Meet Me at Sunset (Evening Island)

by Olivia Miles

  Gran had taken her in, unemployed and unwilling to go back to her father for handouts. She could paint all day, Gran had promised, because the island offered endless inspiration. In turn, Ellie had taken care of Gran. At first, she had just served as her companion, but then it moved on from errand running to minding the house, to making sure that Gran was taken to the doctor, that she was comfortable. Weeks and months would go by when she wouldn’t even paint. Gemma probably didn’t know that.

  But despite everything that Ellie had done for Gran, the favor, she knew, was all hers, and that without Gran’s invitation, and without the island house, she had nowhere else to go.

  The door to the studio jingled and she glanced out the window toward the harbor. Evening was setting in, and she hadn’t intended to come back here tonight, but then, yet again, Gemma had to go and upset her. There was no more coffee if one of the guys from the harbor intended on a warmer upper. If she had any now, she’d be awake all night, and she hoped to get some sleep so she could rise early tomorrow and capture the sunrise over on the Eastern Edge.

  She dropped her paintbrush into the cup of water and wiped her hands on her apron. She was rounding the bend when she saw him, before he noticed her. The evening sunlight was filtering through the windows, casting rays of gold on his nut-brown hair, and his hands were thrust in the pockets of his khakis. He was studying her paintings, taking time with each one, and he didn’t look her way until she stepped farther into the room and said, “Hello.”

  Simon looked up, the surprise fleeting on his face before his expression turned to one of familiarity. “I promised I’d visit.”

  “And you always kept your promises,” she said, wishing as soon as she’d said it that she hadn’t. After all, there had been the one promise that he hadn’t kept. He’d promised to come back, and he hadn’t until now. As an engaged man.

  Because that’s what he was, she reminded herself. Whether she liked it or not, he was in a relationship with someone else, and the fact that Erin wasn’t here should hold no bearing. But somehow, it did. Because Simon was here, and she was here, and the island…it was their place. And it seemed that it still was.

  She eyed him carefully, wondering if he even remembered those words, spoken the final night they were together, ten years ago this August. Ten years, she thought now, thinking that was more than a third of her lifetime, that really, she should be over it by now, except that for some reason, she wasn’t. She was eighteen then, same as him. It was a running joke that she was technically an older woman, turning nineteen on the last day of the month. She had three months of age on him, but he seemed so much older and wiser and sure of what he wanted. He was going to be a lawyer, like his father. He would summer at the island. His life would carry on as it always had, whereas she yearned for change.

  They’d stayed out late that night, swimming until their skin turned blue with cold, and then huddled together in blankets down at the shore, staying warm next to the fire that he’d built, staying there until the wood burned down and it was just the dying embers and the moon for light.

  He’d be back, he promised. And she’d be back, she said. Nothing would change between them, even though it felt like everything was about to change—that their futures held no certainty other than that their lives were about to start. They would be adults, free to finally do as they chose. And he chose not to return.

  He’d be back, he’d said. Same time, same place. Next summer. It would be like always, just another year apart, another summer to look forward to. Only she was worried. She knew that this time, they weren’t going back to their childhood homes and their usual lives. They were each going out into the world. They’d experience new things. They’d meet new people. They’d move on from their childhood families. Would they move on from the island too?

  She’d kept up her promise. Returned the following summer even though it was just her and her mother and Gemma by then.

  But Simon never came. Or explained. Or apologized, either. His parents came—said he’d gotten a great internship that was too good to pass up. Instead, he’d passed her up.

  Still, she’d waited. And hoped. For a change of plans.

  For a change of heart.

  What would she have said, all those years ago, when she’d cried into her pillow late at night, swam in the lake all by herself during the day, and rode her bike all over the island, wishing and hoping that one morning would mark his return, if she knew that he would someday return? That he’d be back, long after she’d stopped looking for him. That he’d be standing in her art studio. That she would own an art studio! That she might have another chance.

  Except for the small part about him being engaged.

  “So you work out of here?” he asked, looking at her in wonder.

  She nodded, pride filling her as she stood amongst her work. Her dreams. “I paint out of the studio, but I also paint on location. I run classes once a week, too. Friday nights. Open to anyone, so long as there’s a chair.” She eyed him, wondering if she should push her luck, and then decided she had nothing to lose. She’d already lost him once before. “You should drop by sometime.”

  He grinned at her, and every nerve ending in her body seemed to sing. “Maybe I will.”

  After a moment, he broke her gaze and motioned to a painting, one of her favorites, that she’d painted last fall when the leaves were at their peak and the entire island seemed to be awash in shades of crimson, orange, and yellow. “This one is remarkable. I never saw the island like this before.”

  “Most people don’t,” she said simply. After all, most of the tourists were gone by Labor Day, the summer people too. Then it was just the year-round folks, grateful at first for a chance to breathe, to have their space back, to be able to walk into Main Street Market without having to worry that all the fresh bagels would be sold out, but then, she’d learned with time, eager for everyone to return.

