CHAPTER 1

Piper Quinn looked up from pulling on a dandelion—whose roots, she decided, reached all the way to China—pushed a shock of her short dark hair out of her eyes, and waved. Nat McCabe looked in the rearview mirror of his pickup and waved back. She smiled. Nat had stopped home for a late lunch, but before he left, he’d pulled her into his arms, murmured how good she smelled, and teasingly told her he’d been craving rice pudding all morning, and Piper, who’d been satisfying Nat’s cravings for nearly forty years, laughed. She’d been planning on working in the garden that afternoon—they’d had a wet spring and the weeds were thriving—but as she watched Nat pull away, she thought about the rice pudding her mom used to make, and an image of her mom’s old Good Housekeeping cookbook—faded red and missing its dust jacket—filled her mind. Her mom had used that cookbook as faithfully as she’d used her Bible.

Piper glanced at the weeds poking their seedy heads up above the fence and briefly entertained the idea of looking for a recipe online. There were several sites she liked, all with wonderful recipes and reviews, but she quickly dismissed the idea. There was only one rice pudding recipe she wanted to make, and it was in her mom’s favorite old cookbook.

Piper gave the mulish weed one last tug and it defiantly snapped off at the ground. She sighed, tossed it in her basket, and eyed the offending root. “I’ll be back,” she warned, “and I’ll have my weeder!” She rinsed her hands under the outdoor faucet, dried them on her shorts, and looked at the big golden retriever sprawled across the sunny grass. “Are you staying out here, ol’ pie?” The sweet old dog, hearing one of the many names she associated with herself—ol’ pie, ol’ girl, sweets, pup-ster, and of course, her official name, Chloe—opened one eye, yawned, and closed it again. Piper shook her head and smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She climbed the two wooden steps to the wraparound porch and straightened the wooden sign that was hanging next to the door. The carved and painted green-and-white sign had been welcoming friends to the Quinn summer home in Eastham for as long as she could remember. Whit’s End was the whimsical name her father had given the rambling Nantucket-style house when he learned that their fifth child would also be their fourth daughter! He’d carved the sign that same summer, and although it had been repainted several times, it was due for another fresh coat.

Piper went inside, kicked off her tattered running shoes, and walked over to scan the cookbook shelf. On it was everything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child to the infallible Irma Rombauer and her daughter Marion’s Joy of Cooking, and tucked next to that was a dog-eared copy of The Joy of Sex—what in the world is that doing down here? Piper pulled it from the shelf and continued looking for the cookbook, but when she didn’t see it, she picked up the groundbreaking sex manual from the early seventies and leafed through it, remembering, with a smile, how she and her sisters had spent hours poring over the iconic illustrations, trying to decide whether some of the positions were even anatomically possible. She started to feel aroused, closed the book, and tucked it under her arm. Nat would get a kick out of it . . . and maybe even a new craving!

Piper climbed the stairs to the second floor and gazed resignedly up the worn, narrow stairs to the third. She hadn’t been in the attic in years. She’d even tried to forget its existence, but she knew forgetting wouldn’t change anything—the attic would still be full of stuff . . . and stuff was the gentle word she and Birdie and Remy used when referring to the attic’s contents. Sailor used a more colorful noun. For years, she and her sisters had talked about going through everything, but somehow, they’d never gotten around to it. Life always got in the way.

Piper pushed open the door and pulled the string dangling from the rafters. Nothing happened. She peered around the dimly lit room and made her way toward the window—the only other source of light—but as she walked between all the boxes, her heart sank—she was never going to find the cookbook in this mess.

She bumped into an old seamstress mannequin, and when she reached out to steady it, she inadvertently touched the unfinished neckline of her mom’s last project—a sundress for Remy’s daughter Payton. Her mom had been working on the dress that fateful rainy, spring day when she’d stopped to make a cup of tea and get the mail. Piper had been away at college at the time, but Birdie had called to tell her what happened. “Thank goodness she put the kettle on before going out to get the mail, because it was the whistling kettle that alerted Mr. Moody—who found her lying in the driveway.”

