| |
Phone service returned around six in the morning. Olivia’s phone buzzed wildly against her stomach as she slept in the office, spooned beneath Anthony’s strong arms, while Chelsea was curled up on the couch near the wall. Olivia lifted her phone to find fifty-seven messages from her friends and family. The messages she’d sent had just arrived on their phones as well. Through the air over the war-torn island, messages sent themselves back and forth — a reminder that once upon a time, things had been normal.
Olivia could make time for the messages later. In the meantime, she had to figure out a way to get these people out of the dining room and off the island. Lucky for her, she had a perfect figure in her corner for the task: Amelia Taylor herself.
Olivia padded out toward the destructed foyer, shivering beneath a big coat she’d nabbed from her office closet. Amelia’s phone rang only twice before she answered. Her voice was high-pitched and frantic.
“Thank God it’s you!” Amelia cried.
“Amelia! Are you okay?”
“Yes. We’re all fine here on Peases Point,” Amelia assured her. “Oliver was already over, and we put up all the storm shields and everything. We’re a bit too high for the water to get here, but I can only imagine what it’s like at The Hesson House.”
Olivia was silent for a moment. Amelia heaved a sigh.
“I thought so. I thought the worst,” Amelia breathed.
“Everyone is okay. I just need a way to get them out of here.”
Sunlight had begun to creep its way from the eastern horizon, casting the grounds in a grey, shimmery light. The water had receded quite a bit; it trickled gently around the vehicles and cast itself back down the hill toward the vast ocean beyond.
“I was hoping you could hire a few buses for me,” Olivia suggested. “Send them my way, maybe around nine?”
“On it,” Amelia affirmed. “How’s the damage?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Gosh. Okay. Okay.” Amelia muttered to herself and then said something a bit louder, off to the side, probably to Oliver. “Have you talked to the other girls?”
“Not yet. Is everyone okay?”
“Yes. Jennifer and Derek, Camilla and Jonathon, Mila and Liam — all accounted for and healthy. And their houses are fine, too.”
“So beautiful to hear. I’m dreading to see what the rest of the coastline looks like,” Olivia said. “And I’m praying my house is okay.”
“All that matters is we’re all here. We’re all still here. And we’re going to get your guests back home, safe and sound. I can promise you that.” Amelia paused again and then said, “Let me call over to the depot and get that started for you. I’ll call you when I have more information.”
“Okay.” Olivia heaved a sigh. “On my end, I guess, I have about forty-seven hungry mouths to feed. And a whole lot of explaining to do.”
“I can’t imagine.”
**
OLIVIA COULD HAVE KISSED her chef straight on the mouth. She discovered him already up to his elbows in breakfast preparations, his eyes dark and his brows furrowed. He instructed the other staff members on what to chop, what to mix together, how to formulate the kind of breakfast that “really got people started.” When his eyes found Olivia’s, he nodded firmly, like a soldier at the head of the ranks. The war was nearly over.
“Thank you,” she breathed.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “I heard you on the phone in the foyer. You got a plan?”
“I spoke to Amelia. We should have some buses to get these people out of here soon,” she said. “Along with the rest of us. Is your phone back on? Your people okay?”
He nodded. “Everyone is safe and accounted for.”
The dining room was a funny sight. Guests slept on in various positions — strewn across couches, and huddled under blankets. These were the upper-echelon of society, the sort of ladies who never allowed the world to peer at them if their hair wasn’t coordinated just so. Now, they stretched themselves up from their make-shift pillows to show hair that looked more like roadkill than anything else. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Olivia might have made time to laugh.
Olivia greeted everyone just past seven and explained the strategy at hand. First, breakfast. Second, buses to the ferry. The previous night, she and Anthony had gathered up as many items as they’d been able to muster from the rooms upstairs and delivered them out to the guests, who now had gathered their belongings around them on the ground, as though that space on the carpeting was their territory. Much of the rest had been destroyed.
Sure these people were rich. They had thick bank accounts and deep pockets. Losing items like that shouldn’t have bothered them. But it still did. Of course, it did. It all contributed to a ballooning trauma.
Chelsea and Anthony stepped out from the back hallway. Chelsea stretched her thin arms over her head and yawned, her mouth stretching like a lion’s. Anthony dotted a kiss on Olivia’s cheek and said, “Good work on everything this morning.”
“I just want to make sure everyone is okay,” she told him.
The buses arrived a good twenty minutes later than they’d been scheduled, which left her guests enough room to complain their little hearts out. Olivia yearned to describe to them just what state the rest of the island was probably in, that the buses had probably had to weave and wind through several disasters in order to find them.
“Have they never had a single thing go wrong in their lives before?” Chelsea breathed into her mother’s ear.
Olivia shook her head, not wanting to give in to her buzzing annoyance.
The men who owned some of the immaculate cars on the property insisted on staying behind with them to ensure they were fixed properly. Olivia explained that each of the vehicles would have to be towed and that they needed all the guests off the premises to begin the clean-up process. One of the men, the particularly aggressive one who owned the Porsche, pointed up at the gashing hole in the top of The Hesson House and said, “Clean-up process? I don’t think a little vacuuming is going to fix up that place, lady.”
