ChapterSix
Elsa and Carmella had come to pick Alexie and Mallory up from the ferry docks. They stood in sunglasses and sundresses with their arms crossed tightly over their chests as a form of protection. With each step that Mallory and Alexie took toward them, the air grew more taught and sinister.
“Mom looks so pale,” Alexie muttered. “And I don’t think it’s just because I have pink hair.”
When they reached their aunt and mother, Elsa’s shoulders quivered as she dropped forward, drawing her arms around her daughters. Mallory’s eyes bugged out mid-hug.
“Mom. What’s going on?” Mallory’s voice wavered.
Elsa sniffled, scrambling through her pocket to find a tissue and mopping up her nose.
“Is Zachery all right?” Mallory demanded, sounding volatile.
“Zachery is fine,” Aunt Carmella replied quickly, sensing the damage their silence had done. “The house was robbed last night.”
“Robbed?” Mallory and Alexie cried in unison. It seemed outside the bounds of reason. Everyone knew that you could trust everyone else on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. They were neighbors and friends, all on a big rock floating in the ocean. It was essential that they stick together.
“They took just about everything of value,” Elsa breathed, continuing to mop her nose. “They left no stone unturned, as they say.”
“They left Zachery’s beautiful cake,” Aunt Carmella reminded her.
Elsa rolled her eyes. “Yes. The thieves who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of antiques and family memorabilia managed to leave the birthday cake in the fridge. Miraculous.”
There was nothing else to say. Elsa drove them back to the Remington House, her bone-white hands gripping the steering wheel too hard. After a long and gut-wrenching ten minutes of silence, Mallory asked more questions, heavy with disbelief.
“Was there any sign of a break-in?”
“Not that the cops can see right now,” Elsa answered.
“How could someone get in? They must have known the code to the garage?” Mallory demanded.
“It’s hard to say. The cops said something about hacking the system. Apparently, that’s a common way thieves are breaking into houses these days,” Elsa continued.
“Although they told us they haven’t personally seen it on the Vineyard,” Aunt Carmella said.
“And you didn’t hear anything at all?” Mallory asked her mother.
Elsa held the silence for a moment. “Zachery and I spent the night at Bruce’s. Only Nancy, Alyssa, and Lucy were at home. Lucy slept through the night. Waking Alyssa is like waking the dead. And Nancy had taken a sleeping pill and didn’t stir at all.”
Selfishly, Mallory wanted to ask what had been taken from her own personal room, the one she’d shared with Zachary for nearly a year. She brought up the image of the space: the laundry strewn across the bed from when she’d packed for NYC, Zach’s crib, and the big bay window that overlooked the ocean. Her items of value were few and far between, only the locket she’d inherited from her great-grandmother and maybe the antique chest in which she’d folded her winter sweaters. She held her tongue, knowing that she had to carry the burden of this for her mother’s sake.
Mallory understood the gravity of her mother’s sorrow. Elsa had grown up at the Remington House, together with Carmella and their brother, Colton. Colton had died as a child. A few years after that, Elsa and Carmella’s mother passed away in a car accident. The house was shadowed with loss yet still colored with the hope and prosperity of the years that had followed. Mallory, Alexie, and Cole had used their grandfather’s home as their own personal adventure zone, running up and down the staircase as they pretended to be pirates or cowboys. Eventually, Grandpa Neal had remarried Nancy, which had brought its own stage of joy. All the while, the home had lived on as a beacon for lost time, with its immense number of artifacts from Mallory’s grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives.
Elsa parked in the driveway of the Remington House, turned the engine off, and heaved a sigh. Nancy appeared in the doorway with Zachery lifted against her. Mallory leaped from the car and hustled up to her baby, who cooed excitedly.
“Mama!” Mallory held Zachery against her, breathing in his warmth. Two days without him was more than enough.
“Happy birthday, baby!” Mallory said as she stepped through the foyer, which seemed heavy with loss. Mallory’s eyes welled with tears, even as Zachery continued to coo excitedly. What did he know about “things”? The most meaningful items in his life were his cozy blanket and his favorite teddy bear. Probably, they hadn’t been stolen.
“Hi.” Alyssa waved from the floor, where she sat with Lucy in front of a big pile of blocks. “We cleared some space for more playing.”
“I can see that,” Mallory said, trying and failing to laugh at Alyssa’s joke. She placed Zachery on the floor by the blocks and sat cross-legged beside them, watching as Alyssa created a little tower that Lucy swatted to the ground.
“Lucy loves to destroy,” Alyssa explained.
“The pink hair is quite interesting,” Elsa commented distractedly as she and Alexie stepped through the front door.
Alexie patted her pixie haircut, her eyes bouncing around the room. “I just wanted something different.”