“Mama!” Lucas yelled as he ran across the lawn to the small garden where Brynn was putting a new basil plant in the ground.
Lucas fell on his belly as he ran, splaying his arms out in front of him to catch his fall. Brynn dropped her spade and ran to him, but he got up on his own, laughing. He’d started wobbling on his feet at eleven months, and now, at eighteen months, he was so fast that Brynn could barely keep up with him.
“You’re so tough,” she said to him, scooping him up in her arms and giving him a kiss on the cheek.
“Mama,” he said again.
The soil in Maine was different from the soil on the Vineyard. It was darker, richer, and denser. It was still unfamiliar to Brynn. Even her hearty herbs were struggling this summer. But she knew she’d get the hang of it, soon. Or eventually, anyway.
She and Ross had sold their home almost immediately after he’d been released from jail. They’d decided that the only way to move forward was to get away from the island. If they stayed there, they could never start over. They could never be who they wanted to be. They could never give Lucas the life that he deserved. Nelson & Sons shut down, and a local real estate firm bought the offices to use for their rental business. The family had all but been erased, with only the mansions they’d built left behind as their legacy. Brynn and Ross knew that the island needed to be free from the Nelson family, just as much as they needed to be free from it, too.
Maine seemed like a safe choice for their next chapter. They found a small two-bedroom home to rent just outside of Portland, which had some of the familiarity of the Vineyard but was big and different enough to allow them a fresh start. The house was all they needed. It had a little backyard and a porch with enough space for three chairs.
Brynn and Ross had both testified at the trials of Henry, Margaux, and Sawyer, which were carried out quickly. And they never spoke to any of them directly again. They couldn’t. For Ross, it was a reckoning. A reimagining of his entire childhood, his entire identity. Without his family, he could be himself, though he had to figure out who that was. He had to start over. Brynn got to know him all over again, and slowly, she started to fall in love with him again. But this time, it was different. They were equals, and they trusted each other. They’d been through something that they were certain would break them, but it hadn’t.
Now, Ross came home from work every day around five, tired but happy. He was working as an independent carpenter, doing small jobs, mostly custom cabinetry, but he was content. He found meaning in the work. It was honest. It was his own.
During the trials, Brynn had locked eyes with Cecelia’s mother at one point. She was certain that Mrs. Buckley recognized her from her visit right after Cecelia’s death, when she had pretended to just be one of Cecelia’s friends. But Mrs. Buckley had just nodded at her. Nothing would bring Cecelia back. Nothing would ever fill the void that Mrs. Buckley and her family would have forever. Brynn knew, as a mother herself, that Mrs. Buckley would have traded places with Cecelia in a heartbeat if she could have. But she’d never get to do that. Cecelia was gone. Once the trials ended, and all three of the Nelsons were sentenced to life in prison, Brynn knew that at least Cecelia’s family could take comfort in knowing that the people who hurt their daughter would never see the light of day again. But all Brynn could do was try to be grateful that she had her own son with her, alive and healthy, and that she’d love him every day as much as she could, since Mrs. Buckley could never do the same.
The transition into their new life hadn’t been easy for Brynn and Ross. At first, Brynn was resentful of the potential move. Why should I have to uproot my life, she had thought. Ross should go, not me. After all, she thought, it was Ross’s family that created this whole mess, not hers. But the truth was, she didn’t want Ross to go anywhere without her. She still wanted to be with him. She still wanted to make it work. Leaving together was the only chance they had.
Before they’d left, Brynn’s mother had found her a therapist in Vineyard Haven named Dr. Wanda Lee, or just Wanda, as she liked to be called. Brynn had to pay out of pocket for each session, but it was worth every penny—and it still was. She still saw her virtually every two weeks. Wanda helped Brynn realize that part of her depression was chemical, and there were prescriptions that could help with that. But part of her depression, Brynn learned, was also due to a lack of support, a lack of sleep, a lack of feeling adequate. And those things, Brynn and Ross worked on together, as a team. They still fought, and it wasn’t easy, but they were communicating more than ever before. Brynn felt entitled, for the first time, to vocalize her needs, her expectations, and her desires. And this time, Ross listened.
In fact, it was Ross’s idea to find a daycare for Lucas. “Maybe just a few days a week?” he had suggested. “I could do drop-off in the mornings.” They’d lucked out and snagged a spot at a daycare just a few minutes away. She and Ross had dropped Lucas off together for his first day. She’d sobbed the moment he ran off from them and joined a group of kids gathered around a water table in the fenced-in yard. She had to turn away so he wouldn’t see, but Lucas wasn’t looking at her, anyway. Ross had put his arm around her as they walked back to the car. She felt like her heart had been ripped right out of her chest. She desperately wanted to run back into the school and grab her son, hold him close, breathe him in, and never let him go. And she told herself that she could, if she really had to. But she didn’t. She let him go. And he was happy. Pretty soon, so was she.
