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Despite all their best intentions, Amelia flung herself into the idea of a Hurricane Fundraiser with endless zeal. Jennifer, Olivia, Mila, and Camilla exchanged glances at their next meeting as Amelia talked quickly, her words tumbling into one another as though she had forgotten the concept of oxygen. When she finally did pause and blink up, her pen poised over her yellow pad of paper, she balked and said, “Well? What do you think?”
“I think it sounds generally good,” Olivia finally offered, forcing herself forward. “But you seem — hmm.”
“I seem what?” Amelia demanded.
“Really into this,” Jennifer tried.
“Exhausted?” Camilla tried.
“No. No. I’m not.” Amelia drew her hair behind her ear, suddenly exasperated. “I just know that the grunt work has to happen now so that we can reveal all our best-laid plans at the town meeting this weekend. If you tell the people the best strategy, they’ll go along with it without hesitation. If you go in there with wishy-washy plans, then they’re apt to walk all over you.”
“Nobody will walk all over you,” Mila tried.
But Amelia cast her a dark look, one that meant business. Mila placed a potato chip on her tongue and chewed slowly as her gaze fell to the floor. They knew better than to prod the beast — especially now, in her pregnant state.
The town meeting was set to begin at five in the evening that Saturday at the downtown assembly hall, which had enough benches and chairs to suit five hundred guests. Amelia wanted to ensure all business owners who wanted to be involved, along with everyone who had been directly affected by the hurricane, could attend. The logistics were tricky, especially as the island remained heavily in hurricane clean-up mode. The mood across the island was grim. It was as though a general cloud of despair had been cast over all of them. The fact that summer had officially dug her head into the sea didn’t help matters, either. They were headed fast and hard toward the darkness, toward winter — and their island had threatened to crumble beneath them.
Olivia hugged each of her girls as they headed out into the night. Amelia assured her yet again that all would be well. “We’ll get your funds for The Hesson House, honey. Mark my words.” But Olivia knew better than to get her hopes up. “See you this Saturday.”
Anthony wouldn’t arrive back from his buddy’s place for the next hour or so, which left Olivia at home on Captain’s Walk. She sat on the couch and flicked through various reality TV channels as though one of them — the house-flippers or the adopters or the overseas fiancés — had any sort of answer for her desolate state. She checked her phone for the zillionth time that day, praying for an answer from Chelsea. But in the wake of her return to the city, she’d received only a few text messages here and there. She had mentioned — in a three-word text message that just read, “Dad is gone,” that Tyler had departed. But where had he gone? And why had he come in the first place? Worry permeated through everything else. But Olivia reminded herself of the strength it had taken in the first place when she had told Chelsea she had it in herself to handle it. She had to stick to that sentiment. She felt it had given Chelsea a kind of courage.
If you had courage, there weren’t a whole lot of boundaries in your path in this life. Olivia knew this, especially because it had taken her years to build up any kind of courage herself.
That Friday, Olivia arrived at school thirty minutes early. She placed her lunchbox in the fridge in the teacher’s lounge and then turned to find Janet Maxwell, whom she’d managed to avoid in the wake of the hurricane. Now, she clucked her tongue and delivered a horrible gaze, one that was meant to transmit pity, maybe, but ultimately made Olivia feel very small.
“It’s just awful what happened to that hotel of yours.”
Olivia tried on a smile that ultimately failed. “Thanks. I know. Did you make it out okay with the hurricane?”
“Oh, sure. We’re good. Thank goodness. It just broke my heart afterward to walk through town and see everything all mangled. But I guess that’s the risk we all take, living out here on this island like we do.”
“My family’s been here for generations. I can’t imagine ever going anywhere else,” Olivia stated.
“Well, anyway.” Janet seemed not to care about this sentiment at all. “At least now, you can get back to what really matters. Those students need your TLC, don’t you think?”
Olivia had thrown herself almost completely into her teaching work in the wake of the hurricane. She had graded every paper ahead of time; she’d read and re-read their assignments to mentally prepare herself for discussion; and she’d come up with interesting new writing topics for several of her classes, who had taken to the material with enthusiasm.
Still, something about it all felt so empty to her. She had been a teacher for twenty years. It had been enough before. What was wrong with her? Why did she now look out on her sea of students and feel lackluster? It wasn’t the students, per se. Rather, it was a shift within her own soul.
During the first period, two of her students started an argument about Gatsby’s “Daisy” and whether or not she was a sympathetic character. In normal circumstances, Olivia might have relished this conversation, but in the wake of everything that had happened, her mind was elsewhere. She pushed herself to fall into it, though. She even divided the classroom up into two sides to operate the argument like a sort of makeshift courtroom. But as their points flew back and forth, her heart dipped lower into her stomach. All she could think about, no matter the date nor time, was The Hesson House. It felt like a dead thing she’d had to leave behind on the road to somewhere else.
**
AT FOUR-FORTY-FIVE on Saturday evening, the assembly hall in Edgartown was a buzzing ecosystem of life and friendship and community. Olivia and Anthony entered and found themselves immediately accosted with, “Hey! Good evening!” and welcome smiles. Amelia beckoned for them to come up to a little table she’d set up, where they had to sign their names and whether or not they wanted assistance for their business or household from the funds they would generate at the hurricane fundraiser.
“Sign this girl up,” Camilla said brightly as she and Jonathon eased in from the crowd off to the right.
Olivia chuckled as she penned her and Anthony’s name across the pad of paper. “Yeah, I would say we need help.”
