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“I found something.”
Clara tapped the speaker icon on her phone just as she pulled the door shut behind her and locked it. Part of her wanted to stay at the cottage for the night, but with the notebook now in her possession, her body was buzzing.
“What are you talking about?” Kate asked. She sounded different. Distracted.
Skipping down the path toward her car, Clara pulled the journal from her arm and again examined the exterior. “At the cottage,” she replied. “I found something.” For whatever reason, divulging what she thought she found felt too big to say.
“Oh!” Kate answered with sudden recognition, as though she’d been swinging on a birch tree, blissfully detached from Earth for a while. “Right. The cottage. What? What is it?”
“Um,” Clara began, fumbling her way into her car and plopping into the seat with exhaustion. “Can we meet? For a drink, maybe?”
“Oh,” Kate said again. Clara began to wonder if she’d woken her up from a deep sleep. She was acting so oddly.
After a beat, Clara raised her voice—only just. “Hel-lo? Kate? Are ya there?”
“Sorry, right. Yes. I’m here. Sorry, Clara. I just have someone here taking a look at the Inn.”
Clara smiled and shook her head. Kate’s budding project was destined to consume her. Maybe Clara ought to have called Amelia instead. She opened her mouth to say as much, but Kate went on.
“Do you normally drink?” Kate asked.
“No,” Clara replied. “But I have a feeling we might need one.”
***
They met at The Bottle, an eccentric wine bar at the far edge of Birch Village. Clara wasn’t a big fan of The Bottle—too uppity—but Fiorillo’s was out of the question and neither she nor Kate was willing to go to one of the dives inland or The Lake Shack, a tacky tourist trap closer to the marina.
The Bottle had been Nora’s go-to spot.
The only way Clara could describe the interior decor was Nantucket Chic. Sailing and boating photographs (in disappointing shades of black and white) hung evenly along the walls. Dark wood furniture, in sparse measure, sat in orderly circles across a hardwood floor. A comically large helm held court at the wall nearest the lake and on either side of that, grand bay windows.
The bar, shining cleanly from a long stretch at the far side of the room, separated them from two white-shirted barkeeps (is that what you called them if it was a wine bar?). The hostess, a girl probably younger than Clara, stared with boredom, even as Clara and Kate stepped inside. Still, she mustered a snobbish smile. “Welcome to The Bottle. Is it just the two of you this evening?” she asked as Clara and Kate stepped up to her glass stand.
Kate, steely eyed, had no time for this woman’s pretense. “Yes, and we’ll take the seat by the window.” She pointed to the right of the helm and began walking before the hostess had a chance to grab two thick drink menus. If there was one thing Kate and Clara had in common, it was a distaste for being treated like tourists. Amelia and Megan hated it, too. Come to think of it, no local appreciated the treatment.
Once they were seated and had ordered the lightest, sweetest wine on the menu, Clara pulled her bag from the back of the chair.
“So, what is it?” Kate asked as she propped her elbows on the polished tabletop.
Clara hesitated momentarily, clutching the journal in her hand before sliding it out of her leather bag and pressing it firmly onto the spot in front of her. She kept it there, anchored in place as she looked from it to Kate. Clara sighed. “I think it’s Mom’s—Nora’s, I mean—I think it’s her diary.”
Kate’s eyes grew wide, and she immediately reached across. “Are you serious? Let me see.”
Swallowing, Clara pulled it in toward herself. “Hang on,” she answered, feeling foolish and dramatic even though she was trying to be the exact opposite. “Maybe we need to wait until Amelia and Megan are here. We should open it together, right?”
“Then why did you bring me here?” Kate spat back, now crossing her arms defensively.
“I don’t want to be the one to hold it. I don’t know. It feels like... like bad luck or something.” Clara bit her lower lip and loosened her grip on the notebook.
Kate cocked her head, her features softening. “Bad luck? Come on, Clara. Have you opened it yet? Do you even know for sure that’s what it is?”
Clara shook her head.
The waiter returned with their drinks, and Kate immediately rose her glass in a toast. Clara frowned with suspicion.
“To Mom,” the older of the two began. Clara lifted her glass with a degree of uneasiness. Kate continued, “Who left us with more than a house on the harbor, a cottage on a creek, and rental properties. All those turn to dust in the end. Just like you and me, Clara. Nora Hannigan left far more than that for her four daughters.” Kate overemphasized the last word, and Clara felt her cheeks grow hot and her shoulders relax at her sister’s unending drive to make her feel loved.
“To Mom,” Clara agreed, pushing her glass toward Kate’s.
They each took a long sip, then Clara offered the notebook across the table. “Here. You’re the oldest. You take this and set up a meeting. We’re going to need all hands on deck.”
