“Ugh!” She spits it right back out. “Milly, what is this?”
Milly hands her a napkin, unfazed. She plucks the lime garnish from the empty cup and squeezes juice into each of ours. “Sorry, forgot the lime. A gin and tonic.”
“Seriously?” Aubrey grimaces and sets her cup down on the table. “Thanks, but I don’t drink. How’d you get alcohol?”
“I have my ways.” Milly watches as a line of people stream down the staircase from the upper deck to escape the rainstorm, then focuses her attention on Aubrey and me. “So. Now that we’ve covered all the surface stuff, let’s get real. What aren’t we telling each other?”
My throat gets dry. “Huh?”
Milly shrugs. “This entire family is built on secrets, right? It’s the Story legacy. You guys probably have some juicy ones.” She tilts her cup toward me. “Spill.”
I glance at Aubrey, who’s gone pale beneath her freckles. I feel a muscle in my jaw start to twitch. “I don’t have any secrets,” I say.
“Me either,” Aubrey says quickly. Her hands are clenched tight in her lap, and she looks like she’s about to either throw up or cry. I was right; she’s a terrible liar. Even worse than I am.
Milly isn’t interested in going after Aubrey, though. She pivots toward me and leans forward, her big watch sliding down her arm as she cups her chin in her hand. “Everybody has secrets,” she says, taking a sip of her drink. “That’s nondebatable. The only question is whether you’re keeping your own, or someone else’s.”
A bead of sweat gathers on my forehead, and I resist the urge to wipe it away as I gulp down half my drink. I don’t like gin, but any port in a storm seems like a solid metaphor right now. I try for a half-bored, half-irritated expression. “Can’t it be both?”
Rain lashes the window behind Milly as her eyes lock on mine. “With you, Jonah?” she asks, raising one perfectly arched brow. “I’m guessing it can.”
“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Jonah asks.
I steal a glance at him across Aubrey. The rain has cleared, and we’re on the upper deck watching our approach to Gull Cove Island. Jonah rests his forearms against the rail and leans forward, the wind tousling wavy, dark brown hair that’s halfway between Aubrey’s blond and my near black. The pointed chin I remember has morphed into a square jaw, and braces did him a world of good. Not that he smiles much.
“I think it’s pretty!” Aubrey says, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the ferry’s motor. The boat pitches sharply to one side, sending a spray of white foam into the air. I hold tightly to the rail with one hand and use the other to indulge in a nervous habit my mother hates—bringing the knuckle of my thumb between my teeth. My damp skin tastes like salt, but it’s better than the exhaust-filled air we’re breathing.
“Me too,” I say.
My words are automatic, a reflexive desire to disagree with Jonah, but he’s right. Even from a distance the island looks flat and unremarkable, surrounded by a strip of pale-yellow beach melting into an ocean that’s almost the same shade of gray as the dense, low-hanging clouds that surround us. Tiny white houses dot the shoreline against a backdrop of short trees, and the only spot of color is a squat tan lighthouse striped with jaunty blue.
“It’s so small,” Aubrey says. “Hope we don’t get island fever.”
I pull my knuckle from my mouth and lower my arm, feeling the heavy weight of my watch slide to my wrist as I do. My grandfather’s battered old Patek Philippe is the only memento my grandmother passed along to my mother before she cut off contact. No matter how many times Mom’s tried to have it repaired, the watch refuses to tell time. It always reads three o’clock, so twice a day—like about now, probably—it’s right. “Maybe Mildred will work us so hard that we won’t even notice,” I say.
Aubrey glances at me. “You call her Mildred?”
“Yeah. What about you?”
“Gran. My dad always says ‘your gran,’ so I guess I just went with that.” She turns toward Jonah. “What do you call her?”
“Nothing,” he says briefly.
We’re silent for a few minutes as the ferry continues its progress toward shore. The white houses get bigger, the yellow strip of sand more defined, and soon we’re passing so close to the lighthouse that I can see people walking around its base. The dock is crowded with boats, most of them much smaller than the one we’re on, and we neatly slot into a space between two of them. “Welcome to Gull Cove Island!” the captain calls over the intercom as the noise of the engine abruptly stops.
“It’s packed,” Aubrey says nervously, scanning the crowd on the dock below us.
“Tourist trap central,” Jonah says, turning from the rail and toward the staircase. “Have you looked up how much rooms cost at Gull Cove Resort? People are out of their minds.” He shakes his head. “The beaches are way better on Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, but somehow being the worst, smallest island has become a selling point. Because it’s ‘off the beaten path.’ ”
When we near the ferry’s exit, Jonah veers off to one side and hauls a battered duffel bag out from under a bench. “Where’s your stuff?” he asks Aubrey and me.
“We checked it when we came on board,” I say, eyeing his bag. “Is that all you brought?”
Jonah slings the duffel over one shoulder. “I don’t need much.”
We enter the stream of people leaving the ferry, following the narrow walkway from the boat to the dock. It’s a full-on vacation crowd; despite the cloudy weather everyone is decked out in shorts, sunglasses, and baseball hats. My red dress looks completely out of place, even though I wore it for a reason. It was my mother’s in high school, one of the few things she held on to that I can get away with wearing today. Putting it on felt like getting a subtle dig in at my grandmother for bringing us all this way without acknowledging her children first. They still exist, Mildred, whether you want to admit it or not.
The ferry walkway exits onto a wide cobblestone path flanked by shingled buildings in alternating shades of white and gray. As soon as we reach the road I take a deep breath, then startle a little as I smell honeysuckle mixed with the salty air. Mom’s signature fragrance, but I’ve never smelled it live before.
A row of luggage tents on wheels line one side of the cobblestone path. Aubrey and I find number 243, as we were instructed when a valet took our suitcases, and open the flap. “Here they are,” Aubrey says, sounding relieved as she pulls out a suitcase and backpack.