Birdlane Island

by V.C. Andrews

Genres: Coming of Age; Sagas; Suspense

Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Flowers in the Attic and Landry series—now popular Lifetime movies—an evocative and tender tale of star-crossed lovers on an isolated island.

Off the coast of Maine, on an island shaped like a seagull in flight, shrouded by mists off the bay, lives a novelist Jason Lorraine and his teenage daughter Lisa. They live a simple life, largely cut off from the mainland, and Lisa’s weak health poses a frequent concern.

After the sudden and untimely death of Lisa’s mother, Jason becomes even more reclusive and protective. Lisa is forbidden to see Jamie, the charming fisherman’s son who has quickly become her closest confidante in her grief. The star-crossed lovers steal time with one another, but fate intervenes, and they may never find a happy ending. A brooding artist from out of town, Kyle, arrives and brings more color to Lisa’s world. As Lisa fights for love, independence, and agency, will her beloved island become her sanctuary or her prison?

Release date: February 25, 2025

Publisher: Gallery Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE
It wasn’t until I was about to enter kindergarten that my mother sat me in the captain’s chair to talk to me about something, with my father standing in the doorway of the living room, listening. She had a familiar light yellow folder clutched in her hand. Daddy was about to be on his way to his office building to work when she announced that she was going to explain things to me about myself. He stopped with surprise and stepped back to the doorway.

“Things?” he asked.

“About her health,” Mommy said sharply. “Your sister said a girl her age would understand and should know.”

“Advice from my sister?”

“She is a nurse, Melville.”

“The only advice she’s capable of giving is how to be miserable,” he said.

Mommy smirked and turned back to me. I had seen her looking into the yellow folder she had in her hand often, but I did not know where she kept it or why it was so important to her, to me. She never left it laying around anywhere in the house where I or anyone else could peek at what was inside. I used to think it was just some secret business information about our lobster and fish company.

Mommy was sleeping more often in the smaller bedroom right past mine toward the rear of our house, so it could have been kept in there. When I first asked her why she had suddenly decided to sleep in that bedroom, she said it was closer to me and until I was older and more in charge of myself, it was just a good idea. That puzzled me at the time, the time before the captain’s chair, but I didn’t ask any more questions about it.

Daddy didn’t seem to be terribly upset with her sleeping and moving her things there. He often kept his feelings under wraps. The only thing I heard him say was that he had more room in their bathroom with all her “beauty gimmicks” gone. Mommy gave him a look that could spear a bluefin tuna.

Her violet-blue eyes got brighter and bluer when she was angry or going to say something very important, and that was the way they were when she told me to sit in the captain’s chair. I could never turn away from those eyes. I heard people, especially my father, say that she had a kind of “violent beauty.” Looking at her was like looking into a flame.

Before she started, she brushed her honey-brown hair away from her face. My hair was her color and always kept about the same length, which made me feel pretty because everyone thought she was. I couldn’t imagine being more beautiful than my mother, even though older people were always promising me that I would be someday.

“Your mother is the most attractive woman on Birdlane when she is unaware anyone’s lookin’ at her,” Daddy once said. I thought that was nice until he added, “Just like most women who put on airs when they know someone’s lookin’ at them.”

I quickly sat in the captain’s chair. My father was the one who mostly used this brown leather chair with nailhead trim. It was the most important place in the room, because everything else, the two facing sofas and the oak wood coffee table, was arranged so that whoever sat in the captain’s chair commanded everyone’s attention.

I knew it was going to be an “adult” conversation. Nothing would be disguised; there would be no “baby” talk, no putting the truth into magical characters or animals that talked like people, and I wouldn’t be permitted to look elsewhere or be distracted. I had to sit up straight and put my hands in my lap, but that was never easy for anyone sitting or talking here, because there was a lot to distract him or her in our living room.