Olivia’s nostrils flared as she explained yet again. “If you want to stay on Martha’s Vineyard, that’s up to you. But you can’t stay here.” She passed several of the men her business cards and instructed them to call her in no less than three days. By then, she would have more information on their vehicles. At least, she hoped she would.
Just then, she needed them out of there.
The buses disappeared down the long drive and then chugged out toward Oak Bluffs. Olivia’s shoulders shook with apprehension. It was time to face the music, to face the destruction and devastation of what the storm left behind, without the fluff of dealing with the tourists. Olivia slowly turned back to see it in all its glory: the house that had changed her life forever.
Anthony smacked his palms together. “Not a whole lot we can do before the rest of the water clears out.”
Olivia nodded. “True.”
“I think it’s best that we try to get back to your house. Clean up a little bit. Get some more food in our systems. Maybe have a real sleep.”
Olivia nodded again. She felt as though she would have nodded to anything. She’d had to grapple with so many decisions over the previous twenty-four hours, and she wasn’t sure she could ever make another again. Anthony slipped his fingers through hers and focused his eyes on her face. Still, she couldn’t move her gaze from that gash in the top window, the way the walls had caved out in the bottom floor, and the way the water ran itself around the mansion.
“How are we going to get home?” Olivia asked gently.
Suddenly, dock-worker Tony appeared through the trees. He waved a hand and hollered that his truck still worked. “Thank goodness, huh?” he said as he jangled his keys. “I just bought that baby last year.” He said he’d be happy to bring them back to Edgartown. His eyes flashed toward Chelsea excitedly, as though he’d ensured his truck had avoided storm damage just for her, to ensure she would be safe. Chelsea grumbled inwardly but then feigned a smile— the kind men like Tony weren’t accustomed to.
“That’s so great, Tony. Thank you.”
They gathered the things they needed and then jumped into Tony’s truck. From the rearview mirror, Tony had hung a stuffed animal, which he announced he’d won from the Oak Bluffs festival that summer. “I want to give it to my kid, but his mom took him to Boston,” he said. “And what’s more, she recently told me I might not be the father! So, maybe I should keep the little teddy for myself?”
“I think you should still give it to the child,” Olivia said. “What are you going to do with a little bear?”
Tony looked at the bear doubtfully, then turned the engine on. “There she goes! All right. Let’s get out of here.”
The truck eased down the long driveway, careful to miss the strewn limbs and ragged logs from the trees on either side. Olivia gripped Chelsea’s hand and found her gaze.
“Have you gotten cell service back?” she asked.
“Yes,” Chelsea affirmed.
“Any word from your father? Or Xavier?”
Chelsea just shrugged. This was clearly a topic of conversation she wanted to push off for another day.
Tony weaved the truck out onto the main road and headed southward toward Edgartown. Only a few other vehicles were out. Toward the coastline, water had drawn itself up over the tree lines and gurgled toward the road, threatening to press toward their wheels. A smaller house nearer the coast had been half-obliterated. Olivia hadn’t any idea who had once lived there; she prayed they’d found relief.
Olivia’s house on Captain’s Walk was a few blocks from the upper part of Katama Bay. She squeezed Chelsea’s hand harder as they approached. Toward the south-eastern part of Captain’s Walk, water glimmered, but their little Mecca of land was safe, with just little trickles of water oozing around it. Olivia and Chelsea leaped from Tony’s truck and hustled inside, where they discovered nearly everything intact. Only a single window on the eastern side had smashed through. It seemed that a tree branch had been thrown across the yard. It now hung strangely between shards of glass and fluttered in the breeze.
Olivia wrapped her arms around her daughter and held her there in the bathroom, alongside that branch as it swayed to-and-fro in the wind. Tears sped down her cheeks and stained the shoulders of Chelsea’s sweatshirt. This was the first time Olivia had allowed herself to fully weep.
When she pulled back, she found that Chelsea, too, had begun to cry. Olivia wrapped one of Chelsea’s rogue curls around her ear and whispered, “We’re going to be okay, honey. Everything is okay.”
Chelsea nodded, although her eyes told a far different story.
Anthony appeared in the hallway. He ran his fingers through his hair and said, “Chels? Tony says he won’t get out of here until he gets to tell you goodbye.”
Chelsea turned and cast Anthony one of those horrifically pointed, dark gazes. She glared at him with more severity and power than Olivia had seen in years. After just a moment, Anthony flung his palms skyward and said, “Okay. I’ll get him out of here. I promise.”
When Anthony disappeared again to get rid of Tony, Chelsea’s tears mixed with laughter, and Olivia joined in. Chelsea’s head found her mother’s chest as she exhaled, exhausted.
“I knew I always liked him, Mom. You picked good.”
“I really did. And maybe that’s all I was meant to get out of The Hesson House, anyway.”
Chelsea lifted her head gingerly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the place is so messed up, Chels. I have no idea what will happen next.”
“But that doesn’t mean you’re going to give up on it. It’s been your dream all year long.”
Olivia nodded, even as her heart thudded with dread. “All I want, right now, is to sleep. Let’s talk about the rest later.”