Chance Harbor

by Holly Robinson

Genres: Family Life; Sagas; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Beach Plum Island and The Wishing Hill... "No one does it better than Holly Robinson.”—Susan Straight, National Book Award Finalist and Author of Between Heaven and Here
 
Catherine and Zoe are sisters, but even their mother, Eve, admits her daughters are nothing alike. Catherine is calm and responsible. Zoe is passionate and rebellious.  Nobody is surprised when Zoe gets pregnant, drops out of college, and spirals into drug addiction.
 
One night Catherine gets a call from Zoe’s terrified daughter, Willow, saying her mother has abandoned her in a bus station and disappeared. Eve blames herself, while Catherine, unable to have children, is delighted to raise Willow as her own. 
 
Now, five years later, Eve is grieving her husband’s death and making reluctant plans to sell the family’s beloved summer home on Prince Edward Island. But a series of unexpected revelations will upend the family and rock three generations of women.

CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED

Release date: October 6, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 400

Sample

Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

Visit us online at penguin.com.

PROLOGUE

Catherine’s cell phone rang at ten o’clock. She fumbled for it on the table beside her and answered despite not recognizing the number. “Hello?”

It was her niece, Willow. Her voice was a whisper, thrumming with fear. She had to repeat herself twice before Catherine understood her.

“Mom told me to call you after her bus left,” Willow said. “Can you come get me? Please?”

Willow was at South Station in Boston. Alone.

Catherine yanked a coat on over her pajamas. She’d been downstairs watching television; her husband, Russell, was already in bed. She imagined the furious conversation she’d have with Zoe tomorrow, when her sister decided to return from whatever oh-so-exciting party or man had called her away: On what planet is it okay to leave your ten-year-old daughter alone in Boston at night? In a bus station? Even you should know better!

Catherine didn’t wake Russell before plunging into the chilly night. She charged down the porch steps and out to the car before realizing she was still wearing slippers. She didn’t turn around.

She ran two red lights driving from their house in Cambridge to Boston, making the trip to the bus station in record time despite construction on the BU Bridge.

In South Station, she swept the lobby with her eyes, heart hammering. It was nearly empty. A pair of businessmen waltzed by with briefcases, their shoulders stiff as coat hangers beneath their suits. A woman in a flowered jacket passed, hand in hand with two children, walking so fast that the smallest boy was lifted right off his feet. Homeless people were draped across the benches like forgotten blankets.

Finally, she spotted Willow. Her niece was huddled in one corner of a wooden bench, a backpack at her feet, her pale hair a knotted spiderweb over her black fleece jacket.

Catherine kept her voice calm. “Hey, sweet girl,” she said. “What are you doing staying up so late, huh?”

Willow started to cry. “I didn’t know what to do, so I called you like Mom said. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. You did the right thing. Don’t cry. I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay.” Catherine bent low over Willow, turning to glare at the vagrant woman camped closest to her niece until the woman slid off the bench and loped off, her hat pulled low.

What might have happened if she hadn’t come to get her? What if she’d been on call at the clinic tonight? Or, God forbid, what if she and Russell had taken up Mom’s offer to spend the week at Chance Harbor?

“Where’s your mom, honey?” She brushed a strand of hair out of Willow’s eyes.

“I don’t know. She told me to sit here and wait for you. Without moving.” Willow’s lower lip trembled. “I didn’t move the whole time. I promise. Can we go now? I’m tired.”

“Absolutely.” Catherine took Willow’s small, cold hand in hers, and thought, Goddamn you, Zoe. I’m going to kill you when I see you.

Of course, she didn’t know yet that her sister had disappeared.

CHAPTER ONE

Eve had fallen asleep easily, but woke with a start and didn’t know where she was. Her pillow was damp. She thrashed about, searching for Andrew.

Then, with a lurching sensation, she remembered: her husband was dead. She was alone at their summer house in Chance Harbor for the first time in her life.

Eve reached for the lamp on her bedside table. Her wrist connected with a drinking glass and sent it flying. Water sprayed the sleeve of her nightgown as the glass tumbled to the floor with a smash.

