Page 15 of April Flowers

It was the only way he’d survived it.

Chapter Six

The ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket Harbor lasted just as long as it had twenty years ago; it required about an hour on the tremulous ocean. After she parked in the below-deck lot, Margot got out of her car and went up to the indoor coffee shop, where she bought a cappuccino and sat to watch the water surge by. It occurred to her that when she left in 2005, she might have assumed that by 2025, a form of super technology had replaced the old ferry services—that it might have taken ten minutes to reach the island, tops, and involved flying or teleporting. But the newer ferries were similar to the old ones. Life kept going in much the same way—with similar pains.

She was older. The world was the same.

She couldn’t believe she was going back to Nantucket.

It had taken her only a few days to arrange for her departure. She’d needed February 15 and 16 to prepare Gabby for the flower shop, and she’d needed February 17 and 18 to pack and clean her apartment. She’d never left her apartment for so long, and she didn’t like the idea of it staying slightly messy in her absence, disorderly as she dove back into her previously very disorderly life in Nantucket. Now, it was February 19th, a Wednesday. Forsome reason, the sun was shining over the Nantucket Sound, bright enough that she wished she had her sunglasses. At the neighboring table sat a man who looked like a fisherman, his head lifted, his eyes closed as he took in the sunlight through the window. To Margot, he looked like a painting.

Although he looked nothing like him, the man reminded Margot of her father. It was something about his expression and the appreciation he had for soft, beautiful moments.

When Nantucket came into view on the horizon, a shiver went through Margot’s entire body. She hurried down to her car and sat with her hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. All she could think about was the person she’d been on the day she’d left Nantucket: eighteen, nervous, and prone to crying. She hadn’t had a car back then, but she’d taken the ferry and grabbed a bus to Boston. Very suddenly, she was out of her life and thrown into a new one. Her initial plan had been to go farther than Boston, maybe Los Angeles or Denver, but she’d gotten a job at a bar and decided to stick around until she had enough money to travel more comfortably. But in Boston, it was difficult to have enough money. What was “enough” anyway? Suddenly, she’d grown so accustomed to Boston and so comfortable in her new “lonely” life that she hadn’t wanted to leave. And anyway, nobody from Nantucket ever came to look for her. It was like they knew she wanted it that way.

Why was she coming back?

The logical thing was not to come back. The logical thing was to call the hospital and hire a nurse to take care of her mother. The logical thing was to keep a great distance between herself and Lillian Earnheart.

Yet when Sam had called to explain that Lillian had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, something in Margot had broken down. She’d started sobbing uncontrollably.

Margot hadn’t cried like that in twenty years.

Imagining her mother lost and confused in the house where Margot had been raised, she’d heard herself telling Sam she would be there soon. She’d heard herself say, “Thank you, Sam. Really. It means a lot that you would reach out, even though you’re not…”A member of the family anymore, she’d wanted to say. But she’d stopped herself.

Sam had understood. “I can’t wait to see you, Margot. You’ve been missed around here.”

Margot wasn’t sure she believed Sam. She’d said it because it was something you were supposed to say.

All too soon, it was time for Margot to drive off the ferry and onto that brightly lit rock in the middle of the ocean, the island she’d once known as home. Slowly, she inched down the ramp and felt her wheels bounce gently on the concrete. A man in an orange vest waved her through the harbor parking lot toward a stop sign, where she waited no fewer than two seconds before pressing the gas and shooting herself toward Cisco Beach. She felt sure her mother awaited her, probably with her eyes watching out the window, her heart opening for her daughter, the only one who cared enough to change her life and come home to care for her.

Don’t get your hopes up, Margot, she thought as she drove.This is Lillian Earnheart we’re talking about.

Sure enough, when Margot pulled into the driveway, nobody was at the window, watching for her. For a full minute, she sat in the front seat of her car, breathless, looking up at the big white house on the edge of the shore. It was weather-beaten and ill-cared for, still more proof that her brothers and sister had done very little to help out over the years. Not that she could blame them for not doing what she hadn’t had the energy to do.

Once upon a time, the Earnhearts had been a family that cared for each other. They’d cared for their property, for their future, for their island home. Now, the shutters were eithercrooked or missing. There were three busted windows. The door hung strangely, as though someone or something had tried to break it down.

Samantha Coleman’s reason for calling was becoming clearer. Lillian Earnheart needed somebody, anybody.

Margot got out and crept up the porch steps, frightened they might give out beneath her. Although she had better insurance than she ever had—she was a thirty-eight-year-old entrepreneur and full-fledged adult, after all—she couldn’t afford the time required to heal a broken leg. At the door, she knocked and rang a doorbell that seemed broken.

“Mom?” Margot muttered.

On the internet, she’d read that Alzheimer’s patients could be paranoid and anxious. Maybe Lillian was hiding in the kitchen, thinking Margot was trying to break in. Margot’s heartbeat quickened. She hoped her mother didn’t have her father Frank’s gun somewhere back there. She imagined Lillian as she’d been twenty years ago: slender with glossy hair and a mean streak. She imagined her hiding in the shadows of the kitchen, the shotgun slung up on her shoulder, waiting.

Margot shivered and took a step back. She couldn’t trust this place.

Slowly, she left the porch and peeked through the garage window. No car. Maybe her mother was out—with friends or at the doctor or at the store. It was Margot’s fault for not calling first. But what could she say? Her mother was too proud to accept help.

Her mother hadn’t reached out—not once—in twenty years.

Margot went back to her car, fighting tears. She called Sam, her hands shaking. Sam answered on the third ring.

“Are you here?” There was a smile in her voice.

“I am!” Margot, on the other hand, sounded on the brink of losing it. “I’m at the house.”

“How’s it going?” Sam’s tone was darker.

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