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They walk down the long, weathered dock together, with Cameron following behind them, holding the handles of her artfully worn-in Louis Vuitton duffel bag in one manicured hand.
“I basicallydidgrow up in Washington,” Sunday says, letting Olive slip her hand through her arm so that they can walk with their shoulders pressed together. “But this is technically where I’m from. I hope it’s not too much of a letdown for you girls.” She drops her voice. “It’s a fairly modest place, and the people here are hardworking and not into frills or fame.”
“But that guy knew you,” Olive says, turning her head to look back at the older man in the overalls.
“Everyone knows Mom,” Cameron says, slipping her sunglasses off and shooting Olive a steely glare. “Plus she lived here until she was sixteen, so it’s not like there aren’t going to be a ton of people here who know her.”
Sunday pauses before stopping at the end of the dock and addressing Cameron. “That’s true,” she says. “There are people who know me as the girl I was, and we will definitely run into some of them. I don’t know what they’ll say,” she says, looking back and forth between her daughters, “and I can’t control what impression you get of me from these interactions, but I want you to know that I brought you here so that you could learn more about the real me.”
“We know the real you, Mom,” Cameron says, looking bored. “The real you is all about spin control. Daddy is going to run for office again, and you know that it’s going to look bad for you to be living your bachelorette life down in Florida while he’s busting his butt on the campaign trail, so you want to come here and show the world that you’re still the same down-home girl from a small town. But you’re not. You’re a calculating woman who probably left this dump behind without a second thought.” Cameron flings the hand that’s not holding her duffel bag in the direction of the activity on the main street of the island. “You went to D.C. to find a man, and you found one. Then you stayed with him even though he treated you like crap for years.”
“Hold on a second,” Sunday says, putting a hand up to stop her daughter. There are people from the ferry streaming around them, though they can’t help but hear a little of the conversation that Sunday and her girls are having right there on the dock. “If you think I stayed with him for too long and that he treated me so badly, then why are you always on his side, Cam?”
Cameron rolls her eyes and looks put out for a moment, then turns to look at her mother directly. “I’m on his side because Daddy never pretended to be anything he wasn’t. He might be a gay man trapped in a straight man’s world—“
Olive makes a huffing sound like she can’t believe her sister just said this out loud. “Cam, come on,” she says, looking around to make sure that no one has heard this.
“But at least Dad is clear about who he is—he’s a politician,” Cameron goes on. “You pretended to be this perfect wife who stood by her husband’s side, but you only did it so that you could escape from whatever this place is.” Cameron stops her tirade for a second and casts her gaze at the buildings that are visible from where they are. It’s mostly white-painted wooden houses, businesses, and bicycles with rusty fenders from exposure to the salty sea air. Every so often a golf cart slips by, driven by someone who is waving or shouting out friendly greetings to people on the sidewalks.
“You have no idea,” Sunday whispers with sadness. “I had to leave here, whether I wanted to or not.”
“Cam,” Olive interrupts her mother and sister, “if you’re going to act this way, then why did you even come? I thought you might at least show up and listen to what Mom has to say.”
Olive’s words seem to soften Cameron just a bit, and the tightness of her posture loosens perceptibly. “I do want to hear what she has to say. It’s important to me.”
Sunday’s eyes immediately sting with unshed tears; her baby girl is here, and she’s willing to listen and find out what Sunday had gone through as a young girl. She’s about to thank Cameron for being there when Cameron speaks instead.
“I need to know everything that made you the way you are, Mom. I want to find out all the things you did and why you did them, and then I want to make sure I don’t repeat your mistakes with my own kids.”
The tears in Sunday’s eyes well insistently and she can feel herself on the verge of a sob; this was not what she’d hoped to hear from Cameron.
Cameron holds her Louis Vuitton like she’s about to turn around and stalk back onto the ferry, leaving Olive and Sunday behind on the island. And she probably would, which Sunday knows from raising this headstrong, tough-as-nails woman, but the ferry has already pulled away to head back to the booming metropolis of Onancock, so she stays put there on the dock, holding her mother’s gaze in hers.
