by Olivia Miles
“Thank you,” she said again.
“My pleasure,” he said, holding out the two lollipops for the girls, who glanced at her for approval before greedily yanking the candy from the man’s hands. He laughed and, seeming satisfied with that interaction, said, “Have a nice time.”
“You too,” she said wistfully. She watched him go, until he was at the far helm of the boat, thinking that this was the most help and support she had received in a very long time and that she sort of loved him for it, more than she probably should.
She watched to see if he was alone, or going to meet someone who was waiting, but then Victoria was thrusting a sticky wrapper at her, and Rose was asking her to help peel the wrapper, and she thought it was just as well.
He probably had children of his own, she thought, reining in her disappointment. After all, she was a married woman. For now.
***
They took a carriage to the house, something that thrilled the girls to no end, and something that made her smile, too, and not because of the smell of manure. Her car was part of her life back home, and she wanted to forget about that life for a while, the way she used to every summer as a girl, before the pressure of school and grades started all over again.
The house came into view and she inhaled sharply, all at once sure that she had made the right decision in coming here. With its white gable and wraparound porch, it was just as wonderful as she’d remembered it, maybe more so.
The sky was blue and the grass was green and the water was right there, sparkling and still. Later, she’d take the girls over to wade in it and collect rocks.
Now she hurried to unload everything and bring it all up onto the porch. The paint was peeling, she noticed, showing signs of age that hadn’t been there last time she’d visited, marking the passing of time that she tried to ignore.
It would all be the same. It had to be the same.
“Hello?” she called as she turned the knob of the front door and let it swing open. The girls ran inside, ahead of her, and she braced herself that they wouldn’t knock over one of Gran’s porcelain figurines, until she remembered that Gran was not here.
Her heart gave a little tug. She should have visited more, she knew. But there was college and then Evan and then the girls. And life was so busy. Too busy.
From upstairs she heard the floorboards creak, and a moment later, Gemma appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Surprise!” she said brightly. She was feeling downright giddy really, now that she was here, on land, on the island. An entire body of water was separating her from the real world. No need to focus on the fact that it was only a fifteen-minute-long ferry ride.
Gemma didn’t look as pleased to see her as Hope had expected. She looked wary, and tired, really, as she came down the steps slowly, stopping at the base. “Ellie told me you were coming. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No time!” Hope was a little breathless. True, she’d had time to tell Ellie, but that had been a requirement, seeing as Ellie was living here now, even if the house did belong to all three of them.
“What made you decide to come?” Gemma pressed.
Hope glanced around the room. The afghan that usually hung from the back of the loveseat was missing and some of the heavy paintings had been replaced with Ellie’s light and airy watercolors. “Oh, you know Evan had that business trip in Singapore, and the girls are finished with preschool for the year, so I thought, why not?”
Gemma pursed her lips together, but said nothing.
“The house looks good,” Hope commented.
Gemma’s look was rueful. “You can thank me later.”
Hope gave a wry smile. She should have known this was Gemma’s doing. Left to her own devices, Ellie would pick her clothes from a pile in her closet and crawl into an unmade bed each night, and that wasn’t just when they were children. They’d shared enough recent events at their parents’ house for her to know Ellie hadn’t changed her ways yet. If ever.
In a way, she hoped Ellie never would.
“You didn’t have to,” she started.
Gemma’s eyes widened. “Believe me, I did. Or you would have!”
Hope wasn’t sure what to make of that remark, so she said nothing. Really, was it assumed that her standards were so high? That she liked everything just so? Her sisters may be surprised to find out that her life was absolutely nothing like it appeared on the surface. Had Gemma not noticed the stain on Hope’s pants?
She looked over to see Rose wander out of the kitchen, without her clothes on. Gemma had to laugh at that, and she did.
Hope, however, was far from amused. While Rose had no problems with modesty, Victoria was the opposite, and had refused to wear the tankini with the lemon-wedge print that Hope had ordered for the summer.
