No Beach Like Nantucket Read online

  No Beach Like Nantucket

  A Sweet Island Inn Novel (Book Two)

  Grace Palmer

  Copyright © 2020 by Grace Palmer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

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  Also by Grace Palmer

  No Beach Like Nantucket

  I. One Year Later

  1. Mae

  2. Holly

  3. Eliza

  4. Holly

  5. Mae

  6. Brent

  7. Sara

  8. Eliza

  9. Sara

  10. Brent

  11. Holly

  12. Brent

  13. Sara

  14. Mae

  II. Two Weeks Later

  15. Mae

  16. Brent

  17. Mae

  18. Brent

  19. Holly

  20. Eliza

  21. Brent

  22. Holly

  23. Brent

  24. Eliza

  25. Mae

  26. Eliza

  27. Mae

  III. Six Weeks Later

  28. Sara

  29. Brent

  30. Eliza

  31. Holly

  32. Eliza

  33. Brent

  34. Holly

  35. Mae

  36. Sara

  37. Eliza

  38. Sara

  39. Brent

  40. Eliza

  IV. Opening Night

  41. Sara

  42. Holly

  43. Sara

  44. Brent

  45. Holly

  46. Sara

  47. Brent

  48. Mae

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  Also by Grace Palmer

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  Also by Grace Palmer

  Sweet Island Inn Series

  No Home Like Nantucket (Book 1)

  No Beach Like Nantucket (Book 2)

  No Wedding Like Nantucket (Book 3)

  No Beach Like Nantucket

  Sweet Island Inn Series (Book Two)

  The Bensons badly need a fresh start. Can they find peace and happiness on the beaches of Nantucket?

  * * *

  Last summer, a storm blew the Benson family’s lives to bits.

  It’s been almost a year since that fateful day.

  Since they learned that life at the beach isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

  * * *

  They’re doing their best to pick up the pieces.

  Mae is running the Sweet Island Inn.

  Eliza is learning what it means to be a mother.

  Sara is rediscovering her passion in the wake of heartbreak.

  Holly is searching for stability in her marriage.

  And Brent is—well, Brent isn’t doing so great.

  * * *

  Despite these challenges, they just might make it—if they can stick together.

  But right when it seems like they’re going to be okay, terrible news strikes.

  A call from Aunt Toni changes everything.

  And suddenly, Nantucket doesn’t feel quite like home anymore.

  * * *

  Come book your stay at Nantucket’s Sweet Island Inn—where the water is warm, the sun is shining, and everyone welcomes you like family—in this heartwarming, inspirational women’s fiction beach read from author Grace Palmer.

  Part I

  One Year Later

  1

  Mae

  A warm Friday morning in April.

  “More coffee?”

  “That would be lovely, thank you.” Dominic looked up at Mae and gave her a broad smile.

  It had become a morning ritual between the two of them—sitting on the first-floor wraparound porch of the Sweet Island Inn and sharing the first cup of coffee of the day. Half the time, they didn’t even say much of anything. Instead, they just sat there, soaking up the sunrise and each other’s presence. The company was nice, as was the stillness, before the hustle and bustle of an innkeeper’s never-ending work began.

  It was strange to Mae to start her days so peacefully. After all, she’d spent most of her six decades on this earth hitting the ground running. Maybe this was a “growing older” thing. A new chapter of her life, so to speak. She still felt young at heart, but she couldn’t deny that her knees and wrists tended to get a little cranky if she got them going too abruptly first thing in the morning. Slipping into the day, like going one toe at a time into the first ocean dip of spring, felt right.

  Eventually, though, the time came when the rest of the inn’s guests would start to stir and she’d have to get going. She always felt just the slightest pang of annoyance when she heard a noise from upstairs. She still loved running the inn, but she loved these quiet morning moments with Dominic, too.

  “Is today the day?” Dominic asked with a wry grin as he took a sip of the fresh coffee she poured him.

  She settled into the rocking chair next to his. “Perhaps tomorrow,” she said with a teasing smile of her own.

  That little exchange was a ritual, too. A running joke that had started some time ago and never really stopped. He’d asked her suddenly on one of their first mornings sharing coffee on the porch if today was the day she kicked him out of the inn. Just like she’d done on that first morning and every morning since, she had said, “Perhaps tomorrow.” She didn’t mean a word of it.

  It was true that he’d been here for quite some time now. Nearly a year, actually. He’d extended his stay in Room 1 indefinitely. Mae was hardly upset about it. She liked his company, his politeness, how he knew when to ask a question or make a joke, and when to just smile and enjoy the sunshine or the snowfall.

