The Darlings: a Novel Read online

  Praise for Message in the Sand

  “A sweet story about a small town, and the one summer that changes everything for its inhabitants. Right now, more than ever, we need stories about resilience, strength, and how the people we see every day have the power to change our lives—the latest novel by Hannah McKinnon delivers.”

  —Brenda Janowitz, author of The Grace Kelly Dress

  “Loyal readers of Catherine Ryan Hyde and Mary Alice Monroe will appreciate the web of relationships spun over decades and the strength of unlikely allies. Blending young love, rekindled romance, and the power of potential, McKinnon’s latest is heartwarming to its core.”

  —Booklist

  “A gripping, heart-wrenching novel of domestic fiction by Hannah McKinnon… In this gripping, emotional story, a shattering tragedy upends the lives of two young girls and those in their orbit.”

  —Shelf Awareness

  Praise for The View from Here

  “A warmhearted yet clear-eyed look into what brings people together and what tears them apart, this makes a delightful case for shaking off childhood roles.”

  —Booklist

  “Warmhearted and a perfect beach read.”

  —9to5Toys, “Best New Summer Books”

  Praise for Sailing Lessons

  “If you are a fan of sisterhood-themed beach reads by Nancy Thayer and Elin Hilderbrand, then McKinnon’s latest engaging standalone needs to go on your summer to-be-read list.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “McKinnon writes with such imagery that you can almost smell the salt in the air.”

  —Booked

  Praise for The Summer House

  “Sure to appeal to fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Dorothea Benton Frank, The Summer House is an intriguing glimpse into a complicated yet still loving family.”

  —Shelf Awareness

  “Charming and warmhearted.”

  —PopSugar

  “McKinnon bottles summer escapist beach reading in her latest, full of sunscreen-slathered days and bonfire nights. Fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Mary Alice Monroe will appreciate the Merrill family’s loving dysfunction, with sibling rivalries and long-held grudges never far from the surface. This sweet-tart novel is as refreshing as homemade lemonade.”

  —Booklist

  Praise for Mystic Summer

  “When two roads diverge… take the one that leads to the beach! Hannah McKinnon delivers a charming gem of a novel in Mystic Summer. I adored this book.”

  —Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Identicals

  “Hannah McKinnon’s Mystic Summer is a heartwarming story of lost love and the against-all-odds chance of finding it again…. Mystic Summer is a lovely summer beach read that will keep readers turning the page until the very end!”

  —Nan Rossiter, New York Times bestselling author of Summer Dance

  Praise for The Lake Season

  “Seasons of change take us home to the places and the people who shelter us. Well told, and in turns sweet and bare, The Lake Season offers a compelling tale of family secrets, letting go, and the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.”

  —Lisa Wingate, nationally bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

  “Hannah McKinnon’s lyrical debut tells the story of a pair of very different sisters, both at a crossroads in life. McKinnon’s great strength lies in her ability to reveal the many ways the two women wound—and ultimately heal—each other as only sisters can.”

  —Sarah Pekkanen, New York Times bestselling author of The Wife Between Us

  “Charming and heartfelt! Hannah McKinnon’s The Lake Season proves that you can go home again; you just can’t control what you find when you get there.”

  —Wendy Wax, New York Times bestselling author of the Ten Beach Road series and The House on Mermaid Point

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  To Grace & Finley, my reasons for everything. Who fill my heart and my pages with all the raw, beautiful, love-worn wonders of life. Keep writing your story; I’ll never stop reading.

  Andi

  That was the trouble with family; you could put miles and miles between you, but they always knew your favorite hiding places. No sooner had Andi pulled up to Clem’s Clam Shack at the base of the Mid-Cape Highway, the last stop before crossing the Sagamore Bridge that would officially land her “on Cape,” did her phone ring. It was Hugh. Leave it to her nosy brother, who hadn’t returned her calls in weeks, to buzz her the moment she was about to shove a much-needed buttery bite of lobster roll into her mouth. Andi groaned and let the call go to voicemail. Hugh’s message was impatient. “Where are you?”

  To be fair, Andi wasn’t exactly hiding out at the Clam Shack. She just needed a minute. A minute to herself, with her teenage daughter, Molly, who did not care one bit for seafood and was, in fact, still sound asleep in the passenger seat. No matter. Andi would give herself this final family-free moment to savor her hot lobster roll. It was like a skydiver’s last deep breath before jumping out of the plane. Each year Andi pulled over at Clem’s Clam Shack, just as each year the entire family reunited at Riptide, her grandmother’s Cape Cod summer house. Everyone showed up. Her parents, Charley and Cora; her twin brother, Hugh, and his partner, Martin. And their little sister, Sydney, who would be getting married there in just a few short weeks to her fiancé, James, a bright New York commercial Realtor.

  The annual Darling gathering wasn’t a standing invitation so much as a requirement. There were no excuses. Exceptions were not granted. Knowing that, each summer the Darling family members shrugged off their usual responsibilities in the various states in which they lived, packed their beach bags, and put on their game faces. You could beg off Thanksgiving; you could even miss an occasional Christmas dinner without raising too many hairs on their mother’s perfectly coiffed head. But no one missed the family vacation at Riptide. It was simply unheard of.

