Heroes Are My Weakness(109)

Her cell rang in her pocket. It was the dealer at the resale shop. She leaned against a weathered sign that advertised chowder and lobster rolls and listened, but what he told her was so incomprehensible, she had to make him repeat it twice.

“It’s true,” he said. “The money is outrageous, but the buyer is some kind of collector, and the mermaid chair is one of a kind.”

“For good reason!” she exclaimed. “It’s ugly.”

“Fortunately, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Just like that, she had the money to wipe out most of her debt. With one phone call, she’d been given a fresh start.


THE CAR FERRY WAS DUE the next afternoon—Annie’s forty-fourth day on the island. She had to dash out to Harp House in the morning and pick up the things she’d left with Jaycie—her puppets, the rest of her clothes, Mariah’s scarves. After seven nights sleeping on the lobster boat, she was more than ready to live on dry land. She wished that dry land weren’t a couch in the back of Coffee, Coffee, but it wouldn’t be for long. One of her dog-walking clients wanted her to house-sit while he was in Europe.

A notice on the community bulletin board announced a town meeting that night. Since the issue of the cottage was bound to come up, she wanted to attend, but she needed to make sure Theo wouldn’t be there, so she waited until the meeting had started before she went inside.

Lisa caught sight of her and gestured toward the empty chair at her side. The seven island trustees sat at a long folding table at the end of the room. Barbara looked no better than she had the last time they’d been together: her blond hairdo still deflated, her makeup nonexistent. The other grandmothers were scattered around the room, some sitting together, others with their husbands. Not a single one made eye contact with Annie.

The business of the meeting unfolded: the budget, wharf repairs, how to get rid of the island’s growing supply of dead trucks. There was speculation about the day’s unusually warm weather and the storm that was supposed to accompany it. Nothing about the cottage.

The meeting was beginning to wind down when Barbara stood. “Before we end, I have some news.”

She looked smaller without her thick mascara and rouged cheeks. She leaned against the folding table, as if she needed the support. “I know all of you are going to be happy to learn that—” She cleared her throat. “Annie Hewitt has given Moonraker Cottage to the island.”

The room buzzed. Chairs squeaked as everyone turned to look at her. “Annie, did you really?” Lisa asked.

“You never mentioned anything about this,” Barbara’s husband said to her from the first row.

A trustee at the opposite end of the table spoke up. “We just learned about it ourselves, Booker.”

Barbara waited for the commotion to settle down before she went on. “Thanks to Annie’s generosity, we’ll be able to turn the cottage into our new school.”

The buzz started again, along with some applause and a whistle. A man Annie didn’t know reached around to clap her on the shoulder.

“During the summer, we can rent it out and add the income to the school budget,” Barbara said.

Lisa grabbed Annie’s hand. “Oh, Annie . . . That’s going to make such a difference to the kids.”

Instead of becoming steadier, Barbara appeared to be wilting. “We want our younger residents to know how much we care about them.” She gazed toward Lisa. “And how much we’re willing to do to keep them on the island.” She looked down at the table, and Annie had the unsettling feeling she was about to cry, but when Barbara lifted her head, her eyes were dry. She nodded to someone in the room. Nodded again. One by one, the grandmothers she’d conspired with rose to their feet and joined her.

Annie shifted uneasily in her chair. Barbara’s lips quivered. “We have something we need to tell all of you.”





Chapter Twenty-four


ANNIE’S UNEASINESS ESCALATED. BARBARA GLANCED helplessly at the others. Naomi ran one hand through her cropped hair, leaving a rooster tail behind. She took a step away from the rest. “Annie didn’t give up the cottage voluntarily,” she said. “We forced her out.”

A confused muttering rippled through the audience. Annie shot to her feet. “Nobody forced me to do anything. I wanted to give you the cottage. Now am I wrong, or do I smell coffee? I move to adjourn the meeting.”

She wasn’t a property owner, and she couldn’t move to adjourn anything, but her need for revenge was gone. The women had done something wrong, and they were suffering from it. But they weren’t bad women. They were mothers and grandmothers who’d wanted so much to keep their families together that they’d lost sight of right and wrong. For all their flaws, Annie cared about them, and she knew better than anyone how easily love could make people lose their way.

“Annie . . .” Barbara’s natural authority began to reassert itself. “This is something we’ve all agreed we need to do.”

“No, you don’t,” Annie said. And then more pointedly, “You really don’t.”

“Annie, please sit down.” Barbara was back in charge.

Annie slumped into her seat.

Barbara briefly explained the legal agreement between Elliott Harp and Mariah. Tildy gripped the edges of her scarlet bomber jacket and said, “We’re decent women. I hope all of you know that. We thought if we had a new school our kids would stop leaving.”