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Chapter Seven
Elise fell into stepbeside her sister. Tracey’s hair fluttered in the light breeze, and her cheeks immediately brightened pink in the chilly air.
“You must be so cold here,” Tracey said with a laugh. “A California girl facing a Michigan winter. I can’t imagine it!”
“But the leaves,” Elise said, “And the air and the water and...”
“And the lack of tourists,” Tracey finished. “And the sense of community that comes over this place when the summer season is over! Oh, I could go on and on, but I think you sense it, too.” After a pause, she added, “Wayne told me that you’re a screenwriter. That you’re working on something about the island.”
“I’m just playing around with some ideas,” Elise said. “I don’t know what will come of it.”
What else did Wayne tell you about me? Why did he bail on me last night? Why did he bring you to the bed and breakfast this morning? Was it a kind of peace offering? Or was it just a distraction to keep me guessing about what he might do next?
“Well, I would love to read it sometime,” Tracey said as she snuck a hand into her coat pocket and jangled out keys. “But right now, I want you to see this line of dresses I just got in to the store. They arrived a month late if you can believe it. They would have sold beautifully over the last few weeks of the season, but now...”
She placed the key into the lock and led Elise into the grey shadows of the boutique, the very one in which the women had first spotted each other.
“Here they are,” Tracey said, dropping to her knees in front of several boxes toward the side of the front room. With tender hands, she brought out a gorgeous maroon dress, with a low-cut top and a cinched waist, then a silver dress with a higher neckline and gorgeous button detail, and a dark jean skirt, which would have hit Elise at the knee.
“The designer lives down in Florida,” Tracey explained. “I met her a few years ago when I went down there on a personal vacation. Tell you the truth, I was going through a pretty rough breakup at the time, and I needed time away from the island to get some perspective.”
Elise took the clothes from Tracey’s extended hand and added them to an empty rack so that she could analyze the fabric better.
“I guess I’m doing something like that now,” Elise said. “My divorce was finalized only recently. And then, with my mother... I just wanted to see everything from far away.”
“That’s the funny thing about those trips, though, isn’t it? The fact that no matter how far away from home you go, you’re still there with yourself,” Tracey said, her smile fading slightly. “I begged my older sister, Cindy, to meet me down there when I got a little sick of myself after a week or so. Gosh, this must have been four years ago. Before so many things happened. People now long-gone were still alive. People seemed happier. Dad was so much more vibrant back then.”
Elise swallowed the lump in her throat. “You said there was so much I missed. But I’d love to know what you meant. What is your life like? What was it like to grow up here on Mackinac Island? And Dean... What was it like to have him as a father?”
“He had a difficult time with all of us kids, I think,” Tracey said. Her smile was nostalgic. “He was trying his best to make his way in the world, you know. It didn’t take him long to become the richest man on the island. There’s no telling why it all happened the way it did. Maybe it had something to do with Alex’s illness. He felt he had to become something strong enough for all of us. Maybe it had something to do with your mother and the life he hadn’t been allowed to have with her. I honestly don’t know.”
Elise nodded somberly. Something like that had gone through her mind.
“But me? Well, I have a daughter. Just one. Her father is still around, but we don’t exactly see eye-to-eye. He’s high up at one of the ferry companies. I’ve joked for years that he’ll be the one to push me off a ferry on one of my trips across, one of these days,” Tracey said with an ironic laugh.
“How old is your daughter?”
“She’s twenty-one,” Tracey said.
“So is my daughter!” Elise said.
Tracey and Elise shared a tender moment. Elise’s mind hummed with potential future images. Penny and Tracey’s daughter—soon later revealed to be named Emma—together on the island, getting to know one another, laughing the way cousins were supposed to laugh.
Elise was amazed at how easy it was to talk to Tracey, especially as the ice melted between them. Elise tried on various dresses and skirts and chattered easily with Tracey, who told her more stories about growing up on the island, about her father. Tracey was also curious about Allison Darby, about what kind of woman she had been.
“That sounds like Dad’s type, all right,” Tracey confessed. “I can’t imagine it. Getting swept up in a romance on the set of a movie... It must have been the time of Dad’s life. And then to come home to three screaming kids, one of them so sick we weren’t sure if he would make it? I’m sure it was a nightmare.”
Elise nodded as she added another dress to a hanger and hung it back on the rack. “I have a lot of compassion for him. And I don’t want anyone to regret what came before.”
“How could we?” Tracey said somberly, her hand across Elise’s shoulder. “You’re perfect.”
That moment, the door burst open to reveal a woman who looked almost identical to Tracey.
Her eyes were enormous; her lipstick was jagged and smeared across her lips; she looked as though she had been crying.
Immediately, Elise panicked.
“Cindy? What’s going on?” Tracey asked as the door clipped shut behind yet another Swartz sister.
