Family Reunion Read online

  Family Reunion is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Nancy Thayer

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Hardback ISBN 9781524798789

  Ebook ISBN 9781524798796

  randomhousebooks.com

  Title page photo: iStock.com/​RodrigoBlanco

  Book design by Alexis Capitini, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Susan Zucker

  Cover image: Johner Images

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Nancy Thayer

  About the Author

  One

  Summer was almost here! Eleanor Sunderland sat on her deck looking out at the eternal Atlantic, savoring the view. Above in the sky, diamond-tipped stars were appearing, one by one, and Eleanor could hear the gentle shush of the waves on the shore far below her. The scent of long, sunny days drifted in with the light, salty breeze from the sea.

  It was late May, and if she tilted her head, she could scan down the row of houses on the bluff. She could see which ones had lights on, which summer people had arrived early. She felt both invaded in her happy seclusion and grateful for the company. The winters here could be lonely.

  This summer might be lonely, too.

  The air was chilly. She wore a long-sleeved dress, but still she shivered, and when her cat flicked his tail against her leg, she knew it was time to go inside, to give Shadow his treat, to prepare for bed. She had never liked going to bed. When she was outside by the ocean, Eleanor felt no age at all, but in her house all the new and necessary bits of technology made her feel very much her age.

  She stood up—too fast. Her blood pressure had trouble rising, her doctor told her, because she was so tall. Never one to enjoy being told what to do, it was a nuisance to be seventy years old and bossed around by her body. She waited, and the dizziness faded, and she went through the sliding glass door into the kitchen to give Shadow a small clump of Feline Feast. She checked the lock on the back door, out of habit, and made her way through the large house, turning off lights as she went. Upstairs, she brushed her teeth and changed into her light cotton nightgown and folded back the light quilt and settled against her pillows.

  “Shall we watch some television, Shadow?” she asked the cat, who had eaten and now sat purring at the end of the bed.

  She picked up the long black remote control, which made her think of the black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was magical, but it was surely going to give her carpal tunnel syndrome or whatever it was called. Her thumb hurt from pressing the buttons. Yes, she knew she could use voice commands to get to a certain channel: PBS. CNN. She knew about the ridiculously named Xfinity, another sign that the English language was being hijacked by idiots, but once she was on the channel—or what was it called now? Stream?—then she had to push a button to go up and down and across the rows of offerings, often accidentally landing in a Japanese anime series like The Legend of Korra. She pressed the blue button that allowed voice commands. It made a strange, unpleasant noise. The television screen said, Something is wrong. Well, she knew that!

  “What are we going to do, Shadow?” Eleanor asked.

  Shadow continued licking his beautiful dark fur. At least he didn’t run on batteries.

  “My hair is still as thick as yours,” Eleanor told the cat, who obviously didn’t care, but it was true. She had been graced with thick dark hair, and so far age had not thinned it out, even though it had streaked the black with white and wreaked havoc on the rest of her body.

  A pile of books lay on the bed next to her in all their glorious colorful jackets. New books she’d bought at Mitchell’s, because she loved that bookstore dearly, and also a few books from the library. She always gave herself some time to browse the library shelves to check out new reads she hadn’t heard about and wasn’t sure she would want to stick with. Like agreeing to only coffee on a first date, rather than an entire meal.

  But she’d spent much of her day reading, and she wanted the effortless zoning out that television provided. She couldn’t tolerate being with her own thoughts for one more minute. She needed distraction.

  Earlier today, she had walked from her house on the bluff to Martha’s house in town. Martha was her best friend. They’d gone through weddings, childbirth, adolescence, and empty nests together. Martha’s marriage had been as happy as Eleanor’s was miserable, and it was Martha’s laughter and advice that had gotten Eleanor through life with her wildly handsome, indescribably tense, strict, virtuous husband, Mortimer Radcliffe Sunderland. Now deceased.

  Three years ago, Mortimer died suddenly, in his sleep. During the reception after the funeral, Eleanor had whispered to Martha, “I’m surprised Mortimer would do anything suddenly,” and they had covered their mouths with their hands and giggled like little girls.

  But this morning, over coffee, Martha announced, “Eleanor, guess what! Al and I are leaving this week to take a three-month cruise of the Mediterranean!”

  Eleanor felt faint. The floor seemed to slip beneath her feet. “What?”

  “I know it’s a surprise. I didn’t mean to spring it on you like this.”

  Eleanor sat there, quietly, furiously, trying not to feel she’d just been stabbed in the heart by a traitor. After a moment, she regained her self-control.

  “Gosh, what a surprise,” Eleanor said in her normal voice. “I had no idea you were planning a cruise.”

  Martha blushed. “We didn’t really plan it. We sort of decided on the spur of the moment. We’ve splurged on first-class tickets. First-class everything, because Al will turn seventy in June, and we decided it’s time to spoil ourselves.”