“Where are your clothes?” she asked, giving her sternest, no-nonsense look. It came naturally. Once, she had imagined motherhood to be baking cookies and cuddling under the blanket with a picture book. Now it meant wiping throw up off yourself in public and wrangling nude children.
This was what Evan didn’t understand. He had never idealized parenthood. He never had…expectations. Evan’s life hadn’t changed much from before the twins came along to now. But her life had. Her life, as her own person, had officially ended. Maybe, she thought, it had never even begun.
“It’s hot in this house!” Rose pouted, pushing out her lips and narrowing her eyes in Hope’s direction.
“Right,” Hope said crisply. “It’s nap time.” It wasn’t, not really, but it was also eastern standard time zone here, so technically they were an hour ahead of their routine, meaning that it was nap time, on island time.
“No!” Rose wailed, fueling Hope’s decision.
Hope took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen, where sure enough, the sweet little pink romper was lying in a heap next to her bunny-printed underwear. She glanced around. Her heart sped up. “Where’s your sister?”
She stared at Rose. Rose stared back with round eyes.
Gemma was the one to walk through the back door, and Hope hoisted Rose onto her hip, her heart pounding as a million thoughts raced through her mind. Her child had escaped. Gone off around the house, crossed the road, and was now floating in Lake Huron. Evan would never forgive her. She would never forgive herself! It wouldn’t have ever happened if she hadn’t come here. She shouldn’t have come here! She should have woken up, eaten her standard half a cup of Greek yogurt with a cup of fresh fruit and a black coffee and then gone to the dentist for her semiannual cleaning. If she’d wanted to see a lake, she could have driven fifteen minutes down the road to Lake Michigan.
“Victoria!” Her voice was shrill. She never would have screamed like this back home—the neighbors would be sure to talk. But Sunset Cottage was remote, and the two houses on either side, by the looks of it, were still unoccupied for the season.
“The playhouse!” she suddenly said. Frantically, she swiveled her head to the left, her eyes falling on the old shed that the Taylor girls had been allowed to turn into a playhouse. Their father had painted it white and their mother had made curtains for the window out of floral-printed pillowcases and Hope could remember being just as envious as her sisters were, not over the tiny playhouse but over just how involved the Taylor girls’ parents were with them. Hope had vowed to be like that when she became a mother. And she had. She’d given up her career—one that she was good at and enjoyed. She did all the crafts, and did all the groups. And now…she had lost her child.
Gemma was the first one to make it to the playhouse, with Hope trailing behind, Rose bouncing on her hip, still in the buff, not that Hope cared just now. She hoped there were no garden tools in there, no sharp objects like axes or saws that Victoria might find tempting to touch.
She held her breath as Gemma pulled open the door, which was already half-open, Hope now saw, and out popped a little smiling face. “Surprise!”
Gemma whooped in relief, but Hope clenched her
jaw so tight that she was afraid she really might have to go the dentist soon, and she doubted very much that the dentist on the island would take her insurance.
“That’s it!” she snapped, turning into Mean Mommy, the mother she had sworn she would never be, the mother she was rapidly becoming, because it was just so much, all day, all the time! It was so…thankless! There was no promotion to strive for. No paycheck deposited into her account every other Friday. Evan hadn’t even commented on the unicorn, well, other than with an eye roll. “It’s time for a nap!”
Only as soon as she saw Victoria emerge from the shed, her bottom lip now quivering, she knew that there would be no nap, at least not without a bath. This was her life, she realized. Feeding, bathing, cleaning. Repeat.
“But I don’t want a nap!” Rose screeched into her ear.
“Well, I do!” Hope ground out.
She was aware that Gemma was watching her with wide eyes. That she had slipped, shown a side of herself that she wasn’t proud of, a side that she didn’t want to reveal, or even own. But there it was.
“You’ve had a long drive,” Gemma said, taking Victoria by the hand. “I can bathe the girls if you want to get started unpacking?”