She used the flashlight app on her cell phone to pick her way around the broken glass to turn on the overhead light. Her face, reflected in the mirror above the oak bureau, looked like a stranger’s. Gaunt, the chin too sharp, the cheeks hollow. Her short brown hair had grown out, the curls springing nearly to her chin now.

Eve ignored the broken glass—easier to vacuum it up in the morning—and pulled on her jeans and a sweater. It was only three a.m., but she’d never get back to sleep now. She took her book downstairs and made coffee. When you lived alone, schedules mattered less. That was both good and bad.

Coffee in hand, she grabbed the car keys and jammed her feet into sneakers, then got into the car and drove to East Point, where she parked beneath the lighthouse and walked over to the chain-link fence. She could hear a distant foghorn, a low moan in the dense liquid darkness. The beam from the lighthouse swept across the sea.

Here, the Northumberland Strait met the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The colliding tides roiled and waves crashed against the cliffs below her. This was the perfect place to watch cormorants and gulls dive and to search for the slick bobbing heads of seals. The first time Andrew had brought her here, the year before they were married, he had wrapped his arms around Eve’s waist and said, “We’re not just at the easternmost tip of Prince Edward Island, you know. We’re standing at the end of the world.”

The tall grass along the fence rippled like water around her feet. Eve waded through it to one of the picnic tables on the bluff. She sat on top of it, her feet on the bench, and stared out to sea, trying not to think about her husband, Andrew, and his final betrayal.

She had lost a daughter and now her husband. She was alone. Those were the facts she had to face.

Eve returned home when the sky was pearl gray with dawn. The wind had died down, leaving the sea dead calm and the dull silver of pewter, except for the sparkling path of the new sun. The island seemed to be holding its breath. She had stretched out on top of the picnic table and slept a little; now she felt surprisingly energized.

She had made some progress in the house, going through the closets to separate the things she wanted to keep from those she would give away or leave in the house when she sold it. She would have to make at least one more trip here with a trailer to get some of the bigger family heirlooms, like the green tapestry couch that had been Andrew’s mother’s.

She also had to find a contractor, a roofer, and a painter willing to come before spring, when the house would officially go on the market. Meanwhile, in addition to fixing up the house, she also had to sort through the small barn at the back of the property.

She walked through the tall dew-sparkled grass to the barn door, took a deep breath, and pushed it open. The door creaked and groaned.

Inside, the barn was lit by small windows. The sunlight streamed through them in dusty ribbons. There was a panicked flutter of barn swallows overhead as Eve’s eyes adjusted. The barn was divided into two rooms by a half wall; one room was for the mower and trash cans and bikes, the other for Andrew’s workshop. His tools were neatly hung in their usual places, and his tall black rubber boots stood by the door.

So strange, how you could love and hate a person with equal intensity. She and Andrew had first met when Eve was a new college graduate and took a marketing job in one of his companies south of Boston. They were married six months later. Andrew was older by a decade and had a magnetic, commanding personality, even more so because of his slight Scottish brogue—inherited from his father—and because he was beautiful to look at.

Yes, beautiful. Not handsome, the way many women described their lovers and husbands, but beautiful, with that startling thatch of reddish blond hair, his sweet smile, his neat hands.

A musician’s hands, Eve had thought at first. Then she’d gotten to know Andrew and realized that his instrument was the computer; the music he played was the software he designed—entire symphonies in code that helped companies compile information and mine data.

They’d gotten married in Newburyport’s city hall but had held their real wedding on Prince Edward Island, right here in the garden behind the Chance Harbor house, surrounded by the extended MacLeish family beneath a rose arbor with the blue sea and red cliffs behind them.

Now, as Eve touched one of the hammers, idly feeling the smooth wooden handle between her fingers, she had the strangest sensation that at any moment Andrew might walk in and start telling her about his latest repair project. He’d been putting up new gutters last year. That was why he came to the island: to tinker. “Tinkering is my religion,” he said. “With this house, I’ve got physical therapy for the rest of my life.”

