Jenna
Revelation: a surprising or interesting fact
that is made known to people
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to go over to your mother’s again? You’ve been there every day since Lauren and Mack arrived.” Greg locked the front door of the cottage and they walked to the car together. “Maybe they need space.”
“They don’t need space.” Jenna thought about the message Lauren had left on her phone that morning. “Lauren needs backup.”
“And that’s you?”
“Yes. I’m her sister. She keeps telling me she’s fine, but how can she be fine?”
“I guess she’s doing what she can to hold it all together.”
“And that can’t be easy. She told me yesterday that the cause of death was heart disease. Damaged valve or something. Can you imagine that? Ed was forty. The whole thing is terrible for her, and she keeps getting these calls from London from that lawyer guy I met, so it never ends.” Jenna threw her purse on the back seat of the car and slid behind the wheel. “And living with Mom can’t be easy either. She doesn’t talk about the big stuff.”
Greg fastened his seat belt. “We’ve discussed this a million times. We both know your mother finds it hard to show emotion.”
“I know, but I thought she might have tried a little harder with Lauren. Didn’t you see how she was at dinner with Lauren the first night? She barely mentioned Ed.” Jenna waved to one of their neighbors who was walking their dog.
“Because she didn’t know what to say. A lot of people don’t know what to say in difficult situations, Jenna. She’s not alone. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Of making it worse. And she was probably stunned into silence by the revelation about Scott. I know I was.”
“I still can’t believe she took Scott Rhodes to meet Lauren.”
“The part I find harder to understand is how he can be Mack’s father. If you’d asked me to list all the possibilities, he wouldn’t have made the list.”
He would have been top of her list, Jenna thought. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before?
She drove away from the beach, taking a left and then a right.
“Now I think about it, there was something—” she tightened her grip on the wheel “—they noticed each other.”
“Evidently. Can you slow down? It’s not going to help your sister if you land us in a ditch.”
“Sorry.” Jenna eased her foot off the accelerator. “I’m worried about her. Do you think Scott’s the reason she didn’t come home much?”
“I don’t know—slow down!”
Jenna braked hard. “Maybe she was worried she’d run into him.”
“I’m worried we’re going to litter the island with dead bodies. Do you want me to drive?”
“No. Sorry. I’ll slow down. I’m anxious. From what Lauren told me, she’ll have to get a job.” Jenna drove carefully through West Tisbury, where the annual fair and livestock show ran for four days every August. She wondered if her sister was missing the city and decided it was probably the last thing on her mind. “Whenever we spent time together, she and Ed always seemed happy, didn’t you think?”
“You can never tell from the outside what is going on inside a marriage. We probably look happy, too.”
Her heart gave a bump. “We are happy.”
“You haven’t seemed too happy lately.”
Why had she started this conversation when she was driving? “I want a baby, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean I’m not happy.”
Was he saying he wasn’t happy?
She felt a rush of panic. Greg was the one sure thing in her life. Dependable and reliable. She’d built a future with him on solid foundations, and suddenly those foundations had given a warning tremble.
They were silent for the rest of the drive and when Jenna finally pulled up outside The Captain’s House and glanced at Greg, his eyes were closed.
“Greg?”
“Mmm?” He opened his eyes. “Are we here?”
“Yes. Wait—” She put her hand on his arm before he could unfasten the seat belt. “Are you happy? You talk about everyone but yourself. Tell me how you’re feeling.”
“I’m tired. Work is busy.”
She didn’t want to talk about work. She wanted to talk about them.
“You do want a baby, don’t you?”
He hesitated. “Of course.”
“Sometimes I think I want one more than you do.”
“I want a family. But it’s not the only thing I think about.”
Was she that bad?
From now on she was going to stop talking about it all the time, at least to Greg. Now that Lauren was back, she could talk to her.
On impulse she grabbed him and tugged him toward her. “I love you, Greg Sullivan.” She pressed her lips to his, feeling the familiar shape of his mouth.
He slid his hand behind her neck and kissed her back. It started slow, but no one knew how to stoke the heat like Greg. With each slide of his tongue and brush of his fingers, he turned the kiss into a dizzying prelude to a greater intimacy. She knew exactly how that intimacy would feel and raw sensation flashed through her. There was a delicious ache in her pelvis and she wished they were back home.
His hand stroked its way under her sweater and up to her breasts and she felt her flesh tighten under the skilled brush of his thumb.
“Greg!” She gasped against his mouth and he eased away just enough to speak.
“What?” His voice was thickened, his eyes sleepy and sexy.
“We can’t. Not now.”
“You’d rather talk to your mother than do this?”
“I’d rather not get arrested for conducting an indecent act in public.” But she was tempted. This felt good. It had also felt spontaneous and there had been little of that in their lives lately.
“I guess you’re right.” He let her go and instantly she felt bereft.
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.” The sincerity in his voice soothed her.
