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Bella and Kristine insisted that Heather take it easy over the remainder of their trip. Together, the three of them piled onto the living room couch, covered in old knitted blankets with lush pillows beneath them, and sorted through old movies they’d watched years before— musicals and chick flicks and the occasional period drama, like Pride and Prejudice. At times, Heather pinched herself with disbelief. Her twenty-two-year-old daughters actually wanted to spend time with her, all the way out in the middle of nowhere, while the rest of the city raged on?
But there were definite sorrows within her daughters, reason enough for them to hide out with her. It went deeper than Kristine’s recent breakup. Both girls had taken up therapists in recent months to deal with the death of their father. Only once, between chick flicks there on the couch, did they urge their mother to do the same.
“I don’t know,” Heather breathed. “I had that therapist for a few months immediately after the accident. I just felt like she did more harm than good.”
“It’s difficult to find a good therapist,” Bella affirmed. She held a Twizzler aloft and moved it through the air as she made her point. “I tried out three before I actually went with this current one. Especially in the city, there are so many waiting lists—”
“Because everyone is messed up or crazy or sad or all three at once,” Kristine interjected.
“Yes, exactly. But I’m glad to have found Evelyn,” she continued. “She’s a terrific person to talk to.”
“Do you tell her stuff you don’t tell me?” Kristine demanded.
Bella wiggled her elbow into her sister’s arm. “Don’t be jealous of my therapist. I pay her to listen to me when you don’t.”
Heather giggled and snuggled tighter against her girls. Kristine suggested they watch Sweet Home Alabama next, a classic with Reese Witherspoon.
“Oh, God, do you remember when Dad would imitate Reese when we watched this?” Bella asked as she hunted for the film.
“He killed that Southern accent,” Kristine affirmed.
Heather sucked in her cheeks with the memory. “That’s right. He always said, ‘You can take the girl out of the honky-tonk, but you can’t take the honky-tonk out of the girl!’”
Kristine and Bella bellowed with laughter. Heather joined them, her eyes heavy with tears.
“And he said, ‘Honey, just cuz I talk slow, doesn’t mean I’m stupid,’” Bella added. “Gosh, for as much as he made fun of us for loving this movie, he really did have the whole thing memorized.”
“That was your dad,” Heather stated, feeling the nostalgia. “He was always willing to over-prepare when it came to making fun of us.”
Heather rose and headed for the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine. Nicole then appeared on the other side of the glass, her smile bright, an attempt to hide her deep circles beneath her eyes.
“You’re working yourself to death up there,” Heather said somberly as she lifted the cork from the bottle.
Nicole shrugged. “It’s a lot, and I know. Sometimes, I think I’m going a little crazy. But I take a lot of pleasure in it. It’s been remarkable to see Bar Harbor open their arms to me as one of their own in hospitality. I walk into places sometimes, and I hear them say, ‘There she is. The New Keating.’”
“The New Keating,” Heather breathed. She placed four wineglasses in a row along the counter and clucked her tongue. “I wonder what Dad would have thought of you coming back and taking over his business.”
This father who had left them. This father who’d been so terrifically depressed that he’d left the world of his own volition. This father she couldn’t possibly understand. Who was he? Kristine and Bella had known their father, but Nicole and Heather, and Casey had a far different story.
“I think about that sometimes,” Nicole offered quietly. “Uncle Joe was terribly pleased, especially because his own daughter had never taken to the inn. He said the Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery had been his and our father’s dream. That with every new pitfall and every piece of bad luck, they knew they would always have this.”
Heather’s chin dropped toward her chest. “I wish we knew more about those pitfalls, about the dark times.”
They held the silence for a moment. Nicole pressed a hand over Heather’s shoulder and exhaled slowly.
“I’m guessing you haven’t told the girls anything,” she whispered.
Heather shook her head. “They’re dealing with their own grief just now. I don’t want to worry them with even more of my own.”
“You’re a good mother, you know.”
Heather puffed out her cheeks. “Some days, I feel like the most incapable mother in the world.”
The rain picked up outside as the wind howled against the windowpanes like some kind of warning. Heather beckoned for Nicole to join the three of them in the living room to watch Sweet Home Alabama. Nicole ran upstairs for a moment to change into her pajamas, saying she couldn’t bear to be uncomfortable while the others were so cozy.
While they waited, there was a dramatic knock on the door. The knock held nothing of the friendliness of Luke’s knock. Heather placed her glass of wine on the counter and strode toward the front door. Bella and Kristine were in the midst of yet another argument about this season’s boot style and whether it had all started with a Kardashian.
The disgruntled man on the other side of the door wore a dark raincoat, which shone from the intensity of the raindrops it now held. Beneath the hood, Heather made out a nearly familiar face. With a jolt, she recognized him as Henry, the butler of Evan Snow. In his hands, he held a large crate with what looked to be about three decades’ worth of dust around the sides and underneath.
He held the box out in front of him for Heather to take. She did so, wrapping her arms beneath the dust. His eyes told her everything she needed to know: these were her father’s things.
“Thank you...” Heather finally breathed.
