Island Girls: A Novel Read online

  A soft breeze drifted over her skin, tickling her slightly, making her senses stir in the most pleasurable way. Leaning back on her elbows, she sighed deeply, closed her eyes, and breathed in the salty island air.

  And allowed herself to think of Liam.

  ——

  She’d been in her cramped office in the liberal arts building of Sudbury Community College, bowed over her desk with a pile of English composition exams. Occasionally she tilted her head to face the ceiling and relieve her neck and shoulders. She sometimes stood up and loosened her stiff back with some light exercises, knee bends, waist bends, arm swings. But mostly she worked steadily, not allowing herself to look out her window at the green lawn where students lolled in the warm sunshine.

  Meg had been happy. Okay, if not exactly happy, she’d been content. She enjoyed her work; was amused, challenged, and annoyed by her students; and spent a lot of time wondering whether the semicolon and colon would fairly soon disappear from common usage, or at least blur and blend. In the Twitter age, punctuation was an endangered species.

  So, she prized her work. But she missed having a love life. She was afraid she’d end up like the head of the department, Eleanor Littleton, PhD, a charming if rather homely single woman whose entire world revolved around the English department and her two Yorkshire terriers.

  Meg’s desk was of battered metal with three drawers down each side and a shallow drawer in the middle where she kept pens, rubber bands, scissors, breath mints, and Scotch tape. Its top was layered with blue books, exams, and e-mails she’d printed out because she got tired of staring at her computer screen. She sat on a basic government-issue secretary’s chair with a squeaking back that provided little support. She kept calling maintenance about it; they kept promising to bring her a better chair.

  “Big fat liars,” she muttered.

  “Who?”

  Meg didn’t have to look up to identify the man standing in her open office door. She knew Liam’s voice all too well. That was a pleasure and a problem.

  Liam Larson. Liam Larson, PhD. Professor Larson, full professor of English, author of the well-received Nineteenth-Century American Poets, a poet himself, published in several online and university reviews. Liam Larson, tall, fair, Camelot handsome, and five years younger than Meg. The first time she’d seen him walk down the hall, she’d said under her breath, “Oh, come on. Really?”

  Probably five pounds lighter than Meg, too. At twenty-six, Liam was six three and as slender as a marathon runner. At thirty-one, Meg was five four, and while no one would call her fat, they might say—men had said—that she had a fine full figure. A big bust, wide hips, all of it highlighted by her white skin. She let her pale red hair grow past her shoulders and often wore it loose, trying to make her hair seem equal in volume to the rest of her body. She camouflaged her shape with khaki slacks and baggy skirts, corduroy jackets, tailored shirts buttoned to the neck. In the summer, she wore shapeless tunics. If she was ever going to get tenure at this college, she had to appear professional. Academic.

  Liam looked academic and sexy at the same time. Chinos, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue tie to set off his blue eyes.

  Meg smiled at him. Leaning back in her chair, she stretched her arms and yawned. “The maintenance men,” she explained. “They’ve been promising to bring me a decent chair for two weeks.”

  “Let me take a look.”

  Before she could object, Liam was in her space, filling up her incredibly small office. He squatted behind her chair and fiddled with the knob, trying to tighten it. His breath stirred her hair. His knuckles brushed her shoulders.

  Please don’t say I’m too big for this chair, Meg prayed silently. She knew the chair was too small for her; it was too small for almost anyone. She guessed the college ordered these chairs because they were cheap or had been discarded by some other university system.

  “This thing is hopeless,” Liam decided. Standing up, he leaned over Meg and picked up her phone. He hit a few numbers. “Maintenance? Professor Liam Larson here in LB20. I need a new desk chair. This one’s broken. Immediately. Thank you.”

  Hanging up the phone, he grinned at Meg. “The word professor has got to be good for something.”

  “You could have said Dr. Larson,” Meg told him.

  “Nah. Then I’d have to take out his appendix.” Liam pushed a stack of papers out of the way and slid his slender butt onto Meg’s desk. His long legs dangled down in front of her three drawers.