But of course Andrew would never work here again. Loneliness coursed through her body like an electric shock, so intense and painful that the floor tipped and Eve had to catch herself on the long workshop table.

After a moment, she went back to the house and grabbed the stack of boxes she’d brought from the garage of their house in Newburyport. Another of Andrew’s pack-rat habits was to break down every box that arrived at their house and keep it “just in case.” He’d be pleased she was reusing them, Eve thought with a smile. She’d always blamed Andrew’s inability to throw things out on his island upbringing: here, nothing was wasted.

She ferried the boxes out to the shed. She could offer the tractor and snowplow and tools to Andrew’s cousins. They could pass them on to anyone else who wanted them. She had no need for more tools, and Andrew would be heartbroken if she sold them.

Eve had nearly reached the shed with the boxes when an enormous black animal—at first glance it was easy to imagine it was a bear—appeared out of nowhere and came lumbering up to her. A dog. But whose?

She looked around. Nobody seemed to be walking the dog or calling for it. It must be one of the local farm dogs; she knew the sheep farmer at the end of the road had several.

The animal circled her legs, grinning, tongue lolling. It had the height and heft of a Saint Bernard. This wasn’t the sort of dog you typically saw up here on the island, where the farmers kept shepherds or mutts, the Americans brought golden retrievers, and the people from Montreal brought their lapdogs to the beach in sparkly collars. No, this was a dog you’d want with you in an avalanche, where it would lie on your body to keep you from dying of hypothermia or would tow you down the mountain.

“Well, aren’t you nosy,” Eve said, laughing as the dog stood beside her, gazing up at her face with merry yellow eyes. It was difficult not to feel joyful in the company of a creature so unreservedly glad to see you.

The dog kept her company as she began sorting Andrew’s tools and packing them in boxes. She had to be careful not to fill the boxes too full or she wouldn’t be able to move them. Once each box was packed, she taped it shut and labeled it carefully with a list of contents. She stacked the boxes on the other side of the shed with the bicycles. They’d have to go, too; no way could she fit four bikes in her car.

By the time Eve was ready for lunch, she’d nicknamed the dog “Bear” and let him come inside, where the animal happily galumphed around the house and then settled into a heap of black fur after devouring half her sandwich.

As she was writing up a list of tasks she hoped to complete in the coming week, Eve heard a truck drive by. Too slow to be an islander. They treated this road, which bisected the island from the south shore to North Lake, like a highway.

Now the car was pulling into the driveway. Probably a neighbor. Nobody called ahead here. They just assumed you’d want company. Andrew’s cousin Jane had already stopped by twice, once with biscuits and a second time to ask if Eve wanted help. She did not. Andrew’s aunt Maggie had come by as well, bringing snowflake rolls and homemade blueberry jam, saying there was bingo up at the church, and did Eve want to join her, try her luck tonight?

“Might make enough to fix up this old place,” Maggie had said, eyeing the roof.

Eve didn’t have the stomach for bingo, either.

She sighed now and ran her hands through her hair. She thought she’d seen everyone by now. Had hoped she was done with explanations about why she was selling the family’s island house.

The dog heard the truck, too. Bear picked up his head and tipped his ears forward, muzzle raised, whiskers trembling. His entire body had gone rigid with anticipation. There was a sharp whistle from outside, and the dog went to the door, turning to look over his shoulder at Eve to make sure she got the message.

She opened the kitchen door and stepped out onto the deck, shading her eyes against the sun as the dog trotted across the yard, tail waving, to greet a man standing by the truck.

The man rubbed the dog’s ears, murmuring something Eve couldn’t hear, then raised his head to look at her. “So you’re the one who kidnapped my dog. I’ve been looking for this son of a gun all morning.”

“He just appeared. I wondered who he belonged to, since I haven’t seen him before.”

“He was in my truck and must have jumped out when I stopped at the store down the street. Didn’t think this guy had it in him. Sorry for the bother.”

“No bother. He was a perfect gentleman.”