“That’s putting it lightly.” This came from the left, from a towering force of a man, Wesley Sheridan, who owned the Sunrise Cove Inn. He smiled at Olivia warmly, like a father might, and said, “It’s just awful what happened to your hotel, Olivia. My girls and I haven’t been able to comprehend what you must be going through. If anything like that happened to our Sunrise Cove, I don’t know what we’d do.”
Olivia thanked him and stepped to the side to allow others to sign their names. “I heard the bistro got hit a little bit?”
“Not so bad,” Wes affirmed. “And we probably won’t take funds from the fundraiser. We’ll take a little pause from the bistro, fix it back up to its original state, and then continue on. To be honest with you, it’s for the best, since Christine and Zach — my daughter and her boyfriend, who run the bistro together have started to raise my granddaughter’s baby, Max, while she’s away at Penn State. And what’s more, Christine, herself is getting bigger and bigger by the day.” He wagged his eyebrows. “Another baby in the family! I feel just giddy about it. It’s so wonderful.”
Susan Sheridan marched up alongside her father and greeted Olivia warmly. “Is he bragging about all his grandchildren again?”
“He is. You caught him.” Olivia beamed at the duo.
“Dad, not everyone wants to hear about our family tree everywhere we go,” Susan teased. She then made a serious face and said, “I really was so sorry to hear about The Hesson House, Olivia. Luckily, you have Amelia Taylor in your corner.”
“That’s putting it lightly,” Olivia affirmed.
Susan waved a hand and beckoned to another woman, Nancy Remington, the widow of Neal Remington, who had taken over the Katama Lodge and Wellness Spa after his rather sudden death the winter before. She furrowed her brow and linked a hand around Olivia’s shoulder.
“Darling, it is just so awful what happened to you,” Nancy breathed.
The amount of love that brewed up from the heart of Martha’s Vineyard hospitality sector was unmatched. Tears sprung to Olivia’s eyes. Before she could figure out what to say, besides a few fumbled, “Thank you’s” Amelia announced that it was time for the town meeting to begin. Olivia and Anthony weaved down the lines of chairs to grab two seats off to the right, near the front.
“Good evening, everyone,” Amelia said. Her stomach bulged out and gave her an air of strength over the rest of them. What kind of woman could arrange such an enormous island-wide function and grow a baby inside of her, all at once? That kind of woman could.
“Thank you all for coming today. Hurricane Janine ripped through the island a week and a half ago. She certainly left a lot of devastation in the wake of her path. But it’s up to us to be there for one another and ensure that our island’s prosperous time continues. For this reason, I would like to propose a fundraiser, to be held at the Harbor View Hotel. The grounds are enormous, and if the weather’s anything like other years, we should have some beautiful blue-skied days in October, perfect for something like this.”
There were murmurs across the wide expanse of islanders. Several hands stuck into the air and waved around. Amelia looked slightly annoyed, but she selected several of the community members to speak.
“My hardware store lost half of its roof,” a man said off to the left. “Will I qualify for assistance?”
“Well, before we get into all the nitty-gritty details, I think it’s important that you all ask your insurance providers how much they can assist you,” Amelia suggested — speaking as though she spoke to a young adult.
The man sat and scratched his head as though this thought hadn’t crossed his mind. Several other people stood with similar questions; others seemed on the hunt for free funds, regardless of their hurricane situation. Amelia rolled her eyes and then clapped her hands together in an attempt to silence the room so she could continue.
“Let’s move on to the task at hand, shall we?” she stated loud and clear. “Later on, it will be decided if you qualify for any funds that we raise at this event.”
“Who will do the deciding?” This was the hardware store man all over again.
“We have a twelve-person board that will make this assessment,” Amelia affirmed. “They’re life-long islanders, with a commitment to the economic ecosystem of this island. Essentially we will assess who got hit with the most damage and go from there.”
The questions continued. Amelia grew increasingly exasperated. One older woman just stood up and listed all of the items in her vegetable garden that were destroyed in the hurricane. Amelia said she was sorry, but she wasn’t sure the fundraiser could help her with something like that. The woman grumbled, gathered her things, and immediately left. Olivia sniggered as Anthony stabbed an elbow into her side.
“Don’t laugh,” Anthony breathed. “We don’t want them to turn on us.”
Olivia righted her face, even as a seemingly very wealthy sailing type raised a hand and said that he didn’t believe it was up to the government to arrange any kind of fundraiser like this.
“Then what would you have us do?” Amelia asked him, balking.
The man wasn’t sure. He returned to his seat and muttered something to his wife, clearly annoyed.
“In any case, let’s continue on with the meeting. Shall we?” Amelia no longer looked particularly thrilled with her decision to handle this meeting on her own.
Slowly but surely, they nailed down the facts, which included what kinds of games they would hold, what sorts of food kiosks they would offer, and how many items they would require at auction to ensure that they generated the number of funds they required. Ultimately, the meeting was rather prosperous. And when it finished, Wes Sheridan’s sister stood on a chair and hollered that she and a few of her friends had made enough clam chowder to feed an entire continent.
“I hope you will all stay for dinner and communion,” she announced as she clasped her hands together, grinning from ear to ear. “And let’s give a warm hand of thanks to Amelia. We don’t know what we’d do without you. Please don’t pull all your hair out as you deal with us.”
Amelia grinned and bowed her head as rolls of applause fell over her. Olivia’s heart swelled with pride. Despite wildly different personalities and countless perspectives, the island really would find a way to come together in the wake of this disaster. Naturally, coming together also meant eating to their hearts’ content. This was just the Vineyard way.