  “Can you believe it’s been nearly a year?” she said suddenly.

  He nodded slowly. “Time certainly passes with haste. More so, the older I get, despite my protests.”

  “What a year it has been,” she murmured.

  “That it has. That it has.”

  What had happened? So much and so little at the same time. Her old life had been irretrievably shattered by the tragic loss of her husband, but she had found a new and beautiful one inside of that, like a Russian nesting doll breaking open to reveal something equally as gorgeous within. The inn was a blessing she had never anticipated. She was newly a grandmother once more, and it gave her such pleasure to see Eliza blossoming into the motherhood that she knew her eldest daughter had given up hopes of long ago. There was happiness in so many places in her world.

  There was a little corner of happiness seated with her on the porch just now. Dominic was a source of happiness in her life; there was no denying that. Theirs was a comfortable and pleasant friendship. She had come to rely on it whenever sadness reared its ugly head.

  They heard a big yawn come from upstairs. It was a warm morning, so the Robinson couple in Room 4 must have opened their window to greet the dawn. “I should get hustling,” Mae said with a tinge of sadness. Again, she felt that little irritation at having to spoil this nice, quiet moment. But such was her life and her duty to her guests. Once she was in the thick of her errands, she didn’t mind. The hummingbird side of her personality that so loved flitting from task to
task to task wouldn’t ever leave her.

  “And so begins another morning.” Dominic smiled. “Time for me to go back to sleep then, I believe.”

  Mae chuckled at that. She knew that Dominic only got up so early for her sake. He worked late into the night six or seven days a week, tapping out the beautiful words of his novel into his laptop. So, once they’d shared their coffee, he went back to bed for a few hours before getting back up and beginning his day properly. Sara had made one or two sly comments about it. “He wakes up that early just to hang out with you? Oooh lala!” Mae had just swatted her youngest daughter with a dish towel and told her to hush.

  They bid each other goodbye and went their separate ways. Mae went into the kitchen to pop her blueberry muffin mix into the oven in time to serve breakfast once the Robinsons came down and put a fresh pot of coffee on to brew.

  The rest of the day went by in a hazy blur. A trip to the grocery store to restock the inn’s pantry, a long overdue deep clean of the bathrooms in Rooms 3 and 6, and then hanging up some new pieces of art in the living room. It was a pair of paintings she’d purchased at Winter Stroll last Christmas and had been meaning to take care of ever since. She particularly liked one of them, a blurred watercolor of a Nantucket lighthouse. The color palette was soft and muted and the scene it depicted was a frigid beach in the dead of a harsh winter, but there was something indescribably beautiful about it anyway. If Nantucket could be pretty in the midst of a blizzard, then it could be pretty any time at all.

  Before she knew it, the late afternoon rays were slanting through the kitchen window, and it was time for the other event on today’s calendar. She’d been ignoring it all day long, trying not to expend too much mental energy on it. But now, here it was, up close and personal, and there was no avoiding it any longer.

  One year since the accident aboard Henry’s boat, Pour Decisions.

  One year since everything had changed forever for the Benson family.

  It had gone so fast. The year had been full of many moments both happy and sad.

  But try as she might, she couldn’t remember many of them off the top of her head. Only a few stood out: the return to Nantucket of her daughters, one by one, each for their own challenging reasons. The birth of her granddaughter. The inn, of course. The journey of her youngest son, which had been full of switchbacks and turnarounds. She hadn’t spent much time looking backwards. Onwards and upwards, as the saying went. Mae was particularly good at keeping her eyes rooted on the future.

  But today, a year to the day since the accident that took her husband, it was time to reflect. This night, at sunset, she and her children would be honoring Henry.

  Mae took a deep breath. She felt tears brewing deep down inside, but it wasn’t time for that yet. First, she would get ready. Then, she was going to meet her children at Henry’s favorite beach and remember him.

  2

  Holly

  Life had a funny way of coming full circle.

  Seven months had passed in the blink of an eye. It was April now in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The winter had been brief but brutally cold, and only now was Holly beginning to feel like she could actually thaw out and resume life as she’d once known it. Or, more accurately, as she’d wished it had always been.

  After last summer in Nantucket, she’d been on a high. Things were going to be different. Better. The way they were supposed to be. Pete was going to love her and her kids were going to listen to her and the whole world was going to fall into order around her.

  For a little while, that had actually seemed plausible.

