by Anna Burke
“Come on.” Ivy took her hand and, with a look that should have started a fire in the hayloft, towed Lillian out of the barn and toward her car.
• • •
Ivy’s appointments ended on time. She stopped by Storm’s-a-Brewin’ on her way home, because while she was on call tonight, which meant she could not invite Lillian over, the painful tightness in her chest needed release. It wasn’t until she sat at the bar and waved at Stormy that she understood the tightness wasn’t MS or the crushing weight of keeping her condition a secret. She was happy. Irrepressibly, obliteratingly happy, and trying to contain it was causing her physical pain.
“I need some shades if you’re going to come in here glowing like that,” said Stormy.
“Hello to you, too.”
“What can I get you? Wait. Never mind; I want you to try this.” She pulled a small round bottle out from beneath the bar.
“Is it beer?”
“Nope. Cider. Just got a batch back from my brewer. These are apples from Angie’s place. Small batch. Prepare to have your mind blown, and it’s a low alcohol content, so no need to worry if you’re on call. Just try a sip.”
Stormy practically bounced behind the bar, and Ivy relented. “I’ll try it.”
The squeal of excitement from her friend was worth any nerve pain the cider triggered, though she hadn’t experimented enough with cider to know for sure if it would bother her the way beer did. Stormy popped the lid and handed it back.
“It’s not a sweet cider,” she said, frowning as if she’d just realized this might be a problem for Ivy. “But it’s crisp.”
She took a sip. The cold cider crested on her palate, and the biting taste of winter apples flooded her taste buds.
“Holy shit, this is delicious.”
“Really? You’re the first to try it. Besides me and my brewer, obviously.”
Flattered more than she could express, she took another swallow. One of the reasons she’d never enjoyed cider was because most of the ciders she’d tried had a cloying sweetness that stuck to her throat and left her hungover. This was different. Crisp, as Stormy had promised, and slightly floral. And grown in soil tended by Lillian Lee. That thought, more than anything else, gave the cider its flavor.
“You should be proud. Can I buy a case?”
“Of course!”
“And I’ve been meaning to ask. The island could use an infusion of good beer. Do you ever cater events? I could hook you up.”
“I’ve done a few small things locally, but nothing high end.”
“If you want to, let me know, and I’ll bring some of your beer to Rabbit this summer. Not the cider though. That’s mine.”
“Deal. Although I wouldn’t want to get you bunnies all hopped up.”
Ivy stared at her, deadpan, until Stormy laughed at her own terrible pun. “I take it back.”
“Too late.”
“I hear things are going well with you and Lil?”
She couldn’t quite hate how easily that made her blush, or how quickly the happiness threatened to overwhelm her again.
Stormy raised her eyebrows. “That’s a yes.”
She nodded.
“And she accused me of meddling. Hah. I know what I’m doing.”
“Don’t tell her that,” said Ivy.
“Don’t you tell her I said that.”
“I would never.”
“Your reputation notwithstanding, I believe you.”
• • •
Lillian leaned back into Ivy’s couch and stroked the kitten, still unnamed, sprawled across her thigh.
“Close your eyes,” said Ivy.
“Do I trust you?” she asked, and though the question was in jest, there was a part of her that wished someone would answer it.
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“What will you do if I close my eyes?”
“Don’t you think that defeats the purpose of a surprise?”
“Is it a good surprise?”
“I think it is,” said Ivy.
“Will I?”
“I hope so.”
“Will it hurt?”
“What kind of surprise would hurt and also be something you would like?” Ivy paused, perhaps recalling their adventure in the tack room, then smirked. “Lee, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Not what I meant.” She folded her arms across her chest. “And you have no idea what I have in me.”
“Falafel, pita, and wine.” Ivy checked them off on her fingers.
“Fine. I’ll close my eyes, but don’t make me regret this.”
“First you have to stand up.”
Lillian removed the kitten, stood, and held out her hands. “Okay. Closing my eyes now.”
Ivy towed her gently across the floor. She could tell they’d left the living room by the diminishing warmth of the fire, and her feet brushed over the edge of a thick carpet.