  “How wonderful,” Eleanor announced, lying through her teeth.

  “I know! Eleanor, let me show you our ship! Our itinerary! Hang on, I’ll get Al’s laptop.”

  So Eleanor had to sit there going “Ooh” at the shiny photos of Greek islands rising out of deep blue seas, elegant staircases to posh
first-class suites, and a formal dining room with white tablecloths, floral centerpieces, waiters dressed like naval officers in handsome uniforms, and buffets of food from around the world.

  “Al has to take a tux,” Martha whispered in awe. “I have to buy some gowns. Gowns, Eleanor! One night we’ll sit at the captain’s table!”

  “You’re going to gain weight,” Eleanor predicted, like the black fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.

  “Actually, I won’t!” Martha pulled up shots of the ship’s fitness center, complete with bikes, weights, and yoga mats. “Also,” Martha crowed, “ta-da!” A turquoise swimming pool filled the screen. “No salt, no sand, just clear water.”

  Full of chlorine and other people’s pee, Eleanor almost said, but bit her tongue.

  Instead, she said, “The ship must be enormous if it has a swimming pool.”

  “Oh, it is,” Martha agreed, and babbled on.

  Eleanor stopped listening. She was happy for her best friend. She was simply sad for herself. Summer was always a difficult time on the small island, when thirty thousand or more summer people arrived to share the pleasures of Nantucket. Contractors honked at any car with a New York license plate, families on bikes pedaled blithely past stop signs, and you never saw anyone you knew in the crowded grocery store. Complaining with Martha was one of her few summer joys, and this summer she would be deprived of that.

  “Now you’re going to have to get a cellphone,” Eleanor said triumphantly. Martha was kind of a technophobe, using a landline telephone and her old Kodak camera.

  “Well, I thought of that,” Martha said. “But you know how I hate those things. We’ve decided that, if necessary, I’ll use Al’s, but really we’ll only need to check on the children, and they’re all grown up so we don’t even need to do that.”

  “I’ll miss you,” Eleanor admitted.

  “I’ll send you postcards!” Martha told her.

  Eleanor restrained herself from rolling her eyes—did anyone even send postcards anymore?

  “Please do.” Forcing herself to be cheerful, she said, “Oh, Martha, I hope you have a spectacular time!”

  She had been sad and hurt and angry when she left Martha’s house, because it didn’t seem like Martha not to tell Eleanor about something so important before.

  Now she tossed the remote control on the quilt. “Alexa,” she said, “play Bob Seger.”

  As his rough and growly voice filled the room with “Against the Wind,” Eleanor snorted, because if anything was against the wind it was her old house on the bluff.

  Then came the words: “We were young and strong,” and Eleanor couldn’t help it. She burst into tears.

  She’d been young and strong, once. She’d spent all her summers in this beautiful house. Her grandparents had owned it, and then her parents, and now Eleanor. She was an only child, and this house, with its eccentric creaks and uneven floors, was like a living companion to her. A friend. She could walk through the house with her eyes closed and know what room she was in. The house had been built long before fast ferries and UPS, back when islanders made do with what they had or could scavenge, so the doorknobs were all different—porcelain, brass, glass, metal latch—and Eleanor had always thought that made the house friendlier, somehow.

  She could put her hand on the wall in the guest bedroom and feel where a door into another room had been removed and the space plastered over. At a casual glance, you wouldn’t see it because it had been so carefully done and painted. But Eleanor remembered when the door was there, connecting her bedroom to her grandparents’ room. When she was a small child and the night was howling with rain and wind, she would leave her bed to hurry across the cold wide-planked board floors to her grandparents’ bed. Her grandmother would lift Eleanor up, tucking her in beside her. Even now Eleanor could remember the warmth of her grandmother’s body curled around her, the protection of the heavy quilt over her, the snores of her grandfather on the other side of the high, wide bed.

  She felt affection for the small crack in the window of her bedroom because it reminded her of that long-ago summer night when Kay, her island friend, roused her by throwing pebbles at the window, just like in stories. Eleanor had snuck out of the house, biked down to the beach with Kay, and together they’d gone swimming in the dark waves, something they’d both been forbidden ever to do, swim at night. Oh, they’d felt wicked and brave! Now Kay was living with her husband in California, both of them doing yoga and drinking almond milk, and Eleanor was widowed.