There was nothing in the world better than knowing you were loved, and nothing that made you appreciate that gift more than seeing someone who had lost that.
“Let’s rescue my sister.”
She took his hand as they walked into the house, savoring the closeness. How must Lauren have felt marrying Ed when she was in love with Scott? It wasn’t something she could imagine.
As they entered the house, she sniffed the air. “Something smells good.”
The smells might have been hopeful, but as they walked into the kitchen Jenna felt the tension in the atmosphere. Her mother was lifting a casserole out of the oven and Lauren was setting the table. The look she gave Jenna was one of utter relief.
“Hi.”
Jenna walked straight across the kitchen and hugged her, frowning as Lauren’s hip bone jabbed her in the side. She could probably give half her body weight to her sister and Lauren still wouldn’t be fat.
Lauren’s arms tightened around her and Jenna remembered the times they’d done this as children.
When one was in trouble, the other was there.
Jenna noticed Mack slumped at the table. She was focused on her phone as if she was trying to disconnect herself from what was happening in the room. Like her mother, she had dark hollows under her eyes and she looked exhausted.
“How are you doing?” Jenna let go of her sister, checking first that she wasn’t about to keel over.
“Good.” There was a wild look in Lauren’s eyes and she was shivering.
Lie: to speak untruthfully with intent to mislead or deceive.
“Are you cold? This place can be drafty.”
Winter in the house was so much harsher, somehow. Summer shone light into dark corners but now, in the depths of February, the whole place felt tired and unloved. Or maybe it was the atmosphere. A house was only as happy as the people who lived there.
“Scott fixed the windows,” Nancy said vaguely. “No more drafts.”
“Scott?” Jenna glanced round cautiously, half expecting him to be leaning against a wall gazing at them all in brooding silence.
“He was here earlier finishing off some work on one of the doors, but he left.”
“Which shouldn’t be a surprise—” Mack glanced up from her phone “—given his track record.”
Lauren flushed. “It wasn’t like that.”
Why would her sister defend a man who had left her pregnant?
Jenna wished now that she’d found a way to drag her sister out of here so that she could be on her own with her.
“Sit down. Let’s eat.” Nancy put plates on the table.
Jenna sat next to Lauren, across from Greg.
Was her mother really going to act as if none of this was happening?
And then she saw Nancy take a deep breath.
“As we’re all together round the table, I thought this would be a good time to have an honest talk.”
Really? Jenna thought. Did anyone in her family know how to have an honest talk?
“That sounds healthy,” Greg said, and Jenna frowned.
It sounded out of character.
Nancy served casserole onto plates and handed them round. “Now that Lauren has had time to recover from her jet lag, we need to talk about what happens next.”
Jenna added rice to her plate, appalled by her mother’s lack of tact. While she had the spoon in her hand, she added a mountain of rice to Lauren’s plate. Her sister needed to eat. “There’s plenty of time to think about the future.”
“No,” Nancy said. “In fact there isn’t.”
There was an awkward silence and Jenna felt a rush of irritation.
Couldn’t her mother just once deliver soothing platitudes as she was supposed to?
“Mom?”
“We need to help Lauren formulate a plan.”
“Plan?” Jenna failed to keep the irritation out of her voice. “You mean about Scott?”
“No. I assume there’s nothing to be done there or she would have done it years ago.”
“I’m here.” Lauren hadn’t touched her food. “Sitting right here at the table. And I know I need to make decisions. I need to find a job and somewhere to live.”
“There’s plenty of time for all that, isn’t there, Mom?” Jenna tried to smile but only managed to bare her teeth. “You have ten bedrooms, so the house isn’t exactly overcrowded. Lauren can live here while she decides what’s best for her and Mack. The rest can wait.”
Nancy sat down hard on the nearest chair. “It can’t wait.”
“It’s only until I’m back on my feet again,” Lauren said. “We won’t get in the way. You’ll hardly see us if you don’t want to, and we certainly won’t stop you painting.”
And there it was. The truth.
Because they both knew that was the only thing that mattered in their mother’s life. Painting.
“This has nothing to do with painting,” Nancy said. “You have no idea how I have struggled with this, but I know it’s the right decision.”
“What is? What decision?” Jenna realized with a lurch of her stomach that this wasn’t about saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. This was something more.
Her mother gripped the edge of the table. “I’m selling The Captain’s House.” There was a ripple in her voice that almost sounded like emotion. “The place is too big for me now. I’m on my own. I don’t need ten bedrooms.”
Jenna couldn’t have been more shocked if her mother had clocked her with a skillet.
“You said you would never sell it. You said your ancestors would turn in their graves.”
“Things change.”
Lauren was the color of hospital sheets. “Who are you selling it to?”
Nancy studied her hands for a long moment and then looked up.
“That’s the part that might be a little awkward. I’m selling to Scott Rhodes.”