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“Sure, babe. I’ve wondered that. Of course. But I’d like to believe that his life has been so good that I’m nothing but a passing thought—if he thinks of me at all. I’d be totally fine if he never did. If he’d blended in so seamlessly to his new family that I vanished into the background. That would be the best case scenario. I don’t need to believe that I have a child out there, pining for his birth mother.” She bites her lower lip and watches a fishing boat pass by with three men on it, all decked out in coveralls and with hats on their heads. One lifts his cap in Sunday’s direction and she gives a half-hearted wave. “Do either of you pine for your birth mothers?” Sunday asks the question, but even as she does, she’s afraid of the answer.
“No,” Cameron says quickly. “Never.”
Olive shrugs and watches the boat as it moves out into the open water. “Sometimes,” she admits. She turns to Sunday quickly. “I’m sorry, Mom. I don’t mean to make you feel bad, I just wonder about her. And about the rest of the family I never knew.”
“Oh, love, of course you do.” Sunday squeezes Olive’s hand reassuringly. “I don’t fault you for that. And I want you both to know that if you ever want to seek out your birth families, I’ll move heaven and earth to help you find them.”
Simultaneously, as if they’d planned it, Olive and Cameron lean into their mother, placing their heads on both of her shoulders. She smiles as tears spring to her eyes.
“You know,” she says, wrapping an arm around each of her girls. “I wanted you both to come here with me because I think it’s high time you know where I really come from. But also because your dad has threatened to tell my story for me, and I don’t think that’s his right.”
“It’s not,” Olive agrees, leaving her head on Sunday’s shoulder. “I’m going to tell him not to.”
“That won’t stop him,” Cameron says, lifting her head to look around Sunday at her sister. “You know he does whatever he wants.”
The three women are silent as they contemplate this, and Sunday knows that her girls are well aware of all of Peter’s rumored indiscretions. She just hopes they have no clue about the finer points of his bad behavior, like getting caught in the kitchen pantry at the White House with Adam the chef.
“I guess I wanted to bring you here and tell you all this myself so that he couldn’t beat me to the punch,” Sunday explains. “He’s going to do whatever he’s going to do in the press, and he’s going to reveal my life and my story to make himself look better, but I don’t really care what a bunch of strangers thinks about me anyway. The only two people in the world who I want toreallyknow me and understand me are you two girls. And I hope now that you do.”
“I think I understand you…better,” Cameron says slowly.
Olive lifts her head from Sunday’s shoulder. “Me too.”
“I can see now that you married Dad when you were still pretty young, and that you fought hard for the life you ended up with. And that maybe you didn’t want to let go of that life just because he wasn’t the perfect husband.”
Sunday nearly snorts at the words “perfect husband” being used in the same sentence as Peter, but she doesn’t. “That’s true, honey.” She puts a hand on Cameron’s back and rubs in slow circles. “I had you girls to think about, and frankly, I knew what Ididn’twant my family to be. I wanted to give you everything I could, and to be the best mom I could be. But don’t forget as you start your own journey into motherhood, Cam, that it’s hard work. And you will make mistakes. As long as you do everything with love, then that’s the most you can ask for. And everything I’ve done—every choice I’ve made—is out of love for you two girls.”
“Mom, can I ask one more question?” Olive says.
“Sure, babe.”
“Why did you adopt us instead of having more kids of your own? Was it because you felt bad about Benjamin?”
Sunday is gobsmacked for a second, and she doesn’t answer right away. “I think I felt like someone out there in the world was raising my baby and giving him a better life than I ever could have, and that I knew I could do the same for some other woman—I could raise her baby and be the mother that she couldn’t be at that moment.”
Cameron nods, digesting this. “That makes sense.” She stops talking and stares at her mom meaningfully. “I’m glad you did. I’m glad you’re my mom.”
“Me too,” Olive says, kissing Sunday on the cheek. “Me too, Mama.”
Ruby
“Girls, girls, settle in,” Ruby says, waving at the chairs she’s set up in the back room of Marooned With a Book. “We’ve got a ton of stuff to talk about.”
“And I bet it’s not even about the book,” Molly says, biting into a lemon poppyseed scone that she’s brought over from The Scuttlebutt to add to the hasty smorgasbord they’ve made this week for book club. Gone are the formalities of the first couple of meetings, with the carefully prepped snacks, the proper voting on books to read and discuss, and the getting-to-know-you awkwardness, and in their place are random bites to eat, a system of suggesting whatever sounds good to read and then voting by raised hand, and a growing familiarity that feels deeply comforting to Ruby.
The table at the side of the room is laden with cheese and crackers, Molly’s scones, some onion dip and a bag of chips, a platter of fruit, and three different kinds of wine. Ruby has also set out a pot of hot water and a variety of teabags for anyone not wanting wine, but this evening every woman has a glass of wine in her hand except for Tilly, who, at nineteen, is drinking a can of Coke.
“It’s not about the book,” Sunday confirms, crossing her legs and biting into a cracker and a hunk of smoked gouda. “We’ve both got stories from our far-flung travels.”
“You first,” Ruby tells her, sitting down with a small paper plate loaded with snacks in one hand and a clear plastic cup of red wine in the other. “Tell us about Tangier Island.”
Ruby and Sunday have already pulled an all-nighter since being back on Shipwreck Key, and they’ve talked about everything that happened on their respective trips. Harlow and Athena had been there as well when they built a huge fire in Ruby’s fireplace and settled in with blankets and mugs of tea to talk, but these other women have become their support network—their friends—and they want to bring them up to date and share their stories with Heather, Marigold, Molly, Vanessa, and Tilly, too.
“Okay, where do I start…” Sunday pours herself another half glass of wine and sighs, thinking of the quick trip back to her childhood home. “First of all, as I told you, Cameron didn’t want to go, but she agreed to meet us in Virginia, and we all got on the ferry together.”
“Good thing she showed, or I would have called her myself,” Molly grouses.
“No, she showed. And they got to see the island, my sister Minnie, the house we grew up in, and they even met my favorite teacher.”