Ivy’s breath warmed her ear. “You can open your eyes now.”
It took her several heartbeats to figure out what she was seeing. The room was a study, of sorts. Bookshelves lined two of the walls, and a window seat occupied a third. The yellow light of a corner lamp illuminated the object in the room’s center.
“Ivy, what is this?”
A piano stood on an oriental rug. Black wood reflected the lamplight in waves, and she moved forward to touch it. Not just any piano. A Steinway baby grand. Her fingertips left faint prints on the veneer.
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Check out the sheet music.”
Her eyes focused on the sheets arranged on the music rack. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. The piano had to be one of the smaller baby grands made by Steinway, but that hardly mattered. Restored or new, a piano in this condition cost well into the five digits.
“You didn’t tell me you had a piano.”
“I didn’t, then,” said Ivy.
The prickling started in her fingers and moved over her shoulders, down her back, and across her scalp. Air refused to flow normally into her lungs and instead rattled in her ears.
“But you don’t play piano.”
“No, but you do. And it’s gorgeous, isn’t it? I thought, ‘why not?’”
She spoke like a piano was a decoration. An accessory. Something closer to a vase than an instrument.
“Why not?” She repeated Ivy’s words in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. Ivy hadn’t appeared to notice, or else she was too busy admiring her newest possession to realize something was wrong.
“Yeah. I spoke to one of my sister’s friends. He told me this was one of the best pianos I could find in the States.
“Exactly. And you don’t even play.”
A frown creased Ivy’s forehead. “Why does that matter?”
“You just went out and bought a piano.”
“I wanted to hear you play.”
“That’s—” She touched the lid with the reverence it deserved. A reverence Ivy would never show it. Could never show it, because she was too used to quality to recognize it.
“Lil?”
“This is a mistake.” She backed away from the piano. From Ivy. From everything she’d allowed herself to hope for. Ivy had said, I want you, and this is what she had meant. Possession. Something that could be owned and discarded, much like she’d thrown Lillian away before.
“What’s a mistake?”
“The fact you have to ask that. The fact you can just buy a piano and expect me to fall in love with you without—without knowing the first thing about me.”
Ivy’s face, already pale, whitened to chalk.
“This is what you do.” Her voice grew stronger, more certain as her anger came to a crescendo. “You have no idea what it’s like for the rest of us. Do you think you can just buy me? That, what, I’ll forgive you everything just because you’ve thrown enough money at me?”
“Like you know the first thing about money.”
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“See? That’s what I’m talking about. You think you’re better than me. You always have.”
“Bullshit. You’re just as bad. You think poverty gives you moral superiority, but you’re not poor anymore, Lee. You’re a doctor. Welcome to the middle class.”
“Like you know anything about the middle class.”
“And you freak out the minute someone tries to do something nice for you.”
“Nice? Nice is dinner. Nice is a picnic, or a shoulder rub, not a fucking Steinway. You could have at least gone with a Yamaha, or a—”
“You hate when I buy you drinks. You hate when I buy you anything. You’re the one with the money problem, not me.”
“Name one thing in your life money can’t fix. One thing, and I’ll—”
“I have MS, Lillian.”
She choked on her next retort.
Ivy trembled across from her, gripping the piano for support. Ire radiated from her tense shoulders.
The meds on Ivy’s bathroom counter made sense now. Terror for Ivy opened its mouth to swallow her. She balanced on a tightrope of fury over the pit. Just as she had on the ropes course, she willed herself not to look down. The fall waited. Except this time, there was no harness to catch her, and no way to climb back out.
Her feet gripped the rope.
“Thank goodness you have good health care, then.” The cruelty in her words shocked her at the same time as it thrilled her. Something dark and liquid and hot clawed at her insides, and when she opened her mouth, it spoke with her voice. “Tough luck. But you’ll never have to worry about supporting yourself. You’ll never have to worry about affording your medication.”
“That’s not—”
“When pretty rich girls get sick, it’s tragic. When poor girls get sick, it’s a drain on the health care system. How is that fair?”
