Minnie said it as quietly as she could. “I love you.”
But rather than wait for Viggo to answer, rather than wait for the words she so needed to hear, she turned on her heel and ran from the dock. Tears drained from her eyes and fell onto her dress. It was the dress she’d selected because it was her favorite, the one she’d wanted to run away in. She prayed that her father wouldn’t force her to get rid of it, along with everything else.
Kendall had told her that if she didn’t make it to the hotel by the evening, he’d leave her behind. But it was still morning, long before her cutoff time, and Minnie hoped that Kendall would give her points for that. She hoped he would forgive her for leaving last night and for asking for time to think it over. When she entered the hotel, she flashed a smile at the bored twentysomething behind the front desk, then hurried upstairs to her father’s room. After a knock, he opened it, bringing her into his world of strange smells and unmade beds and bags of chips, already mostly eaten. The half-eaten protein pudding still sat on the counter.
It was disgusting. But what was worse was the way Kendall looked. His jowls hung on either side of his face, and his eyes were black and sinister and strange, like two long hallways she didn’t want to walk down. Minnie smiled at him. “I’m here,” she said. “We can go.”
Kendall grunted something that sounded like, “Took you long enough.” But Minnie couldn’t be sure.
“I didn’t pack anything, like you said,” Minnie said, although the truth was, she had a few twenty-dollar bills in the pocket of her dress, just in case.
“Good,” Kendall said. “Where did you tell your mother you were going?”
“Out with friends,” she said.
“Tell her you’re sleeping over,” Kendall said. He walked to the window and peered out from the curtain, wincing at the sunshine. “We won’t leave till midafternoon, when the heat drops a bit, and fewer tourists are out. I don’t want to be spotted.”
Minnie cursed herself for having come here so early. She could have been out on the water with Viggo, soaking up the last of a Nantucket summer that was ending for her far too soon. She could have been kissing Viggo, swimming in the ocean, sipping little bits of wine, and relishing the last uses of her name. Minnie, Minnie, Minnie. She loved her name.
Kendall told Minnie he had a headache. He poured himself a glass of whiskey and told her to go downstairs and buy whatever she wanted from the bar. She got a soda and a grilled cheese, which she ate sitting on his bed while he drank and looked at his phone. Eventually, she got up the nerve to turn on the television, and they watched nearly all ofFour Weddings and a Funeral, which was one of Hannah’s favorites. Minnie guessed that Kendall didn’t even know that.
When it hit three thirty, Kendall snapped his fingers and told her to text her mother to tell her she was spending the night somewhere. “We want her off our backs for a while,” he said.
Minnie was frightened. But she saw the way Kendall looked at her, like he needed her to do this as soon as possible, so she typed out the text.
MINNIE: I’m going to stay the night at a friend’s place.
Hannah wrote back right away, as she so often did.
MOM: Who’s the friend?
MINNIE: You don’t know her. Her name is Bethany Briggs.
She picked the name of a girl in her art class who’d once lent Minnie a pencil. They’d had very little contact besides that. But Viggo had said that Bethany was “cool” and that they hung out sometimes, because Viggo liked Bethany’s boyfriend, who lived on Martha’s Vineyard. More than that, she knew for a fact that Bethany’s mother worked long hours and probably wouldn’t answer the phone if Hannah somehow tracked down her number to corroborate Minnie’s story.
MOM: Can you give me an address? Anything?
MINNIE: We’re still at the beach and will probably be here till late. I’ll text u some details when we get to her place. Love you.
MOM: Love you too…
Minnie could tell that her mother was miffed. But this was the best she could do, for now. When the text conversation finished, Kendall got off the bed, took a shower, and said it was time to go to the ferry. “There will be a car waiting for us on the mainland,” he said. His hair dripped from his shower, but he seemed not to notice.
Minnie’s head rang with questions. The one that managed to escape right before they left the hotel room was, “Where are we going to live?”
Kendall had his hand on the doorknob. But he gave her the worst sneer she’d ever seen, then said, “Don’t be like your mother. Don’t ask so many questions.”
22
That evening before her dinner with Eleanor Pike, her head still roiling with ideas about the Legacy Club and all she planned to do, Hannah drove out to the harbor to see Julien. Long before he spotted her, she watched him from the boardwalk, her hands gripping the railing. He looked utterly capable, the powerful foundation of everything that happened at the docks. Workers hurried up to him, asked him questions, then scurried away, their faces relaxed after learning whatever he’d told them. Hannah knew this was the kind of man worth her while.
But she had to tell him that tonight, she had plans. Slowly, she walked toward him, aching with the memory of their kiss. When she was fifteen feet away, he spotted her, and his face broke into a smile that surprised her. She hadn’t expected that he’d show so much emotion on his “home turf,” so to speak. A few of the other dock workers looked at him, then looked over at her, their own faces echoing shock.
Best of all, he approached her, then put her hands around her and hugged her, right there in front of everyone. Hannah’s heart floated into her throat.
“I didn’t expect you,” he said under his breath.
Hannah smiled. She didn’t want the hug to break. She wanted to feel the warmth emanating from his chest, for all time. But she had to get back to her car and drive to Eleanor Pike’s place. She had to figure out what the woman wanted to say to her. If Eleanor Pike wanted to “do away with her,” so to speak, Hannah had left Eleanor Pike’s name and address with a friend of hers who lived off the island. A former newspaper colleague, she’d texted Hannah back: You always get yourself in messes. Make sure you can get out of this one. Love you.
