A Letter from Kristin
Acknowledgments
Emily Vandemark came to Hope Haven to get away from people, but the place was teeming with them, like minnows. She didn’t remember Dune Island being this crowded when she vacationed here with her family as a child. Cyclists and pedestrians flanked both sides of the road and nimble beachgoers darted in-between cars as they made their way past the crowded stretch of sand known as Beach Plum Cove. Emily watched them through the window of the cab as if under water. She jiggled her leg and sighed.
“As soon as we pass this beach, we’ll speed up,” the driver said, glancing at her in his rearview mirror. “It’s always mobbed on Memorial Day. Tomorrow it’ll quiet down again until school gets out at the end of June. After that, the island’s population swells to five or six times its usual size until Labor Day.”
Just as he promised, traffic diminished within a few blocks. As they drove toward her destination, the roads narrowed and became curvier. During the last three miles, they didn’t pass another vehicle, cyclist or runner. They climbed the final hill, gradual and long, and bordered on the right by woodlands of pitch pine and scrub oak. On the left, the trees thinned out, opening onto wide dunes bending with beachgrass, bayberry and sand heather. I’m in an Edward Hopper painting, Emily thought. At the crest, the vantage revealed a spectacular ocean view and she gasped, in spite of herself. The shimmering azure waves were highlighted by whitecaps; otherwise she might not have known where the ocean ended and the sky began.
They descended the hill a couple hundred yards and turned left, winding their way down a sandy lane toward the sea. Beach rose shrubs—rosa rugosa—overtook the split rail fence running along both sides. At the end, the road branched into a shared driveway big enough for three or four vehicles. Emily assumed the little silver sedan was the car she’d use during her stay. Next to it was a dilapidated mustard-yellow van that she guessed must have belonged to a repairman or delivery person, although she didn’t see anyone on the grounds.
Situated sideways on a slight incline to the right was a spacious, modern-style home with sliding glass doors, floor-to-ceiling windows and a multi-level deck. Despite its expansiveness, the house projected an earthy, weathered appearance and blended unobtrusively with the landscape—typical for homes on the island. Down a slope an acre or so to the left and angled perpendicular with the driveway a small, classical Cape-style cottage was tucked among a stand of red cedar and pitch pines.
“Here you are,” the driver announced.
There she was, indeed.
She paid him, refusing help with her bags. As he pulled away, she paused, eyeing the view and inhaling the scent of ocean, roses and pine. In a single whiff, every childhood summer came rushing back and Emily could barely contain her tears. She turned toward the cottage. Glimpsing its faded trim and peeling turquoise shutters, she thought, It looks a lot like I feel.
Emily began tugging her luggage behind her. The long path from the driveway to the front doorstep was composed of crushed shells, which she realized would make the wheels of her suitcases twist and bump against her ankles. She decided to carry her luggage instead, but she could only manage one piece at a time. She took the bigger one first, leaving her carry-on bag behind.
Taped to the handle of the cottage’s sturdy wooden front door, which was the same bleached turquoise color as the shutters, was an envelope with her name on it. Its contents jangled when she peeled it off. She unfolded the note and read:
Dear Emily,
We hope you had a smooth trip. Here’s your cottage key and a key to the car if you need to go out. We’ve left some goodies for you in the fridge. Can’t wait to see you this evening!
Love,
Collette and Wilson
The note was legible, which meant Collette must have penned it—Wilson wrote with a stereotypical doctor’s scrawl. Emily was grateful for their thoughtfulness, but she still fought the impulse to call the cab company and leave. No one knew she had arrived. She could have pretended she changed her mind at the last minute. She could have phoned Collette and Wilson and said that she canceled her cross-country flight and she wouldn’t be following through with her plans after all.
But where would she have gone? Even if she returned to Seattle, what would she have done for the summer? The art history classes she taught at the university had ended until the fall semester and she was allowing two international students to stay in her apartment during the summer break. Squaring her shoulders, she grasped the heart-tipped, forged-iron door handle, turned the key in the lock and went inside.
The door opened onto a small foyer, with a staircase leading to the second floor of the cottage. Emily set down her suitcase. To the right of the entryway was an open-concept living room and dining area, which hosted sliders to a large deck. A breakfast bar separated the dining area from the kitchen around the corner.
Although the house was spick and span—Emily had arranged for it to be professionally cleaned before she arrived—the dark paneling on the walls, scratched hardwood floors and burnt maroon bricks of the fireplace were a gloomy contrast to the scenery outside. Emily hadn’t paid much attention to the interior as a child, but suddenly she understood why her mother always tried to convince her grandmother the cottage would have benefitted from a little color. Emily’s grandmother, a hoarder who resisted change at all costs, finally agreed to let Emily’s mom paint the exterior trim white and the shutters and doors a bright turquoise green, but she hadn’t allowed any interior redecorating.