The man walked toward her, the dog keeping pace. Eve thought she’d never seen anyone like him. He seemed to be assembled from the parts of contrasting men. He was tall and slim, but with a weight lifter’s broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms. He wore a pair of expensive rubber boots, the sort she’d seen in catalogs, but his blue flannel shirt was faded at the elbows and his green barn jacket had a torn pocket. His pants were the sort of heavy-duty brown trousers an electrician might wear, but a gold Rolex glittered on his wrist.

The man’s hair was gray—silver, really, though she could tell by the few streaks of color left in it that it had once been dark—and a little too long in front. He pushed it off his forehead impatiently, but when he reached the deck and looked down at Eve, his eyes were as calm and deep gray as the sea had been this morning.

Eve’s mouth went dry. She had the strangest feeling that she’d met this man before, but couldn’t imagine where that might have been. She stuck out her hand. “I’m Eve MacLeish,” she said.

“Darcy MacDougall.” His big hand engulfed hers, his eyes quiet and still on her face. Then he released her.

Eve laughed. “I should have known you’d be a Mac-something.”

“Sure I am. Scots galore out on this part of the island.” He glanced beyond her at the house. “This your summer place?”

So he could tell she was from away. Her accent, probably. Eve nodded, not wanting to get into anything about Andrew’s family. For all she knew, this man was another relative. “What about you? Where are you staying?” She could tell now that he wasn’t an islander, either.

“North Lake. Been here since Landing Day in July. My first time seeing it. Quite a spectacle.”

“Yes. I’ve always loved Landing Day.” Eve bit her lip, remembering the early mornings she’d taken the girls to North Lake to watch Landing Day, the day the lobster fishermen brought in their traps for the season. She’d met Malcolm, Andrew’s cousin, there. That meeting had altered her life more than any other, in some ways.

“This is a great spot,” Darcy was saying, his gaze traveling beyond her to the house. “I bet you’ve got a hell of a view from behind your house.” He gestured with his chin. “Mind if I have a look?”

Eve was startled. No islander would ever be this forward. “No,” she said. “The view’s free.”

“My favorite price.”

She kept pace with Darcy’s long strides, the dog between them, trying to see her house as he must: the peaked roof and yellow clapboards, the deep green shutters, the ornate white gingerbread trim. There were some late perennials in the beds behind the house, but the containers and window boxes were a mess of rotting plants. She’d have to clean those out before she closed up the house for winter, too. So much work left to do. That was good: better to be busy than sad.

They stood together in front of the trellis that separated the house from the stairs leading down to the beach. “Anne of Green Gables would have loved it here,” Darcy said, surveying the long weathered boardwalk leading to stairs descending the cliff to the sea.

“I’m sure,” Eve agreed. “Anne would have called it ‘the Sea of Shining Waters.’”

He turned to look at her, cocking an eyebrow. “You know Anne wasn’t real, right?”

“Of course.”

Her tone caused Darcy to raise both hands in surrender. “Sorry. It’s just that, anytime I take someone to visit the Lucy Maud Montgomery museums in Cavendish, I hear tourists asking where Anne lived.”

“I’m not a tourist.” Eve waited for him to ask how long she’d had the house, or why she—someone whose accent clearly marked her as from away—was staying so late in the season. Those were the usual questions. When Darcy didn’t ask them, she felt compelled to say, “Actually, I always felt sorry for Lucy Maud Montgomery.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t know how she could have written Anne of Green Gables, spitting out pages and pages of gossipy good cheer and platitudes, when she was so depressed.”

“She was depressed? Huh,” Darcy said. “I had no idea. The only thing I know about Montgomery is that her books about Anne have inspired busloads of Japanese women to come here and buy those straw hats with red braids attached.”

“Oh, yes. Lucy had a tough time,” Eve said. “She committed suicide when she was about my age. Pills, I think. They found a note. Something like, ‘I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I might do in those spells.’ Then she goes on to ask for God’s forgiveness. Her depression probably had a lot to do with caring for her wreck of a husband.”

