Chapter One Sixteen Years Later Effie Olsen knew it was just after sunup before she opened her eyes. She''d spent the first seventeen years of her life on Alder Isle, and even though she''d been gone for another sixteen, she could still tell time by how the island sun felt on her skin. If Effie had to guess, she''d put it at just before 5:00. The late May morning light was bright and insistent, overly cheery in the most obnoxious way. Four fifty-nine a.m. was too early for optimism, but try telling Maine that. Or more specifically, try telling that to an island off the midcoast of Maine with a full-time population of fifteen hundred.
An island that was once quiet and uncool, but was now ballooning with tourists for much of the year-tourists who''d booked their reservations months in advance for one of the country''s best new restaurants. Effie had woken up on an island that was eight miles long and seven miles wide. An island that was hard to get to and damn near impossible to leave. An island that ignored the fact Maine was supposed to have foggy, gray mornings. Effie rolled over and groaned. Her head was pounding, and her mouth felt dry. Eyes still shut to the world, she reached for her phone on the nightstand, except . Hmmm.
The nightstand wasn''t there. Her hand fell to the side of the bed and touched exposed mattress. There was no fitted sheet, and Effie recoiled at the realization. Ew. A jersey knit sheet was crumpled down by her feet. Shitballs. She understood she wasn''t in her childhood room, but there was no good reason for that. Where was she? Her mind raced, although the dull heaviness in her skull made it hard to think.
She pulled her knees in close to her chest, curled up like a rabbit in a warren, and tried to piece together the last twenty-four hours. Her plane had landed at the Bangor airport after flights from San Francisco to New York to Maine. Her father, Samuel, and younger sister, Ingrid, picked her up with a steaming travel mug of milky coffee and a bag of pizza-flavored Combos. Which was a sweet throwback to her favorite teenage breakfast, but come on, Dad. Heard of granola? Sophomore-year Effie would have happily eaten a whole bag of cheese-filled crackers before 9:00 a.m., but thirty-three-year-old Effie preferred to live by structured, sensible rules. (With, apparently, the exception of waking up in strange bedrooms after a day of cross-country travel.
) On the drive from the airport to the coastal town of Rockland, Effie and her father and sister danced politely around any real conversation until Ingrid blurted out the question Effie had been hoping to avoid. "After sixteen years away, why''d you come home now?" Effie pointed out how she''d come home for Ingrid''s high school graduation and for a handful of Christmases. How both Ingrid and her father had visited her in New York, in Italy, and in San Francisco, where she''d been working as a professional chef. She didn''t have the heart to tell them that she had returned this summer, for the whole summer, out of desperation only. She didn''t have words gentle enough to explain that Alder Isle always felt too small and a little stifling for her big career goals. And she didn''t have the courage to tell them she''d just gotten fired from her dream job. She had too much pride to admit that after years of globe-trotting with a knife bag and a few chef''s coats, she was finally, undeniably, very regrettably broke. And that she was fresh out of backup plans.
(Even now, in this strange bed, she wondered if she''d find the courage to be fully honest before September rolled around.) When they reached Rockland, her dad drove his truck right by an enormous queue of cars. Although the ferry had been booked days ago and there was no more vehicle passage available, dear old dad sometimes played poker with the ticket scanner, so they were allowed to squeeze onto the midmorning boat. On the two-hour ride to Alder Isle, Effie successfully diverted every question about herself, instead coaxing Ingrid-a Generation Z financial prodigy who worked as a strategy consultant for one of the big crypto companies-to explain once again what an NFT was, and asking her father to share the updates from Meadowsweet Scoops, his ice cream shop in town. She bit her tongue to hold back questions about her childhood best friend. Effie knew he still lived in town, on the same street he''d grown up on. But she never asked about him specifically when her family shared island life updates. Probing about Ernie would have felt like ripping open an old wound.
One that still smarted every time she touched it. The ferry docked. They drove the half mile into town and then another half toward the library and school. Effie watched out the window as familiar scenery passed. She''d avoided this island for almost as long as she had lived on it, but it still looked, smelled, and sounded the same. Simple houses with graying shingles. Doors in varying shades of sea-foam green, teal, and marine blue. Porthole windows, unselfconsciously twee.