  She came to stand next to him, thinking that it would be impossible to give this up, not just the painting but the island, the cottage, the opportunity to see what she saw, every day, to capture with her hand and a paintbrush and some paint.

  “I guess I need to come back to the island a little later in the season sometime,” he said, slanting her a glance.

  Something inside her locked up. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, with that grin, and those eyes…it made her feel things she shouldn’t. It made her think that they still had a chance.

  Did they?

  He was so close to her now that she could feel the heat off his skin, and her heart began to pound at the familiarity of it all. It would be so easy to just fall back into step, to continue the relationship they’d built summer after summer; from the time they were fifteen to eighteen they’d carried on in June where they’d left off the previous August.

  Time had never created a distance between them before. Maybe, it didn’t have to now.

  “I thought you had a job to get back to,” she said, trying to keep herself footed in reality.

  He shrugged. “I told you. I have my own thing going now. I can technically work from anywhere in the world.”

  She raised her eyebrows, trying to imagine such freedom. “I’d love to travel the world. To capture it.”

  “You should,” he said, but she just shook her head.

  She was exactly what her father told her she was. She was a starving artist. She’d spent all her trust on this studio—because as Gemma was so quick to point out, real estate on the island was prime. The house was paid off, and there was enough set aside for the taxes and the utility bills. But it stopped there. And the money she made selling her paintings in town was far from reliable, and she’d certainly never be rich from it, or even financially secure.

  Meaning to her father, it had no value.

  She shrugged away the comment and motioned toward the back room. “I have a few from winter, if you’re interested.”

  He nodded and followed her into the storage room. The
room was tight and crowded, with dozens of canvases neatly stacked against the walls. Feeling awkward at how alone they were, she began rifling through her stacks, even though she usually knew where every single painting was kept.

  “Here we go,” she said, pulling out one of her favorites: a scene of Main Street during the first snowfall of the year. Most horses went back to the mainland for the winter months, but here she’d managed to capture a horse-drawn carriage on its way back to one of the family-owned inns, whose residents finally had the house to themselves for a few months. Just looking at it gave her peace, and strengthened her resolve too. Gemma couldn’t sell that house. She wouldn’t let her. And her vote had to count for something.

  Simon shook her head as he studied it. “Wow,” he finally said.

  He gave her a look of approval she rarely saw from anyone else, but then, she supposed, he had always looked at her like that, hadn’t he? Always seen what the others hadn’t? Always liked the fact that she was artistic, free-spirited, that she didn’t want a conventional life.

  But he had wanted that conventional life, hadn’t he? And she had never quite fit into that plan.

  “You got everything you ever wanted,” he remarked.

  “Almost,” she said, meeting his eye. He squinted, ever so subtly, and she wondered for a moment if she’d overstepped. Her cheeks flamed and she used the time to put the painting back in place, even though she was starting to think that maybe she’d take this one back to the cottage with her. Hope was certainly wasting no time in putting her mark on things around there; perhaps it was time for Ellie to do the same. Maybe if she had tried harder to spruce up the place rather than leave so much of it as it was as a hallmark to her Gran, then Gemma would be more eager to hold on to it.

  Except that Gemma seemed to want to cash out. She was becoming more like their father every day. What Ellie really needed to do, she thought, was to appeal to Gemma’s sentimental side.

  If she could figure out how.

  “What’s missing?” Simon asked, and Ellie was so caught off guard that she almost dropped the canvas, and that would have been a disaster. Carefully, and with shaking hands, she set it in place, happy for a moment to have her face turned from him.

  “Oh, you know.” She caught his eye, pushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek. “My parents think I should have a conventional job. Find a husband. Settle down.”

  “The safe route,” Simon said. A shadow passed over his expression. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Well, that was interesting. She studied him, waiting to see if he would elaborate, and when he didn’t, she said, “But you’re happy? Practicing law? Your own firm. Your…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. His engagement.

  She wondered if there was a wedding date. She wondered if it was soon.

  “I’m happy being here on the island,” he said, giving her a crooked grin. “I hadn’t realized I missed it so much until I came back. It’s…it’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind, to forget how much you miss something until you see it again.”

  He was watching her closely, and Ellie’s stomach was positively rolling by now.

  For a moment he leaned in, and her heart sped up as their faces grew closer, and she thought he was going to do it, he was going to kiss her. And she knew that she shouldn’t. He was engaged. Except, a little part of her said, she had him first. She knew him best. Longest. This Erin woman might know the stuffy guy with the law degree, but she knew the real Simon, the one who chucked strawberries into the air and caught them with his mouth, who shed his shirt and dove into the cool lake water, and swam all the way out, as far as he could make it.

  He paused, seeming to catch himself and brushed her cheek with his lips.

  “It was good seeing you today,” he said, pulling back. He squeezed her shoulder, paused as if there was something more that he wanted to say and thought the better of it, and then let himself out.

  Ellie stood in the storage room for several moments after she’d heard the door to the studio open and close. Then she went back into the empty room and stared at the painting that Simon had admired so much, the one with the crimson maple leaves falling at the base of the lanterns that lined Main Street, and she replayed what he’d said over and over, telling herself that she was reading into things, that he was engaged.