  But not anymore. Now, it seemed like her control over her surroundings was fading away bit by bit. She was trying to grab after it, but like sand at the beach, there was just no way to keep it from slipping through her grasp.

  Which wasn’t to say that Pete didn’t love her. He’d been extra careful since their quote-unquote trial separation to make sure he told her all his Pete Things. They’d implemented new rules in their relationship: ten kisses a day at a minimum, no going to sleep angry, and the first and last thing they said each day was, “I love you.”

  That was nice. For a while, that had worked, too.

  But not anymore. Lately, the words felt hollow. The kisses felt emotionless. And while Holly wouldn’t exactly say she was going to sleep angry, she also wouldn’t say she was totally pleased when her head hit the pillow each night. She wasn’t miserable, per se. Just a little unhappy. The kind of insidious, creeping unhappiness that had blossomed into an ugly flower of discontent last summer.

  More than anything else, she was mostly worried that the whole debacle was going to happen again. And then again, and again, like a bad luck merry-go-round.

  Not unlike the mess she was currently dealing with.

  “Mrs. Goodwin?” came a serene, high-pitched voice from the other side of the secretary’s desk. “Principal O’Shaughnessy will see you now.”

  Holly sighed, picked up her purse, and walked into the principal’s office. The secretary, Marsha, gave her a sad smile as Holly passed. Marsha was a nice woman and had a son of her own in Grady’s class. She and Holly volunteered at PTA events together sometimes. Holly didn’t have the energy to return it.

  Inside Principal O’Shaughnessy’s office, she saw her son, Grady, fidgeting in a chair that was much too tall for him despite his recent growth spurt. He’d turned eight the month prior, and he was in the early stages of that transition from chubby little boy to the leanness of a tween. But whatever forces of nature were stretching him out had also conspired to unlock a hidden reservoir of god-awful behavior in him. The kiddo had been an absolute nightmare since January 1st, as if he’d decided that this year was going to test Holly’s patience like never before.

  Holly paused for a second and looked at him. He glanced up at her sheepishly, then back down. That was good. Any eight-year-old who wasn’t at least a little bit scared of being sent to the principal’s office and having his mother called in would probably need a psychological evaluation. He still respected her enough to fear her. That was a good thing, even if the rest of this ordeal was going to stink.

  She looked back at him and tried to summon the appropriate seriousness. Principal O’Shaughnessy hadn’t been too clear over the phone, saying he’d prefer to discuss the details in his office. Whatever Grady had done, it was fairly bad. Holly needed to be stern here.

  But she wasn’t sure which direction to go in, emotionally speaking.

  Part of her was simply sad. Where had her angelic little boy gone? Grady had been such a happy baby, once upon a time. Happier than Alice, even. Happier than her sister Eliza’s little girl, Winter, who was scarcely three months old but already had her mother’s trademark seriousness in her gaze. Grady had loved cuddling with his momma, and he’d laughed like crazy when she tickled the insides of his thighs, and he’d slept through at least one night out of every two for the first six months of his life, which Holly knew was an absurdly rare blessing.

  Now, though, that all seemed like a distant memory, and she half wondered if she’d just made it all up. This was the second time this year that Holly had been called down here to account for Grady’s behavior. The first time, he’d pulled Cindy Mason’s pigtails so hard she cried. She still didn’t know what today’s crime du jour was. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, either.

  Holly hated this part of motherhood. All her fantasies while playing “House” during her own childhood had starred children who adored her, who wanted to bake cookies with her and let her read them bedtime stories before she tucked them in each and every night.

  But Grady wanted none of that. He wanted to jump out of trees and throw mud pies at passing cars when it rained in the park. He despised bedtime stories, and if Holly pushed him on the nightly question of whether or not he had actually brushed his teeth—with toothpaste and everything—he threw fits that could bring the roof down. He delighted in mayhem and little boy filth, a kind of filth all its own. Holly found it
harder and harder each day to communicate with him.

  That all made her sad, in a deep and profound way that she knew she’d one day have to accept. He couldn’t be her darling little boy forever.

  But, as much as she sometimes wanted to throw herself melodramatically on her bed and sob about all of it, the truth was that, right here and now, she was actually having trouble stifling a giggle. Something about the way Grady was sitting—morosely swinging his feet back and forth in that chair that was much too big for him—seemed hilarious.

  This was her little tornado, her little four-foot-eight inch nightmare on wheels? This was the cause of sleepless nights and restless days? When life was up close in your face all the time, she realized, stuff just got thrown out of proportion.