To Kailee’s surprise, Heather spoke up in support of Ross’s father.

  “Ross, sometimes men aren’t good with babies and children. When you were in your teens, you loved helping Wall. Our plan for years was for you to take over the store. I can understand your desire to be with Kailee, but there’s another way. Ross, honey, think about it. At least take a moment to think about it. Kailee’s a lovely girl, but she could move to Concord as easily as you could move to Nantucket.”

  That was the moment Kailee began to hate Heather.

  Heather continued. “You and Kailee could live in our house, with your father. You two could have the entire second floor. Kailee might like living in Concord. It’s a beautiful town, and not as isolated as Nantucket is. You would be near theater and art museums in Boston. You could zip down to New York. You could have a wider group of friends. You and Dad could run the store, and I know you’d improve it. Kailee could find a job for an important business, an international company, not just a small island concern. Or she could work for one of the amazing historical museums in Concord, like Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott lived. And Walden Pond. Won’t you at least think about it? Maybe bring Kailee to live in Concord for a week, to see how cultured the area is? Beaches aren’t as compelling in the winter months. You could always vacation on the island, when the weather is good.”

  Ross didn’t speak. He sat looking down at the table, obviously conflicted and in shock. Kailee couldn’t breathe. Heather had insulted her island, her world, and her father’s business. She tried to gather her thoughts to reply.

  But Wall spoke first, his voice like thunder. “Ross, if you don’t work with me this summer, you’re no son of mine.”

  Kailee whispered, “Please…”

  Ross lifted his head and met his father’s eyes. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Dad. But I’m going to Nantucket.”

  Wall shoved back his chair and strode out the door.

  Heather closed her eyes and sat very still.

  Kailee reached over and took her hand. “This must be upsetting for you. I’m so sorry.”

  Heather pulled her hand away. “Oh, I don’t think you are.”

  “Mom, come on,” Ross said.

  “You come on,” Heather responded. “Suddenly, you’ve lost all appreciation for your father and the business he’s given his life to? Suddenly, all you care about is Kailee?”

  “Mrs. Willette,” Kailee said, dropping the sugar from her voice, “it’s normal for people to leave their parents and make their own lives.”

  “Kailee,” Heather said, her voice shaking, “aren’t you being a bit hypocritical? You’re not leaving your parents, are you? You and my son are going to make your lives with your parents and to hell with me and Wall.”

  Kailee blushed fiercely. Heather Willette had a point, but few people had ever spoken to her so bluntly.

  Ross spoke angrily. “Mom, you know Dad has to be the one in charge of everything. He’ll never take my advice. He won’t let me move a nail unless he tells me to. I won’t live like that. Even if I hadn’t met Kailee, I wouldn’t work for him.”

  “Ross, that’s enough. I’ve spent too many years playing referee for you and your father. Sounds like you’ve already made your decision.” Heather rose so quickly she almost knocked her chair over. She crossed the room, went out the door, and left the coffee shop. Kailee and Ross could tell through the plate glass window that Heather was sobbing. She stood right on the sidewalk for anyone to see, until she found a tissue in her shoulder bag.

  Ross rose to go after his mother. Kailee put her hand around his wrist. Ross sat down.

  Finally, Heather walked away, out of sight.

  Ross dropped his head into his hands, elbows on the table. “What a mess. I feel terrible. I never meant to hurt my mother.”

  Kailee wanted Ross to remain on her side. Quietly, she said, “I can’t believe your mother called me a hypocrite. I thought she’d be supportive of you.”

  “She does have a point,” Ross said. “I’m leaving my father’s store to work for your father.”

  Kailee’s lips tightened. She was shocked at the way the conversation had gone. She knew she should be quiet and let it all settle, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Ross, you’re an adult. You could go off to Antarctica or—or space if you wanted to.”

  “I know.” Ross sounded sad. “But that wasn’t what they expected. I did promise to work in the store, to take it over from my father. We really dropped a bomb. I thought Dad would be mad, but I never expected Mom to be this upset.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “Damn, Kailee, my parents are getting divorced.”

  “It’s so strange,” Kailee said. “Maybe your mother will change her mind and stay with your father. He will need her now.”

  Ross’s face fell. “I don’t think Mom needs him.”

  “Would it help if you talked to your mother yourself, just the two of you?” Kailee asked.

  “No,” Ross replied. Turning to Kailee, he took both her hands in his. “Kailee, I love you. I want to be part of Essex Construction and build my life with you. I want to have children with you and walk on the beach with you in the winter. I’m sorry my parents reacted the way they did. I’m not surprised by my father, but my mother…I’ll talk to her again, but not now. Not when we’re so emotional.”

  Tears glimmered in Kailee’s eyes. “I love you, Ross.” She felt as if they’d been in a battle, and she and Ross had won. It probably was wrong of her to think of it this way, but it was how she felt.

  “My mother’s strong,” Ross said. “She’ll be all right. My dad will be furious, and he likes to nurse a grudge…”

  “We’ll let some time pass,” Kailee said. “It will be all right.”

  * * *

  —

  It was the middle of May, and Kailee was so done with college. No more early morning classes, pop quizzes, professors with halitosis. She was free!