And during the time that Lucas was at daycare, Brynn wrote. She poured herself into her third book, feeling much more liberated as a writer this time around. She felt confident in her writing in a way she’d never felt before. Because even when a blank page stared her down, making her question her ability and her ideas, she knew that writing a book would never be as much of a challenge as motherhood was. She knew that she could finish it, and she did.
Her editor told her it was her best yet. “It feels so authentic,” her editor had said. It just so happened to be about a dynastic family in a rich summer community whose empire eventually crumbles. With, of course, some juicy sex scenes thrown in.
And Lucas … somewhere along the way, Lucas had grown into a young toddler. A real boy. He’d made friends, he’d started babbling, he laughed. Sometimes, after he went to sleep for the night, Brynn collapsed onto the couch and scrolled through newborn photos of him. She wanted to squeeze his chubby newborn thighs, to smell his sweet, sticky skin, to nuzzle his chunky arms and his full cheeks. When she looked at those photos, she felt a longing for a time that she’d missed. She had been there, but she hadn’t been present. Even just a little over a year later, she could barely remember those days. Not really. All the things she was certain she’d remember forever had somehow evaporated. Those days seemed so far away now. Or maybe Brynn had blocked it all out from her memory on purpose. Maybe the forgetting was how she’d survived.
But she didn’t want to be absent anymore. She didn’t want to forget anymore. She didn’t want to look back at photos of Lucas a year from now and think Where was I? So, she tried to be present with him as much as she could. She tried to put her deadlines and the laundry and the chores on hold when she spent time with him. Sometimes, she couldn’t. Sometimes, she had to turn on the television for him so she could get something done—and that was okay. But just as her mother had told her, she knew that each moment with Lucas would just keep unfolding into the next, and she tried to hang on as best she could.
“Are you ready?” Ross asked, rounding the corner from the garage where he’d gone to get his drill. He was reinforcing one of Brynn’s raised cedar garden beds, which he’d made for her when they first moved into the house. “Ready to see your friends, I mean.”
Ginny, Annie, and Marcus were all coming for a visit that weekend with their kids. Brynn found an Airbnb for them to stay at just down the road, and she had the whole weekend planned out: lobster rolls, wine, laughter, and maybe even a visit to her new local playground, for old times’ sake.
Ginny’s baby daughter was healthy and thriving. Sam and Olivia had taken her under their wings immediately. Ginny somehow still found the time to write, and she’d finally published the big story on island maternal care. Her piece garnered so much positive momentum that the hospital changed some of their policies to provide more postpartum support. Almost every day, a different mother reached out to her to say one thing: thank you.
Annie’s business had exploded because of a mention in The New York Times, which described her as “the it wedding planner of coastal New England.” She’d hired several new staff members and rented a bigger office space in downtown Edgartown. Her twins, now in kindergarten, knew the difference between a veil and a train.
And Marcus and his husband were still totally in love, and had managed to fit weekly date nights into their busy schedules. But every now and then, a stranger still assumed that Annie and Marcus were a married couple, and it made them laugh. Their son Liam was starting preschool in the fall.
Her friends were what Brynn missed most about the island, but she knew that they’d all be there for one another in a heartbeat if anything happened. Even though she couldn’t see them every day like she used to, she knew they were there.
When Lucas had turned one, they had all FaceTimed her from Ginny’s house.
“Happy birthday to Lucas, obviously,” Annie had said, “but really happy birth day to you, Brynn.”
“Yeah,” Marcus had said. “You made it.”
Ginny had nodded in agreement, her three kids climbing on top of her. “You survived the first year of motherhood, Brynn. You can do anything.”
It was true, Brynn thought. She’d been through so much during that past year. She’d helped bring justice to two murder victims, she’d walked away from a dangerous family, she’d uprooted her own family’s entire life, and she’d written another book. But despite all of that, what Brynn was most proud of was surviving that first year of motherhood. It had been the hardest year of her life, and she was no longer afraid to admit that. She no longer believed that acknowledging her struggles made her a bad mom. There were so many times during that year when she didn’t think she’d make it. There were times when she didn’t know who she was. There were times when she was certain that she was lost forever, and that she’d never find herself again. There were times when she thought she’d never love Lucas the way she was supposed to.
And yet, she loved him now in such a deeper way than she had known was even possible. She just had to give herself permission to get there on her own time. And, maybe more importantly, she was starting to love herself again, as her own mother had told her to.
“I can’t wait,” Brynn said to Ross.
She picked up Lucas and gave him a raspberry on his belly. He howled in delight.
“Brynn,” Ross said, looking at her with a smile, “you’re such a good mom.”
She laughed.
“You’re right,” Brynn said. “I am.”