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“All I know,” Sunday says, standing with her back to the group as she watches a middle-aged couple walking two Golden Retrievers on red leashes outside on Seadog Lane, “is that I went into marriage and motherhood thinking that I’d be spending my fifties like those people right there.” She nods at the couple as they look both ways for speeding golf carts and then cross the street to sit outside at a bistro table at The Frog’s Grog. “I didn’t think I’d be humiliated over and over and over again by the man I’d sworn to be faithful to.”
When Sunday turns around, the other women are staring at her, and Ruby is looking at her with real concern.
“I feel like I could say, without hesitation, that every one of us sitting here in this room has hit a speed bump or two, Sun,” Ruby says. “Not a one of us has traveled a completely smooth path, and we’ve all had things happen that, arguably,shouldn’thave happened to us.”
Sunday looks out the window again, feeling strangely detached. She’s still holding her wine glass in one hand, and with the other, she lifts the chiffon of her long vest and swirls it around her body absentmindedly. She wishes that Olive could have stayed longer on Shipwreck Key; she came down for a long weekend, found the dress she wanted, and then headed back to Connecticut and her life there with James and the bakery. Olive always seems to think her bakery will fall apart without her there to roll the dough and fill the pastries, which is charming but probably untrue. Still, Sunday admires her dedication.
And Cameron…where is Cameron right now? If Sunday could ask her, would Cammy say that she felt as if life had steamrolled her at some point? That the universe had failed to recognize the fact that she was doing everything right? She would love to know, to sit down with Cameron and talk, really talk, like two grown women, and not like a mother and a disappointed daughter.
“This is the hard part, Sun,” Ruby says, walking across the store as the other ladies sip their drinks and stay quiet. Ruby stands behind Sunday and puts her hands on her shoulders. “You filed for divorce in the spring and moved down here three months ago,” she says gently. “It’s totally normal that the initial excitement of the move and of buying a house would have worn off a little. Now is when the doubts creep in and nag at you:Did I do the right thing? Are my daughters proud of me? Do I even know what I’m doing?”Ruby pauses for a minute, her hands still on Sunday’s shoulders as she stands behind her. “I just want you to know that I think you’re incredibly brave, and that you’re not going through this big life change alone. You have me no matter what.”
Sunday turns to look at Ruby gratefully, tears filling her eyes. “Thanks, Rubes,” she whispers, pulling her friend into a tight hug.
Molly lifts her wine glass. “You’ve got the rest of us, too. Might be a helluva lot more than you bargained for when you moved down here, but if you want a rusty old anchor like me, a woman who’s never taken a bad photo,” she glances at Marigold, “a lady who’ll marry your dad if he’s still alive,” she lifts her glass at Heather Charleton-Bicks, who guffaws at this unexpected barb, “and a bunch of young lassies who are out to change the world,” she nods at Vanessa, Tilly, Harlow, and Athena, “then you’ve got yourself a proper girl gang here on Shipwreck Key.”
The young women fall into fits of laughter at this, even Tilly, who isn’t prone to cracking a smile if it isn’t in response to a sarcastic joke. Harlow stands up, ready to propose a toast.
“Aunt Sunday,” Harlow says, smoothing down the front of her satiny yellow shorts, which she’s paired with a tiny, cropped denim jacket and worn-in cowboy boots. Her hair is untamed, and she’s wearing a slash of shiny fuchsia lipstick. “You’ve come to the right place. Trust me. When I showed up here after that whole…” she waves one hand around, looking uncomfortable, “bar shooting incident, I didn’t know how I was going to pull myself together again. I saw peopledie, and it was horrible." She pauses to collect herself. "But this bookstore and these women have been like my backbone.” Sunday is looking right at Harlow as she talks, and Harlow goes on. “We can all be that for you, if you need us to.”
Sunday’s tears have spilled over, and she nods, crying openly. “Yeah,” she says, smiling through her tears. “I do need that. I really think I do.”
* * *
The reason for Sunday’s uncharacteristic pensiveness is sitting on her kitchen table at home. When she gets back from book club, she drops her purse and keys on the little white wood table by the front door, turning on the lamp next to the dish where she leaves her keys, which is made of half of a giant clamshell. Her front room, small and cozy as it is, is warmed by the lamplight. The small gray loveseat is set against the wall to make the most of the view out onto the sand, and over the back of the couch is a hand-knitted chenille blanket, made by Sunday’s sister Minnie when the girls were still toddlers.
Sunday takes off her long, chiffon vest, and replaces it by wrapping the chenille blanket from the couch around her shoulders. She kicks off her shoes and heads over to the dining table, which is tucked into a corner of her kitchen. She likes to think of it as her breakfast nook, and she tries not to compare it to the massive kitchen that Ruby has, with its huge picture windows looking straight at the ocean—as she sits at her small, round table.
The laptop hums to life when Sunday opens it, and since the only light she’s turned on is the lamp on the table in the entryway, her face is lit almost entirely by the glow of her computer screen as she navigates to her email. She’s already read the message three times, but she skims it again.