  Ross helped her carry the last of her boxes to her Jeep. Kailee kissed him goodbye before he headed in his blue Chevy pickup to stop by his house in Concord, drop off some boxes, and dig out some summer clothes to take to the island.

  Kailee drove down the Mass Pike and onto 495. She tuned to her favorite station and sang with the music all the way down to the Cape. When she crossed the Bourne Bridge, her heart flooded with happiness. She was on the Cape. She was almost home.

  In Hyannis, she drove onto the M/V Eagle, parking in the hold with SUVs, pickup trucks, a caterpillar on a flatbed, a long UPS parcel truck, five passenger cars, and a white FedEx delivery truck all crammed in four lanes from bow to stern. It was hot and noisy down in the vehicle deck, but Kailee had her to-go cup filled with ice and water and she could play sudoku on her phone during the trip.

  She couldn’t concentrate. She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and thought of how her life had changed since she’d left the island for college.

  Kailee had a degree in business management with a minor in technology. All her life she’d known she would eventually work for her father, and then with him, and finally take over the business on the island where her family had lived for generations. When she met Ross, she’d been awed that the universe had given her not only the man she loved, but a man who could be her companion in work as well as life.

  This summer, Kailee would move back into the handsome house on Pleasant Street, a tree-lined elegant avenue with historic homes, far away from the enormous building empire where men wore hard hats and giant machines waited to waken and growl and shake the earth like sci-fi special effects come to life. She would work at the company’s on-site office learning about Essex Construction’s financials from George March, the company’s financial officer. One day a week, she would help her mother with her various town committees and charity and fundraising work. It would be years before Kailee and Ross headed the firm, but her grandfather had started the business, and since Kailee was an only child, she knew her place in the family dynasty.

  Ross would start working for the company at the basic, dusty, lumber-toting, nail-hammering level. His home would be the small apartment over her house’s garage, and Kailee’s parents had told Ross he was welcome to join them for dinner whenever he wanted. Kailee and Ross knew she would be in his apartment often.

  Kailee hadn’t spoken with Ross’s parents since the disastrous meeting in early May. She pitied them, especially Heather, who had been so rude. Kailee didn’t want Heather to be unhappy. Actually, she didn’t give a hoot about Heather’s happiness. Ross belonged to Kailee now, and together they were going forward into the future.

  The ferry slowed and turned. It rumbled at turtle speed into the slip, slamming up against the dock. Machinery squealed as the ramp was lowered and the mooring lines connected. All around her, motors started, and slowly the exodus began.

  She steered her car off the boat and onto dry land with tears in her eyes. Nantucket. Her home. She was born here, raised here, and she had no desire to go anywhere else. She was totally an island girl.

  It would be different now, she knew. Some of her high school friends had gone to college and on to a big city for work. Some had stayed home after high school, married, and had babies. Plus, of course, new, younger princesses had been crowned homecoming queen or starred in plays and musicals. Now Kailee would work full-time. She would make it through the busy season, and so would Ross, and in November, when island life really slowed down, she and Ross could make plans for the future, for their wedding, for the spot on the island where they would build a house of their own.

  Kailee drove down Water Street past the Dreamland Theater, the library garden, Lilly Pulitzer and other boutiques, and turned right on Main Street. She smiled. This picturesque cobblestone avenue, wide enough for angle parking on both sides, with buildings of brick put together in the 1800s, this was her red-carpet road home. Murray’s Beverage was the first place she legally purchased a bottle of champagne. Half the clothes she owned came from Vis-a-Vis. Over the years, she’d bought medicine, lipstick, sunglasses, and ice cream from Nantucket Pharmacy, and books from Mitchell’s Book Corner. Upper Main was one of the prettiest streets in the world, with towering trees and flowering bushes sheltering proud brick mansions and Greek Revival homes with columns.

  She turned onto Pleasant Street at the corner where the Hadwen House stood. She passed the Nantucket Garden Club’s garden, and Moor’s End with its high brick wall hiding its rose garden maze, and at last, near Jefferson Lane, her home stood waiting. The house itself was close to the sidewalk and street, and a brick driveway ran beside it to the garage and garden in back.

  It was almost six o’clock, and her father’s truck wasn’t in the drive. During the long summer nights, he and his crew took advantage of the light and worked late. They were always under deadline.

  Kailee lifted her duffel bag onto her shoulder and hurried up the drive. She opened the front door.

  “I’m home!” she yelled exuberantly.

  Her mother’s voice floated from the back of the house. “I’m working.”

  Kailee dropped her duffel bag in the large front hall and went through the house to her mother’s office.

  Evelyn had had her husband build a conservatory, with a glass roof and walls and wicker furniture with green-and-white striped cushions and a pale green carpet on the floor. It was almost impossible to see through the ferns and other greenery to Evelyn’s antique French provincial desk with intricately carved legs. Kailee thought that only her mother could turn an office into an Eden.

  Kailee studied her mother. Evelyn was nearly fifty, and always beautifully dressed. Long ago, Kailee had asked her mother why she always wore jewelry or elegant dresses even when going on errands.

  “I’m representing Essex Construction,” Evelyn had said. “I must look groomed.”