Yellow lobster crates stacked five high in side yards. Piles of granite heaped next to front doors, passing as decor. Poppies and irises growing from cracks in the crumbling sidewalks. A pickup bumping down the road with two kids sitting on lawn chairs in the bed. Road dust. Bright sun. Screeching gulls. Dougie''s lobster roll truck on the corner.
The line outside it. A breeze. Salty air. Effie sighed. It wasn''t home anymore, but it felt achingly familiar. She hated that; hated that she still felt attached to a place she''d tried desperately to disown. Alder Isle was a perfectly fine little island. If you didn''t mind living a perfectly fine little life.
Her dad turned onto Haven Street and pulled the Tacoma into their drive. Effie stepped out and looked up at the house, scrunched her nose. It was exactly the same. Two stories tall, weathered cedar shakes. The real ones, not the newer style shingles. Four four-paneled windows on the front. A lawn with grass way too long to be considered presentable and half a dozen "projects" scattered around the property, including a riding mower missing the seat. Effie''s red Schwinn was leaning up against the garage, but, her father assured her, it had not been there for the last dozen-plus years.
He''d put air in the tires and greased the chains and set it out for her arrival. To welcome her home. And because she didn''t have a car. It was a vintage cruiser, and it looked its age. But it was hers. Her set of wheels for the next three months. The bossiest part of Effie''s brain shouted she ought to be embarrassed about needing her childhood bicycle. But another, more tender part felt a fondness for it.
Effie waved goodbye to her sister, who started off toward the rented house she shared with her boyfriend, a cook at Brown Butter, a wildly popular, Michelin-starred restaurant. Well, good for Ingrid. Not that Effie was jealous about the house or the boyfriend or even the good relationship her sister had with their mother since her parents'' divorce. She wasn''t. She''d rather live alone, out of a suitcase, for the rest of her life than settle down here. Inside the house, Effie walked up the stairs, her extra-large luggage feeling extra heavy as it thumped against the wood flooring. The suitcase contained the contents of her entire life. She moved often and tried not to become too attached to any one place.
It was risky, working in restaurants. She''d never met a restaurant owner she could trust, so she''d become nimble and efficiently self-sufficient. The downside of that strategy was that packing up and moving to a new city or country every year or so was financially devastating. After sixteen years in the business, Effie was financially, mentally, and emotionally devastated. She heaved the suitcase onto the bed, and a bit of her thick, white-blond hair fell into her eye. Annoyed, she rummaged in her pocket for a bobby pin and stuck it in angrily, plastering the lock back into its ponytail. She looked around, further annoyed at the rogue corner of her heart that warmed at the familiar sameness of her childhood room. Same sky-blue shag rug, same white iron bedpost, same crinkly paper lamp hanging from the ceiling.
Same collection of cookbooks and Alder Isle yearbooks on the shelf. Same stupid lobster painting on the wall. God, Maine was so predictable. It would never be half as exciting as all the places Effie had traveled. But that was the appeal of this summer, wasn''t it? There was safety in the steadiness. She abandoned her suitcase and padded back downstairs to make a BLT for herself and a TLT for her dad. She used thick, center-cut bacon for herself; tofu for him. Beefsteak tomatoes on toasted white bread.
A big smear of Cains mayonnaise. After eating and washing the dishes and leaving them to dry, they walked into town together, to the Meadowsweet Scoops shop. Her father had made a handful of upgrades to the shop, and Effie marveled at how modern and sophisticated it looked. She nodded as he described the state-of-the-art freezer and the elaborate toppings station that was big enough for four flavors of sprinkles. Meadowsweet Scoops had been her parents'' pet project. And after they divorced almost twenty years ago, it became his everything. "I love it, Dad," Effie said, and kissed him on the cheek. He stayed to open the shop for the evening, and she walked back home, averting her eyes as she passed Brown Butter.
She would see it soon enough. Effie let herself in the back door of her house-her dad''s house, she corrected herself-changed into.