20
Gemma walked up Commercial Street feeling like a fool. She’d run all the way out to Provincetown based on a single phone call from Elodie. That’s what happened when you felt desperate: You acted desperate. She’d let everything from the past few days rattle her. And now she’d wasted precious time and money.
At least her aunt Celeste offered to let her stay at her house. She canceled her hotel reservation—a place in town that didn’t allow pets and therefore had openings—and lost her deposit but got the rest refunded thankfully. First thing tomorrow, she’d head back to the city. In the grand scheme of things, very little harm done. And yet . . . why had Elodie lied to her?
She’d felt like such a brat asking her aunt Celeste about the ring. As if she just wanted a big fat diamond. Gemma wasn’t a diamond type of person. Even if she got engaged someday—hard to imagine with her current track record—she hoped her husband-to-be proposed with a ring that meant something, not just a generic gem. No, this wasn’t about a diamond. This was about her mother.
Gemma walked the length of Commercial, passing cute shop after cute shop, each window tempting her more than the next: sumptuous throws, robes, and textiles at Loveland, surprisingly hip clothing at a store called MAP, the Provincetown Bookshop, marked with a wooden sign painted with an owl.
The past four years in Manhattan had made long strolls a habit. A tide of pedestrians swept her up toward the East End, past Cabot’s Candy and a second bookstore, East End Books, with a view of the bay. Here, clothing shops and cafés gave way to art galleries.
She decided to climb the brick stairs to the Harrison Gallery. Sometimes, looking at paintings or sculpture helped give her ideas for her own work. No matter what was going on in her life, work—creating—was always the answer.
The gallery was long and narrow, the white walls filled with large oil paintings illuminated with spot lighting. It was cool inside, the first breeze of air-conditioning since she’d gotten to town. She paused in front of a painting of a poppy field, the orange-red so vibrant she wanted to reach out and touch it. It was how she felt when she saw a beautiful stone.
“It’s special, isn’t it?” a man said, walking up to her. “She’s a local artist. I’d be happy to answer any questions.”
He looked to be in his mid-twenties. He had sandy blond hair and a strong jaw and navy blue eyes, and looked like he should be riding a horse on the cover of a romance novel instead of standing there in the gallery.
“Thanks,” she said, turning back to the painting. She waited for him to move on but he kept standing beside her. She didn’t care how good-looking he was, or how much he knew about the art. She was in no mood for small talk. “Um, there’s no chance I’m buying anything in here. Just so you know—I don’t want you to waste your time talking to me.”
“Always happy to talk,” he said.
“Okay, then . . . I don’t want to waste my time.”
He laughed and pulled a business card out of his pocket. “In case you have some time to waste one day.”
When she was back outside, she glanced at it briefly before tossing it in the trash.
Celeste typically looked forward to their weekly dinners at the Barroses’ house. She adored Jack’s cousin Manny and his wife, Lidia. Lidia was a fantastic cook, and there were few spots more scenic than the century-old house on the bay. They ate on the deck, the table just a few feet away from the front door. The setting sun painted the sky in pastel colors that, over decades, had inspired countless works of art. But tonight, she couldn’t enjoy it. She was uncomfortable thinking about Gemma being all alone back at the house. It felt rude to go out to Lidia and Manny’s and leave her there, but when Jack suggested Celeste bring her, she refused.
“Why not?” Jack said.
“It’s a boundaries thing,” Celeste said. “I have no problem offering her one of our guest rooms, but dinner at Lidia and Manny’s . . . that’s too close for comfort.”
“I’m sure they’d love to meet your niece.”
“Not tonight, Jack,” she said, and the tension in her voice told him not to push.
The attitude at the Barroses’ was always the more, the merrier. Dinner groups had been known to swell to as large as a dozen, depending on how many members of the extended Barros family were in town. Typically, they were seven: the two couples; plus Jack’s cousin Tito; and Lidia and Manny’s son, Marco, and his wife, Olivia. Tonight, Celeste was relieved to find it was just the four of them.
“So, we ended up with a full house after all,” Lidia was saying. “Tito’s in Marco’s room, and we’ve got our first tenant of the season in Jaci’s room.”
Every summer brought the Provincetown housing shuffle; locals rented spare bedrooms for extra income or moved out of their homes entirely to rent them for the season. For a lot of people, three months of summer could make their entire year. Lidia and Manny had successfully rented out their daughter Jaci’s room for the summer. She was staying at school, and they were able to get a last-minute tenant from New York.
“It’s been lonely with Jaci away, but at least we’re making it productive,” Lidia said with a sigh.
“I didn’t know Tito was renting out his place this summer,” Celeste said, refilling her glass of merlot.
Manny nodded. “Clifford Henry told him what he could get for it, and that was that. He didn’t even ask us about moving in—he told us.”
“I hope you gave him a good rate,” Jack joked.
“Don’t think Manny didn’t try to charge him,” Lidia said.
“We have a guest under our roof tonight, too,” Jack said, giving her a wink.
“Oh?” Lidia said, standing up to clear the dishes.
Celeste hadn’t even mentioned to Lidia that her sister showed up in town, never mind her niece. It had been years since she’d talked about her own family.
There had been a summer night, not long after Lidia and Manny got married, when a party at the house had lasted until the earliest hours of the morning. The dozen or so revelers still hanging around all gathered on the beach to watch the sunrise, and Celeste and Lidia had ended up talking for hours over way too many bottles of wine. Celeste told her about the younger sister she’d lost, and that she was barely on speaking terms with the one who remained.
“You should invite her to visit you,” Lidia said. Everyone in Provincetown believed that a visit to the place could cure anything.
“I never want my family visiting me here,” she’d said. “Never.”
Now Lidia and Manny looked at her expectantly.
“Yes. My youngest sister’s daughter. It’s just for one night,” she said.
“I didn’t know you had a niece,” Manny said. Was that a touch of judgment she detected in his voice?
“She grew up with the other side of her family,” Celeste said.
The front door swung open, and someone walked out of the house. The woman gave a quick glance at their group. Then she stopped moving, turning around slowly.
Celeste jumped up from her seat, nearly knocking over her glass of wine.
“Elodie?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
How could this be?
Lidia put down the plates she’d been gathering. “You two know each other?”
“How do you two know each other?” Celeste said, sounding angrier than she intended.
“She’s our tenant,” Lidia said, clearly understanding something was very wrong but unable to imagine what it could possibly be.
Celeste walked over to face her sister.
“Are you stalking me? Trying to pressure me to sign those papers by moving in with Jack’s family? This is so typical of you . . .”
Jack got up and walked over. “Ladies, come to the table.”
“This is as much a surprise to me as it is to you,” Elodie said, looking indignant. Her small dog strained on her leash. “I told you I didn’t have a place to stay and you just left me standing on the dock—”
“What is going on here?” Manny said.
“What’s going on here,” Celeste said, “is that your new tenant is my sister.”