Martha Quinn had suffered a stroke, and although Dr. Sanders had assured her four daughters it was a mild one, the stroke had turned out to be the first of many that, over time, irreversibly damaged the tiny blood vessels in Martha’s brain and stripped her of all her motor and cognitive skills—from sewing and cooking, to writing and walking, to remembering and recognizing, and finally, to swallowing—but it was that first stroke that made it difficult for Martha to hold and thread a needle; and later on, when Remy asked Payton whether she’d like to have the dress finished by someone else, Payton had said no—the dress would just remind her of the day Gran stopped sewing.

Piper moved the mannequin to one side and saw her mom’s hope chest pushed up against the wall. She lifted the heavy lid, and the sweet, woodsy scent of cedar drifted into the room, transporting her back to her parents’ bedroom in the big old colonial in New Hampshire—their year-round home.

Nestled in the top of the old chest was a wooden tray filled with jewelry and beads. Piper picked up a string of pearls and slipped it over her head. Her sisters had loved putting their mom’s beads around their necks, donning her fancy hats, clunking around in her high heels, and admiring themselves in the full-length mirror behind the door. Piper, however, had only liked to watch; whenever her sisters had tried to put the beads around her neck or the bright red lipstick on her lips, she’d always shaken her head and turned away—there was no way they were putting that stuff on her! She’d much rather play the games her brother played—games that involved hitting or bouncing balls and running.

Piper laid the beads back in the tray and noticed a stack of envelopes with her father’s long, elegant handwriting scrawled across them. They were addressed to Martha Lane—his seventeen-year-old sweetheart. Piper slipped off the faded ribbon and began to read the letters her father had written to her mother when he was a navy pilot flying Hellcats off an aircraft carrier in the Pacific during WWII. She smiled at his sweet words and the way he professed his love and told her of the future he hoped they’d share one day. Piper smiled sadly—back then, her parents had been blissfully unaware of the tragedies that lay ahead in their lives.

An hour later, Piper slipped the last letter back into its fragile sheath, retied the ribbon, and looked out the window. She saw Chloe, far below, moving to her favorite spot under the towering oak trees her father had planted when each of his children was born, and then realized the trees’ long shadows were stretching across the grass—the afternoon was slipping by. Five more minutes, she thought, turning back to the chest. She lifted out a pile of sweaters and found an old leather photo album. She pulled her father’s dusty old mission-style rocking chair up to the window, sat down, and opened the book. The album was full of black-and-white photos that had been carefully mounted on black construction paper. She slowly turned the pages and smiled—her dad looked so handsome in his navy uniform, and her mom looked absolutely stunning in a long fur coat, back when fur was not only acceptable, but fashionable. Women weren’t caught dead wearing fur anymore.

Piper slowly turned the pages, reading the captions her mom had neatly printed in white ink: Grand Central, 1945, Hanover, N.H., 1947, Fenway Park, 1948 ... and then there was one with just the year: 1949. The picture was of her parents, and her mom was holding a baby. They looked so happy. Piper studied the photo; they were standing on the porch of Whit’s End, and in 1949, the baby had to be Birdie. She shifted the book in her lap and a pile of loose photos fell on the floor. She picked them up and as she slowly looked through them, she realized they’d all been taken in front of Nauset Lighthouse. The first one was of Birdie when she was about two; then Remy stood beside her. Soon, the pictures included Sailor ... and then Easton ... and finally, there was one with her.

She turned the page and another photo fell out. She picked it up, and the late afternoon sunlight cast its golden rays across it. It was of all of them—older now—a formidable crew! They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and they were laughing. Sailor was making bunny ears behind Remy’s head. They looked so happy. Piper’s eyes glistened—she’d only been five at the time, but she’d been old enough to know that her world—and the people she loved most in it—would never be the same.