***
Managing to set aside the matter of the notebook and enjoying a glass of wine was easier than Clara predicted. Kate was consumed by working on the house on the harbor, or as she continued to refer it, the Inn. Clara giggled each time.
After her oldest sister (she’d never stop calling Kate her sister) finished walking her through what she’d accomplished, she admitted that she was indeed distracted when Clara had called her to get together.
“Matt,” Kate confessed, pretending to hide behind her wine glass.
Clara didn’t find it funny. “Matt Fiorillo?” There were no other Matts in their lives, of course, but the confirmation felt important. Kate nodded. “Was it about...?” Clara began, aiming an index finger at herself.
“No, no. Of course not,” Kate replied, then turned sheepish. “Well, I mean—” she sighed and shook her head. “Clara, anything Matt and I have to talk about inevitably has to do with you, actually. And yes, to be frank we did talk about you.” The tone shifted, and Clara could have sworn the lights grew dimmer in the already dark bar.
“Oh?” she studied her wine glass, focusing all her energy on a little line of bubbles at the top of the liquid and how it reminded her of a translucent caterpillar. She wanted to crawl into a hole, not discuss her origins.
Kate’s fingers appeared in her vision. She was reaching out to hold Clara’s hand, but Clara kept staring at the bubbles.
“Clara, it’s okay. It was a good conversation. I called him initially to help with working on the Inn. But we had a good talk, too. A little about Mom. A little about you. It helped clear some things up for me.”
At that, Clara lifted her eyes. “Like what?”
Kate smiled. “Did you know that Matt came to see if we were selling the house on the harbor?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t want to buy it—well, I mean... he did if we were selling it. He was worried you weren’t going to get as much as us. I guess years ago he came to the house to talk to Mom. He wanted to meet you. She wouldn’t let him, and it turned him off of her. I suppose he sort of held a grudge about it. He worried about you, Clara.”
“He could have come talked to me when I moved out,” Clara reasoned, feeling like a mopey teenager with a Disney Dad who started a new family elsewhere. It was partially true. Matt had a daughter. A different daughter.
Kate nodded. “If you had moved out. But you never did. And he didn’t know anything about you.”
“True,” Clara admitted. After all, Matt Fiorillo, though born and bred in Birch Harbor just like the Hannigan girls, had laid down his roots offshore on Heirloom Island, a miniature chunk of land just south of Heirloom Cove where the House on the Harbor sat. From what Clara knew now, he flipped houses all over the county but kept to himself. He sent his eighth-grade daughter, Viviana, to the private Catholic school on the island, further sequestering them from the mainstream.
Then again, Clara herself wasn’t so mainstream. To school and home and that was that. She didn’t go out. She didn’t fraternize with other teachers. College was hard enough. There, she barely survived the raucous roommate she had in the dorm for two years before choosing to finish her degree online as much as possible. It wasn’t out of fear that Clara shrunk from society. It was out of habit. Having been raised as a runtish only child to a woman who’d lost her husband years back and got trapped in a midlife crisis from age fifty on, Clara was odd at best. Her physical beauty kept her from being an outright weirdo, it seemed, but she got along best with books and a fresh set of crochet needles, unlike her social-media-obsessed peers.
“Anyway, whenever you’re ready, maybe we can get together. You, me, and Matt?” Kate asked at last.
After nodding in uncomfortable agreement, Clara opted to change the conversation. “I met a guy today,” she admitted. It came out all wrong, though. What she wanted to say was that she met her favorite student’s father. But that’s not how it sounded, and now she was outed.
Kate nearly choked on her wine. “What? What do you mean you met a guy? I have never in my life known you to be interested in men. I seriously thought you might go the Nun route after high school.” A goofy smile spread across Kate’s face as she rambled, and Clara desperately wanted to match it with her own, but she was too humiliated by her own misspeak.
Backpedaling, Clara waved her hands. “I mean... I met one of my students’ parents. He works at the marina. He could help with the dock reno at the Inn.” Clara shrugged and took a sip, looking out the window with as much nonchalance as she could put on.
“One question. Is he hot?”
“Ew!” Clara shrieked in response. “Don’t ever use that word again!”
Kate rocked back in her seat and cackled gleefully. “I may be your biological mother, but I’m not your mom. Come on, Clara. I never even said I needed help with the dock. So, spill.”
At that, Clara finally broke. Grinning broadly, she swirled her wine, swallowed the last of it then shook her head playfully. “He’s the father of a teenager, for starters.”
“Is he single?”
“Are you asking for yourself?” Clara shot Kate a coy look.
“I’m asking for you,” Kate replied. “After all, I have my own prospect now.”