Izzy looked at one drawing after another in silence, while Alix held her breath. As a fellow student of architecture, she greatly valued her friend’s opinion.
“These are gorgeous,” Izzy said. “Really beautiful.”
“I’m getting there,” Alix said. “But I keep trying to incorporate everything in one design. Bell towers, magnificent doors, half-round staircases. Everything! I need to decide what I can and cannot use.”
Izzy smiled. “You’ll figure it out. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going out shopping.”
Alix threw back the covers. “I’ll get dressed. It won’t take me but minutes.”
Izzy stood up. “Nope. You’re not allowed to go. This is your big chance and I want you to take it. Stay here and design something that will astound Montgomery. By the way, there’s food downstairs.”
“How did you find a grocery open this early?”
“For your information, it’s eleven A.M. and the whole beautiful town of Nantucket is just outside. I’ve been out and come back and now I’m ready to go do some serious clothes shopping. You cannot meet the Lord High Emperor Montgomery wearing that.” She gave Alix’s old sweats a disparaging look.
Alix knew her friend well. “You know, on second thought, I think I’ll go with you. I need some new sandals.”
Izzy stepped back to the door. “Oh, no you don’t. I’ll be back for dinner and I want to see what you’ve done.” She hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
“I’ll do my best to make you happy,” Alix called out. She knew that Izzy wanted to go by herself. She loved shopping for clothes, and if Alix was in the mood, so did she. But not today. Besides, the two young women were similar enough in size that Izzy could buy whatever Alix needed and charge it all to Victoria.
At noon, Alix’s growling stomach finally made her get dressed and leave the bedroom in search of breakfast. Izzy had bought bagels and tuna salad, fruit, and bags of spinach. All healthy and filling.
Alix made herself a sandwich, but then she went back upstairs to get her drawings so she could look at them as she ate. To her horror she saw that she had only two blank sheets of paper left.
Surely, she thought, if her mother had stayed here more than once she would have paper somewhere, probably in the green bedroom. Feeling a bit like she was snooping, Alix went down the hall to the room Izzy was using.
Alix again wondered when her mother had stayed on Nantucket. And why would she keep her visits a secret? Alix remembered saying that she found out everything her mother did, but it looked like that wasn’t true. But then, to be fair, since Alix had left home to go to college she’d had her own life and had kept things, such as boyfriends, from her mother. It looked as though her mother kept secrets of her own. But why? Was there a man involved?
There were two big armoires in the bedroom, both old and beautiful. One had a few bags in it that Izzy must have purchased that morning, and the other was locked. Alix looked around for a moment to see if a key was nearby but didn’t see one. On impulse, she returned to her room for her handbag, retrieving the ring of keys her mother had sent. Alix hadn’t been told what the individual keys were for, but then Victoria never explained much. She’d always thought her daughter was intelligent enough to figure out everything on her own.
One of the smaller keys fit the lock. Alix opened the double doors to find an entire office inside. There was a printer and drawers full of paper and supplies. Shelves held what Alix recognized as old manuscripts. There were some photos taped on the back of the door. One of them was of Victoria with her arm around a small older woman who Alix knew was Adelaide Kingsley. The date on the photo was 1998, when Alix was twelve years old.
Alix couldn’t stop the wave of hurt that ran through her. It was becoming apparent that her mother had spent a lot of time here on Nantucket in this house. But she’d never told her daughter a thing about it. Of course she’d done it in August, Alix thought. That month had always been sacrosanct to Victoria. She claimed she went to Colorado to her cabin, where she said the solitude helped her to plot her latest book. But obviously, she’d not gone there every year.
Alix stared inside the cabinet. It made sense that her mother would go to Nantucket, as all her books were set in a seafaring community. But why had she kept it a secret?
Alix’s impulse was to call her mother and ask questions. But Victoria was on a twenty-city book publicity tour right now, and being the smiling, laughing author the world thought they knew. Alix wasn’t going to interrupt that. She could wait to find out, and knowing her mother, it would no doubt be an entertaining story.
Alix got the paper she needed, some office supplies, even found an old package of matte photo paper, and hauled everything downstairs to the big family room. She knew that one of the little tables opened and inside were TV trays. She got one out and set down her sandwich. She spread her drawings on the floor, sat on the couch to eat, and looked at them.
At first everything seemed to be a great hodgepodge of styles and designs. Too much! she thought. None of this would fit into the quiet elegance of Nantucket.
She finished her lunch, moved the table out of the way, and kept staring, but saw nothing to salvage. She was just starting to get frustrated when one of her papers rustled in the breeze. That all the windows and doors were closed didn’t register.
“Thanks,” she said before thinking, then shook her head. Thanks for what? To whom?
She picked up the paper that had moved. There in the corner was a tiny sketch she’d done so quickly that she hardly remembered it. It was a combination of Spanish mission and Nantucket Quaker. Plain to the point of severity, but at the same time it was beautiful in its simplicity.
“You think he’ll like this?” she said aloud, then started to correct herself, but who cared? She was alone, so she could talk out loud if she wanted to.
She put the drawing on the tray table and looked at it again. “This window needs to be changed. A bit taller. And the bell tower needs to be shorter. No! The roof should be taller.”
She grabbed more paper and redrew the design. Then she drew it three more times. When she had a sketch she liked, she picked up the architectural scale she’d brought
with her and started a scale drawing.
At three P.M. she made herself another sandwich, got a ginger ale out of the fridge, and went back to the family room. The floor was covered with papers and nearest to her were the new sketches.