At least Grandma’s couch and chairs have been replaced, Emily noticed, recalling how her grandmother’s flea-market furniture was even drabber than the walls surrounding it.
The house was so quiet she found herself tiptoeing down the hall, past the kitchen. She peeked into the room on the left, where her parents used to sleep, but she couldn’t make herself cross the threshold yet, so she ducked into the bathroom opposite it. She assumed it was Collette who had put soap near the sink and arranged the hand towels in scalloped folds. Emily glanced at herself in the mirror. Pale, willowy and without a dab of make-up, she wore a long, straight, sleeveless black cotton sundress. Her hair, the color of sand, was pulled into a severe bun at the nape of her neck and her usually vivid green eyes appeared as washed out as the shutters on the cottage. Another sigh escaped her lips.
As she returned to the kitchen, Emily remembered that she’d left her carry-on bag in the driveway. She exited through the sliding doors, stopping on the deck to survey the back yard. In the far corner, a tight path led through the rose hedges and honeysuckle and passed over the dunes toward a staircase to a private beach. Emily would take that path later; for now, she cut across the lawn. The yellow van had reversed from its spot and was idling with the driver’s door wide open. Emily arrived just in time to see a man lifting her bag.
“Hey!” she yelled, suddenly enlivened. “What do you think you’re doing with that?”
Startled, the man jumped back and dropped her suitcase. Dark and dripping, his hair curled in ringlets around his neck and temples. Beads of water spattered his tanned shoulders. He was wearing navy surf shorts and a sleeveless rash guard shirt. Emily felt a twinge of something—was it fear?—as she noticed the definition of his biceps.
“I’m moving it so I won’t run it over.” He straightened his posture. “Do you always leave your stuff strewn across the street?”
“It wasn’t strewn and that’s not a street,” Emily snapped as she approached. She was woozy from heat and adrenaline, but she planted herself squarely in front of him. “It’s a driveway. A private driveway. Which means there’s no public beach access here, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Now.”
An amused look crossed the man’s face.
“Actually, I was trying to leave. But I do have permission to be here. I’m Lucas. I like to hit the beach to fish or surf and this is about the only spot on the island where I can do that alone this time of year. Wilson and Collette let me park over there.”
He gestured toward his van, which was making an alarming rattling noise. When Emily didn’t respond, he narrowed his blue eyes as if he was trying to place how he knew her.
“You must be Emily, the artist,” he decided. “Wilson told me you were coming today. Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“You didn’t frighten me,” Emily said defiantly, although her legs were trembling.
She wondered what else Wilson had told Lucas about her. Before she arranged to come here, she had secured Wilson and Collette’s word that they wouldn’t tell anyone about… about what had happened. There were already too many people back in Seattle who knew. What happened occupied almost every waking thought she had. She didn’t need it emphasized by people asking questions or feeling sorry for her, even if they only intended to be sympathetic. For the second time that day, she felt like bolting.
She grasped her suitcase handle. Lucas reached for it at the same time, his hand clasping hers. The warm pressure of his palm caused her to sway a little, but she didn’t release her grip.
“Let me carry this in for you,” he offered.
“Thanks, but I don’t need any help.” Emily jerked the bag away from him.
She turned on her heel and strode toward the cottage. Her arm strained under the weight of her carry-on bag, which primarily contained art textbooks and sketch pads, but she didn’t slow her pace. She slid the screen slider open, sharply banged it into place behind her and stormed down the hall and into her parents’ old room, where she unceremoniously dropped the luggage in the middle of the floor.
Emily returned to the kitchen to douse her face with cold water and then held her wrists under the faucet. She didn’t know if she was more unnerved by the heat and humidity or by her reaction to Lucas. What has gotten into me, to accost one of Collette and Wilson’s friends like that? She opened the fridge and basked in the icy draft. Collette and Wilson had stocked the shelves with cheese, fruit and yogurt. She couldn’t remember when she last ate.
A year ago, Emily carried an extra twenty to twenty-five pounds on her thighs and hips, but now she was probably twenty to twenty-five pounds underweight. Once a compulsive eater and a frequent dieter, she always assumed that people who claimed they forgot to eat were either liars or show-offs. Now, she understood: ever since the day her life fell apart, food was the last thing on her mind and her meals were more often prompted by the clock than by hunger.
Frequently lethargic but unable to sleep, she took no pleasure in being so thin or in losing her appetite. Rationally, she understood that food provided energy. But in practice, fixing meals for herself was a futile chore, since she could rarely swallow more than a few bites. She removed a bowl of grapes and a pitcher of iced tea and set them on the table, as if that might stimulate her hunger.