Framed in a high-gloss black finish was the front-page article in Fishermen’s Voice announcing my grandfather Charlie Baxter’s creating the Baxter Fish Enterprises Company on Birdlane Island to buy and sell Maine seafood. Every Birdlane fisherman in one way or another now worked for the Baxter company. We had our own office building on Main Street. Grandfather’s office had big picture windows that looked out at Frenchman Bay. Daddy complained about his own office not having that view. He wanted more acknowledgment. Grandfather had finally made him officially the vice president.

At first we sold only on the East Coast, but today we were selling all over the country. What made our company front-page news back then was that Grandfather Charlie was only twenty-two years old when he stepped off a lobster-fishing boat and became what my father called an “entrepreneur.”

I had to pronounce that carefully because Daddy thought it was such an important word, especially since Grandfather had created the most successful business on Birdlane Island and the one that employed the most people besides fishermen. Almost everyone in one way or another—the store owners and all the professional people, like lawyers, doctors, and dentists—was dependent on it, because if the fishermen didn’t make money, they didn’t, either.

On another wall hung one of Grandfather Charlie’s original lobster traps. He’d had the others bronzed and given them to us. The opposite wall had ten pictures of Grandfather on his boat; three of them included Daddy as a young boy. He said he wasn’t much older than I was at the time. He added that sons of fishermen were expected to grow up faster than other children. I wondered about daughters, but it was rare to see any girls working on fishing and lobster boats. Mommy had told me that girls usually didn’t want to get “fisherman claw hands,” hands that had calluses and got really sore.

In most of the pictures of Grandfather’s boat, you could see some of the lobster catch. I always felt sorry for the lobsters, which Daddy and others often called “bugs.” I would avoid saying how much I felt sorry for them when I was growing up. The one time I did, when Daddy had two of his and Mommy’s friends to dinner, his face turned lobster red and his head nearly exploded with anger.

“That’s our bread and butter!” he cried. “You should have respect and gratitude, not pity!”

“Melville,” my mother said, sharply enough to sting his ears. He simmered down like boiling milk when the burner on the range was lowered.

Unlike the parents of other children my age, mine were very concerned about shocking me with reprimands, my father less so than my mother. Even when she was upset with something I had done or was doing, she spoke in a soft but firm voice. When I was very young, I didn’t think that was so unusual, but after my mother had sat me in the captain’s chair, I painfully understood the reason. I would have rather been yelled at.

I had been to see Dr. Bush, who ran the small clinic on Birdlane Island, and I had vague memories of being taken to see a doctor at Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor. I could recall the scary-looking equipment he used when examining me. But it was some time since I had seen the specialist and had gone to see Dr. Bush. No one really had told me anything I understood. Aunt Frances had tried to say something once. I remembered that just as she began her sentence, both Mommy and Daddy practically pounced on her.

Mommy opened her special file and took out a paper with official-looking doctor’s office information at the top. She turned it so I could see the picture. It was a visual of the heart. Mommy held it with her left hand and pointed to it with her right forefinger.

“You know what this is,” she said. I nodded. “You know that it pumps our blood around our body.” I nodded again, even though I never fully understood that. No one had really ever explained to me where our blood came from and where it went.

She took out another paper that showed a picture of the heart cut so you could see into it.

“There are four valves in the heart that keep our blood flowing in the right directions. You don’t have to know their names right now or what each one specifically does. You just have to know that one of yours wasn’t working correctly when you were born.”

That frightened me, and I looked at Daddy, who smirked and shook his head.

“If you think it’s time to get that technical, why don’t you let a doctor tell her?” he said.

Mommy didn’t turn completely around. “Because he wouldn’t care as much as her mother, and he’d hide behind science so he wouldn’t have to show any emotion. She’d be scared to death.”

“Well, whaddya think you’re doin’ to her now? Especially if you’re followin’ Frances’s advice.”

Mommy looked at me closely. “She’s all right. She’s a big girl.”

