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IDA: Mom has a heart, you know? She’s just overly emotional sometimes.
Sophie scrubbed herself clean, dressed, did her makeup, ate a piece of toast with peanut butter, and drove slowly out to Siasconset, where, once upon a time, her grandma Agatha and her grandpa Calvin had raised Norm and Katrina. As a kid, Sophie had thought the house was something out of a fairy tale. It was three stories, numerous bedrooms, ornate wallpaper, two different libraries, a study, and a gorgeous dining room that, in the past, doubled as a ballroom.
“That’s one of the only reasons your grandpa Chuck let your father and I date,” Katrina had told Sophie once. “My parents had money. The kind of money the Colemans respected.”
Sophie had grown up with all the privileges of a Whittaker and Coleman. She’d taken private horseback riding lessons, French lessons, and sailing lessons and vacationed in the French Riviera at the age of twelve. But she’d never felt she fit the “mold” of the families. She’d always been messy, unscheduled, disoriented. Drugs had been a wonderful way to uncoil fromtheir demands. They’d been her way of taking control—by having none at all.
Sophie parked next to her mother’s car and headed up the walkway. When she reached the front door, Katrina opened it quickly, beckoning for Sophie to enter. Her face was stoic.
“I don’t want to get all the warmth out,” she said.
Katrina wore a pair of leggings, a trim-cut sweater, and a pair of house shoes.
“Here,” Katrina said, handing Sophie a pair of house shoes. “I bought you a pair. I don’t want to scuff up the floors any more than they already are.”
Sophie changed into the house shoes and followed her mother to the living room, where a large fire blistered her eyes. Katrina poured Sophie a cup of tea from a pot on the living room coffee table and began to speak very quickly—spitting instructions at Sophie quicker than she could make sense of them. None of her words hinted at an apology for how she’d acted about the engagement. And none of them were congratulations, either.
“Remember,” Katrina was saying, “my father had a bit of a habit. A horrible habit. He was a drinker. As you go through things today, it’s possible you’ll find a few bottles here and there.” Katrina stared at the fire as though saying this to Sophie’s face was too difficult.
Sophie grimaced. “I won’t drink anything, Mom.” Alcohol had never been her biggest trigger, anyway.
“I just had to tell you,” Katrina said, throwing her hands. After a pause, she added, “I’ll have sandwiches delivered around one. You still like that place on Main Street?”
“I love it.” Sophie smiled.
“Very well.” Katrina stood and whacked her thighs. “Let’s get started. This old place won’t clean out itself.”
Sophie took a few empty cardboard boxes to the second floor, where she set to work on the bedroom that had belonged to Uncle Norm. Over the years, Grandma Agatha had adjusted it to allow guests to stay over, meaning there was only a whisper of Norm left. There were Broadway posters, old books about writing and acting, and art prints—plus several old, moth-eaten sweaters that Sophie immediately stuffed into a trash bag.
Sophie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her uncle Norm. He’d lived out in Los Angeles for decades at this point. She had a few Whittaker cousins out there, none of whom understood the magic of Nantucket Island. Perhaps Norm had painted a different portrait of Nantucket than the one Sophie had. Perhaps he only remembered his alienating, alcoholic father.
Sophie had talked about her grandfather in rehab. She was far from the only one who had family members who’d struggled and subsequently died from their addictions. “But I loved my grandfather,” Sophie had said. “And sometimes, when he drank, he became so loving and excited. He told the very best stories with whiskey on his breath. Maybe that means I glamorized his addiction as a young girl. I don’t know. My mother never glamorized it, though. I don’t even know if she had any love left for my grandfather when he died. That didn’t mean she didn’t mourn him, though. She was completely broken when he died.”
Sophie wondered what would happen when she passed on. Would her child mourn her? Or would she have done something heinous by then? Would she have destroyed their relationship?
“No,” Sophie said aloud. “No!”
It felt nice to hear her own voice. It grounded her back in the year 2024. It would be her first year of complete sobriety since age twenty.
Sophie boxed up Norm’s books, his art prints, old calendars, and old journals. She decided to send these to Norm inCalifornia. They formed a time capsule. Curiosity tugged at her to open Norm’s journals and read what he was up to back then, but she shoved it aside and kept working.
At one, Katrina came upstairs to tell Sophie the sandwiches were on their way. “You got quite a bit of work done,” she said, leaning in the doorframe with her arms crossed.
As Sophie stood, her stomach cramped, and nausea rippled across her lower abdomen. She grimaced. Nausea had come on strong a little more than a week ago. It was part of the reason she’d bought a pregnancy test in the first place. She told herself to get used to it. To keep it under control. Especially here, under the watchful eye of her mother.
She could just imagine what Katrina would say about the pregnancy—that she wasn’t ready, it was too soon, or she was reckless.
More than that, she might say that Sophie wasn’t fit to be a mother at all. And the thought of that terrified Sophie. Perhaps she could find a way never to tell her mother about the pregnancy until the baby was born. By then, it would be too late. And Katrina wouldn’t know what to do except shower the little baby with love.
Downstairs, Katrina made another pot of tea and talked about the work she’d done so far on the house. “We have tentative plans for an auction at the end of March or so,” she said, lacing her fingers together. “By then, your grandmother will be safe and sound in a nursing home, and we can hand this place over to the highest bidder.” She cracked her knuckles on the counter.
Sophie felt a lump in her throat. “Have you talked to Norm about it?”
“He doesn’t care about this place,” Katrina assured her. “He ran as far away from here as he could.”
“Were you jealous of that?” Sophie surprised herself with the question. She clutched her mug of tea, terrified her mother would turn on her heel and yell at her.
Instead, Katrina took it in stride. “Of course, Broadway seemed so glamorous, especially when he first started out. But I never had dreams like that. I wanted to be a wife. I wanted to be a mother.”