When it didn’t, she went back into the bedroom. Kneeling, she unzipped the carry-on bag, relieved that Lucas hadn’t backed over it with his van. Secured in bubble wrap was her most precious possession: a framed photo of her with her mother, father and brother. Broad-shouldered and copper-haired, the men looked arresting in their suits, but Emily and her mother eclipsed them both with their prominent cheekbones, natural blondness and soft femininity. Although the occasion was formal, their smiles were relaxed. The four were gathered arm-in-arm in front of a large painting, Tulips in April, which had been part of Emily’s first professional gallery exhibit. She placed the photo on her nightstand.
She fished deeper into the small suitcase until her fingertips brushed the soft velvet exterior of a little hexagonal box, which was jostled during the flight and rested near the bottom of her bag. She pulled it out and lifted the pearl-white lid. The three-stone emerald-cut diamond glinted as it caught the light. Emily removed the ring from its cushion to examine the script engraved on the inside of the platinum band: Now & Forever.
Not the most original sentiment, nor the most accurate, Emily mused wryly. Although he got it half right; the “now” part. She didn’t doubt that Devon Richards had fully intended to marry her when he proposed with this ring last July. But so much had changed: the “now” had become “then,” and there was no such thing as “forever”. Emily replaced the ring and snapped the box shut. She almost regretted bringing it with her, but she knew it had cost a small fortune. Although she trusted the two students who were apartment-sitting for her, there had been break-ins in the complex lately. The ring would be the first thing a thief would steal. No, it was safer here with her, she rationalized.
Maybe after a few more months, she could convince Devon to take it back. She had always been bothered by his insistence that she keep it, as if it were a consolation prize. Suddenly, she wanted the ring out of her sight and she scanned the room for somewhere to stash it. Under her pillow seemed as good of a place as any; after all, this was Dune Island, not Seattle. “The only thing anyone ever steals on Dune Island is a quick nap in a hammock,” her father used to joke, making everyone else groan.
Overcome by a wash of loneliness, Emily lay down on the bed and within minutes, the distant arrhythmia of waves against the shore had lulled her to sleep.
When she awoke almost three hours later, it took a few moments for Emily to recognize her surroundings. Her hair clung damply to her neck, reminding her where she was. She stretched, and then ambled into the living room for her other bag. After removing two small gifts—gourmet Seattle coffee for Wilson and a blown glass ornament for Collette—she placed the rest of her belongings in the dresser and closet. As she clicked the drawers shut, she realized that unpacking made staying here that much more definite. But before she could consider fleeing again, she heard wheels rolling down the lane: Wilson and Collette were home from work.
She smoothed her dress and flung open the front door just as Collette raised her hand to knock.
“Emily, welcome!” Collette extended her arms above her burgeoning belly. Her baby boy was due to be born the second week of September.
“Look at you!” Emily responded, hugging Collette back. “You’re radiant.”
“That’s because I’m sweltering from the exertion of walking over here.” Collette laughed. “But at this point, I’ll take any compliment I can get.”
“No, really, you’re stunning,” Emily reiterated truthfully, eyeing her sleek, inky hair and olive complexion.
Side by side with Collette, who was the picture of robust pregnancy, Emily felt haggard and wan. The concerned look in Wilson’s deep brown eyes confirmed her perception of herself. She may have dismissed his worries about her during their phone conversations over the past nine months, but her appearance belied her claims that she had been faring all right.
“Emily.” He cleared his throat but didn’t say anything more.
Emily hesitated for a second and then dove into his arms. He gave her a gigantic bear hug, the way a brother would. The way her brother would. The association caused her throat to tighten and her eyes to brim.
“I brought you something,” she announced quickly, feigning cheerfulness.
After making a fuss over their gifts, Wilson and Collette invited Emily to join them for dinner at their house. She tried to decline, but they wouldn’t accept her refusal.
“We’ll give you all the privacy you want as often as you want after this. But tonight is your first night here. You’ve got to come up to our place for dinner,” Collette insisted. “Nothing elaborate, I’m tossing a salad together and we brought clam chowder home from the best seafood restaurant on the island, Captain Clark’s. It’s to-die-for and that’s not just a craving talking.”
Emily conceded and followed them out of the cottage and up the slope to their home. The three of them worked together companionably, chopping vegetables for the salad and setting the table. As they ate, Collette mentioned she’d tried to stock Emily’s kitchen with all the essential cookware, dishes and cutlery but if she needed anything else during her stay, she was free to borrow it from Collette’s kitchen. Emily thanked her, adding that she appreciated Collette making up the bed for her, too.