  Meg shoved her chair away from the desk. And Liam. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll see if anything happens.” Liam looked down at her piles of work. “Exams?”

  “Always.”

  “Only three more weeks till end of semester. What are you doing this summer?”

  Meg rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m going to work on my Alcott book. I’m determined to finish it.”

  “Seriously? You’re not teaching summer school? But you’re the best teacher we’ve got. The students will be devastated.”

  Meg rolled her eyes in reaction to his compliment, but she knew he meant what he said. She was a favorite of the students, and Liam admired her for it. “Liam, I’ve scrimped for a year to save enough money to live on for three months. I’ll subsist on cereal and water. No movies. No frills. No clothes. Just work.”

  A lopsided smile crossed his face. “No clothes? How about letting me come be your editorial assistant?”

  Meg felt herself blush. “I mean I won’t buy any new clothes. Austerity is the rule for the summer.”

  Liam lowered his eyelids into a bedroom eyes stare. She hated when he did it; it made her all shivery and silly feeling. “I’d better plan to take you out to dinner at least once a week. For the sake of the college. We don’t want our professors dying of starvation.”

  Her resolve almost melted in the warmth of his smile. She reminded herself that Liam was five years younger than she was—significant years, impetuous, impulsive, romantic years, when you were allowed to make mistakes. That Liam was intellectually, academically mature was obvious. He’d skipped grades in elementary school and high school, sped through his BA and MA, won his PhD, and published his book of poems to great acclaim by the tender age of twenty-six. But emotional maturity was different, and brilliant scholars were often emotionally stunted.

  She could tell he had a crush on her. True, they were the best of friends and they both were dedicated teachers. They read each other’s essays in draft form and expertly critiqued each other. But Meg couldn’t allow it to go any further. Liam was so handsome—he was almost beautiful. It would be easy to allow herself to respond to him. That would lead her, she was certain, to heartbreak.

  Her phone rang. Literally saved by the bell. She snatched it up.

  “Meg? Sweetheart, it’s Mommy.”

  Meg straightened in her chair, alerted by her mother’s voice. “Are you okay, Mom?”

  “Meggie, I’m fine. Listen, though, I have to tell you something. It’s a hard thing to say. Meggie, your father died.”

  ——

  Seated on the front steps of the house on Lily Street, Meg blinked away the memory of her mother’s phone call. Since that day, time had accordioned into a blur of action: Packing for the island. The funeral. The reading of the will in Frank Boyd’s office and her father’s bizarre and manipulative last letter, so typical of Rory Randall, a lightning bolt from the hand of the all-powerful Zeus who even after his death arranged the lives of his daughters, without, as usual, asking their opinions, and especially without, as usual, being there to respond to the emotional fallout.

  All right, Meg couldn’t control it, but she could contain it. She could use it. She needed three months to work on her book. Now she had them, and in a historic house on a magical island. That her half sister and stepsister were going to share the house did not mean this would be hell on earth. She would be polite but aloof. She would be poised, dignified, restrained. So would Arden and Jenny. The three of th
em were adults, after all.

  THREE

  As a child, Jenny had been sad not to have a father. She hadn’t been embarrassed, because several other kids at school didn’t have fathers, or had fathers who lived far away and never visited. But she minded not having even a photograph of her father. Her mother would say only that she didn’t know who Jenny’s father was, and that was that. For years as a little girl, Jenny daydreamed about meeting her father someday. Her mother had such glossy black hair, and Jenny’s was dramatically black, too. She wondered if her father’s hair was also black, like a pirate’s or a Gypsy’s.

  When she was ten, her mother married Rory Randall. He legally adopted Jenny, and he loved her as much, he promised, as he loved his biological daughters, Meg and Arden. He made her mother happy at last, which relieved and thrilled Jenny, and as the years went by, she didn’t wonder about her “real” father so much. For long stretches of time, she never thought about him at all.