Hope could have wept with gratitude. For the second time that day, someone was showing her kindness, someone was offering to help her, and that was more than Evan had done since…well, before conception.
They went into the house, and she decided to take the two small rooms at the end of the hall on the second floor where she and her sisters had stayed as girls, dividing them as they saw fit, Gemma usually alternating between the two, or sometimes all three squeezing into the one room’s double bed. She immediately realized that, if she had planned this better, she would have thought to include a gate to put on the girls’ room so that they couldn’t easily escape in the middle of the night, get lost in a strange house and then, say, fall down the stairs.
Then she remembered that this particular set of bedrooms had a Jack and Jill connecting bathroom. “Thank God,” she breathed, deciding she could close the girls’ room and only give them entry and exit access to the rest of the house through her own room.
Gemma was already loading the girls into the bath. “You sure everything is okay?”
Hope felt shaky and out of sorts. She nodded, wandering into the room the girls would share to set their clothes in the dresser.
“It was a long drive,” she said again.
She started folding each individual piece of clothing and setting them in the drawer, and then stopped herself, because really, what did it matter? Tidy drawers and ironed tiny T-shirts didn’t matter, not on Evening Island, and that was why she was here. So she didn’t have to worry about all those little things that were making her so miserable. Here the children could roam free (well, under supervision) and her sisters could help her out, and she could think clearly without having to play “the quiet game” in order to hear her own thoughts!
The girls came into the room, wrapped in towels, their hair wet, and she turned down the covers, questioning only for a moment if Ellie would have bothered to put fresh linens on the beds, and then decided it was fine. Fine. It was the cottage. Here they could relax.
The girls fell asleep quickly, and she pulled the blinds, letting only a bit of sunlight glow through the cracks near the window frame. Gemma had already left, and Hope crawled into her own bed and shut her eyes, just for a moment. And she thought about the man on the boat.
Her hero.
Chapter Seven
Gemma
The noise would not stop. Even from the third-floor room she had claimed for herself, she could hear the voices, the singing, the crying, the arguing when it was time for a nap or a snack that didn’t quite meet the girls’ approval. She’d been listening to it for over forty-eight hours. But Hope had to deal with it every day.
For not the first time, she didn’t know how her sister did it.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said when she came downstairs, her laptop in hand, after admitting defeat and knowing that she would never get any work done in the house so long as the twins were there. It had been a rainy morning, but the skies were clearing. Her plan was to carve out a spot at the Cottage Coffeehouse. At this rate, it would become her regular table.
Hope was wiping down the kitchen table while the girls scampered away, leaving their half-eaten snack behind.
“It all becomes very routine once you’re in it. You’ll see when you have some of your own someday.” Catching herself, Hope looked alarmed. “Gemma. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. There are even days when I forget about my broken engagement,” Gemma said with a wave of her hand, but that wasn’t true of course, and her sister understood her well enough to know that.
“You’ll find someone else. Someone better,” Hope said.
“Will I?” Gemma saw the sympathy in Hope’s eyes, and she wondered if her sister really believed her encouraging words or if she was just trying to lift Gemma’s spirits. “Maybe I don’t want to find anyone else.”
“Oh, you say that now…” Hope gave a knowing look.
“It’s not easy to find someone.” Gemma had dated a bit in college, but Sean had been her first serious relationship. She’d thought it was true love. Now she didn’t know if such a thing even existed.
For her, at least, she thought, looking at Hope. Hope had found her happy ending, after all.
“I think someone will come along eventually,” Hope said. “If you’re open to it.”
Gemma grabbed a piece of fruit from the overflowing bowl on the counter and studied it. “Do you really think it’s that easy to find more than one person that you could feel something for?” She wanted to believe it, but she was struggling. And the only thing lonelier than feeling like everyone else had found love except her was writing about it in her books.