  “Groomed,” Kailee had scoffed. “Sounds like you’re a dog.”

  “If I am,” Evelyn had said, “I’m a French poodle with a diamond collar.”

  Kailee had laughed. “I see you more as a Jack Russell terrier. Always going, never stopping.”

  Kailee repeated, “I’m home!”

  Evelyn continued tapping away on her computer. “Just a minute, sweetie.” She finished something, then turned to Kailee.

  “Good trip?” Evelyn asked.

  When she turned to Kailee, Kailee saw that her mother’s face seemed older. She had gray pouches under her eyes. “You look tired, Mom.”

  “I’m extremely busy with the Essex Nature Foundation. We’ve had the paperwork checked out by legal, and we’re having a gala at the end of the summer, just before Labor Day. The only day we could get, actually. My first task is to build a website for the foundation. I’m perusing the websites of other organizations on the island. I don’t want to imitate or irritate the other groups. I’ve made a list of the key people who will be, I hope, founding members. So if I look tired, it’s for a good cause.” Evelyn changed the subject. “When does Ross arrive?”

  “He’ll take the eight o’clock slow boat and be here around ten-fifteen. You guys don’t have to wait up. I’ll watch for him and show him up to his apartment.”

  “Good. He can carry your boxes in. I assume you can start working with George in the office tomorrow.”

  “Yes. I can’t wait.”

  Evelyn smiled. “I remember when we bought you your own small desk with a toy computer and a real calculator and folders and paper and pens.”

  “It was so much fun!” Kailee closed her eyes and for a moment she was back there. “It was like going to paradise.”

  “It’s changed, I’m afraid. Back then, your father’s business was so small I could do all the bookkeeping. Now we’ve got a full-time accountant and a complicated financial system.”

  “You and Dad could sell everything,” Kailee suggested on the spur of the moment. “The land, this house, his business, and you’d be multi-millionaires.”

  “We’d never do that. We belong to the island and these days it needs our help.”

  “I’m glad you’re doing this, Mom, but it’s kind of weird.”

  “Sweetie,” Evelyn said, “think of it as payback. This island has given us so much. We want to love it back.”

  “Got it.” At times like this, Kailee wished she had a more normal mom, one who would hug her and welcome her home, maybe even bake her a cake with a silly heart shaped from icing. But her mother was on a mission, and when Evelyn started on a project, she finished it.

  “I’ll unpack the Jeep,” Kailee said.

  “Mmm.” Evelyn was already back at work, reading glasses on her nose, documents in her hands.

  Kailee returned to her Jeep, took out her luggage, and brought everything into the front hall. She took her wheelie suitcases up carpeted stairs to her room.

  “Oh, groan,” she said when she entered her bedroom.

  She had a canopy bed with teen pink curtains. Swimming trophies lined her shelves, along with often-read classic paperbacks. Pooh, her childhood teddy bear, sat on her vanity table next to her fingernail polish.

  “OMG,” Kailee cried in dismay. “This is such a teenager’s room.”

  She jumped up and began yanking down the ruffly pink curtains of the canopy over her bed. She was an adult now, almost engaged to be married, ready to take on the serious work of her father’s business. She needed to get all the pink out of her room.

  She took down and folded the canopy curtains, detached the wooden finials and posts, and set them by her door to take to the attic later. Ross was stopping by his house in Concord to pick up his stuff. He would come over in his truck on the eight o’clock ferry and arrive at ten-fifteen. Kailee was going to walk down to the terminal so she could see him when he arrived.

  And then their real life would begin!

  three

  Summer had been calling her all her life.

  On this sunny, bright May morning, Heather arrived, after driving her old Volvo station wagon down Route 3, into Hyannis, and onto a car ferry. She left her car and walked up to the upper deck to watch the boat make its way into the wide waters of Nantucket Sound. She allowed herself one more time to replay her last conversation with her son. Had she done everything possible to make him comfortable with her divorce?

  She hoped she had.

  Several days ago, Ross had driven to their house in Concord to pick up boxes he’d been packing up over the previous two weekends. Wall had been at his store when Ross was there—Heather guessed that Ross came during the day when he knew his father wouldn’t be at the house.

  She had tried to talk things over with her son. Once, she’d brought him a glass of iced tea and lingered in the door as he tossed his board shorts and T-shirts into a duffel bag.

  “Ross,” Heather had said in a mild, friendly tone, “would you like to sit down for a moment and talk? I don’t mean about you and the store. I wonder if you have questions or concerns about your father and me getting a divorce.”

  Ross shrugged. “I’m not surprised. He can be a real dick.”

  Angered, Heather snapped, “Are you thirteen years old? Is that all you can say about your father? About our marriage? Do you think you’re going to live your entire life with Kailee and never once be a ‘real dick’?”

  Ross sighed. “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have called him that. What I meant was that he can be really difficult to deal with. And frankly, he’s never been Mr. Warm.”

  Heather went into the room and sat on the armchair in the corner, even though it was covered with clothes Ross had tossed from his drawers.

  “Sit down with me a moment, Ross. Please. I don’t want you to feel sad or lost because of this divorce.”