listen to stories about her father as a young man, putting together the pieces of the puzzle that made up her father’s life.
There have been others. Many others. People who had known her father, who had loved him, who were shocked by the story but eager to get to know Bee, help her put her history together, find out who she really is.
Now she is writing a book. Part memoir, part biography, she is writing about her life: growing up thinking her family was perfect, marrying a man with whom she thought she could mirror her parents’ marriage, then discovering everything she thought was true and real was in fact a sham.
She is writing about the Powell family. How they reached the island, how they came to be such an important part of Nantucket’s history. And she is writing about her father. His life, his marriage to Nan, the trouble that led to him faking a suicide; how life came full circle, finally bringing him home.
She misses him still, but writing this book has brought him to life again. She feels him around her, supporting her, loving her, gently encouraging her and leading her to people and places she is convinced she would not have found had he not been somewhere, watching over her.
After a few minutes of feeling the early morning sun wash over her, Bee takes her coffee to her computer in her bedroom, and opens her notebook, reviewing what she wrote yesterday, what she has to write today.
She still doesn’t think of herself as a writer, yet over the past year she has had three short stories published, one in the back of the New York Times magazine. Just a few weeks ago she sent a synopsis of her book and three sample chapters to one of the big New York agents, fully expecting never to hear from them.
Three days later the agent called her, said she loved it, could they meet.
Now she has an agent, and as soon as the book is finished they are sending it out to the publishing houses. Bee still can’t quite believe it. She celebrated with the girls when she found out: champagne for Bee, sparkling apple cider for the girls, as they danced around the deck, cheering.
Today will be a difficult day to write. Some days it comes so easily, like writing on auto-pilot, the words flowing from her fingers, her mind so calm it is as if the book is writing itself. Other days it is like squeezing blood from a stone.
Bee has learned the secret—the magic tool that separates the true writers from the people who merely dream of being writers, who have a wonderful idea but never get started, or get started but never finish. She has learned the secret of discipline, of plowing through even when it feels like she has nothing to say; of writing even though she doesn’t know what to write; of writing even when there are days, like today, when she is fighting the excitement of the party tonight—the farewell bash at Windermere, for Nan is moving out of the house next week.
Bee has come to love Nan, to think of her as a second mother. She has taken to dropping in at Windermere almost daily, often with the girls, who now, unsurprisingly, call Nan “Nanna,” since Nan is more of a grandmother to them than Bee’s own mother.
Bee had never quite understood what family meant. She had always ached for a large family, had grown up feeling she was missing something. What she has come to understand since her father passed away, is that the people with whom you surround yourself, the people you love, become your family. Whether there are blood ties or not.
Nan is now her family. And Michael, who she thinks of as her brother, and Daff, and Jess. These people, who she didn’t know a year ago, are now part of the fabric of her life, have helped her settle down on this island that is already more of a home than anywhere else she has ever lived.
There is more to it. For the first time in her life, Bee is comfortable in her skin. No longer buttoned up, playing the part of the successful suburban housewife in her pink and green Capri pants, her sparkly gold and diamond jewelry, her hair perfectly blown out twice a week at Peter Coppola, lunching with girlfriends at V or Zest, or swinging into school in her Lexus wagon to