Daddy grunted. “I’d feel gawmy doin’ that,” he said, “gawmy” being a word we used in Maine to mean clumsy, awkward.

“You’re not doing it. I am. You don’t have to stay, Melville,” Mommy said. “Go to work. I’ll take care of it.”

Daddy started to turn to leave but then turned back.

“Go on,” he said. “I’d like to hear how you tell her about it, too.”

Mommy pressed her full lips together for a moment and took a breath, which I knew was her way of swallowing back anger. She fixed her eyes on me again with an intensely serious gaze.

“When you were born, the doctor who delivered you heard a whooshing sound in your chest, and that was when we really had you examined and were told you were fine but we should always keep an eye on you. Now that you’re going to start attending school, I want you to help by keeping an eye on yourself, too.”

I looked at Daddy, who tilted his head a little and this time looked more surprised, like he did when he said, “I wonder why I didn’t think of that.” It was truly like he was blaming his own brain, as if it was one of the Baxter employees.

“How do I do that, Mommy?”

“I’m going to tell you. If you feel you have to gasp or are gasping, you know, like when you run too fast, and if during the day you feel very, very tired or you get dizzy, and if you feel a pain here,” she said, pressing her right hand over her heart, “we want to know right away. Stop whatever you are doing and tell us or get someone to tell us, understand?”

“Who?”

“Well, when you start school, we want you to tell your teacher and have him or her call us. Don’t ever be too shy or embarrassed to do that, Lisa. Will you promise to do that?”

“Yes,” I said. My voice sounded so tiny and thin.

“If you close your eyes and think about it, you can feel your heart beat, can’t you?” Mommy asked.

I could, and nodded.

“Good. If you ever feel it isn’t beating the way it always does when you’re not running or playing, especially if it sounds like it’s skipping, you tell either me or your father or, again, your teacher. Tell someone to call us, wherever you are.”

“What happens then, Mommy?”

“We’ll take you back to the hospital in Bar Harbor, and the doctor will fix your valve.”

“Why can’t he do that now?” I asked.

“Well, right now it’s okay.”

“And you don’t fix it if it ain’t broke,” Daddy said.

“Your father finally said something good,” Mommy said.

“You’re a wicked woman, Theresa,” Daddy said, and walked away to go to work.

Mommy shook her head and put the pages back in her folder.

“Why did Daddy say you were wicked, Mommy?” I asked.

“Because he has a limited, Maine vocabulary,” she said. I didn’t understand, but before I could ask another question, she said, “You can go out now, Lisa. And play like always. Just remember all that I told you. When you get older, you’ll understand it even more.”

She stood up, and I slipped off the captain’s chair, but I didn’t have to get older to know that I would never think about myself the same way again, and I wouldn’t play like always. After the captain’s chair morning, there were so many things I would hesitate to do that other children my age would do without a second thought. Sometimes I felt I should jump into the cold sea to shock myself into thinking less about my heart.

And sometimes I would do things in defiance, angry that I had to be more careful than any other girl my age—or boy, for that matter. Maybe that, more than anything, was what drove me to go up to the Birdlane Crow’s Nest that autumn morning.

Mommy never said I shouldn’t tell anyone about my heart, so I told Jamie. I didn’t tell anyone else until I was much older. I had never seen Jamie look so serious and even a little frightened as he did after I blurted what was in my mother’s special folder.

“Don’t you worry, Lisa,” he had said, pulling his shoulders back and standing straighter and firmer. Jamie could look very grown-up sometimes. Despite his age, his father made him do a man’s load. He often went out with his father’s lobster-fishing boat even though he was younger than my father was when he went out with Grandfather Charlie. “I’ll look after you, too, and make sure your parents know anything they have to know.”

He looked so serious. It was then that I thought Jamie was going to be more than a friend. Sometimes I was sorry I had told him, because he would stop whatever we were doing, even stop walking, and ask me how I was. When I wanted to avoid thinking of my captain’s chair time, Jamie would remind me. It got so I snapped back at him.