Hope gave an evasive look and pushed a strand of her hair from her face as she straightened. “I do actually.”
Just then, there was a shattering sound, and she and Hope froze. Gemma knew that she should stick around, offer to help, but then she thought of her deadline. She was down to twenty-two days now. She couldn’t afford to give up even an hour at this point.
“I should get to the coffee shop,” she said, wincing. “Don’t wait on me for dinner. I don’t know how long I’ll be tonight. I need to finish this chapter.” And start the next one, she thought, feeling the panic build again; but for now, just finishing this chapter would be good enough.
“I was hoping we could all have dinner together tonight.” Hope gave her a look of obvious disappointment, and Gemma pushed back the guilt.
“Tomorrow night. I have to work, Hope,” she said, expecting her sister to understand.
But Hope just said, “It’s a convenient excuse, isn’t it? Work?” Catching Gemma’s frown, she waved her away. “Don’t mind me. I know you have your deadline. I’m not upset with you.”
Perhaps not, but it would seem that Hope was upset with someone. Evan?
Nonsense. Hope had the fairy-tale life. Maybe if Gemma focused on her sisters’ love lives instead of her own, she wouldn’t feel like such a fraud every time she sat down to write.
Gemma didn’t have time to think about that just now. She turned, closed the door to the house behind her, and instead of feeling the guilt that she knew she should have for abandoning her sister in the midst of domestic chaos, she instead felt a sense of freedom that she hadn’t even known existed or that she even needed until she had spent four days sharing a house with her sisters.
She was used to being alone. The only unwelcome disruption to her routine was the occasional siren or the barking of her neighbor’s teacup yorkie down the hall who couldn’t have scared off a burglar if she tried.
She walked down the gravel driveway to the road, pinching her mouth when she saw how quickly the grass was growing back. The rain hadn’t helped matters, and now she would either have to take more time away from
writing to handle it or see if Hope might help out, and she already knew how that would go. Hope had a yard crew for that type of thing. She would suggest that they do the same.
More money, Gemma thought as she wandered down the road, taking in her surroundings, trying to push away the nagging worry that she had only written fifteen pages since she had been here, and while that was better than what she’d accomplished in five months, most of it was just scenic description. She couldn’t bring herself to get to the heart of the story, to bring two people together, when she was no longer convinced that any promises were real. Not long ago, she’d dared to think of getting another contract after this book was handed in; now she didn’t know what would be worse, no contract, or another deadline looming over her?
But her savings wouldn’t last forever. And unless she found another stream of income, writing was her best bet. It was the only thing she had left, she thought, pushing back the heaviness in her chest. Without Sean, what else was there?
He had been a part of her life for the better part of her twenties. They’d started dating when she was only twenty-two, and he was just a year older. That was the problem, he’d told her when he ended things. They were too young to know better then. Too young to know what they wanted.
In other words, he now knew what he wanted. And it wasn’t her.
Sighing, she walked south toward town, past the robin’s egg blue Victorian where the Taylors summered with their three girls, each redheaded and pale skinned, requiring their mother to lather their arms and legs and cheeks with so much sunscreen that their skin would be slick for the entire morning. The Taylors hailed from the Detroit area, a wealthy suburb not much different than the one that the Morgans had grown up in.
But that was where the similarities stopped. While both families had daughters, lived comfortably, and summered on Evening Island, Mrs. Taylor was warm and funny, with a laugh that was infectious, and the girls all had a giggle that was contagious. The whole family was happy and smiling, whereas the Morgans felt uptight by comparison—a little uncomfortable when it came to expressing emotion or being casual. Unless they were here, away from the stern gaze of their father. Did their mother pull them into their arms and braid their hair and have pet names for them the way the Taylors did? No. But at least up here, she wasn’t nagging them to stand with their shoulders back or straighten their hair bows or parade them around like a trio of dolls either. Here they could be themselves, their own individuals. Back in Cleveland, that wasn’t allowed.
