Page 62 of April Flowers

Sam sprang off the porch and hurried to hug Margot. “I’m sorry to just come over like this. I should have called.”

Margot grinned. “You know you’re welcome any time.”

Sam cupped her elbows. They were standing in the newly lush April grass. From where they were, Margot could just barely see her mother, tilting gently in the rocking chair, her eyes on the horizon. Margot wondered what she was thinking about.

“I called Marc,” Sam said. “He told me everything he knows about Vic.”

Margot steadied herself. From Sam’s expression, she sensed a doozy of a story.

Sam said, “Marc worked with Vic in the mid- to late-2000s out in San Francisco. Marc said he originally thought Vic was from San Francisco but learned later that he’d moved there from the East Coast as a little kid. Marc tried to bond with him about their East Coast connections, but Vic didn’t want to discuss it. To describe him back then, Marc used the expression ‘closed off.’

“Anyway, in the span of four years, Vic mentioned a few things about himself. Number one: his mother died. Marc thinks she died when he and Vic were working together, and he thinks, too, that Vic’s mother also lived in San Francisco.

“Number two: he never knew his father.

“Number three: in about 2007 or 2008, Vic got married and had a son who died a few months after birth. It was around that time that Vic quit the company and started his own business. Marc’s pretty sure the marriage didn’t survive.”

Margot had both hands over her mouth. She felt she couldn’t breathe.

Sam’s eyes echoed her own confusion and empathy. “It’s a lot to take in. I know.”

Margot’s thoughts whirred. “Poor Vic.” And then she asked, “Why was he invited to the wedding?”

It didn’t sound as though Vic and Marc had a particularly close relationship. It didn’t seem to merit a wedding invitation.

But Sam waved her hand. “Apparently, they’re better friends now. But they’re the type of male friends who never talk about anything besides business and travel and sports. Marc said he knew Vic had been spending time on Nantucket, but Vic had told him it was related to a business venture rather than anything personal.”

“Did you tell him about my mother? About me and my father?” Margot asked, suddenly stricken.

“No. I didn’t.”

Margot breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to spill the beans before she understood the full truth.

Sam pulled her blond hair into a ponytail that she let fall back to her shoulders. “None of this is my business. But I think you should go see him. Marc says he checked into the Regent Hotel.”

Margot pictured Vic on the balcony of the Regent Hotel, watching the waves roll over the spring sands.

Did he want to see her?

“I’m sure your arrival to Nantucket confused him.” Sam shrugged. “Maybe he thinks you hate him because of what he represents in your family. But it seems like he has some answers for you. Maybe you have some for him, too.”

Margot threw herself forward to hug Sam. But when she closed her eyes, all she could see was that handsome, charming forty-something man who looked surprisingly like her father.

He was her brother. That had to be it.

But why had he come back to Nantucket to see her mother?

What was his angle?

She felt she had to know.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sam agreed to stay with Lillian so Margot could drive to the Regent Hotel to meet Vic Rondell. Margot changed into a paisley dress, did her makeup, and then returned to the back porch to find Sam and her mother in the midst of a beautiful conversation about Lillian’s childhood.

“Mother always used to set me up with the fish my father caught,” Lillian was saying. “I would scrape the scales off the fish and drop the fish in a bucket that she would then slice up and fry. Those were my favorite dinners. My brothers and sisters and parents and I sat around a big table and feasted until our bellies were full. We didn’t have a lot of money back then, and meals like that were scarce. But when my father made time for it, he was a skilled fisherman.”

Sam watched Lillian, captivated. It wasn’t for another full minute that she realized Margot was outside. Sam shot to her feet and wrung her hands. “Are you ready to go?”

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