“I’m fine, Jamie. Stop asking!”

I knew that hurt him, but it never stopped him. Even after he graduated from high school and went to work full-time on his father’s lobster boat, he would always ask me how I was almost the moment he saw me. It was never a simple “How are you?” like people asked each other when they met. Jamie’s question was most often “How do you feel? Have you had any of the symptoms your mother described to you and your doctors told you to watch for?” Or “Did you get very, very tired today?”

I never had, and that seemed to please him more than it did me. One good thing was he never asked me in front of my friends—or anyone else, for that matter. For most of my young life, few people, least of all my classmates, ever knew my heart had made that whooshing sound when I was born. Jamie could keep the secret in his closed lips as tightly as an oyster could keep a pearl in its shell. Eventually, though, they would all know and look at me differently.

But even if Jamie hadn’t asked his questions, I couldn’t have kept the secret of the yellow folder from hovering in my mind like a storm cloud. I was annoyed at the way Jamie studied me sometimes, but also grateful that he was watching over me, especially because we spent so much time together.

Often at night I would listen to my heartbeat after I had gone to bed. I never asked Mommy what would happen if one of those symptoms occurred while I was asleep. Would I wake, or would I die before I had a chance to wake? Actually, I was afraid to ask the question, because the answer might force me to fight sleep and I might get sick or hurt my heart.

Sometimes, when I was growing up, I thought I caught my mother watching me more closely. Had I done something that frightened her? I sat thinking about every little move I had made, wondering if I had missed a symptom. I supposed it was only natural that there would come a time when I would panic. To this day, I blamed myself for what happened. Maybe I had gotten overconfident because I really hadn’t had any of the symptoms Mommy had warned me to report. More than once Daddy had said, always when Mommy wasn’t nearby, “Don’t think about it. You’ve outgrown the problem. You’ve mended yourself.”

Mommy never really answered me if I asked her if that was possible. “We’ll see” was her standard response. When would I see? How long would it be before I would see? Doctor visits now were far more frightening events.

My latest physical exam earlier in the following summer was good, but I had gone only to Dr. Bush and not the Mount Desert Island Hospital clinic. I had heard Mommy tell Daddy that maybe it was time to return to the specialist and get a more intensive exam.

“What for?” Daddy had said. “She’s doin’ fine. Chout, Theresa. You’ll make her so nervous that she’ll just sit and worry all the time. She’ll miss out on doin’ things kids her age do.”

Mommy didn’t answer, but her silence was not reassuring. Besides, there were many more silences between them by the time I was fifteen. I wondered, of course, who was right: Mommy, who always wanted me to think about it and be careful? Or Daddy, who wanted me to forget about it and be more like any normal child? He did blame Mommy for my not wanting to do more sports at school. Instead, I chose to be in art club, where I could sit in the classroom for hours if I wanted and work on the details of a picture I was drawing and preparing to paint.

Mr. Angelo was my art teacher. He had returned from college and years working in Europe to teach art in our small school. His parents, descendants of a Birdlane Island family, had left him their home so he could live in a beautiful place at little or no cost like a fortunate starving artist and keep trying to become a famous artist. As soon as I first began with him, he told me he had given up on that idea.

“When I was about your age,” he said, “and I was obsessed with my artwork, other kids would make fun of me.”

“Why? How?”

“My parents thought it was amusing maybe to name me Michael.”

For a moment, I didn’t understand.

“Michael Angelo,” he said, and my eyes widened. He laughed. “My friends would tease me and say, ‘You’re not Michelangelo. Change your name.’ Instead, I decided I would teach art and become famous for discovering another real Michelangelo. Maybe it’s you,” he said. “You have an extraordinary ability to capture perspective, and I think there is a kind of maturity in what you choose to draw and paint. Don’t give up on it as quickly as I did. Sometimes success takes most of your life.”

