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Wes blinked from Audrey to Amanda. His brain felt foggy and inarticulate. What were they talking about again?
“Let’s just drop it, okay?” Amanda said. Her cheeks were pink, the way they got when she was embarrassed.
“Don’t switch the topic on my account,” Wes said.
The mood at the table stalled. Amanda gave him a worried look and sucked in her cheeks. Wes’s heart banged in his chest. Had he said something wrong? He turned to look at Beatrice, feeling like a man drowning in a swimming pool.
A few seconds later, Noah brought up a game of baseball he and Sam had caught on television, and Kellan chimed in that he’d seen it, too. Wes’s hands were sweaty, and he felt as though his clothes didn’t fit. He stood abruptly and wandered to the edge of the porch so he could catch sight of the front porch of the Sheridan House next door. He took a step, then another down the porch steps, wondering if he could just walk through the line of trees and rejoin his old life. Why wasn’t it that simple?
A hand touched his shoulder. Wes turned to find Beatrice gazing down at him from the top step. “Let’s take a quick walk before dinner,” she said.
Wes wanted to protest, but something in Beatrice’s eyes made him understand that she meant business. He shrugged.
Beatrice and Wes walked to the water. Beatrice took his hand and stuttered over her introduction. “I need to tell you something.”
But Wes was still thinking about the incident on the back porch. “Did I say something wrong?”
“You just repeated yourself,” Beatrice said kindly. “It could have happened to anyone.”
Wes felt a jolt of recognition. When he’d repeated himself—so soon after the fact—it only confirmed his dementia diagnosis. He’d freaked everyone out.
Beatrice didn’t look frightened, though. She adjusted her fingers so that they were laced all the way through his and said, “I talked to Dr. Hamilton today.”
Wes’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh.”
Beatrice’s eyes gleamed, as though she were holding in tears. “The reason I called him was because I’d read about a new ‘miracle’ drug for dementia patients. I didn’t want to get my hopes up about it. I just wanted to ask him if he’d heard about it and if he had any information.” Beatrice squeezed Wes’s hand harder. “He was surprised you hadn’t told me about it. He said you’ve been undergoing tests to see if you’re a candidate.”
Wes felt squeamish. “I didn’t forget to tell you,” he said. “I just wasn’t sure I wanted to. I didn’t want to get your hopes up either.” He sighed. “Those nightmares scare me, Beatrice. I know they’re an indication that everything is getting worse. And the fact that it’s all coming right before the wedding? It’s terrible timing.”
Beatrice was quiet. Wes half imagined her calling off the wedding right here and now. If you’re not well enough to be with me, then it has to be over.
But instead, she said, “I’m just so pleased you’re already on the path to getting that medication!” She looked ten years younger. She threw her arms around Wes and let out a single sob. When their hug broke, she said in a flurry of words, “I read numerous studies about it. I read testimonials. I even watched a two-hour documentary about a woman whose life was completely changed by this drug.” She shook her head. “The fact that you might be just a week or two away from taking it floors me. More than that, the fact that you’ve had the wherewithal to do this all yourself proves that you’re much healthier, still, than you think you are.”
Wes tried to melt in her flattery. He tucked one of her curls behind her ear and imagined them at the altar pledging the rest of their lives to one another in a few weeks. He imagined that his brain would be firing on all cylinders by then. That Beatrice would be proud to call him her husband.
But there were no guarantees in this life. When Wes and Beatrice were called back to the porch table for steak, Wes clutched Beatrice’s hand under the table and listened to his remarkable family joke and laugh and tease one another. He cackled as Amanda told a story about baby Genevieve—who would soon be six weeks old. The sun dropped into the Vineyard Sound and cast the island in fiery oranges and pinks and reds. And just before the light died out altogether, Wes spotted a stork flying out across the water, its wingspan at least four feet. It was incredible.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The court date was set for June 13, 2024. Amanda watched the date approach on her calendar as her anxiety spiked and her baby grew a nice and healthy belly and a funny little personality. Amanda’s moods were all over the place, but she tried never to show them to Genevieve. There was no telling what a little baby could remember; no telling how your actions shifted into their view of the world. One of her newer recurring nightmares involved an adult Genevieve telling her future partner, “My mother was always so angry.”
Two nights before the court date—to be held at Nantucket Courthouse—Amanda was in the living room with Sam, sharing a bottle of wine and unwinding after a long day of preparation. Sam told her that the historians were pretty sure they were “close to cracking the case of what happened to Martha,” and Amanda was fascinated. Martha was the ex-slave who’d kept the diary. Apparently, she’d learned to read and write from the women she’d worked for in Georgia. Throughout the diary, she championed the fact that her daughter would know how to read and write from childhood. She would have a completely different sort of life than the people Martha had grown up around. And didn’t every mother want their babies to have more than they had?
“We have to assume that Matthew was the second baby’s father, right?” Amanda said, sitting cross-legged on the couch.
“I don’t know. Peering that far back through history is like trying to see to the bottom of the ocean,” Sam said.
Amanda rubbed her temples. She imagined Martha’s romantic life on the island during the few years after the war. Perhaps she’d met someone at a market, a handsome fisherman or a farmer. Maybe there had been other Black people on Martha’s Vineyard—ex-slaves or otherwise. Perhaps they had a community that Amanda knew nothing about.
When she said this to Sam, Sam shrugged.
“If she really met someone else, maybe she went away with him,” Sam suggested. “She took her first baby and left the Sheridans behind.”
Amanda decided she liked this storyline the best. “I’m just so happy she got out of that basement,” she said, shivering.
Sam had told her that the only reason Martha had been able to breathe down there was because Matthew Sheridan had built a vent system that allowed air inside. But that meant the basement room had probably been awfully frigid during the winter.
The baby monitor blared with Genevieve’s anger. Sam hopped up to go tend to her, assuring Amanda it was all right and he would take care of it. Amanda topped off her wine and listened intently, waiting for Genevieve to calm down. She wasn’t as accustomed to her father, but he normally did the trick. Amanda’s mother had told her that Richard had never been so keen to help out with their babies. That he’d left Susan to weather the chaos alone.
