Page 50 of Love Conquers All

Maybe I am!

James says he loves the tight-knit community here. He says he could imagine us raising my children here. We can teach them to swim and ride bikes.

I have nightmares of Wally. I don’t think he’s happy about any of this. I told James, and James went into the back room to cry.

July 31, 1984

I called Melissa back in Rhode Island. She sounded strange on the phone, as if she didn’t want to talk to me. I know that me and James running away created quite a scandal. But I told Melissa, “That’s all people ever want. They want something to gossip about. I’ve given you something to gossip about!” But when I hung up, I cried for hours. Melissa was my best friend. She was the maid of honor at my wedding.

I never should have married James.

With a sense of disbelief, Sylvie continued to read. She read about her mother’s constant dissatisfaction with her father. She read about her mother’s anger at Nantucket and how they weren’t immediately accepted. She read about how unhappy her mother was when her father purchased the place that would soon become The House on Nantucket.

Her mother wrote:The last thing I want is to work behind a front desk all day. But James is so sure that the tourism industry is the way to go. He’s so sure that’s the only way to make money. I envision changing a million bedsheets. I imagine that I’ll meet a billion terrible guests.

Sylvie read about the day James and Sarah went to the hospital to welcome Sylvie.

Sarah wrote:All my life, I wanted a child. I never imagined how unhappy I’d be.

Sylvie got up and closed her mother’s diary. Her heart hammered in her chest. The rainstorm outside escalated, and the wind pressed hard against the structure, making the old building creak. Slowly, she backed away from the desk, then ducked down the ladder to the hallway below. The House on Nantucket suddenly felt massive and empty and filled with ghosts. She shivered and went all the way downstairs to find her sweater. Back on the sofa, she curled into a ball and listened to the storm rage outside. It seemed to match her mood.

All she wanted in the world was to call Graham. But the way he’d been acting made her feel foolish. She felt aligned with her father’s first wife—the woman who couldn’t compare to Sarah Bruckson, not in James’s mind. The woman he’d left.

Sylvie thought,My mother didn’t know how to love us.

Sylvie wondered what that lack of love had done to her father. She imagined twisted, dark words. She imagined empty beds and passive aggression. She imagined Sarah telling James,“I never should have married you. We never should have had a child. I always hated you.”

For all these years, Sylvie had thought her mother was the perfect angel who’d died and left Sylvie behind with a monster. But it seemed that the real “monster” was Sarah herself.

Sylvie felt terribly alone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Graham returned to The House on Nantucket in a panicked state. His mother's words were ominous, drawing him back through time. When he burst through the front door to find Sylvie curled up in a ball on the sofa, his worst fears were confirmed. Sylvie raised her head to look up at him, her eyes two soft glows in the dark. Graham was wet from the rain. He removed his shoes and dropped to his knees next to the sofa. He wanted to cover her tear-streaked face with kisses.

“Graham,” Sylvie whispered, reaching for his cheek. “Graham, I thought you were with your mother.”

“We’re going to eat later,” Graham said. “We couldn’t do it without you.”

Sylvie closed her eyes. A look of pain came over her face. Graham slid up onto the sofa and pulled her head onto his lap.

He knew it was coming before she said it.

“I read my mother’s diaries,” she whispered. “Not all of them, but enough of them to know.”

Graham took a breath. “What do you know?”

Sylvie wet her lips. “She was a very unhappy woman. Her first love died, and I think she made my father pay for it. Shenever wanted to come to Nantucket. I don’t even know if she wanted me.”

Graham didn’t know what to say. It felt as though he and Sylvie were encountering the inky darkness of the past together. But what did knowing about the past change about the here and now?

Sylvie propped herself up on her elbow and blinked wearily. “It’s the strangest thing. I’ve never felt so sorry for my father before. Reading between the lines, I think he really was in love with her. He really wanted to make a life with her work. But she just hammered him with insults and anger over and over again. She couldn’t crawl out of her depression. Maybe she didn’t even want to.”

Graham swept his fingers through Sylvie’s hair. Thunder boiled in the sky.

“I’m too scared to keep reading,” Sylvie admitted.

Sylvie’s phone buzzed. Sylvie picked it up and showed it to Graham. “It’s from Hilary. She’s worried that I’m not back yet. But I don’t know that I want to face her tonight. I don’t want to have to explain myself. You know?” She rubbed off her tears with the edge of her sleeve. “I can’t imagine talking to anyone but you about this.”

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