AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Carmella hadn’t seen such kindness in Elsa’s eyes since before she’d told Elsa about Tina’s affair. Carmella nodded and followed Elsa into the house, then up the stairs to the bedroom Elsa planned to share with Bruce, where Cole had created a mountain of boxes.
“It’s this one, I think,” Elsa muttered to herself as she slid a massive box onto the bed and opened it. Within were stacks of their mother’s diaries. Carmella’s heart thudded with fear.
Elsa withdrew a thick, old-fashioned photo album, which she placed delicately on the mattress. She then turned to Carmella to say, “I’m sorry about how I reacted when you told me about Oliver. I didn’t want to believe that Mom and Dad’s love wasn’t the very best love ever. But if I’m honest with myself, what ‘love’ isn’t complicated? So long after his death, I told myself that Aiden was the perfect husband and father, and in many ways, he was. But if I let myself, I can remember the ways he frustrated me. I can remember a time or two when I thought he flirted with someone else. We were married for decades, and I believe we were always faithful to one another. But marriage is complicated. I should recognize that, especially because I’m entering into a new marriage myself.”
Elsa opened the photo album and removed several photographs of Elsa and Carmella at various ages. Beneath those photographs, Tina had hidden some, placing them behind the “easy” photographs as a way to hide her affair from Neal.
There were ten photographs with Oliver in them. Carmella was breathless, trying to take in every detail. In one photograph, Tina and Oliver were seated on the front porch of the seaside cottage, and Oliver had his arm slung around Tina’s shoulder. Their smiles were enormous, glorious— proof of a happiness that seemed to transcend time and space.
In two, Tina had photographed Oliver with her daughters. In one, Oliver held baby Carmella as Elsa wrapped her arms around one of his legs. He was laughing as though Elsa had just said something adorable. Had anyone else seen the photograph, they’d have assumed he was their father.
“I sobbed and sobbed when I found them,” Elsa explained softly.
“How did you?” Carmella asked, flabbergasted.
Elsa shrugged. “I was going through this photo album when I was supposed to be packing. I was looking at photos of Dad and Mom during that time you said the affair happened, and I couldn’t help but notice their faces are shadowed. They don’t stand near one another in photographs. They seem at a great distance from one another.”
Carmella nodded as Elsa flipped through the book, showing this difficult time of Tina and Neal’s marriage.
“I don’t know what to do about Mom’s love for this man,” Elsa said. “But because I want to keep loving my mother, and because I love knowing more about my mother, all I can do is love their love.”
Carmella sat at the edge of the bed, her chest heavy. “When we were kids, Mom and Dad seemed pretty in love. Don’t you think?”
“I remember they held hands a lot,” Elsa said. “And laughed.”
“I haven’t gotten that far in the diaries,” Carmella said. “I don’t know how Mom found a way back to loving Dad. But isn’t it amazing that it happened?”
Elsa wiped a tear from her cheek. “If what you said about him is true, I don’t know if he deserved her love.”
“He did,” Carmella said, although she wasn’t entirely sure what it meant to “deserve” love. “He loved us in his own way. And later, he became the kind of father we needed.”
“Not when it came to Karen,” Elsa said, remembering their stepmother.
“He got out of that when he could,” Carmella reminded her. “I didn’t tell you any of this to demonize Dad, anyway. I just told you…”
“Because it’s a great story,” Elsa sighed. “And now that I’ve sat with it for a while, I’m so glad I have it.” She paused, then lifted the photograph, wherein she clung hard to Oliver’s leg. “I must have really cared for him. I must have seen how happy he made Mom.”
Carmella leaned forward and wrapped her sister in a hug, her head spinning. Downstairs, someone opened the door to the back porch, and laughter and conversation poured into the big, empty house.
“We can go to the cottage together if you want to,” Carmella breathed.
Elsa shook her head. “I don’t know that I need to see it. I’m just really glad she had it at the time. She was on a quest for happiness, just like all of us.”
ChapterEighteen
Every July on Martha’s Vineyard, islanders opened their arms to the celebration of the summer: the Around the Island Regatta, which brought in hundreds of sailors from all over the world to race around Martha’s Vineyard. As this was Aria’s first summer on Martha’s Vineyard, she was overwhelmed as the population of the island quadrupled in size. Most staggering, of course, was the bar’s sudden business, which presented her with hour after hour of back-breaking work deep into the night. The best of it was that the sailors who’d come to the island liked to tip big. Still, during the days leading up to the big race, Aria slept long and hard, only managing to get up, brush her teeth, wash her hair, and speed off to the bar again.
The race itself was held on the Saturday after the Fourth of July. Aria was scheduled to work the lunch rush, which happened to coincide with the race itself, which devastated her. This was Cole’s first big race of the season, and she wanted to stand at the edge of the dock and scream his name until he came in.
“You’re going to come in first,” Aria said as she set up the bar that morning, smiling at Cole.
“I don’t know. Tommy Gasbarro is a killer sailor,” Cole said, speaking of another man on the island who’d sailed extensively.
“Is that the guy who got hurt a few years back?”
“Yes,” Cole said. “But that was a fluke. Every sailor has a fluke now and again.”
Suddenly, as though they’d called her with their talk of sailing accidents, Whitney Silverton marched into the bar. Impossibly, she was even tanner and more beautiful than she’d been in May, and she called both of their names excitedly.
