Like humans, she thought. You shouldn’t trust them either.
It was trust that had led her to this moment. The moment she’d been dreading.
She’d let everyone down.
She could refuse to answer the door of course. Pretend not to be home. But what would that achieve? It would only postpone the inevitable. And she’d been the one to call him, so not opening the door would be ridiculous.
She’d been terrified he might arrive while Jenna was here, but fortunately she hadn’t stayed long and hadn’t seemed to notice that Nancy was almost urging her out of the house.
It was one of the few occasions she’d been relieved not to have a particularly close relationship with her daughters.
Nancy would have to tell her the truth eventually, of course, but not yet.
The worse part was the waiting, and yet the ability to wait should have been in her genes. Her great-great-grandmother might have stood in this exact same spot two centuries before while waiting for her husband to return home after two long years at sea. What must she have imagined, thinking of the tall square-rigged ships out there facing mountainous seas and Arctic ice? And how must the captain himself have felt finally returning home after years of battling the elements?
He would have seen the house he’d built and felt pride.
Nancy’s cheeks were ice-cold and she realized she was crying. When had she last cried? She couldn’t remember. It was as if the relentless wind blowing off the sea had eroded her tough outer layer and exposed all her vulnerabilities. She was crumbling and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to handle what was coming next.
At some point over the past sixty-seven years she was supposed to have accumulated knowledge and wisdom, but right now she felt like a small child, lost and alone. Dread was a lurch in the pit of your stomach, a cold chill on your skin. It was the ground shifting beneath your feet like the deck of a ship in a squall until you wanted to cling to something to steady yourself.
She closed her hand round the wood of the Adirondack chair that had been a birthday gift from her daughters. In the spring and summer months she sat out here with her morning coffee, watching the boats, the gulls and the swell of the tide.
Now, on a cold January afternoon with the dark closing in, it was too cold for sitting. Already her hands were chilled, the tips of her fingers numb. She should have worn gloves but she’d only intended to step outside for a moment. One breath of air to hopefully trigger a burst of inspiration that had so far eluded her.
She desperately wanted someone to tell her what to do. Someone to hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right.
Pathetic.
There was no one. The responsibility was hers.
“Nancy!”
Nancy saw her neighbor Alice easing her bulk through the garden gate. Two bad hips and a love of doughnuts had added enough padding to her small frame to make walking even short distances a challenge.
They’d been neighbors their whole lives and friends for almost as long.
Alice was breathless by the time she crossed the lawn to where Nancy was standing.
“I saw Jenna’s car. Does that mean you told her?”
“No.”
“Lord above, what did the two of you talk about for an hour?” Alice slipped her arm through Nancy’s, as she’d always done when they used to walk to school together.
Nancy wanted to pull away. She’d thought she wanted support, but now she realized she didn’t.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder how it’s possible to talk for an hour and say nothing.”
“You’ll have to tell her eventually. Our children think we don’t have lives, that’s the trouble. All my Marion talks about are the children. Does she think nothing happens in my life? My Rosa rugosas may not interest her, but they’re important to me.”
Nancy and Alice shared a love of gardening. Before Nancy had employed Ben, the two women had helped each other in the garden and shared knowledge on which plants could withstand the harsh island weather and sea spray.
“I wasn’t there for my girls,” she said, “so how can I ask them to be there for me?”
“Nancy Lilian Stewart, would you listen to yourself? When you say things like that after all the sacrifices you made, I swear I want to slap you. You should tell them everything.”
Everything?