Page 26 of Love Conquers All

“An idiot,” Stella said.

Suddenly, Sylvie burst into giggles. The other Salt Sisters joined her, throwing their heads back, unable to stop. Nothing they’d said was particularly funny, but Sylvie felt as though something sinister in her heart had just been released. She felt alive.

Chapter Twelve

Summer 2002

It was nearly two years since the regatta protest, and Sylvie and Graham were more in love than ever. At seventeen years old and with nothing to lose, they fought valiantly for a better world, staging little protests across Nantucket and traveling to Boston to meet with bigger protest groups. They used the internet to push their message and wrote numerous articles for the Nantucket newspapers about the delicate ecosystem on the island and how “regular people” could help out day-to-day.

It felt like they were finally getting somewhere.

They’d been arrested no fewer than four times.

Sylvie’s father thought she was insane. Ever since the very first arrest at the 2000 regatta, he’d done everything in his power to get between her and her “environmental bogus.” Sylvie had had to get extraordinarily creative in order to continue seeing Graham and pushing their message. James had always been one of her biggest enemies, but now she saw him assomething far greater and more sinister than that. He was against a better world.

Because Sylvie was seventeen years old and “needed to earn her keep,” she worked almost daily at The House on Nantucket. There, she handled day-to-day operations at the front desk, checked people in, and occasionally cleaned rooms. Sylvie hated working there. She hated seeing her father every day, walking in that dominant and aggressive way of his, shooting angry looks her way. Mrs. Galloway and Frank, the other employees who’d worked there for years, didn’t seem bothered by him.

“That’s your father’s way,” Mrs. Galloway said sometimes. “He’s a man in a great deal of pain.”

“Pain?” Sylvie scoffed. If anyone was in pain, it was her. James had seen to that.

But just because Sylvie had to work didn’t mean she and Graham weren’t perpetually at work on their true mission.

That Fourth of July was the Nantucket Festival, which always brought in a staggering two hundred thousand tourists. Armed with buckets of beer bottles and gushes of wine and spirits, their bellies full of seafood and salty fare, they partied all through the weekend, sailed dangerously and drunkenly across the Sound, barbecued from their iconic vacation homes, and generally pretended as though whatever “real” life they’d scored wherever they lived didn’t exist. These people—the wealthy millionaires and billionaires who treated the planet like their personal trashbin—were Sylvie and Graham’s targets.

But what was the best way to get their attention and teach them a lesson?

At first, Graham and Sylvie put their efforts toward a dramatic hand-made poster, which they spent mornings and evenings painting in Graham’s garage. They listened to music and wrote out facts about ocean life, Nantucket’s unique ecosystem, and how the people celebrating the Fourth of Julywere single-handedly ruining island life. SAVE THE PLANET! KEEP NANTUCKET ALIVE! As they worked, they listened to music on full blast, wiping sweat from their brows with the back of their hands. Sometimes, they took breaks to kiss or take snacks from Valerie’s refrigerator. Valerie knew about the poster; she’d seen what they were planning to write and said, “It’s powerful.” She also said she wished she would have been more “worldly” when she was their age. She wished she would have made a difference.

But Sylvie wasn’t convinced their poster was powerful enough. After all, it was easy to ignore a bit of writing, even if that writing contained three-foot-tall lettering. It was especially easy to ignore it when you were a multi-millionaire and out of your mind on expensive champagne.

“We need something bigger,” Sylvie breathed over the phone to Graham about three weeks before the Fourth of July, wrapped in a ball on her childhood bed.

“Bigger? You want to get more handcuffs?” Graham asked.

“I think they’ll be expecting that,” Sylvie said, frustration mounting. “We can’t do the same thing over and over again.”

“Maybe we need to gather more people,” Graham suggested.

Sylvie groaned, remembering the other high schoolers who occasionally dipped in and out of the environmental club. They’d been excited by Graham and Sylvie’s 2000 summertime arrest (and the fame that had come with it) and had wanted to jump on the bandwagon. But Graham and Sylvie didn’t think they were serious about the message they were fighting for.

“I don’t want them to get cold feet in the middle of a demonstration,” she said finally.

Graham went quiet. Sylvie could picture him in his own childhood bedroom, aStar Trekposter tacked to the wall over his bed, a desk covered with books and journals, photographs of him and Sylvie taped to the door.

“I just think we have to do something daring,” Sylvie countered. “Daring and big and unforgettable. We have to stop them in their tracks. You know?”

“I know. We’ll come up with something,” Graham said.

A few minutes later, Sylvie and Graham said good night and “I love you” and hung up the phone. Sylvie brushed her teeth and got into bed, feeling the weight of the world on her chest. It was up to her and Graham to fix everything, she’d decided. Nobody else was going to.

That’s when the door burst open to reveal her father.

James was a dark and ominous shadow in her doorway. Sylvie leaped up, reaching over to turn on her lamp. But this only illuminated how sweaty and strange James was, shifting uneasily as though he’d had too much to drink. If Sylvie had to guess, she’d say that he’d been in his study, looking over old photographs of her mother and bemoaning his existence.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Sylvie demanded. “You’re scaring me.”

James took a step into the bedroom, bringing with him the smell of salt and sweat.

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