“But isn’t everything harder for a woman to do?” I asked. Daddy had certainly said or implied that many times, which was why he was always suggesting I work toward being a secretary or, like Mommy, a bookkeeper.

Mr. Angelo smiled. “Well, there’s a ways to go to make things easier for women, at least as easy as anything is for men. But look at what happened last July: a woman was nominated for vice president… Geraldine Ferraro. It’s not 1684. It’s 1984. If you have the will, I think there’s a way,” he said, “whether you’re a woman or a man.”

His words excited me. I wished I could get Daddy to understand that I wasn’t doing art to avoid being too physical and bringing about one of the warning symptoms. I really enjoyed it. “The more you act nervous about yourself, the weaker you’ll become,” Daddy had told me a little angrily one day because I had spent so much after-school time in art class. “If you were a boy, I’d have you on one of my lobster-fishing boats by now.”

“Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t work on a boat,” I had told him. Lately I was thinking I might go out with Jamie one day just to prove it to him. I certainly would feel safe with Jamie. “I’ve seen fishermen’s wives on boats.”

“Some of those wives have mustaches,” he said.

“What?”

“Forget about bein’ a fisherman or fisherwoman. Just join the girls’ volleyball club or somethin’ to work those muscles, and don’t spend all that time indoors doodlin’. Act more like a Baxter.” Long ago I had lost count of how many times he had told me that.

“I love my artwork, Daddy,” I said. “It’s not doodling. You don’t know that much about art. I won’t give that up. If you took away all my artist’s equipment, I’d draw pictures on the walls. You’ll have to accept that’s who I am.”

“How many people make a good livin’ bein’ artists?” he snapped back.

“There is more to life than just making money. Even Grandfather says that.”

“He’ll say whatever it takes to please you,” he replied.

For a moment I paused. His words sounded more full of jealousy than anger. I thought he realized it and immediately relaxed his shoulders and softened his tightened lips.

“Maybe that’s true for women. But if you end up marryin’ a fisherman’s son, you’ll have to do somethin’ more than diddle in art to survive.”

I always knew what he believed. Girls couldn’t make important decisions, especially for themselves. All of those who had important jobs, the bosses, even the managers of stores selling women’s clothing, were men on Birdlane Island. It was different on the mainland, in Bar Harbor. I had seen many women in charge of businesses there. Crossing the bay was like crossing to another world where there was more fashion and excitement. The busy streets and larger stores made me feel like Columbus discovering a new world. And it was there that I could see other people’s art, some famous art that included female artists, too.

“That doesn’t frighten me, Daddy.”

“Well, it should,” he said. He always thought it was important for him to have the last word in an argument. Before I could respond, he walked away.

Early in my life I learned not to go running to Mommy to complain about Daddy. First, I clearly understood how he would react. He wouldn’t stop to reconsider what he had done or said. He’d have his back up and double down on whatever he had said or done. I didn’t want to feel that helpless, either. Despite my health issue, I always wanted to be strong enough to take care of my own problems. Much of what went on between Daddy and me went unheard. The only one who managed to get some of it out of me was my grandfather.

It had become almost a ritual of ours for me to spend Saturday lunch at his mansion. He had asked me to come one day when I was twelve, and I had been doing it often since then. I certainly didn’t want to go running to him to complain about something Daddy had said or done, but Grandfather had always assumed something would happen, not only between Daddy and me but between Aunt Frances and me or Mommy. She could be quite bitter and sharp with her remarks. Mommy never let her get away with her sarcasm or disdain, and although I knew it was impolite to snap back at an adult, I made sure she knew I wasn’t going to just stand silently and take any of her bitterness, either. Daddy was right: Grandfather would defend me.

On this particular Saturday, Grandfather had a surprise for me at the Crest, his mansion. It would make Mommy nervous and for some reason infuriate Daddy. Perhaps he could sense what was going to follow.