I feel like I’m the bearer of bad news lately…first having to rush down to Shipwreck Key to tell Ruby about the book, and now having to tell you this, though I think you’ll be glad it’s coming from me. Peter has been shopping a story around to various outlets about how you’re frigid, and that the end of your marriage is your fault, and yours alone. Sorry to be so brutal, hon, but I want you to hear it like it is, and it ain’t good. I know you’re down there now, living a whole different life that’s mercifully removed from Washington and from the public eye, but you have daughters—you have family. I wouldn’t want you to be blindsided by him sharing your personal secrets with the world, and Sunday, I think he’s going to share them all. Starting with everything that happened on Tangier Island. I’m so sorry—please tell me if there’s anything at all that I can do.
Yours, always—
Helen
Poor Helen. She’d been Jack Hudson’s Chief of Staff, and from there, had become a dear and beloved friend of both Ruby and Sunday’s. An alliance as strong as theirs formed between women in Washington is unusual—perhaps it’s unusual in any place that trades on power as currency—but time and time again, Helen has shown the former First and Second Ladies that she has their backs. That her friendship is not conditional on whether they're still a part of the political machine that is Washington D.C. Any one of the three women would move mountains for the other two, and Sunday knows that it will always be this way between them.
But now, Helen having to be the one to let Sunday know that her deepest, darkest secrets might come out as part of her divorce proceedings makes her cringe. And for what—so that Peter can spin the narrative in his favor? So that he can restore the golden glow to his own reputation and potentially use that in future bids for an office of some sort? At sixty, Peter Bond is still handsome and charming in the way that politicians can be, but in Sunday’s eyes, he’s nothing but a man who hides behind a mask. In public, he pretends to be a smooth, moneyed gentleman with a gorgeous family, but when the mask drops, he’s the kind of husband who belittles his wife, leaves her in hotel rooms as he combs dark bars for quick, meaningless interludes with other men, and who would now trot out the skeletons in his wife’s closet and jeeringly dance with them in front of the world because it makes him look good. It makes her sick to think that she’s spent thirty years of her life married to a man like Peter.
With the warm chenille throw still wrapped around her like a shawl, Sunday walks through her kitchen barefoot and takes a stemless wine goblet from her cupboard. She uncorks the bottle of half-drunk merlot sitting next to her clean sink and pours three swallows into her glass, which she downs like a hearty shot of whiskey before pouring another.
There’s a door in her kitchen that leads out to a small back deck, and Sunday lets herself out with her wine glass in hand. She wanders down onto the sand, holding onto the blanket around her shoulders as she thinks about Helen’s email. She wouldn’t put it past Peter to do exactly what he’s threatening to do: throw the mother of his children under the bus in order to elevate his standing in the public eye. It’s almost funny to her now to think about what must have gone through her head when she married Peter Bond. Was she so desperate for stability and for a life far beyond the one she would have had on Tangier Island? Yes, of course she was—the answer has to be yes.
Sunday had grown up rough and without even the faintest whisper of glamour or prosperity. The things she’d gone through following her brother’s death had been life-altering, and the very thought of those things being used by her soon-to-be ex-husband as a means to an end disgusts her. In some ways, it feels like even more a betrayal of their marriage vows than finding out that Peter had been intimate with other men. After all, if bodies aren't sacred in a marriage--and in so many cases they're not--then at the very least, aren't a person's secrets meant to be safe?
Sunday walks all the way to the edge of the water, looking out at the navy blue sea with its whitecaps. Far off in the distance she can see the lights of a giant cruise ship, and she wonders where it’s headed; do the people aboard have secrets buried as deeply as Sunday has buried hers? For all the years Sunday has spent being upbeat, bubbly, and in search of the bright side of any dark cloud, she’s also spent an equal amount of time trying to run from the things she can’t live with every day.
In spite of the warmth of the September evening, Sunday shivers under the chenille cape she’s made for herself. She puts her wine glass to her lips and sips it, blinking back tears under the moonlight.This is just a temporary setback, she tells herself. For three decades, she’s been able to shake herself off after every fall, hold her shoulders and head high, and push forward with a smile, and she’ll do it again this time, no matter what Peter says about her.
Only there are things she left behind on Tangier Island that she wanted to permanently forget; things she hoped would never see the light of day. It’s going to take more fortitude than nearly anything else she’s been through, but Sunday is going to show Peter who’s the boss, and—surprise! It isn’t him.
It was never him.
Rather than drinking the last sips of her wine, which she knows she doesn’t need anyway, she flings the liquid toward the water and empties her glass, then turns and high steps through the soft sand all the way back to her house, determined to find a way to beat Peter at his own game.
Ruby
It’s the last Friday night in September, and Ruby has decorated her house for fall. There are gourds and pumpkins on the mantel, the dining room table, and the kitchen counter. Vines of silk leaves in yellow, red, and orange are wound around the banisters of the steps in front of the house, where what looks like a hundred pumpkins in all sizes line the walkway, the steps, and the porch. Two tall cornstalks flank the front door, and pots of sunflowers are scattered amongst the Adirondack chairs, on the backs of which Ruby has artfully tossed lightweight plaid blankets for autumn evenings spent outdoors.