  At the end of the downstairs hallway, the wall was marked with not one but two indentations, both by Eleanor’s son, Cliff. One summer when Cliff was three, he had a small plastic tricycle. Zooming around on that was his favorite activity. The house was large, with many rooms, so on rainy days Cliff was allowed to ride his bike inside. Eleanor could remember his fat legs pedaling furiously as he whizzed around, laughing maniacally. Only once did he crash into the wall. Cliff wasn’t hurt nor was his bike but the accident caused a zigzag fissure in the wall. It was minor. They painted over it at some point and forgot about it until Cliff was eleven and bored out of his mind on another rainy summer day. He was throwing a football at his older sister, Alicia, who kept rolling her eyes and saying, “This is stupid.” One time he threw the ball too high and too hard, so it slammed into the wall, causing a section of the old wood to splinter and cave in. When Eleanor saw it, she shook her head and hugged her son. “What do you have against that poor old wall?” she asked. A carpenter came to repair it, but the wall never looked the same.

  One time, Ari, Eleanor’s three-year-old granddaughter, had terrified them all when she disappeared from the house and never answered their calls. Eleanor’s daughter, Alicia, Ari’s mother, had been at the point of phoning the police when Eleanor opened the kitchen cabinet and discovered the child curled among the baking tins, her baby doll neatly tucked in a bread loaf pan. The doll’s eyes were open, but Ari was sound asleep.

  “Ari?” Eleanor had asked gently.

  Ari had opened her big blue eyes and smiled. “Hi, Gram,” she’d said, and yawned.

  Memories were everywhere. Five generations had summered in this fine old house on the bluff. The house was beloved, and so very old. Eleanor knew she was not keeping up with the repairs on the house. When her parents were alive, her father did most of the maintenance, but Eleanor’s husband, Mortimer, an insurance executive, was very much not DIY, and besides, they were mostly there in the summer, and who wanted to think about power drills and saws in the summer? After her husband died, Eleanor had had a new roof put on the house.

  It had always been a tradition for the family to spend summer weekends on the island. Some years the mothers and their children had stayed the entire week and the fathers came down Friday night. After Eleanor’s parents died and Alicia married Phillip, the tradition continued. Mortimer and Eleanor’s son, Cliff, often came, too, and the family was all there, together, sleeping under one roof. Eleanor loved this custom. She was happiest when her family was with her in the summer. She’d delighted in the shouts of Cliff, Phillip, and Mortimer playing tag football in the yard, and the sudden musical splashing of the outdoor shower when someone returned from the beach. And the casual, messy lobster dinners eaten outside on the long wooden table on the deck, where Eleanor put two large bowls at each end of the table, one full of nutcrackers and picks, the other for people to discard the shells. Smaller bowls at each place held melted butter. Or the rainy summer nights when they sat in the dining room, eating clam chowder and hot rolls, drinking a not very good champagne, telling tales on each other, and laughing.

  When her husband died three years before, Eleanor had sold her Boston house and moved to the island to live year-round. She already had friends here, and she’d quickly constructed a routine of social events. When she went to church, she sat with Bonnie and Donnie Hamilton, retired year-rounders who’d been brid
ge partners with Eleanor and Mortimer. After church, the three often went to lunch at the Seagrille, where within the relative privacy of the booths they discussed all the town issues and who was joining what community committee and how delighted they were that Muffy Andover had joined the board of the Hospital Thrift Shop, even though Muffy (that name!) tended to flash her wealth about. Clarissa Lourie was on the board of Ocean Matters with Eleanor, and they had lunch at least once a week to discuss books. Even after Mortimer died, the Andersons and the Andovers and the Hamiltons always invited Eleanor to their cocktail parties, and when Eleanor became brave enough to give a dinner party herself, it was the Hamiltons, Andovers, and Andersons who were her guests.

  And, of course, Martha and Al Clark.

  The children—she still thought of Alicia and Cliff as “the children”—came down for the weekends and for the entire last week of August, and after Mortimer died, they all came to the island to spend Christmas with Eleanor. Sometimes Ari, Alicia, and Phillip would arrive early, loaded with bags of decorations and presents. Cliff would surprise them with extravagant gifts. He could afford to. He sold real estate in Boston and had no family of his own. Eleanor would throw caution to the winds and turn the thermostat up to a toasty seventy degrees, Cliff would help her bring in the logs, and they’d build a fire in the living and dining room fireplaces while Alicia and Ari twined laurel all around.

  This past Christmas had not been quite so much fun, and Eleanor was worried about the summer. About her daughter, specifically.

  Alicia had always been such a very girly girl, even though early on Eleanor and her husband tried to go with the wisdom of the times and occasionally dress her in overalls and give her train sets so she wouldn’t be limited by her gender. But by the time she was four, Alicia insisted on clothes with ruffles and frills. She would play only with dolls, and she had so many tantrums when she didn’t have the much-discussed Barbie doll that Eleanor and Mortimer surrendered and gave her a Barbie for Christmas. After that, there was no stopping her. She wanted her bedroom to be all pink, she wanted to wear sparkling bracelets and bows in her hair, and when she was older, she saved her allowance to buy People magazine.