Page 44 of Sunset on the Solstice

Victor raised his glass and looked her dead in the eye. “You’re a great mother, Rebecca. All your children have grown into remarkable adults. We’re proud of you.”

Esme beamed.

Later, when it was time for wedding speeches, Shelby stood and raised her glass to her little brother. Her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, but her voice was clear.

“As many of you know, my brother Chad, my sister Lily, and my mother all came out to Montana recently. Their goal was to help me move back to Nantucket,” Shelby began. “At the time, I was about as lost as I’d ever been. But there was one kernel of hope in my life, and that came in the form of a wedding invitation I received at the beginning of summer. That invitation was from Chad and Jenny. When I opened the letter, there beneath the mountains, I was more alone than I’d ever been. But when I looked at Chad’s and Jenny’s smiling faces, I remembered that I’d once believed in the power of family. I remembered that I’d once looked around a Nantucket table and seen only smiling faces, exuding love.” Shelby closed her eyes.

“In any case, I want to wish Chad and Jenny a beautiful future together. The love you share will sustain you for years to come. We can all feel it, here in this ballroom. You are the luckiest and wealthiest people in the world, if only because you have each other.”

It was a perfect speech, Rebecca knew. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been able to stop crying. As Shelby passed the microphone to the next person who wanted to speak, Rebecca stood and scooped her daughter into a hug. Shelby shook gently before calming down. “I just can’t believe I made it,” she muttered. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

23

Shelby was right to worry about Jared trying to get his children back. In the weeks that followed her decision to run to Nantucket Island and away from him, she waited with bated breath, searching the yard and the beach and the boardwalk, peeking around every corner to make sure he wasn’t there. Especially at Chad’s wedding, she was on high alert, thinking it would be a perfect time for Jared to take the kids away.

But Jared seemed not to be the sort of guy who chased, at least not in a physical sense. Rather, he had his lawyer send heinous-looking papers to Rebecca and Ben’s place, which Shelby opened only with her own lawyer present. It was just as bad as Shelby had thought it would be. Jared and his legal team were accusing Shelby of parental kidnapping.

It was the beginning of September. In a well-lit office, listening to the autumnal rain drumming outside, Shelby and her lawyer went over her options before deciding that it was best to file a restraining order against Jared. They had their reasons. They had witnesses.

“Usually, men like this don’t put up a big fight,” her lawyer explained. “His ego is bruised, yes, but…”

“Jared isn’t a typical man,” Shelby said, knowing in her heart that this was true.

She considered the events of many years ago, when she and Jared had broken up, only for Jared to get into an accident and go into a coma. It wasn’t that he’d planned the accident. It wasn’t that he’d planned the coma. But it had allowed him a level of manipulation that had destroyed Shelby’s life.

She was working through that in therapy. Asking herself why she abandoned everything and everyone she knew for a guy she barely knew wasn’t such an easy thing.

The war between Shelby and Jared continued to rage from September and into late autumn. Throughout that time, Shelby settled deeper into her Nantucket life—and grew increasingly pregnant. Rather than wait to learn her baby's gender, as Jared preferred, she asked the doctor and learned she was having a little girl again. “Three little girls and one boy,” she said to her mother in the car as they drove back from the doctor’s office. “I think that’s enough, don’t you?”

“You know I’ll help you if and when you decide to have more,” Rebecca offered. “If you meet someone else, if you want to build a life with someone else, you might want to allow yourself space for new children, new eras. Nothing will hold you back.”

But Shelby felt exhausted by the prospect of new love. “Let’s just get through this pregnancy and this legal battle and see what it all looks like,” she said, laughing.

By the beginning of December, two weeks before Shelby’s due date, Shelby’s lawyer and Jared’s lawyer were at a standstill. “Jared still isn’t willing to give up, but he recognizes that you have enough fodder to fight him for a long time,” her lawyer explained, a smile playing across her lips. “But as he’s far away in Montana, I imagine he’s losing interest in all this.”

“Losing interest?” Shelby was shocked. She’d never imagined that Jared would ever stop fighting her, especially when it came to the kids. No, he didn’t know them well, and no, he’d had no hand in raising them. But that didn’t mean he believed that himself.

“This happens sometimes if the men meet someone else,” the lawyer said delicately, turning over a folder on her desk.

Shelby let out a laugh. “He’s getting married again?”

The lawyer grimaced. Shelby remembered that the lawyer had sent someone out to Montana to poke around and see what Jared’s life without Shelby was like. Probably, that “spy,” or whatever term applied here, had discovered a new girlfriend, a new life. Jared didn’t want to fight Shelby any longer, because he was afraid of what Shelby knew about him. It was much better for Jared to begin again with someone else—someone younger, maybe. Someone more malleable.

“I want to tell her not to do it,” Shelby stammered. “I want to warn her.”

But the lawyer told her Shelby couldn’t do a thing, not without jeopardizing the terms of their agreement. “This needs to be taken as a win,” she told Shelby sternly. “Jared is willing to leave you and the kids alone forever.”

“But he’s going to ruin someone else’s life,” Shelby said.

“Think about your children,” the lawyer told her. “They’re still young. There’s a chance that they won’t really remember anything about Jared. That’s a win.”

Shelby knew her lawyer was right, although her throat was tight and she struggled to breathe.

A few nights before Shelby’s due date, she couldn’t fight it anymore and decided to call Vivian. Vivian sounded just as surprised as Shelby felt.

“It’s so good to hear from you,” Vivian said. “I think about you and the kids every single day. How is it out there on that island? Your mother sends me pictures sometimes. I hope that’s okay.”

Shelby smiled, unsurprised at how frantic Vivian still sounded. She hoped that Vivian’s loneliness in those mountainous woods still served her.