“You’re welcome. It’s new, by the way. Or fairly new. It’s the one we moved out of our second guest room, since we’re turning it into a nursery. I think I mentioned on the phone that the mattress set was too unwieldly for Wilson and his friend to bring upstairs, which is why they put it in the room on the first floor. I hope that’s okay with you?”
Emily would have preferred not to sleep in her parents’ old room, but she understood why that wasn’t an option. “Sure, it’s fine.”
“It must have been weird to see the upstairs rooms so bare like that?”
“Mm.” Emily hadn’t actually been able to make herself go upstairs yet. She wasn’t ready to face the rooms she and her brother had used during their blissful summer vacations.
“The rest of the furniture in the cottage is left over from the Johnsons. It’s all the stuff that was too big to take with them.”
Emily should have guessed as much. Her parents had inherited the cottage when Emily’s maternal grandparents died ten years ago, but by that time, Emily’s immediate family had long since moved from Connecticut to Chicago and their Dune Island summers had become a thing of the past. So, her parents had rented out the little house year-round to the Johnsons until the elderly couple needed to move into an assisted living facility. For the past three years, Wilson and Collette had kept an eye on the vacant cottage, which the Vandemarks invited them to use to host guests they couldn’t accommodate in their own home.
Not that they needed the extra space; their house was huge. Originally, Wilson’s grandparents, the Laurents, had owned a summer cottage just like the Vandemarks’, but it had sustained extensive water damage in the aftermath of a particularly severe ice storm. When Wilson decided to move to the island permanently to work in the hospital here, he’d had the cottage razed and built the modern dwelling on the same site. A building can be replaced—people can’t, Emily lamented silently.
“How long has it been since the last time you came to Dune Island?” Collette’s question pulled Emily back to the present.
“Um… I was twelve, so I guess it’s been close to eighteen years.”
“A lot has changed since then,” Wilson informed her. “For one thing, there’s poison ivy growing near the staircase now. It’s mixed in with the roses and honeysuckle, so you’ll want to avoid picking those when they’re in bloom.”
“We’ve also had a couple of rip currents to the west of the beach stairs,” Collette added.
“And we still don’t get as much traffic out here as the rest of the island does, but it’s definitely increased, so be careful when you’re pulling out of the driveway,” Wilson advised.
“Sure thing, Mom and Dad,” Emily teased.
She meant it playfully, but suddenly the topic they’d all been tiptoeing around was out in the open. Their cheerful pretense shriveled like a stale party balloon.
“W-we didn’t mean to sound like…” Collette faltered.
“No, of course not,” Emily apologized. “I really didn’t take it that way, either. I know you’re just looking out for me.”
Wilson hastily changed the subject to the unpredictability of island weather and they resumed eating. Emily forced herself to swallow a few spoonsful of chowder, but if it was as delicious as Collette claimed, she hardly tasted it. She prattled on about the marvelous view from their house, the tasteful décor and especially Wilson and Collette’s generosity in allowing her to use their second car for the summer.
“You’re the one doing us a favor,” Wilson said. “Everyone at the hospital is amazed such a talented artist is refusing any kind of compensation.”
“It’s a privilege to contribute to a good cause.”
As Emily quoted her brother’s life motto, Wilson winced. Even as a boy, Peter had demonstrated an unusual commitment to serving others. Just like Emily’s parents, her brother would have gone to any extreme to help someone in need—especially children—in whatever capacity he could. That was part of the reason Emily had come to Dune Island: to carry on the family legacy by painting murals in the newly constructed pediatric wing of the hospital. Insisting she would only participate in the project on the condition that she could do it on a volunteer basis, she’d adamantly turned down the offer of a stipend.
The other condition of her presence here was far more personal. Emily had asked Wilson and Collette to promise they wouldn’t tell anyone about the helicopter crash that killed her father, mother and brother nearly nine months ago, last August. It happened high in the Honduran mountains, where her parents—a retired special ed teacher and a school counselor—had relocated in order to teach schoolchildren through a newly established literacy program. Peter, a child welfare social worker, had visited them there during a vacation once, and he was so moved by the people he met that he arranged to return last summer to help out with a short-term disaster relief construction project.
After the accident, the school near Chicago where Emily’s parents used to work sent her a copy of their campus publication featuring a tribute to her parents. It said: While delivering medical aid, food and school supplies to a storm-ravaged village nearby, Janice and Frederick Vandemark, along with their son Peter, paid the ultimate price for putting their beliefs into action…
No doubt the reporter’s homage to the Vandemarks was meant to convey admiration, but after reading it, Emily tore up the article, crying, “No matter how eloquently it’s phrased, they’re still dead, dead, dead.”
By the time of the crash, Emily had been living in Seattle for several years, Peter was still in Chicago, and their parents resided several countries away. But they were close-knit and stayed in contact . . .
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