“Or maybe something to do with her mother dying and her father marrying a stepmother who didn’t like her,” Darcy added.

Eve stared at him, then laughed. “So you do know all about Lucy Maud Montgomery.”

“Only what my daughter tells me. She read Anne of Green Gables when she was a kid and was psyched when I got a job up this way. She’s been up here twice already this summer and spent most of her time at the museums.”

“My older daughter loved the books, too. What kind of work do you do on the island?”

“Wind energy,” Darcy said. “I’m a solar engineer. I’m up here as a consultant, monitoring the turbines at East Point.”

“A lot of people around here complain about them,” Eve said, thinking of Cousin Jane, who lived across the street from the turbines and was always fearful that one of the blades might shear off and fly into her house.

“Yes, well, tell the complainers that these ten turbines produce enough energy for twelve thousand homes and are displacing seventy thousand tons of greenhouse gases each year.”

As Darcy continued talking about the project and a grant he was writing to install a wind farm at another location on the island, Eve wished she’d put on a little makeup. Strange to be standing next to a man so much taller than she was. Eve was five foot ten. She was an inch taller than Andrew and had always thought they fit well together in bed. Malcolm, too, was about her height. What would it be like to be with a man so much taller than she was? Darcy must be well over six feet.

Abruptly, Eve felt self-conscious as she realized Darcy had stopped talking and was watching her curiously. She hoped he hadn’t asked a question. Even more, she hoped he hadn’t guessed her thoughts. Heat flamed in her cheeks and she turned away. “Where did Bear go?” she asked, scanning the backyard and gardens.

“Who? Oh! You mean Sparrow.”

“Sparrow?”

Darcy grinned. “The dog’s named after Jack Sparrow the pirate, not the bird. My son named him. I’m just dog-sitting while my son’s in California.”

“What’s he doing there?” Eve asked, thinking with some relief that being married with children probably meant Darcy was a normal, reasonable man and not one of those off-the-grid types you found living here, the escapees from New York or Boston who saw how cheap the houses were on Prince Edward Island and snapped them up. They all thought they’d go native until the first winter hit and the roads disappeared under blowing snow. Then the houses went up for sale again.

“He’s getting an MBA at Stanford. Looks like you’re doing a fall clear out,” Darcy said as they walked back toward his truck and passed the barn. He whistled for the dog.

Eve had left the barn doors open while she had lunch; the boxes were visible to one side. “Yes. It’s a good time of year to do it.”

“Too bad you missed the seventy-mile yard sale a couple weekends ago.”

She made a face. “I’ve been to that yard sale. I always come away loaded down with more junk than I sell.”

Darcy laughed. “You’ve been up here in the fall before, then.”

“I’ve been on this island in every season. But I’m still ‘from away,’ as far as everyone here is concerned.”

“Me, too, even though my grandparents immigrated here from Scotland before they moved to New York.”

“So where do you live now? I mean, when you’re not here.”

“Vermont. I was at the university there, in the engineering department, for many years. I still teach a class or two when the mood strikes.” Darcy whistled again. The dog finally wandered out of the barn, blinking in the sudden sunlight and making them both laugh. “Well, better let you get back to things. Thanks for looking after the dog.”

“No problem. It was nice to have company,” Eve said.

They shook hands good-bye, and she was struck by another jolt of recognition. What was it about this man that made her feel so comfortable?

•   •   •

You’d think sophomore year of high school would be less about pranks and posers, but so far none of the kids seemed to have gotten that memo. Matt Tracy had already set fire to a trash can during English, making the smoke alarm go off, and the alpha girls were taking selfies of themselves in geometry.

Willow might have to throw herself out a window if she had to stay in geometry one more second. The teacher, Mr. James, was scary clean, using hand sanitizer every twelve seconds.

He had tried teaching them about angles and vectors by having the class make paper airplanes while ranting about “making math fun.” This would have been okay if Mr. James weren’t so totally OCD. The poor guy folded and refolded the same stupid piece of paper, while the robotics nerds and gamer geeks made airplanes with weights and counterweights out of bent paper clips or whatever. The student planes zoomed around in circles until one of them hit Mr. James right between the eyes. Bitchy Shelly Paradiso practically peed her pants laughing.

