Page 20 of April Flowers

“It’s like she knows I’m here,” Margot said now. “It’s like she wants to make everything that much harder on me.”

“Sounds like Lillian,” Sam agreed with a laugh. “I called Daniel, by the way.”

Margot groaned. “What did he say?”

“Nothing nice,” Sam admitted.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m the one who chose to marry him. You didn’t ask to be born as his sister,” Sam reminded her.

“He really isn’t coming?”

“He’s busy with work,” Sam said. “Whatever. We’re going to find her.”

Implied in her tone was the fact that they had to find her. Otherwise, something really bad would have happened to her. Otherwise—maybe—she was dead.

Margot thought she was going to throw up.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted something. A flash of something. Movement. But what? Or who?

“I gotta go,” she told Sam.

“Me too. Love you. Good luck.”

Sam throwing out that she loved Margot caught Margot off guard. When was the last time anyone had said they loved her? She genuinely couldn’t remember. She certainly hadn’t said it in twenty years. She’d been careful to keep herself from ever saying it to a boyfriend, and she’d never had friends who demanded such generosity.

They’d known she liked her privacy.

Stuffing her phone back into her coat pocket, she charged from the porch out to where she’d seen movement—near the boathouse. The boathouse looked even worse than the main house, with salty wind and rain and sleet ripping at the paint and wood beneath. It looked sanded down and rickety, like a shack.

Now that she played the image over again in her mind, Margot was pretty sure she’d seen someone poking their head out of the boathouse door. Was it possible that Lillian was back there? Hiding? Was it possible she’d seen Margot at the front door yesterday and decided to hide until Margot left the island?

Maybe she didn’t recognize me, Margot thought.

Or maybe she recognized me and wanted me to go.

By the time Margot reached the boathouse, she’d worked herself into a terror. What if she was wrong? What if it wasn’t her mother in the boathouse but a robber or a murderer? What if the murderer had taken her mother back there?

Stop being so morbid, Margot!

But creepy things happened on tiny islands all the time. That was what all those crime thriller novels were about. That was what all those true crime podcasts covered. Why not here, too?

Margot tried her voice to find it was wobbly and strange. “Hello?”

Of course, nobody answered. Whether it was a murderer or her hiding mother, she was sure nobody would come running out to say hi!

She needed a better tactic. Slowly, she crept around the side of the boathouse and peeked into the entrance, where, once upon a time, her father Frank had stored his boats and fishing gear. There was still plenty of fishing gear back there, but it looked as though her mother had sold the boats. The wood was rotten, and everything smelled waterlogged and dead. Margot coughed and wrinkled her nose. If her mother was really hiding back there, it was no small miracle that she wasn’t choking to death.

And then Margot thought,What if she’s back there—dead?

Margot wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

For twenty years, Margot had fought to build another life for herself. She’d worked so hard, avoiding sleep and human relationships and love, all in pursuit of her vision.

Had she done all that, only to return to Nantucket to find her mother dead?

Margot’s voice was rattly and overly loud. “Mom? Are you back here?” When nobody answered, Margot’s hands were in fists. She was suddenly overwhelmed. “Mom, I swear, if you’re back there, if you’re hiding from me, I’ll never talk to you again. Ever. I’ll get back in my car and back on the ferry, and nobody, not even Samantha Coleman, will be able to drag me back here. Do you understand?”

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