Page 17 of Lost Memories (Secrets of Mackinac Island 1)

“Terrible writing,” Mia affirmed.

Penny rolled her eyes. “Mom, it’s not like everyone can be as good of a scriptwriter as you.”

“Let’s just push through the rest of this scene and then watch something on TV that doesn’t make our ears bleed,” Brad suggested.

“I hate to say it, but I think we’re all a bit too drunk for this,” Mia said as she scraped the last of the blue icing from the bottom of the cake pan.

After they finished the scene, Elise chuckled inwardly as she followed the others into the TV room. Although every piece of her body ached with sadness, she had the sneaking suspicion that this life—this chaotic play and silliness and banter—was precisely the kind of way her mother had wanted to celebrate her life.

“Let’s watch one of Grandma’s favorites,” Penny insisted, cuddling close to Elise.

“When Harry Met Sally?” Brad asked.

“Oh! Great call,” Penny affirmed. She leaped up and found the film on one of the streaming sites. In minutes, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal fought side-by-side on screen.

As they watched, Elise dipped into her own belly of nostalgia. She could feel herself as a young teenager, sitting with her mother and watching this very film; she could feel her tongue, heavy with questions about her father’s identity—yet never wanting to tear the boundary between them or force her mother to acknowledge any darkness she didn’t wish to drudge up.

Now, Elise was left with countless questions, especially in the wake of that woman, Margaret, and her story about this far-away world on Mackinac Island. “The most magical time of our lives.”

If her mother had been on Mackinac Island in the late seventies, then, it stood to reason, whoever Elise’s father had been—very well might have been from there, too.

The thought jolted through Elise like lightning.

“What’s up, Mom?” Penny asked, turning her eyes toward her mid-way through the film. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Elise shook her head, contemplating this newfound thought.

Why had her mother kept this a secret from her all her life?

And why did Elise suddenly feel that discovering the truth was all she had left?

Her script had failed. Her children were headed back to school soon. Her husband had a life in Silver Lake with Regina. And her mother had died and left her one a single, enormous question.

Suppose her father was out there somewhere?

Suppose she could ask him all about her mother before she’d known her best—those years when she had been youthful and vibrant and, apparently, “hanging with celebrities,” on the brink of this other, famous life.

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