Sanctuary Island (2 page)

Putting aside her own misgivings, Ella made her voice as gentle as she could. “I’m sure it will be. And hey, I think I saw a ladies’ room sign on the lower deck when we first got on the ferry. Want to go check it out? I’ll help you down the stairs.”

Merry sat up straight, giving Ella the same bright, plucky grin that had wrapped her around her baby sister’s little finger since they were kids.

“No, thanks. I want to stay on the top deck where I can get a good look at the island. I can’t believe we’re the only ones up here! I guess this must be the off season. I can’t wait to see it in a couple of months—I bet it’s packed!”

Ella felt as if her body had frozen to the metal bench. “A couple of months?”

Merry’s shoulders hunched up slightly and the grin dropped off her face, but Ella couldn’t back down.

“Merry. You can’t seriously be planning to stay that long.”

“Can’t we play it by ear?” Merry pleaded. “I mean, she’s our mother. And we haven’t seen her in fifteen years. You really think two weeks is going to be enough time to get to know each other?”

“I’ve only got two weeks of vacation,” Ella hedged. Two weeks of forced leave thrust on her by her worried, frustrated boss was more like it, but Ella didn’t say that. “Come on, we need to stick to the plan.”

“Oh, the almighty
plan
. Screw your plan! I’m perfectly happy to throw myself open to destiny and see where it takes me.”

Sure, because that always turns out so great for you.

The words stung the tip of Ella’s tongue, sharp and bitter, but she swallowed them back.

“Besides, it’s not like you’re happy at that stupid job, anyway,” Merry said, defiance trembling through her low voice.

The unconscious echo of the speech Ella’s boss gave her only days ago jolted Ella like a slap to the face. Merry couldn’t know what Paul Bishop had said that afternoon when he’d called her into his elegant, wood-paneled office and closed the door. When he’d shaken her carefully constructed world down to its foundations.

Ella gave her sister the same reply she’d given Bishop. “I’m good at what I do. Yes, commercial real estate is slumping, but it’s a cyclical business. I’ll be back on top before you know it.”

Underneath the firm answer, though, Ella was aware of the same puzzling sense she’d had in the meeting with Bishop—the sense that there was something she wasn’t understanding, some concept just outside her grasp.

Because all she could honestly think was,
What the hell does my happiness have to do with anything?

Her job at Bishop Properties paid well, offered benefits, and until recently, had provided the kind of security Ella had been looking for her whole life.

Silence was a weird thing, Ella reflected as the next couple of minutes brought nothing but the rush of the wind and the low thrum of the engine vibrating through the deck.

She knew Merry better than anyone in the world. They had the same blue eyes, the same slight dimple in their chins, the same brown hair—although Merry had dyed hers a deep, purplish magenta this week, and next week it could easily be platinum blond—but that’s where the similarities ended.

Still, at only three years apart, they were closer than any sisters Ella knew. As close as twins, with their own shorthand language, mannerisms, and expressions, and the ability to communicate volumes with just the quirk of a brow. They could talk for hours or sit in a completely companionable quiet together, and just be.

But even as close as they were, Ella couldn’t bring herself to admit exactly how near she was to freaking out about seeing Jo Ellen Hollister again.

Merry squirmed in her seat, mouth turned down in an unhappy curve, and Ella blew out a breath. “Just hold on, sweetie. If you don’t want to use the bathroom on the ferry, that’s okay. I think we’re almost there, and the ferry bathroom is probably a health inspector’s nightmare, anyway.”

“No, that’s not what … Look. Ella. I know I’m kind of a mess, but you’re not the only sister who gets to worry. For the last year or so, I’ve wanted to say something about that job. When you told me you were taking a vacation, I was so relieved, because you were, like,
this close
to burning out. All you do is work. You don’t go out, you don’t have friends, you don’t date.” Real concern laced Merry’s husky voice, and one of her slim hands fluttered almost unconsciously to rest on the hard roundness of her stomach.

“Hey! I have friends,” Ella protested, ignoring the comment about her dating life. Who had time to date? She couldn’t imagine devoting precious hours to the awkward, messy, pointless process of dating. Someday, maybe, but now? When the job she’d fought and studied and lived for was in jeopardy, and her baby sister was about to have a baby of her own?

