“Stephanie?” Minnie warbled. The name felt so foreign to her, so unlike her. Why had her father picked it? Of all the potential names? She’d always wanted to be an Aurora, for example.
“It’s just a name,” Kendall said, his tone darkening.
Minnie closed the passport. Her hands were shaking. “What’s your name?”
“Bruce,” Kendall said simply. This made sense to Minnie. Her father had always loved Bruces: Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Willis. Could she still convince him to give her another name?
“But we need to leave as soon as possible,” her father stated.
Minnie stuttered with panic. “I can’t leave. Not yet.”
Kendall arched his eyebrow and remained silent.
“I mean,” Minnie went on, trying to fix it. “I need to figure a few things out first. I need to pack?”
“We can buy everything later,” Kendall said.
Minnie thought of her mother, alone in that creaky old house, waiting for her. She thought of Viggo, who would probably go back to Stacy after she left. Maybe he would think of Minnie every once in a while. Or maybe their love had been so brief that he’d never think of it at all.
Minnie didn’t know what to say.
Kendall crossed his arms over his chest. “I guess you don’t believe me, then.”
Minnie was stricken. “No! I do. I believe you.”
“Then why don’t you want to come with me?” Kendall demanded. “Would you rather stay here with your mother than live with me? I have money, Minnie. You have a future with me.”
Minnie didn’t say what she was thinking. The future with her father was not her future. It was Stephanie Hitchins’ future.
“I want to come,” she said quietly. “I just need, like, twenty-four hours. Give me twenty-four hours.”
For a moment, Minnie felt sure that her father was going to say no. But then, he took a deep breath and spread his hands out on his thighs. “Twenty-four hours,” he affirmed. “After that, I’m taking off with or without you. There’s no going back.”
20
It was around nine thirty at night, and Julien and Hannah were on the back porch of the old Kaiser house yet again, sipping wine and watching the stars twinkle over the water. Incredibly, it was June and months out from the worst days of Hannah’s life back in Miami.
She felt like she’d survived a massive catastrophe. Sometimes she struggled seeing everything that had happened to her, as though that massive catastrophe had been captured in an old photograph that hadn’t come out quite right.
She practiced the story on herself.I was married to a terrible man, but I got through it. My daughter is all right. We’re going to move on.
She inhaled the scents of salty air, of the now familiar Julien beside her in the rocking chair, of the wood they’d sanded on the newly built steps in the hall. It felt like everything was settling into place, building a foundation for her next years of life. She loved it. And if she was being honest with herself—which she always wanted to be—she had to admit she was falling for Julien. He was steady and kind. He made her laugh. She couldn’t believe she’d found him.
She couldn’t believe they’d found one another.
They hadn’t kissed, not yet. But they’d spent hours with one another, both in conversation and in silence, working on the house, eating burgers, drinking wine. He’d told her about his wife, about the accident that had taken her from him. And now, as the night grew darker above them, they spoke about their childhoods—about Hannah’s, so far away in the Midwest, and about Julien’s, here in Nantucket. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that it had been hard.
“Two sisters,” Julien said softly. “My mother struggled to keep track of everything, especially early on. My father was not an easy man to know.”
Hannah felt the distance. She felt the reticence. She waited for him to explain, sensing that this was one of those stories that built up the foundation of Julien’s life. She wanted to know everything.
“It wasn’t completely his fault,” Julien declared, his fingertips drawing lines over the rocking chair’s arm. “His father was often away at sea, and his family didn’t have much money. My dad started working from an early age. We’re talking eleven, twelve. It was a different time. But everything was on his shoulders. And when his dad was home, he beat him to within an inch of his life. So, when he grew up, married my mother, and had kids, he didn’t know how to handle his own emotions. He drank, which made everything worse.”
Hannah sensed already where this was going. Her heart thudded for Julien, for a story that he seemed never to tell.
“The first time I remember my dad hurting my mom, I was maybe three or four,” Julien said. “I was outside on the porch, watching through the screen door. He was angry about something. Maybe he didn’t like dinner? That was a pretty common theme. And he threw her across the living room, like she was a rag doll. I couldn’t really understand what I wasseeing, but I cried and cried. He went upstairs, leaving my mother to tend to me and my tears.”
Julien’s eyes were rimmed with red. Hannah touched his shoulder, her heart swelling. People like Julien’s father should never have been allowed to marry and have children, not without years of therapy. But she knew people like Julien’s father had had many, many children. Millions of children, probably. And those children were dealing with all this trauma.
