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Lola raised her shoulders. “I don’t know. I hope so. My father needs a win, I think. Gosh, she looks beautiful tonight, doesn’t she? I hope I look half as good in my sixties.”
It was difficult for Rina to imagine Lola looking anything but stunning. The Sheridan women all looked nearly identical to their late mother, Anna, who’d been a knock-out. Steve had explained the heartbreaking story of Anna’s death, that she’d been having an affair with a man who’d accidentally drowned her.
“Were you ever married, Rina?” Trevor asked spontaneously.
Rina was startled at the forward question. Steve’s cheeks were pale.
“I was,” Rina said, her voice wavering. She’d told Steve all about Vic many months ago—that she’d been head-over-heels for him and had married him in her twenties. They’d tried for children that hadn’t come, and ultimately, Vic had cheated on her and broken up with her shortly thereafter. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to get into it with Trevor Montgomery on New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t a story she generally liked to tell.
“Plenty of people were married,” Kelli said, waving her hand. “I was married to the world’s most horrific man.”
“And now, you’re engaged to a wonderful man,” Trevor said, punching Kelli lightly on the arm. “Where is Xander? Is he around here somewhere?”
Rina and Steve locked eyes over the table. Rina breathed a sigh of relief. Trevor had forgotten his question just as soon as Kelli had distracted him.
“Rina,” Lola interjected. “Tell us about your recent gig in Oaxaca! Did you find the guy? The one who disappeared?”
Everyone was always intrigued by Rina’s work. There was something about finding people who’d “disappeared” that captured everyone’s imagination. But for Rina, her job often left her with a feeling of sorrow about humanity. People abandoned people, unwilling to offer the support they’d once promised. She’d seen so many holes within families that she’d begun to doubt anyone was actually “good” deep down.
Except Steve. She genuinely couldn’t find anything wrong with him.
“She found him in ten days flat,” Steve bragged of Rina. “I remember over the phone that you told me you thought it would be complicated. You thought you were going to have to live in Oaxaca for a while and work the case.”
Rina felt a wave of relief. “I got lucky with that one,” she said. “The guy had abandoned his wife and children in Oklahoma, and the wife really needed help. She couldn’t pay for food, and they were going to lose the house.” Rina recited a very common story in the United States and among her clients. “When I got to Oaxaca, the trail went cold until I happened to meet with a young woman in her twenties whose sister had just fallen in love with ‘some American guy.’” Rina used air quotes, remembering that sunny day on the coast. “She hated her sister’s new boyfriend so much. She would have done anything to get him out of their hair. And it just so happened he was the guy I was looking for.”
Everyone at the table laughed. Trevor’s eyes sparkled.
“You’re quite impressive, Rina,” Trevor said. “No doubt about that.”
Suddenly, an uproar of celebration came from the other side of the room. Wes and Beatrice were in the doorway, their hands linked and raised over their heads. Beatrice’s eyes glinted with tears, and Wes’s smile was enormous, extending his crow’s feet from his eyes to his hairline.
“Oh my gosh! It happened!” Lola whipped up from the table and hurried through the crowd to hug Beatrice first and then Wes. “It’s gorgeous, Dad,” Lola said, both hands around Beatrice’s left one as she gazed at the ring. “You know, he picked this out all by himself? He didn’t want any help from us girls.”
Under the table, Steve took Rina’s hand and squeezed it just once, then let it go. Rina’s heart flipped over. She immediately stood, excused herself, and retreated to the backyard, where she stood without a coat, breathing in and out and filling the air before her with steam. Just a few feet away, the Vineyard Sound lapped up onto the beach, and the froth caught the light of the low-hanging moon. Beyond that, the water was inky black and impossibly deep.
To Rina, the ocean was different on this side of the continent. It was angrier. It told different stories. Here near Martha’s Vineyard, it had swallowed up so many whalers and fishermen. Even in the Montgomery and Sheridan families, it had drowned Charlotte’s first husband and Wes’s first wife.
Again, Rina heard a rasp and words of anger coming from the other side of the inn. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was the teenagers again—Gail, Abby, and Rachel.
“I don’t want your help,” one of them was saying. “I want you to leave me alone for a change. Do you understand?”
“Gail,” the other wailed. “Please. Help me understand.”
Rina ducked away from the inn, not wanting to eavesdrop on their teenage drama. You were allowed so little privacy at that age. She didn’t want to destroy it.
As she walked through the cold, her head stirred with questions. When Steve touched her, her heart ballooned in her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Sometimes, when she came to visit, they fell asleep next to one another as they talked deep into the night. Sometimes, Steve fell asleep midsentence and woke up the following morning, prepared to dive back into the same conversation.
A long time ago, when Vic left her, Rina promised herself she wouldn’t fall in love again. Her mission in life was her work.
Yet here she was. Wasting time. Hadn’t she turned down a potential gig just because she’d wanted to come out East and spend time with Steve? She could hardly recognize herself anymore.
It was terribly cold, with a ten-degree windchill. The fact that she traipsed around the inn without a coat was more proof of her insanity. From outside, she could peer through the window of the Bistro and watch the Montgomery and Sheridan celebration and feel the buzzing of their laughter through the walls. How was it they were able to find such joy in their everyday lives? Had they figured something out about the world that others hadn’t?
Nearest the window was Rina’s favorite couple, Isabella and Rhett, who’d begun their romance when Rina first came to the island. Initially, Rina had suspected Rhett of being involved with a crime. He’d even briefly gone to jail. But upon his release, he’d stopped at nothing to prove his innocence and save the young woman—and even gotten hurt in the process.
Since then, he and Isabella had fallen deeper in love. And because Rina was so often around, she’d been allowed a front-row seat. She and Steve had often discussed this abstractly, referring to what it had first felt like for them to fall in love. During these conversations, Rina knew Steve referred to Laura, his wife, although he didn’t mention her by name. Always, Rina was talking about her teenage boyfriend, Cody, who’d had legs too long for his body and shaggy blond hair. She’d broken up with him when she’d gotten into college and he’d decided to go to Europe to meet his grandparents. They’d communicated via letters for a while—holding on to a childish hope of romance that they eventually watched fade.
Rina hoped for better when it came to Isabella and Rhett. She hoped she’d have the privilege of being at their wedding one day.
