Page 1 of Footprints in the Sand
Chapter One
Martha’s Vineyard - May 2025
It was Aunt Oriana’s idea to go for a hike. “It’s a beautiful day!” she announced to Eva, Theo, and their mother, Meghan, as they trudged through the outrageous eighty-plus-degree heat. It was unseasonably warm for late May, and the turquoise Vineyard Sound was dotted with white sailboats filled with islanders eager to celebrate the late spring day. Eva wished she were in the water instead and couldn’t remember how she’d let Aunt Oriana convince her to head out in this. Eva had the day off work, and she’d rather be at the beach with her boyfriend, Finn. Heck, she’d rather be cleaning the kitchen or organizing her office! At least there was air-conditioning.
She’d invited Finn, but he’d known better, kissing her goodbye and saying, “Have a great time with your crazy family! See you when you get back!”
As they went along the trail, Aunt Oriana talked a mile a minute about her most recent trip to Manhattan, where she’d sold several paintings and met up with old friends. Normally,Eva was fascinated by Aunt Oriana’s career in the arts and loved hearing about the multimillion-dollar deals and the celebrities who contacted Oriana for help decorating their places. Her mother, Meghan, was responding with “uh-huh” and “oh wow” in a way that suggested she was just as exhausted and unable to talk as Eva was.
Theo asked, “What’s Finn up to today?”
Eva rolled her shoulders back. “Probably shivering on the sofa and watching television?”
“The dream.” Theo shook his head.
Their mother, Meghan, overheard Finn’s name and turned to ask, “What’s that I hear about Finn?”
Aunt Oriana stopped her monologue, and her ears perked up. “Goodness, when is that boy going to get the hint? How long has it been, Eva? Ten years?”
Eva’s already hot cheeks were burning. It’s true that she and her boyfriend, Finn, had been together for nearly eight years, and getting engaged had felt “on the cards” for a very long time. They talked about the details of their wedding. They discussed the catering they wanted to hire, the outfits they planned to wear, and the music they envisioned playing. They’d talked about it so much, in fact, that it almost felt as though it had already happened, that they’d gotten married a long time ago and liked to live in the past.
But there was no ring on Eva’s finger. She was twenty-eight years old and not getting any younger. But she and Finn were a team. They did everything together.
“They’ve been together eight years,” Meghan supplied to her sister. “We always think it’ll be next summer. Every year we say that.” She tried to laugh.
Eva couldn’t meet her mother’s eye.
“Maybe you should be the one to ask him,” Aunt Oriana suggested with a crooked smile. “Things are different nowadays. You can take charge if you want to.”
“She doesn’t want that,” Meghan said nervously. “I mean, don’t you want the big, romantic proposal?”
Eva was sweaty and woozy, and she was drinking so much water that she thought she might explode. She wasn’t sure how to answer any of this. Theo kept glancing over at Eva, wondering how they were going to get out of this.
But then, a miracle happened. Aunt Oriana’s phone rang, and she stopped hiking and badgering her for answers and picked it up with a happy singsong, “Hi, Dad!”
Eva and Theo halted and grabbed their knees for support, gasping for breath.
Eva muttered to Theo, “I’m twenty-eight going on seventy-seven. I swear, Grandpa could probably hike faster than me!”
“Nobody should hike in this heat,” Theo said. “I need a cold beer, stat.”
Eva giggled and watched Aunt Oriana’s face as she spoke to Grandpa Chuck, a man Eva adored, a man with the best sense of humor and the smartest sense of the world. It was often strange for Eva to remember that the only reason she existed at all, the only reason Aunt Oriana and her mother had been born, was because of Grandpa Chuck’s long-ago affair. In breaking up his first marriage and family, he’d shattered so many hearts.
Was that a good reason not to get married at all?she wondered. Maybe Finn was worried about that kind of commitment. Perhaps he wanted things to stay the same.
“That’s wonderful news!” Aunt Oriana said into the phone. “We’ll wrap up here and head there soon.”
Eva’s heart jumped, and she and Theo performed a little jig right there on the hiking trail. Aunt Oriana hung up and smiled at the three of them, announcing, “Apparently Rachelle’s homefor a surprise visit! We’re all invited to Nantucket for a barbecue. Should we go?”
Eva and Theo high-fived, and Meghan threw her arm around her sister and said, “I don’t know if I would have survived this hike anyway.”
Aunt Oriana wiped her brow and admitted, “I was pretending to like it. Let’s hit the road and enjoy ourselves for a change. Who needs hiking when there’s barbecue and sunshine?”
Eva breathed a sigh of relief and followed her aunt, mother, and brother back to the parking lot. They decided together to take the two thirty ferry from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket and worked on a list of things to bring along the way. Eva would head home, pick up Finn, and buy a few bottles of wine and bags of chips.
They said, “See you soon,” and sped off in separate directions. Eva had the windows of her car rolled down and loved the feeling of the breeze through her hair. The drive from the trailhead to the little house she shared with Finn was seven minutes of sensational landscape, with greens, whites, and blues, and sweeping sands. She often had to remind herself to take it in, to really look at it, because she was so accustomed to beauty that she sometimes let it pass her by.
When she parked, she left her car in the driveway so she and Finn could exit quickly and didn’t even bother to open the garage door. For this reason, she guessed, Finn didn’t have a warning that she was coming in. It was why she caught him the way she did.
