Page 70 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

He walked hard to keep up with her. “You know why you’re going to be a good psychologist? Because you spend so much time trying to fix the people around you, but you never fix yourself.”

Her bangs blew into her mouth as she pivoted to face him. “My family is falling apart, and my father isn’t who he said he was. The perfect little Whiting family is a gosh darn mess, and you can rest easy that you’re not part of it. We’re the most screwed-up family in the entire world, and you’re right, I have no idea how to fix it.”

He kicked at the sand, the soft grains tickling her ankles. “Maybe you don’t have to fix it, Betsy. Maybe you just have to learn to live with the truth.”

Betsy collapsed onto her knees in the sand. “Since when are you a therapist?”

“Since I spent many years in therapy.” He looked off down the beach, then swept his eye up to her. “If you keep everything in, you’ll become like my mother. Angry and resentful and broken. We needpeople in our lives, Betsy, and if my mother taught me anything, it’s that everybody needs a lot of somebodies to be okay.”

Melody had moved back to Nantucket to be near her brother and parents when she got pregnant. It couldn’t have been easy, even if Charlie visited sometimes, but her family had given her the help she so badly needed. She’d found her somebodies.

“Can we go now?” Betsy said to him, and he nodded. They trudged back to the car in the warm sand. Halfway to the car, James stopped her.

“That night your father caught us at the Agricultural Fair, there was something I didn’t tell you.”

Betsy didn’t think she had the energy to do this right now. “What didn’t you tell me? Not that it matters, since my father forbid me that night from continuing to date you.”

“No, Betts. Stop thinking it was you. It wasn’t you,” he said, pushing his palms into his back pockets.

“Well, it was me who ran away that night, begging you to take the boat out in the storm, with those waves; it was dumb. I blame myself for all of it.”

They took a few more heavy steps, and James stopped again, stooping to pick up a perfect scallop shell. He handed it to her. “We’re lucky the coast guard picked us up on a routine patrol. I remember being soaked to the bone. It’s the only time in my life I thought I might drown.”

Betsy shivered at the memory. “Do you know my mother slept in bed with me that night? She followed me around for weeks, and they forbid me to see you, as you probably figured out. I couldn’t talk to you or write you. Maybe Wiley told you, but I stayed in Washington and worked in my father’s office the summer after.”

He pressed his lips together. “It was hard. I missed you, but…”

Betsy’s face grew wet. Years of doing everything her father wanted so he’d love her best; how much he’d taken away from her and how she’d pretended that she was okay with it. How much she hated him now. “I listened to him and didn’t contact you, and I lost you becauseI was following a man who was such a hypocrite, who didn’t even love me the way he said he did.”

“No, Betsy. He did, and he was a good person, at least to me. Whatever he did that has you this upset, whatever is happening here, I want you to know that he came to my house the day after the storm. He told me I was a good kid, that I had a bright future, and he would make a call for me when the time came. To a college, any college I asked him to, but I would have to agree to stop contacting you.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I thought I was the one who put distance between us. Wait a second. My dad is why you got into Berkeley?”

James reached for her hand, then dropped his fingers to his side. “I’ve been so ashamed that I agreed to it, and yet, he already made clear I’d never see you again. I tried to write you, I did. But…” He sighed, glancing at the cloudless sky, then back at her.

“No, James. You did the right thing. I’ve only ever wanted what was best for you, and you needed him to make that call for you. It changed your life.”

“Wiley helped me apply the following year, and he called your dad and reminded him to make the phone call to the dean. Berkeley was the only school I got into, you know. Wiley helped me pay the bills, and he’s helped me so much since, but your father, he was generous. He wanted what he thought was best for you, and he did what he could for me.”

“God, I hate him,” Betsy said, shaking her head. “But I am grateful he helped you. I’m so very grateful he had the right mind to do that.”

When they got back to the car, Betsy and her sister locked eyes as she climbed into the back seat.

“Are you okay?” Louisa asked. She had the look of a feral cat, mangy and lost.

“Not really.” Betsy lay down on the back seat, Peanut Butter licking her forehead. “But we might as well find a place to stay the night.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTVirgie

1965

The very first person that Virgie called after discovering the connection between Charlie and Melody Fleming was India Knight. Though she hadn’t known the British expatriate very long, Virgie trusted her. They went for a brisk walk to Fuller Street Beach the following morning, and Virgie admitted everything that happened with Charlie. She told India about the reporter, the threat to Charlie’s campaign, and what she feared this meant for her marriage.

They sat on the splintered bench at the beach, an open view of the lighthouse. India turned to her. “Of course I’ll help. What do you need?”

Virgie peppered her with questions, but one counted most. She remembered the dinner party with the Knights, when India’s husband had dangled “additional property on Nantucket” as an incentive for him to earmark funds for the missile program. “Can you find out if your husband had anything to do with giving Charlie this house on Nantucket?”

India knew that Russell had friends with homes on Nantucket, but she didn’t think he’d purchased one for Charlie. “If it’s a shell company that bought it, it will be hard for me to track.” She also seemed wary of looking too closely into her husband’s business dealings.

---