“Mom? Is that the pizza?” Bella called from the living room.
Henry shrugged. “I just do as I’m told.”
Henry then stepped back from the porch and disappeared again into the dark night. The box was so heavy that Heather’s arms shook with fatigue.
“Mom?” Kristine called. “Do you need help?”
Heather hurried back into the foyer. “Not the pizza yet. Didn’t they say another fifteen minutes?”
But already, Bella and Kristine had fallen back into their own conversation. This left Heather to sneak up the stairs to her bedroom and place the box on the floor. A brief inspection found several old-looking leather-bound books. And a slight peek into the front of one of them found the words: ADAM KEATING 1977.
1977. The year she had been born.
Her heart thudded as she stepped back. These diaries and documents were like ticking time bombs. They contained the truth. But was she ready to face it?
Before she headed back downstairs, she grabbed her phone and, without thinking, dialed Luke’s number. She had hardly spoken to him since the incident on the docks. Was it embarrassment that kept her away? Or just the intensity of her feelings for him? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she needed him to know what had just happened. He was in this only because he wanted to be.
“Hey there. How are you feeling?” Luke’s voice was warm and welcoming.
Heather’s knees bent slightly. Would she fall to the floor all over again? “Hi.”
“I’ve been texting you,” Luke admitted. “And then I stopped texting you because I felt I was being annoying. But then, I was just thinking about texting you again.”
Heather’s lips curved upward. Downstairs, there was the doorbell and then the shuffle of her twins as they retrieved the two large pizzas from the delivery driver.
“Tell me, Heather. Are you all right?” Luke asked.
“I am. I really am.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, then added, “I don’t know what happened. I just lost my head.”
“We’ve all lost our heads before,” Luke said. “I just try not to do it when I’m out on the water.”
“Yeah. Not great planning on my part,” Heather agreed.
Luke held the silence for a moment. Heather wanted to have him on the line as long as she could. After all the time they’d spent together, the past few days without him felt strange and off-kilter.
“I just received a special delivery from your old friend, Henry,” she finally said.
“You’re kidding.”
“I know. He wasn’t too happy to see me, either.”
“Slimy little rat, isn’t he?” Luke spat with a laugh. “What did he bring you?”
“A large box with diaries and some documents. That kind of thing.”
Luke whistled. “Guess old Evan Snow got soft.”
“You think he’s taking pity on me?”
“There’s no pity here. He had your father’s things. And he saw you for who you really were the other day,” Luke told her.
“Oh? Who I really am? A weak-willed woman apt to pass out at any given time?”
“No, Heather,” Luke told her pointedly. “He saw you as a woman with a family. A woman people love. A woman who wants to know her story so desperately, even after so much heartache in the rest of her life. Evan Snow is a lot of things, but he’s also a family man. And he had a tragedy of his own a few years back. His wife passed away.”
Heather’s heart dropped into her stomach. “That’s awful. I wish I would have known.”
“How could you know? Things happen to people. Bad things. And all we can do is pick up the pieces and move on,” he said.
She could sense that Luke spoke of himself here, too— whatever lurked beneath the surface, whatever darkness remained in his past. Still, this wasn’t a phone conversation.
“I’d love your help if you’re willing to give it,” Heather asked. “I know it’s a big ask, but these diaries are terrifying for me.”
“I’m there. You just say the word.”
When Heather appeared downstairs, she found Bella, Kristine, and Nicole over the top of two large circles of cheese-laden crispy dough. Nicole lifted a glass of wine to her lips and giggled at something Bella said. It struck Heather as beautiful, seeing the three of them like this. Nicole hadn’t spent much time with her girls since their big move to their universities, especially since Nicole had been in the midst of her own turmoil during those years. This was probably the first time Nicole really saw them as the women they’d become.
For the first time in ages, Heather considered Nicole’s relationship with her own children, Abby and Nate. They’d never been particularly close. Heather realized, now, that Nicole hadn’t mentioned them once. Heather’s heart felt bruised. Could this have something to do with why Nicole had come to Bar Harbor in the first place?
Nicole commented on Bella and Kristine in the kitchen about halfway through Sweet Home Alabama. She and Heather had just popped open another bottle of wine while Bella and Kristine ate their third slices of pizza— something Heather and Nicole resisted.
“They’re such spectacular young women,” Nicole complimented softly as she lifted the bottle of wine high over the glass. “I’m so grateful to get to know them in this new way. I remember going to your house last year after the accident when we were waiting for news about Max. And I just looked at them and thought, well...” Nicole trailed off.
“They probably looked a lot like me,” Heather offered. “Empty.”
Nicole placed the bottle of wine back on the counter and wrapped her arms around Heather. Her chin nestled against her shoulder. “I’m so glad you three are here,” she breathed finally. “Whatever happened in the past— between Dad or Mom or whoever else was involved— I’m glad that all that brought us together, here in this house, with the wild Maine rains outside the window. Can you imagine a better life than this?”
Heather’s heart glowed with the beauty of it all, even in the face of such confusion. “I love you, sis,” she whispered as their hug broke. “So glad my daughters have such a remarkable aunt like you. No matter what.”