  But despite knowing this, she couldn’t help but feel hopeful that somehow, everything was about to change, and for the better.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hope

  Hope had established a routine during her ten days on the island. Every morning she woke at six, a solid hour before the girls did, just like always, only here she woke to the light that filtered through the linen curtain panels, spreading sunshine all over her room. She put on her pink cashmere robe, because it was cool in the mornings, when the windows were still cracked from the night before and the day was still young, and padded down the stairs to the kitchen at the back of the house, where she prepared breakfast for everyone, because if she was already cooking for her children, she may as well see it through, and because, it was what was expected of her. Hope hosted holidays. Hope threw parties. Hope was the silent leader growing up, and that dynamic had extended into adulthood.

  Hope was not allowed to fall apart.

  Sometimes Ellie beat her to it, brewed a pot of coffee and left for the day before Hope had even gotten a start, but more often than not she stuck around, hovering at the kitchen door as if she wasn’t so sure she was invited in, or what to make of Hope’s hospitality. Hope would hide her smile, pleased to prepare a meal for someone who so clearly appreciated it, just like Ellie had appreciated all those times when Hope was already old enough to drive and responsible for taking Ellie to her much-loathed piano classes, where her posture was forever in question, and where she had been reprimanded more than once for “going rogue” by putting her own spin on a classical piece, and to make up for it, she’d swing Ellie by the ice-cream stand on their way home, their own weekly tradition that only cost her a few of her babysitting dollars and meant so much to Ellie that it was worth it.

  Evan certainly didn’t appreciate the meals she made for him. He ate dinners quickly, usually with his eyes on the television screen, and then she was left with a sink full of dishes that made the entire effort seem even more thankless. Often he would call to let her know he was working late, and she didn’t even bother to mention anymore that she was already roasting a chicken and that she’d just peeled the potatoes.

  It hadn’t always been like this, she knew. Back when they both held down jobs outside the home, they often met for dinner in the city before heading home. But that was before the girls, and going out to eat with the girls was too much trouble right now.

  Around seven, the girls woke, usually together, because they did everything together and because Victoria was scared to walk down the stairs by herself. They’d eat at the table while Hope carried a plate up to Gemma, learning quickly into things that it was best to leave it just outside her closed door. She’d find it when she was ready, even if it had probably gone cold by then.

  Then there was the kitchen to clean, and the flower beds to weed, (only thanks to the help of the handyman that Gemma had hired and had been seen chatting with a few times, the yard was looking much better already), and then, when the sun was higher in the sky, she and the girls wandered to their private beach, buckets in hand, a paperback for Hope, not that she could keep her eyes on it much. Oh, she used to love to read! Now, by the time the girls were in bed, her eyes were so heavy that even attempting to read usually put her right to sleep. And she didn’t want to sleep! She wanted to enjoy every moment of the evening, not just for the sunsets that turned the sky coral and pink and sherbet orange, but because it was the only time in the day, the only time at all, that was hers. Only hers.

  After the beach, there was the bath, and then, usually, a trip into town. Hope had recovered from the weekend’s disaster and now made a daily habi
t of it, to be amongst the land of the living. And, maybe, if she was being completely honest with herself, to have the possibility of running into John again. John who made her take on the same expression that Ellie did any time that Simon’s name was mentioned.

  Her favorite shop was Harbor House Designs, the home interiors shop just off Main, where Rose had attempted to smash the crystal vase with the candlestick. Now when Hope went inside, she was prepared. Each girl had a lollipop and a promise of another if they behaved. The owner brought in fresh items every three days; she said it was the only way to keep business going with the locals, who were her best customers.

  “After all,” Sheila said to her today, “there are over five hundred year-round residents on the island.”

  Were there? That was more than Hope would have thought and the figure felt like one with potential, though she wasn’t sure why or how. Still, she picked up a boxwood topiary and set it down, then moved onto some table linens before her eyes drifted to a beautiful armchair in a mint-green buffalo check print.

  On a whim, she picked up a charcoal-colored throw pillow with a mint and blue floral pattern and set it on the seat of the chair.

  “That’s a bold combination,” said a voice behind her.

  Hope’s cheeks flushed as she turned to see the shop owner standing beside her. “Sorry,” she said, reaching for the pillow, but Sheila held up a hand.

  “Don’t be. I like that. I like your style.” She tipped her head. “Are you a designer?”

  Hope laughed. “No. I’m…” She stopped there. What was she? She didn’t even know how to describe herself anymore. A mom? A wife? No one ever asked her what she did anymore. People just assumed. No one really stopped to ask much about her as an individual at all, she realized. Other than John. “I’m Hope Morgan,” she said, extending her hand.

  Sheila gave it a shake. “I heard that Ellie’s sisters were here for the summer. And you have the same eyes.” She motioned to a framed print on the wall, and Hope was surprised to realize it one of her sister’s paintings.