  She did mind that Rory Randall had red hair and so did his first two daughters, while Jenny’s was black. So when the three were together with their father, everyone assumed that Arden and Meg were Rory’s daughters, which, of course, they were. Jenny was his daughter, too, his chosen daughter. If she could have worn a sign on her chest stating that she was Rory Randall’s daughter, she would have. It was wonderful to have a father.

  Having sisters had been wonderful, too—for a while. Jenny was exactly Meg’s age, three years younger than Arden. The first year of their life together was chaotic, with Arden and Meg living mostly at their mothers’ but staying at the Nantucket house for the summer.

  The second year had been the year of The Exile, and since then, although they saw one another, Arden and Meg had not accepted Jenny as a real sister.

  Well, they would have to now.

  They had to live with her for three entire months in the same house. As if they were family.

  Jenny had seen Arden’s and Meg’s faces when the lawyer read their father’s letter. Meg had gone white. Arden’s lips had thinned in anger. Then Arden and Meg looked at each other and something passed between the two of them, an unspoken message they did not even think to share with Jenny.

  It was partly her mother’s fault, Jenny knew. She could understand why Justine told Rory the other two girls were not allowed to come to the summer house anymore, and back then, when she was eleven years old, she’d been smugly, foolishly glad. That made Rory all hers. He had chosen her, he had adopted her, and then, as if in a fairy tale, the stepsisters had been whisked out of sight, out of mind. She hadn’t cared about Meg and Arden’s feelings.

  Well, Jenny had paid for her mother’s decision and for her own childish sense of triumph. Twenty years had passed, and she’d been raised as an only child. During those years, their father did “get his girls all together” from time to time in Boston, taking the three of them out to lavish meals in la-di-da restaurants or treating them to The Nutcracker ballet at Christmas. But even though, in front of their father or any of their mothers, the three behaved politely, Jenny had no doubt Arden and Meg hated her.

  Jenny was hoping they’d do better this summer. Since their father’s letter had decreed they spend three months together, it wasn’t unreasonable for her to expect that slowly, gradually, Arden and Meg would get used to Jenny’s presence, and start to like her just a little, and then accept her a little more, and then, eventually, welcome her into their sisterhood, for they were all, one way or another, daughters of Rory Randall.

  Jenny had e-mailed the other two to inform them she had a Jeep Cherokee, so they wouldn’t need to bring a car to the island. The house was in town, an easy walk to the post office, library, even to Grand Union. They could share the Jeep. But Meg had insisted on bringing her Volvo over because she had so many boxes of books. Arden had, through e-mail, sided with Meg, stating that having two vehicles at their disposal would prevent any awkwardness if more than one person absolutely needed a car at the same time. So fine. The short drive next to the house had just enough room for two cars.

  As for bedrooms, Jenny had already staked her claim. One of the two spacious front bedrooms had been her bedroom for more than twenty years. After college, when she first had started up her computer business on the island, Rory and Justine still came down from Boston for summers and holidays. Jenny had installed her bank of computers, printers, and monitors at one end of her bedroom in order not to invade her parents’ space.

  Jenny had informed Meg and Arden of her possession of the front bedroom in her last e-mail. In a moment of guilty private gloating, she’d Express Mailed them newly copied keys in case she wasn’t there when they arrived.

  Because she had keys to the house and they didn’t.

  It was like being schizophrenic! Half the time Jenny longed for her sisters’ affection; the other half of the time she battled to one-up them. And she was thirty-one years old. When did a person ever outgrow childish behavior?

  Today she’d certainly stormed the citadel of selflessness. She’d gone to all the markets and stocked up on baskets of fresh vegetables, bags of staples, and wine. By the time she’d finished the shopping, it was past noon, and she arrived back at the house to discover a Volvo in the drive.

  Her heart thumped. Meg was here.

  “Hello!” Jenny called as she elbowed the back door open and humped the bags of groceries through the mudroom and into the kitchen.

  Footsteps clattered down the back stairs. Meg appeared. She looked younger than she had at the funeral—well, of course she would, they all would, they had all been so formal and somber at the funeral and the reading of the will.