No. Ella had more important things to worry about than dating.

Merry gave her the patented Little Sister Eye-roll of Doom. “Please. We live together. I know everyone you know. Your best friend is your therapist. And when you’re not at work, you’re at the apartment on your laptop, researching properties.”

“Adrienne hasn’t been my therapist for years and you know it, so it’s completely fine that we meet up for lunch every now and then as friends. As for the rest of it, you’ve got enough hobbies for both of us,” Ella said fondly. “Maybe I’m a workaholic. But I’m trying to do better! An island vacation ought to get me off the hook for a year, at least.”

She was trying to make a joke out of it, mostly to avoid having Merry press any harder on the reasons behind Ella’s abrupt willingness to use vacation days to visit the mother she’d long ago written off, but Merry didn’t smile.

Ducking her head, Merry said, “I know this isn’t exactly the vacation of your dreams—I know you’re only here because of me, and I want you to know I appreciate it. I can’t imagine going through this alone.”

Ella swallowed around the lump thickening her throat and leaned in for a hug. “Don’t worry about me—I graduated from therapy, remember? I worked through all my issues about this. And sure, maybe for me that means being fine with the status quo of turning down all of Jo’s attempts at reconciliation. But I understand why you don’t feel the same way. And, sweetie, you’ll never have to be alone,” she said into the soft hair at her sister’s temple. “Not as long as you have me.”

The ferry blared its low, bleating horn. Merry pulled back, her eyes filled with excitement and nerves.

Craning her neck, Ella saw that they were pulling up to a wide wooden dock that ended in a gravel parking lot. A small, whitewashed building squatted at the top of the gravel hill stretching a barrier arm across the narrow road that led to the interior of the island. The words “Summer Harbor” were painted across the side of the building in flowy script, the letters scoured to a faded blue by the salty breeze.

The dock had been built up from the beach where a tumble of large, red-brown rocks formed a sloping wall between the flat circle of gravel and the surprisingly long stretch of untouched sand. Squinting, Ella made out a rickety set of steps connecting the two.

After the incessant ebb and flow of the crowds thronging the streets of Washington, it was almost surreal to stare down at what seemed like miles of pristine beach, empty of everything except a couple of sandpipers hopping comically through the foam of receding waves.

The wind was so briny Ella could taste it on the tip of her tongue. Gulls swooped and shrieked, their white wings glowing in the morning light, and Ella stood up to latch on to the railing.

Even though her feet were firmly planted on the rumbling deck, she somehow felt pitched forward, poised on the brink of something she couldn’t name.

Ella didn’t believe in fate or destiny. She didn’t believe in much of anything beyond the need to work for independence, the security of having a good plan, and the unbreakable bonds of loyalty and love that tied her to Merry. Believing in things was more in Merry’s line.

But as a shiver of surprising anticipation traced down Ella’s spine, she couldn’t escape the feeling that Sanctuary Island was exactly where she was supposed to be.

CHAPTER 2

Ella carefully navigated their car’s slow, painstaking way down the corroded ramp, very aware of the precious cargo of Merry and her unborn baby strapped into the passenger seat.

She drove across the parking area to the little white shack and paused in front of the red-striped automatic arm. Rolling her window down to try and get a better look through the uncovered window cut into the side of the building, Ella wondered if she was supposed to honk to get someone’s attention.

A large, hulking figure with a strangely shaped head stirred in the shadows of the gatehouse. The figure moved with an odd, shambling gait, and when a meaty fist slid back the glass window in the side of the booth, Ella jumped.

An older man beamed out at them, sunlight sparking red and gold off the points of the scratched, dented metal crown cocked at a rakish angle over his left eyebrow.

“Good day! I’m King of the Gateway to Sanctuary. How can I help you ladies?”

He spoke in a rich, plummy, obviously fake British accent, his underlying Southern diphthongs twanging through the words.

Ella opened her mouth, then closed it again. The self-proclaimed royal leaned a companionable elbow, regally clad in a red-and-black checked flannel, on the windowsill and regarded the two women with considerable interest.