“I need to figure out how to get it right,” Cameron says, laying a hand protectively across her midsection. “Because I just found out that I’m pregnant.”
* * *
Sunday stumbles around the little house that she’s rented on Airbnb. She’d been shocked to find that the world of vacation rentals had actually reached Tangier Island, but when she’d plugged in the data and searched, sure enough, there was a tiny three-bedroom house overlooking the water for rent. It had been advertised as a “charming beach bungalow” with “amenities galore,” but Sunday knows Tangier well enough that she wasn’t fooled for a second: the house is a single-story, clapboard dwelling with a mudroom off the front porch. This repository for mucky boots, jackets, and hats has huge windows that look out onto the marshy water, and the sunsets from the mudroom are undoubtedly the kind that bathe a person in the golden light of evening, making them feel warmed from the outside in as they shed outerwear and step into the folds of the house.
But the house itself is rustic, at best. A handmade table and chairs sit next to a wood stove in the kitchen (this had been offered up in the ad as a “breakfast nook,” but is the only dining option for every meal), and the bedrooms are all small and clean, each with a four-poster bed covered in a simple white duvet. Everyone shares a single bathroom with a pedestal sink and a narrow shower, and the linen closet is filled with soft, well-worn towels and bedsheets. It is precisely what Sunday expected, but seeing her daughters here is jarring; their whole lives have been spent ferrying from upscale hotels in major cities to resort destinations, and while Olive seems overly charmed by the paintings of the sea framed and hung on the walls in every room, Cameron looks slightly out of place there, twisting the pearl necklace she wears over a black cashmere turtleneck as she observes the plain surroundings.
“Is this what your house looked like, Mom?” Olive asks, standing next to Sunday at the kitchen counter while she makes tea for the three of them. “This place has got such a rustic, simple vibe. I love it.”
“Thanks, babe,” Sunday says. She knows her younger daughter is working overtime to stay cheerful and upbeat, and she appreciates Olive’s efforts to mitigate the storm that’s brewing between her and Cameron. “And yes, my house was much like this one. My dad and brother used to come in off the water after a long day of fishing and dump all their wet and dirty clothes in the front room.” She places teabags in three heavy ceramic mugs and pours the boiling water from the kettle over each, watching as the steam curls up and away.
“You don’t talk much about any of that,” Olive says, taking two mugs by the handles and walking them to the table. She sets one carefully in front of Cameron and then sits down in a chair with her own tea. Sunday brings the last mug over and sits with her daughters beneath the simple chandelier that hangs over the table. The sun is already low in the sky, and there’s a slight chill in the air that makes her want to put some logs in the wood stove and start a nice fire.
"I've told you both that my brother died young, and you've met your aunt Minnie--my sister--do either of you remember that?"
Olive and Cameron give each other a long look and Cameron lifts a shoulder and lets it fall. "Not really." She looks less guarded in this moment, and curious about the story her mother is telling.
"She came to Washington when you girls were fairly young and brought her kids, Matt and A.J. I think we took you all to the Lincoln Memorial and to a street fair. You kids all got your faces painted like animals--Cam, you were a tiger, and Ollie, you chose a zebra--and then one of you ate too many hot dogs and got a stomach ache, though I can't remember which one of you it was." Sunday lifts her mug of tea with both hands and blows on the steam to cool it. "That was the only time Minnie came to visit, and I never brought you two here."
Cameron's face hardens again. "And why didn't you ever bring us back here to Tangier? I mean, look around--this would have been a great place for two little girls to play with their cousins. We landed at the boat dock and right away we saw a shop that sells candy, plus there were kids running around with fishing poles. I would imagine there were even more children here when we were young."
Sunday nods, but doesn't refute this. "That's all true. It would have been a place where you could have come each summer and made memories with family, but I chose not to bring you."
"See, this is exactly what I'm talking about," Cameron says, pounding a fist on the wooden table and making everyone's tea slosh around in their mugs. "When I'm a mother, I want to make sure my kids know where I come from."