  Andi polished off her lobster roll and licked the butter hungrily from her fingertips. Six months after her divorce, she was finally getting her appetite back. But facing the whole family—for a wedding, of all things—was still unnerving. She reached over and tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her still-sleeping daughter’s ear. Molly had inherited that gold-spun head of hair from her father, George. George, who’d promised Andi a family and a future, but had not stuck around to deliver on the last part. Who, after only six months of divorce, was already five months deep in another relationship with a new woman.

  When Andi broke the news of her divorce the previous Christmas, her mother had stared wordlessly out the living room window at the snowy yard, fiddling with the bulbous ruby ring Charley had proposed to her with. It was a familiar tic signifying her distress. Andi had held her breath, watching as her mother twisted it back and forth on her slender finger. “The twist of disapproval,” Hugh had deemed it, when they were little.

  “Living alone will be hard,” Cora had said, finally.

  How would she know? Andi had wondered. Her mother had been happily married to her father, Charley, a man of great patience and affection, for over forty-five years.

  “Mom, living together is harder. This wasn’t a decision made in haste.”

  Cora’s gaze had remained fixed on the snow. “Still.”

  “She will be fine,” Charley Darling said, stepping forward to lay a hand on Andi’s shoulder. “Andi always finds her way.”

  Thankfully, that had been the same Christmas that Sydney and James announced the news of their engagement, giving the family something else to sink their teeth into. It left Andi with some breathing room as everyone rearranged their stricken expressions into smiles and turned their attention to the happy couple.

  “You owe Syd,” Hugh had mused, holding out a tall snifter of Bailey’s by the fire while the rest huddled around the dining room table talking reception sites. “Gives you a chance to step out of the spotlight and lick your wounds.”

  “I don’t have wounds to lick,” she’d insisted, snatching the snifter glass and taking a deep sip.

  But she had. Even though the decision to divorce had been mutual, it was still heartbreaking. In the span of one year Andi lost her marriage, her home, and her bearings. George had insisted they sell the house, which was yet another blow. Sure, Andi knew she couldn’t afford to hang on to it alone, and friends suggested a fresh start might be best. But it was her home, and if ever Andi needed a refuge to heal it was now. Their house was the place Molly had come home to from the hospital. The house where Andi had learned to get her hands dirty and design outdoor living spaces and, after thirteen years, finally established a thriving perennial garden teeming with butterfly bushes and Shasta daisies and hydrangeas. Where she’d painstakingly selected and then painted the soothing earth tones of every room herself and still had the paint-splattered cutoff shorts to prove it. The idea of leaving all of that, of boxing up all the memories of Molly’s childhood and taking them somewhere else, was almost more gut-wrenching than leaving her marriage. Another loss to grieve.

  It took her months to find their new plac
e: a little two-bedroom cottage in the center of town with a large maple tree in the front yard. They moved in during winter break, when Andi had a week off from teaching at the middle school and Molly was home from high school. The house was modest and historic, which meant it needed a whole lot of work, but it was theirs. And it was where they would start over. For the last six months she’d pulled out her paint rollers again. Hung her favorite artwork from the old house on the new walls. Purchased shiny new appliances during the Memorial Day sales. Andi knew it would be years before the new place felt like home. But little by little it was starting to.

  Since then, she’d avoided traveling to family gatherings for holidays and, instead, holed up at the cottage under the guise of moving, unpacking, and settling in. Skipping Sydney’s engagement party in February, then Easter Sunday, and her parents’ anniversary dinner in May. By then she was as moved into the new cottage as possible, but still she used it as an excuse for staying away. She was too raw. Too tired. She was reinventing herself, according to her girlfriends, whatever that meant. Despite her happiness for Sydney’s upcoming nuptials, Andi just didn’t have the stomach to pour over bridesmaid dress designs or feign joy over reception color themes.

  Still, she felt guilty. Her father called weekly to check in. Her mother sent texts asking why her voicemail box was full. She knew she wasn’t being a good daughter or a good sister, but the only thing she had energy to muster for was being a good mother to Molly. And she’d make no apologies for that.

  Despite her best efforts, she had not entirely escaped the bustle of the upcoming wedding, even from the safe distance of her Connecticut cottage. From the champagne-infused announcement by Sydney and James that past Christmas (which everyone had made it to that year), right up to this morning when Cora called with a blustery smattering of directives: don’t forget to bring your bridesmaid gown; make sure Molly has her dress shoes; do you recall the last place you saw my antique French hand linens? Cora had to find them for the bridal breakfast!

  Andi hadn’t even known her mother possessed antique French hand linens. No one had thought to mention them when she got married.

  As she pointed her car toward the Sagamore Bridge, she glanced at the sleeping figure of her fourteen-year-old daughter in the passenger seat. Molly’s expression was especially sweet in slumber, and Andi resisted the urge to reach over.

  Her phone buzzed again, and this time Andi picked it up. “What is it, Hugh?”

  There was a dramatic pause. “Well, that’s no way to greet your favorite brother.”