“We … would like permission to enter the island,” Ella said, flicking a glance at the rearview mirror where the few other cars that had come over on the ferry were forming a line behind them.

The king turned on the high beams, smiling widely enough to reveal crooked, tobacco-stained teeth and a disarming pair of dimples. “Well, of course! That’s what everyone wants. But we can’t just let any old so-and-so in, now can we? So. Who are you?”

Rattled, Ella reached for her purse and dug through it for her driver’s license. What was this, Communist Russia? Was she going to have to produce her papers next? But when she held out the license, the king merely gave her a pitying look and made no move to examine it.

“No, no, no. I don’t need to know your outsider name—I need to know your insider name. Who you are. Deep inside.”

Beside her, Merry stifled a giggle, then winced uncomfortably as she pressed a hand to her lower stomach.

Please don’t have an accident in this car,
Ella thought frantically.
I need the deposit back!

Turning back to the gatekeeper, Ella put on her best calm, authoritative smile—the smile she used to convince real estate developers to sign on the dotted line. She sized up the King of the Gateway the same way she’d size up anyone she faced across the negotiating table.

First, establish a rapport.

“What’s your name, sir?”

“King Sanderson,” he replied, puffing out his chest.

Of course it was. “Well, your highness, it’s been a very long drive, and my sister is in dire need of a ladies’ room. If you could tell us what we need to do…”

“I see,” he said, stroking his nonexistent beard meditatively. “Travelers from afar…”

“Is there a fee of some kind?” Ella swallowed, mentally tallying up the price of the rental car plus the ferry, the unexpected hotel, now this. “I’ve got cash. I think. Somewhere—Merry, can you grab my purse?”

“Sisters,” the king mused. “A pair of sisters … hmmm…”

He banged his hand suddenly against the wall of the booth, startling the wallet right out of Ella’s hand.

“By Jove, I’ve got it!” The man pointed one fleshy finger at them triumphantly, crowing, “I knew I’d get it! You’ve come a long way, through wind and rain, to see someone special—the woman who gave you life—for the first time in years.”

Ella stared, an echo of that odd, fated feeling reverberating through her chest. “How did you know that?”

He slapped the outer wall of the booth again, apparently tickled. “Shoot! Because your mama told me, that’s why! You’re Jo Ellen Hollister’s girls, I should have known from the get-go—you’ve got the look of the Hollister women about you. Come on in! We’ve been expecting y’all.”

“Thanks,” Ella said with some relief. She eased her foot off the brake, but his royal highness wasn’t quite finished yet.

“I hope you girls are ready for this.” He shook his grizzled head slowly, like a sleepy lion.

Stomach tightening into a knot, Ella wanted to ignore him—but, of course, Merry had to lean across her and ask, “Ready for what?”

His eyes took on a sharpness that somehow made him seem more there, all of a sudden.

“This island … it’s good for what ails you. It’ll change your life, if you let it, but like any great healing—it comes at a price.”

Ella felt the hairs along her arms lift and prickle. Plastering on a determined smile, she said, “Okay, thank you for the warning. Bye now!”

“Well, that was weird,” Merry said after Ella rolled her window up. “I wonder what he meant.”

“He meant,” Ella said firmly, “that he’s an elderly gentleman who probably ought to be in an assisted living home somewhere, instead of manning that gatehouse all by himself. I wouldn’t worry about anything he said.”

“I guess it’s good, though, right?” Merry licked her lips nervously as the wooden arm of the guard booth slowly lifted and the king waved them through with a benevolent smile. “That she talked about our visit?”

“Sure, otherwise we’d be stuck baring our souls to his highness back there,” Ella said, summoning up a smile to soothe her sister’s palpable anxiety.

The narrow paved road took them straight through the heart of downtown Sanctuary—which they knew because there was a banner splayed over the road that said
THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN SANCTUARY
in faded red lettering.

Ella kept her breathing steady and even. So what if every heartbeat brought them closer to the moment when she’d look her mother in the eye for the first time since she was thirteen years old? She’d worked hard to move past the lingering issues of her childhood, and she’d succeeded. In the grand scheme of her life, Jo Ellen Hollister was completely unimportant.