Page 67 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

Well, he should have thought about that before he had a love child with your best friend.

Virgie moved outside to the porch, pulling a soft throw over her on the wicker sofa, despite the day’s warmth. It was true. She should be coming up with a plan to pack up her things in Washington. Maybe she and the girls could move to the island full-time, but she knew it wasn’t what she wanted. It would make themostsense for Virgie to rent another apartment in the District with at least two bedrooms—they could squeeze in—but she didn’t exactly have a job to pay for it. The fighting, the confrontations that would ensue, a shared custody plan where she and Charlie avoided each other on the days they exchanged the girls.

The idea left her feeling like she’d been zipped into a corset. Sheexhaled, folding her hands in her lap, watching Pamela as she joined her outside. “I just don’t know how to fix it this time.”

The wicker sofa squeaked under Pamela’s weight. “No, Virgie. Don’t say that. You told me that I must keep getting up. I must keep trying. You must too.”

It felt so natural to slide her arm around Pamela’s shoulders, to feel her drop her head against Virgie’s upper arm. Weeks ago, she had looked at Pamela and thought her circumstances quite different from her own, but they weren’t really. They were two women saddled with the greatest responsibility of all: taking care of those that they loved while trying to take care of themselves.

“I will try, I promise,” Virgie said. She had always said she wouldn’t leave Charlie because he needed her, but maybe it was vice versa. Maybe she wasn’t as strong as she thought. She considered what her life would look like without Charlie. She was always telling her girls that they didn’t need to be married, that they could do anything on their own. But maybe she was selling them a falsehood. Because it was so much harder to do everything on your own. Look at how challenging this summer had been.

Her head felt wobbly then. Did she want a divorce or didn’t she?Of course you don’t want a divorce, she heard herself say. She wasn’t ready to leave Charlie. They had met for a reason in 1947—they had given each other strength and security and possibility—and cosmically, she believed, they were not finished with each other yet, even if she wasn’t sure how she’d ever forgive him.

“Do you remember the part inThe Awakeningwhen Edna learns to swim?” Virgie had always been drawn to the scene. It was in the first third of the book, a turning point for Edna’s character, because learning to swim gave her certain freedoms to move through her life (and the sea) without fear of being swept away.

Pamela went inside and fetched the novel, opening it to the appropriate page. “Yes, here,” she said. After her life-affirming solo swim,Edna lies in the hammock, her husband beckoning her into the bedroom: “She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did.”

The Awakeninghad given Virgie strength when she’d read it as a college student—whispering ideas to her about marriage that her parents had never displayed—and the book had given her a boost when she’d read it last year, just before she wrote her first Dear Virgie column. Books didn’t just transport you to faraway places, Virgie believed. They could sharpen your identity and remind you who you aspired to be.

She was hungry then, suddenly famished, and she went inside to get her sandwich, Pamela on her heels. “Well, Pamela, maybe that’s what you and I need to do. Figure out how to swim.” Pamela nodded along, but Virgie could tell by the way she stared down at the book cover that she was confused. “What I mean is, you’ll need to relearn how to live, and I will need to learn…” Here, Virgie paused. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the rays of sun warming her face. “I will need to relearn what it means to be Charlie’s wife.”

It was too much to explain to Pamela, but Virgie knew she was right. To overcome, she couldn’t give in to sadness; she needed to swim against the tide. She would keep her principles and she’d be a good mother. She would be strong, stronger than she believed herself to be as a senator’s wife, and she would stand on her own, cutting down those branches that had grown into Charlie’s. She wouldtrustthat she could emerge from this mess in one piece, she would write her way out of it so her daughters learned what strength really looked like.

With her eyes still shut, Virgie imagined herself standing under a meteor shower, each spark sending a bolt of bravery through her bones.

She opened her eyes wide to the bright blue harbor outside. The answer was in front of her all along. All this time she’d defined herself as Charlie’s wife, Charlie’s friend, Charlie’s biggest supporter, andwhen she grew angry with him this summer, she’d fought back by being everything he didn’t want.

But that had failed too. Virgie had to dig down deeper, she had to look in the mirror, and she had to say to herself:What is important toyou, Virgie Whiting?

She knew the answer. It was so simple, and it had been right in front of her all along. It was control. She wanted to be in control of herself, of her girls, of her future.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENBetsy

Nantucket

1978

There was an upright wooden piano in the living room overlooking the inlet, a scatter of picture frames arranged without pattern on top. The loveliness of the space’s decoration, with its mix of colors and patterns and wide-plank floors taunted her. Whose home was this? Betsy and her sister sat straight on the velvet green sofa, though Betsy felt as though she was riding on a train with an uncertain destination.

“What a lovely view,” Louisa said, gazing out the windows.

“Every once in a while, we get lucky and see a seal,” the woman said. She handed Louisa a hulking pair of binoculars. “You’re welcome to take a look.”

“That’s okay,” Louisa said, handing them back to this woman. This perfect stranger who seemed to know who they were as soon as she’d cautiously opened her door. After introducing herself as Melody Fleming, the three of them shook hands. She invited them in for iced tea while James waited in the car.

“Aren’t you Mom’s friend from the wedding album?” Louisa looked as confused as Betsy felt, and she dreaded, without any knowing at all,how these dots would connect. She noticed that Melody didn’t wear a wedding ring.

“I am an old friend of both of your parents,” the woman said, carrying a pitcher into the living room along with three glasses on a serving tray. She poured each of them a drink.

So far no one had touched theirs.

Louisa cleared her throat. “We’re here because we have reason to believe that this land is our father’s, Charlie Whiting’s, and we need to understand if you’re here as part of a legal contract.” She might as well have been wearing power heels and the tailored suit she wore at the firm.

“Okay.” Melody wore no makeup, not even blush, and her reddish brown hair was pulled into an elegant bun, like she was on her way to dance class. She spoke slowly and deliberately. “You seem like you have many questions, and I’m happy to answer all of them.”

Betsy glanced at Louisa to see where she wanted to begin, but her sister seemed to be cataloging the features of the woman’s face: the dark outlines of her almond-shaped eyes, her long slender nose, and the way it all came together with a kind of brilliance. Sensing she was being studied, Melody self-consciously adjusted her denim skirt, then drummed her fingers together. She looked from one sister to the other, waiting.

“Itwasyou,” Louisa whispered as though she were the only one in the room. Then, louder, “Dad denied it, but I always knew I was right.”

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