  “Only brother.”

  “Don’t forget Martin.”

  Andi smiled wryly. “Martin is my brother-in-law and why he puts up with you, I’ll never know.”

  Hugh chuckled. “Uh-huh. So… where the hell are you?”

  She glanced at the first exit sign off the bridge: Sandwich. Still a solid hour from the family house in Chatham. “Almost there,” Andi lied. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? Shall I start with the look on our mother’s face? Or the ten thousand wedding deliveries piled to the ceiling in each room? The damn wedding is still three weeks away and it’s already unadulterated chaos here. I need you.”

  As much as she dreaded the sympathetic looks and tiptoeing she was sure she’d get as the recent divorcée at her little sister’s wedding, Andi had to admit it—she had missed her family. She pictured her father in his fishing hat and smiled. Her mother’s clam chowder simmering on the stove for the traditional first night supper. “It all sounds nice, actually.”

  “Well, it’s not. But none of that is why I called.” Hugh paused. “You may want to adjust your seat belt.”

  “Why?” Hugh was a rabid complainer and dramatist. But this sounded concerningly different. “Did something happen?”

  “Oh, it’s about to. Tish is coming.”

  Tish, their paternal grandmother. Who pretty much never made an appearance unless someone died or was born. Who owned the summer house, but hated vacations. And the beach. And often, it seemed, her own family.

  “No way!” Then, “How’s Mom?”

  Hugh let out his breath. “Three gin and tonics in.”

  “Oh, God.” Their mother did not drink.

  “So we’ll see you soon?”

  Andi groaned. The call ended. She merged into the fast lane.

  Hugh wasn’t wrong. This was big news.

  Their father’s mother, Tish, was no grandmother beyond her calligraphed branch on the Darling family tree. For a short time she had permitted the children to call her “Grand-Mère,” with the appropriate French accent, but even that could not stick. Standing at all of four foot eleven and weighing no more than ninety pounds (as Hugh liked to say, including all her diamonds), Tish was a life force. Despite the scarcity of her involvement in her grandchildren’s lives, she maintained a chilling air of import and ability to inflict trepidation, especially when it came to their otherwise unflappable mother, Cora. The two women had never warmed to each other. It was just how it was.

  As such, the Darling grandchildren had rather untraditional memories of their grandmother. She drank dirty martinis. She did not bake cookies, nor did she wipe noses. According to her, birthday parties were savage events best reserved for those under the requisite height to ride a roller coaster, and come Christmas her only nod to family festivities was a card from faraway places like St. Barts or the Maldives. In their father’s own words, Tish was an accomplished and cultured woman who’d provided everything her only son could ever need. Except hugs.

  In that vein, Tish had not been to the beach house in decades. Though she’d been invited to the wedding, the family wasn’t holding out much hope. At best, those who welcomed the idea, notwithstanding Cora, expected a brief appearance followed by a lavish gift and swift departure. What she was doing there, three weeks in advance of the big day, was an outright mystery.

  As she tried to pass cars on the narrow two-lane highway, Andi glanced down. She was not dressed for Tish. Though no one in the family ever really was, except maybe Hugh and Martin. A quick look at the passenger seat confirmed that Molly was still sleeping. Should she rouse her? Molly had only met Tish twice in her life, but had somehow been left with a rather favorable opinion of her great-grandmother. And the feeling seemed mutual. While Tish had never approved of her ex-husband, George (“a simpleton”), she had looked favorably upon infant Molly at her first meeting. When Andi had carried Molly into the living room, Tish had inspected the baby from the safe distance of a wingback chair. Then, after tossing a withering look at their mother, Cora, she remarked, “See that glint in her eye? Finally, some hope.”

  Andi groaned. She hadn’t even told Tish about her divorce.

  * * *

  Indeed, the divorce had not been decided upon in haste. If anything, Andi and George had clung to the frayed edges of their marriage too long. They’d tried therapy; for two years they went. They’d committed to weekly date nights, even though the sitter cost a fortune and it was hard to muster forced smiles and small talk over linguine at La Fortuna. At her best friend’s suggestion, Andi tried going back to church. She’d always been what her mother called a Christmas Catholic. But even though she found some comfort in those Sunday mornings, George had not, and Andi felt like impostors standing among the other seemingly united families at coffee hour. As a final attempt to reconnect, they’d left Molly with friends one long autumn weekend and driven the winding leafy roads to Lake Champlain, Vermont. The foliage had given its all that year; the mountains were resplendent in bright shades of coral and red and yellow. But after three days in the most picturesque inn, even the perfect weather and pumpkin-laden streets of Burlington couldn’t save them. Outside of Molly, there was nothing to talk about. They’d decided on the drive home to call it quits. Despite knowing they’d tried, it still felt as endings do: sad and uncertain. Andi was still trying to figure out a new beginning.

  But that was for another day. Today she was going to the summer house to celebrate her sister, Sydney. With one hundred and fifty guests heading up the Mid-Cape Highway in the next few weeks, Sydney’s new beginning was just about to unfold. Whether Andi was ready for it or not.