“I’m sorry,” Cole said when she didn’t answer.
“No. It’s okay.” Shannon rubbed her temples. Not for the first time, she thought about her father’s stroke and how, genetically, she was now predisposed to an early grave. She needed to stop eating red meat. She needed to exercise more.
“We just didn’t see this coming,” Shannon said finally. “We weren’t prepared.”
“Nobody ever is, I guess,” Russell said. His smile was sorrowful and sincere.
Shannon had never been happier to be with a friend. Slowly, as the jukebox played classic rock into the night, they were able to get to other topics: scientific experiments they’d read about, exciting new developments in Alzheimer’s research (which was Shannon’s specialty), and how they planned to spend their summers, now that they were both single.
“I’ll be here all summer,” Russell said glumly. He had a few school-related matters to take care of, which he didn’t want to discuss.
“I’ll be here, too. Mostly.” Shannon considered her mother, alone with her father in that massive Nantucket summer house.
That night, not long after Russell and Shannon said good night, Shannon received a call from her mother. It was nearly ten and much later than Shannon would have imagined her mother calling. It meant something was wrong.
“Mom?” Shannon was out of breath, standing on a street corner.
“Hi, honey.” Her mother’s voice was strangled, bizarre.
“What’s up?” Shannon asked. “Are you all right?”
“Me? Oh, I’m fine,” her mother said. “I’m really fine, you know? One day at a time and all that.”
Shannon gripped the pole of a stop sign till her fingers ached.
“It’s just that I was wondering if you girls wanted to come to Nantucket soon?” Her mother continued, “Your father and I would love to see you. I know your semester should be finished soon. We can do everything you love to do on Nantucket. We can go sailing if you want to.”
Shannon knew that her mother was lonely. She knew that her mother felt the weight of all the approaching years without Fred by her side, mentally and emotionally.
“I have to wrap a few things up here at school, and then I’ll be there,” Shannon promised her mother.
“Oh, honey. That’s so good of you,” her mother said, sounding out of her mind.
Shannon told herself that tomorrow, she’d finish her experiment. She’d get it right this time. And then, she’d pack her bags and get to Nantucket as soon as she could. Something was wrong.
5
Blackmailed. It was the first word that came to Arietta’s mind when she woke up alone in bed and the last word that she lingered on as she tried and usually failed to fall asleep. The word followed her around all day, every day, as she performed her tasks of feeding Fred, washing Fred, cleaning Fred’s room, and making sure he got all his medication, all of which were administered via a tube.
“What could they be blackmailing us about, honey?” she asked her husband as she sat beside him late one night, sipping wine and watching the sunset. “We never did anything wrong.”
Even as she said it, Arietta was aware of how naive she sounded. But genuinely, she didn’t know what the blackmailer could be talking about.
Arietta was embarrassed that she’d reached out to her daughters and asked them to come to the island to visit her. Even before the big move, Shannon had told Arietta that she would be lonely on the island, away from her friends in Boston, all of whom had vacation houses on other islands and probably wouldn’t be visiting. More than that, she was aware that their old friends didn’t like to see Fred and Arietta together, now thatFred was what he was. They didn’t want to be reminded of all that could go wrong in a marriage and in a life.
Arietta wasn’t ready to admit that Shannon was right. Then again, Arietta hadn’t counted on being blackmailed while here on the island. It added a darkness to the loneliness. It added something sinister to her long days of caretaking.
Was it possible that someone was messing with her head? Maybe they’d heard about Fred’s stroke and had decided that Arietta was an easy target, a lonely widow who could be taken advantage of.
Arietta considered going to the police, but something stopped her. She hated to admit that it was fear that something was really wrong and there were secrets beneath the surface of her marriage that she didn’t want to know.
What if Fred was hiding something?
But there were things to do to prepare for Shannon, Felicity, and Isabelle’s arrival. Arietta threw herself into getting the house ready, making beds and vacuuming the rooms they’d usually taken during their previous stays. When she was in Fred’s room, she talked endlessly about the girls, about how great it would be to have everyone together again. “I’m sure Shannon’s running herself ragged at Yale to finish up the semester,” she said. “And Felicity and Isabelle have each other, thank goodness, but I worry about them, too. Do you think Felicity really wants to get into business?”
Fred, of course, had no answers for her. Had he been fully conscious, fully himself, he might have said,Of course she wants to get into the family business! It’s been nothing but fruitful, sweetie, and Felicity has always loved success. She’s always loved prestige. You know that.
It was true. Felicity was more like her father than Arietta. Arietta wanted to celebrate all of her children, their differences and similarities, even the ones she couldn’t really understand.