When we had enough excess lobster, Livvie would use it in a dish for our hardworking employees. Today, it was lobster fried rice. It was a crowd-pleaser of a dish. The chatter around the serving table was happy and loud.
The smells from the meal wafted down to the dock as we tied up the Whaler. The Jacquie II was absent. It had ferried the lunch customers home and was waiting at the town pier to load the dinner passengers. I was pleased as I walked up the terraced lawn toward our dining pavilion to see that the picnic tables scattered around the island were fully set for dinner service. Emmy Bailey, the longtime employee who had agreed to take on my jobs of manager and host today, clearly had things well in hand.
I stopped by the long tables where our employees ate to check in with Emmy. She gave a cheery report about the lunch crowd and said she was fully prepared to handle dinner as well. I happily agreed.
In addition to the fried rice, there was a green salad made with lettuce Livvie had grown in her kitchen garden on the island and strawberry pie for dessert. Tempting as it was, I didn’t sit down. The little sandwiches and cookies served at the memorial service were more filling than I’d expected.
Mom had stopped to talk to Mary Carey, who’d filled in for her at the gift shop. She caught my eye and nodded. All had gone well there, too. I went to the till at the bar and drew out money to cover the tips Emmy and Mary would have lost for the day. They each smiled gratefully when I gave them the cash. Then Mom and I walked up the hill to Windsholme.
Windsholme. Home. The mansion built by my mother’s ancestors had been derelict all my life. Then, four years ago, Mom had committed the entirety of an unexpected inheritance to its renovation. On the ground floor, where the entrance hall, living, dining, billiards, ladies’ retiring room, and enormous butler’s pantry had been, there were now function rooms and a big new kitchen to service weddings, corporate events, and so on. The Snowden Family Clambake had hosted gatherings like these before, but we were so dependent on the weather, we’d had to keep them small. The renovation hadn’t been completed until the spring, and that had by no means been a certainty. The lawn and garden around the house were still a muddy mess, so nothing had been booked for this season. But the new space would represent enormous opportunity starting next season.
For now, it was the second story of Windsholme I was most excited about. At either end of the floor, the architect had created apartments for Mom and me. I hadn’t lived on Morrow Island during the summer since I was in college, but when I was growing up, my family lived in the little house next to the dock, where Livvie, her husband, Sonny, and their children, Page, and Jack, spent their summers now.
I loved being back on the island. Many things had changed. Within the last year, we’d come within range of a cell tower, so island life wasn’t quite the cut-off existence it had been. The illusion, in the mornings before the customers arrived and late at night after they left, of being miles from civilization was gone. But cell-phone access and internet service also meant I could live on the island full-time, dealing with the Clambake suppliers, customers, and employees as needed. I no longer had to run back and forth to the mainland to manage the business.
Mom’s apartment was carved out of the old master bedroom, bath, dressing room, and study. There hadn’t been any furniture at Windsholme since the Great Depression, when it had all been carried off by family members or sold. So far, both Mom and I had furnished our apartments with the bare minimum of what was needed. Our tastes weren’t rich, but the added expense of getting everything out to the island on a barge meant we had to be as efficient as possible. Mom had decorated her place in feminine pinks and greens, different from our house in Busman’s Harbor, which was not so much decorated as made livable by a mishmash of family donations going back to when I was a baby.
One piece Mom had brought over was a beautiful mahogany drop-front desk. When we reached her apartment, she gestured for me to sit on her new sofa while she retrieved a folded piece of printer paper from one of the cubbies. She brought it over and sat with me on the couch. She didn’t hand me the paper right away. Instead, she stared at the pale green area rug under her feet and worked her jaw, as if thinking of what to say, or more likely how to say it.
I let this go on for a few moments before deciding she needed help. “You seemed uneasy today,” I said gently.
Finally, she looked at me. “I was. Most uneasy. What did you think of Ginny’s house?”
“It seemed great,” I answered. “A lovely summer home. A house for a happy family.”
“And the interior?” Mom prompted.
“The interior?” I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “Neat. Clean. Kind of sterile,” I added on second thought.
“Exactly,” Mom said. “When I visited there as a teenager, the house was chockablock full of stuff—books, puzzles, antiques. Four generations of Merrills had lived there and I don’t think any of them ever threw anything away.” She stopped talking, as if she’d made a point.
“Mom, that was fifty years ago. Presumably, when you visited back then, the house looked like Ginny’s parents wanted it to. Ginny could have had a whole other style. She had decades to clear it out.”
Mom gave her head one sharp shake. “Not the Ginny I knew. She loved that old house. And the cluttered, cozy feeling it had.”
“People change,” I countered.
“Do they?” Mom’s bright blue eyes drilled into mine. “Besides, Ginny didn’t know she was going to die that day when she went into the water. Why was everything so tidy?”
“Maybe she was tidy. She lived alone. It’s not like there would have been much mess.” I thought for a minute. “Someone must have gone there when she didn’t come back and at least emptied the refrigerator and the trash.”
“Exactly!” Mom agreed. “The members of the Wednesday Club have been over there ‘tidying up,’ as Kitty would call it. Who knows what they’ve thrown away or taken for themselves? And by whose authority?”
By the time she’d spit out the last word, I was sitting back on the couch, regarding my mother with concern. She was never one to care about things that weren’t her business, and she hadn’t seen Ginny Merrill in decades. What on earth had brought this on?
“Mom, look, I know you’re feeling guilty, or sad, or regretful.” I groped for the right word, though I was only guessing at her feelings. “But you’re grasping at straws. Why is the state of the house bothering you so much?”
“Because of this.” Mom thrust the folded paper at me. I opened it. It was a printed email message to Mom’s address from [email protected]. It was dated five days before Ginny disappeared.
“Dearest Jacqueline,” it read, “I know this is your busy season at the Clambake, but if I could prevail on you to visit me on Chipmunk Island? Or I could come to you. I have something I want to discuss with you. Please let me know whatever would be convenient for you.”
I refolded the paper. “You didn’t meet her.”
“I didn’t even respond.” Mom’s voice was thick with regret. “It was that first summer I was back working at the Clambake after your father died. I figured I’d find someone who could take over my job for a day and then get back to Ginny with a date. I hadn’t gotten anything organized when I heard she was missing.”