  Meg had her amazing golden-red hair pulled back in a bushy ponytail. She wore a pale lime sundress that set off her blue-green eyes. Her skin held the pallor of an academic who never did sports, or in Meg’s parlance, the radiance of a virtuous maiden. Whatever, she was dazzling.

  Jenny wore jeans and a white cotton shirt. She thought she looked practical, capable, independent, adult, all that.

  Meg skidded to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh. Jenny. Hi.” Her smile was anxious.

  Jenny had warned herself it would be this way; it would be weird if their first interactions weren’t lukewarm at best. She was certain Meg was hoping it was Arden she’d see first, that Arden would be here so the two of them could gang up on Jenny just like always. Jenny had steeled her heart.

  No chance of any sort of sisterly hug. With considerable effort, Jenny tried for a light, friendly tone. “Meg. You’re here! Hi! Come in. Well, of course you can come in whenever you want to, I mean, because …” She was already tongue-tied. “I bought groceries. Stuff for breakfast and bread. Sandwich and salad makings. Some wine. To get us started.”

  “What a good idea.” Meg hesitated. “Um, any more in the car that I could bring in?”

  “Yeah, that would be great.”

  The screen door banged as Meg slipped outside, and banged again as she returned, arms loaded. “You got a lot of food,” Meg said, setting the groceries on the counter. “I’ll have to reimburse you for my share.”

  “Yeah, let’s wait till Arden’s here and we can sit down and draw up a weekly meal menu and shopping list.”

  Again, a pause. “Oh, okay. Although I plan to take care of my own meals. I need to watch my weight. I intend to get in shape.”

  Progress, Jenny thought. Meg was sharing something personal. Turning around, she said, “Please. You already have a shape like Marilyn Monroe’s.”

  Meg snorted. “I wish. No, I need to lose weight. But mostly I’ll focus on my work.”

  “Don’t you teach at a college?”

  “I do, but I’ve got the summer off. I’m going to write a book about May Alcott.”

  “Oh, Louisa May Alcott. I read her—”

  “No, May Alcott. Her younger sister. She was a brilliant artist and no one knows about her.” Meg came alive as she spoke, her cheeks pinking, her eyes sparkling. “She was so talented, her work
was chosen over Mary Cassatt’s to be exhibited in the 1877 Paris Salon.”

  Jenny arched her eyebrows, trying to express her interest in this, although really she had no idea what Meg was going on about. Realizing that Meg wanted some kind of response, she racked her brain. “Um, isn’t there a Meg in Little Women?”

  “Yes, there is, Jenny. But I’m not at all like Meg. And Louisa May Alcott’s real sister, May Alcott, the youngest sister, had an amazing life!”

  Jenny bristled. “My life isn’t so very unamazing.”

  “W-what?” Meg sputtered. “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that …” She frowned. “I’d better get these groceries put away.”

  “Right,” Jenny agreed. “It’s not really hot yet, but I did buy some ice cream and some yogurt. I don’t know which bag it’s in. Also some fruit, watermelon and grapes that need to be cold.” She was babbling now, kicking herself for reacting so defensively to Meg’s remarks instead of just keeping her mouth shut and listening.

  For a few minutes they worked side by side in something like companionship, wordlessly dividing the task so that Meg put away refrigerated items and Jenny put away everything else because, understandably, Jenny knew what each cupboard held and Meg didn’t.

  “Now!” Jenny set her hands on her hips and looked around the room. “I think we should make some iced tea and enjoy a nice cool glass in the backyard.”

  “Oh.” Pause. Meg looked at her watch. “Okay.”

  Jenny set about putting the kettle on to boil and filling the old brown teapot with Lipton bags. “Have you unpacked?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “I have. I took the back bedroom.”

  Jenny paused. “The back bedroom? For heaven’s sake, why? It’s the smallest room and the furniture is so shabby.”

  “I think it’s adorable. I want to sit at the desk by the window and work on my book.”

  “The desk is awfully rickety. I’m not even sure the air-conditioning reaches back that far.…” Jenny poured the boiling water into the pot to steep the tea.