said. “Now I’m back spending the summer with my mom.” She tried to make it sound like she was being

a solicitous daughter rather than using her mother for free housing and laundry.

Gigi had nearly as many ex-jobs as ex-boyfriends.

Most recently she’d quit her gig as a cycling instructor out in LA.

She delighted in yelling at people to work harder but despised having to wake up early to do it.

Upon assigning her all the 6:00 a.m. classes, her manager told Gigi it was an opportunity to demonstrate her commitment.

As if Gigi had any of that to a company that didn’t even provide health insurance.

Returning to Mackinac Island had been a last resort, but when her mother offered up free rent for the summer—with the flight

and ferry included—she hadn’t exactly been in a position to refuse. Gigi’s credit card was declined when she’d made a late-night

pizza order last week, and she was living off the last of the cash her sister had sent for her birthday (a nice wad, Gigi

must admit, though that was only fair, given the whole incident of Rebecca choosing her college roommate as her maid of honor

over her own sister).

“Any guidance for scrounging up stories on the island?” the Scotsman asked as the ferry turned into the dock. “I write fiction,

but it’s often inspired by real people. They’re the oddest characters of all, aren’t they?”

Gigi suspected that she herself starred in the island’s most interesting tales but didn’t volunteer that information. There

were some things she’d prefer not to dig up, no matter how assuredly they would shock.

“You’ll want to look into the witch trials of the 1800s,” she told him. “Women were drowned in a lagoon.” She grimaced. “It’s

still there, between Mission Point and downtown.”

“Is it haunted?” he asked excitedly.

“Allegedly, but it’s a tourist trap. The real stories are with Deirdre Moore, president of the euchre club and rumor mill,”

Gigi said. “You can find her and the other ladies at the Lucky Bean most mornings. And the tennis courts have been taken over

by the pickleballers; they’re worth checking out. My grandmother plays in a league; it’s all nice and petty.”

Gigi’s smile twitched at the thought of seventy-seven-year-old Nonni slamming the yellow pickleball at her opponents’ faces, letting out a primal roar when she won, refusing to make eye contact with her opponents when she lost.

“Loiter at Doud’s too, right on Main Street,” Gigi went on. “America’s oldest family-owned grocery store. Everyone circles

through. You’ll get the scoop on the latest tension between the islanders and fudgies.”

“Fudgies?” The Scotsman was eagerly scribbling notes on the parchment-like pages of a thick leatherbound notebook.

“It’s what locals call the tourists and seasonal residents,” Gigi explained. “Because they buy so much of Mackinac’s famous

fudge. There’s plenty of summer drama with fudgies partying and disrupting the peace. But the real villain is the mayor, Camille

Welsh. Stuck in the Dark Ages with an ego that stretches longer than the Mackinac Bridge.”

“Excellent.” Clyde appeared elated to have such promising leads. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, do give a ring

to the Grand Hotel and ask for Clyde MacDougal.”

“You’re staying at the Grand Hotel?” The luxurious hotel was the island’s most renowned landmark and very expensive. Her new

acquaintance must be an unusually successful author. Gigi found herself filled with more admiration than envy, which was not

particularly like her.

“Just for the summer,” Clyde said. “As I conduct my research.” He let out another titter, seemingly pleased that “research”

entailed vacationing at a posh island resort and ingratiating himself in small-town gossip.

“One more question,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any eligible women around my age, would you? Someone I might

take out to dinner... purely for literary purposes, of course.” His mouth folded bashfully and his cheeks took on a ruddy

hue.

Gigi thought about volunteering her mother, but that would be pointless. Eloise Jenkins didn’t date. “Everyone is pretty much

coupled up,” Gigi said. “The locals, at least. You could find a fudgie, but I can’t recommend them in good conscience.”

“I see.” Clyde’s expression sank but sprang back quickly. His broad nose sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

Gigi, too, caught a whiff of Mackinac Island’s signature scent. “The horses,” she said. “Twenty-first-century transportation

at its finest.”

She expected Clyde to plug his nose as the other tourists on the ferry were doing. Instead, he broke into a boyish grin. “How

charming.” He inhaled deeply as if to commit the aroma to memory so he might accurately reproduce it on the page.

Gigi grimaced. “Charming indeed,” she deadpanned as the familiar manure scent welcomed her home. Or at least to the place

that had once been home and now felt the furthest thing from it.