Now Mr. James was back at the board and Willow was drawing in her notebook. The only class she liked was art. She’d spend all day in art if she could. Last year, when Mrs. Lagrasso (whom the kids called “Mrs. Fat Asso”) taught her freshman art class, Willow had fallen in love.

That’s what art felt like to her: love. She got goose bumps of happiness every time Mrs. Lagrasso showed them another series of paintings or sculptures. Willow had been to art museums with Catherine and Russell, of course, but when she saw art through the eyes of Mrs. Lagrasso, it was different. Mrs. Lagrasso understood the power of art to surprise you with feelings you didn’t know you had.

“What are you drawing? A monkey?” a voice said over Willow’s shoulder.

It was the new kid, Henry Something-or-Other the Third. Pretty much every boy in her school was named after somebody else, or two somebodies. Like it was too much work for their parents to think up original names.

“It’s not anything. Just trying not to slit my wrists while we listen to this crap.” Willow flipped her notebook shut.

“Man, you got that,” Henry said, leaning back again.

They’d been seated alphabetically on the first day of class and had to keep those seats all year—another thing Willow hated about geometry.

Henry’s desk was next to hers. He was a ginger giant, with hair the color of paprika, long legs, and eyes like pennies. He said something else, but Willow pretended not to hear him and focused on the board, which Mr. James was filling with formulas, while she thought about her drawing.

It wasn’t a monkey, but it wasn’t nothing, either: it was actually a sketch of a homeless woman she’d seen this morning as she and Russell crossed Boston Common.

Not even eight o’clock in the morning, and the woman was sitting on a bench by the Frog Pond with her metal cart stuffed with trash bags. She was blind; a white cane was leaning on the bench beside her. The woman was playing a scratched-up old guitar. A handful of coins lay in her open guitar case.

Russell was speeding along ahead of her, but Willow slowed down to look at the woman. She was beautiful, in a strange cartoony way, with giant yellow sunglasses, a bright rainbow tam over shiny black licorice hair, a long black skirt, and a bright red shawl. Like a human-shaped piece of art.

What kind of homeless person got pimped out to play music for a few coins before the benches were even dry? Had the woman slept here?

Willow waited until she was about a dozen feet away, then turned around with her camera. She’d taken a photography class using a manual camera this summer; now she tried to always shoot in black-and-white. In geometry, she’d been sketching the woman because she was thinking about how to hand tint the photographs of her. She wanted to make hand-colored pictures like the ancient ones hanging in Nana’s house in Chance Harbor.

Spanish II came after geometry. A brutal class. Senorita Yolanda didn’t assign seats, but Henry sat next to Willow anyway, wrapping his long legs around the chair rungs.

Willow was thinking about her photographs when Senorita asked her a question in Spanish. Henry bailed her out by answering it for her. She answered the question after that, though, even using the right preterit tense for ir, always tricky: fui.

“Thanks,” Willow said as she walked to lunch with Henry towering next to her. “I owe you.”

He shrugged. “Thirty percent of our grade is participation, right? So, hey. I participated. What do you have next? Lunch, right?”

“Lunch, then art and chemistry. You?”

Henry looked pathetically hopeful. “Lunch. We could sit together. After that, English and European History.”

He’d have Russell for history, Willow realized. She was about to say this, to give Henry a heads-up on Russell as a teacher, when there was a commotion in the hall. A group of senior girls was headed their way.

One of them, Nola Simone, was the queen bee: wherever she went, the drones buzzed around her. As Willow watched, Nola shook her shining hair around her shoulders. Her hair was the color of oak leaves in fall, bright gold and yellow. Nola held her phone at arm’s length, taking selfies of herself surrounded by her friends as they moved through the hall, oblivious to the fact that everyone else had to paste themselves against the walls to make way.

Not that anyone would have tried to stop them. Watching Nola walk by, with her heart-shaped face and hot b