“How is that my fault?”
“It’s not an excuse.”
“I’m not saying it’s an—”
“You can’t just throw that out there and expect me to overlook everything else.”
“I’m not!”
“You are. You broke my heart, Ivy, and now that you’re broken, I’m finally good enough? You’re settling? No. I’m not going to be your consolation prize.”
The sound of her own panting breath filled the silence between them. She knew she was being irrational. That was the problem: nothing about her feelings for Ivy was rational. Everything that should have been tempered by reason came out plasma hot. Around Ivy, she was unpredictable. Unstable. Cruel. Ivy made the world too bright. She made her want things she couldn’t have.
Things like pianos. Music. Passion. Ephemeral joys that might fade with the dawn.
Ivy’s body, wasting.
Ivy, dying.
No.
Tears streamed down Ivy’s face, but her eyes were cold when at last she spoke. “I think you should go.”
She turned her back before her own tears had a chance to fall.
Chapter Twelve
Florida heat hit her face with the smell of flowers and cut grass. She inhaled, grateful to be out of the cold, but the sun could not warm the chill that had settled into her chest since Lillian had walked out of her house. Again.
“You’re so pale,” said Prudence.
“There’s my girl.” Her father shouldered past her mother to envelope her in a hug. His cologne, subtle and familiar, lingered when he held her at arm’s length to look her over. “Nothing a little sun can’t cure, right?”
Her parent’s Naples house sat directly on the beach. Sandpipers darted in and out of the waves past the salt grass growing on the low dunes, and the evening sun bled into the ocean. Her winter clothes felt heavy and cumbersome.
“Is Madison here yet?”
“She’s walking the beach, on her phone as usual,” said Prudence. As if she’s one to talk. Prudence might have recently retired, but she never strayed far from her own phone. Committees and board meetings had dominated her life when Ivy and Madison were children, and all that had changed since was the nonprofit status of the callers.
She rolled her luggage to a guest bedroom and changed into a light sundress, briefly wishing Lillian could see her before remembering Lillian wouldn’t want to see her, regardless of how she looked in the dark blue cotton.
“I’m not going to be your consolation prize.”
Her stomach clenched, and she met her eyes in the mirror, gratified at the anger blazing out of them. Anger she could deal with.
“Mom looks like she spent the last month in a tanning bed. It’s atrocious.” Madison strolled into her bedroom without knocking, a glass of white wine in one hand and her eyes finishing a roll.
“Was that the first thing she said to you, too?”
“Yes. I told her I didn’t want to get skin cancer. Or wrinkles.”
“Dad looks good, though.”
“I know. He finally shaved off that disgusting goatee,” said Madison.
“Right. His Brad Pitt look.” Ivy faked a smile at the memory.
Madison’s eyes, now that they had finished circumnavigating their sockets, settled on her. “You do look like shit, by the way. No offense.”
“I’m not sleeping well.”
“Don’t expect to sleep better here. Dad’s snoring is unbelievable. Come on.”
Madison beckoned her out of the bedroom, and she followed her down to the patio. A bottle of wine waited, accompanied by cheese and crackers and their parents. She filled them in on her new life in Seal Cove while the sun finished setting and mosquitoes made their move. Bug spray stung her nostrils as her father passed the can around.
“It will be so nice to have you close by this summer,” said Prudence.
“We’ll have to get you a boat,” said her father.
She pictured Lillian’s reaction to those words and grimaced.
“What? It’s perfectly logical, and considering your hours it makes sense.”
“You’d look hot in a Pershing.”
Just what she needed. A fucking yacht. Lillian would—
No. It didn’t matter what Lillian thought because Lillian had slammed that door in her face.
“Ivy is perfectly capable of choosing her own boat,” said Prudence, interrupting a heated debate between Madison and Richard.
“ . . .everyone has a Regulator,” Madison said before quelling beneath her mother’s stare.
“Ivy’s always made up her own mind, anyway.”
She smiled at her father. He meant it genuinely now, though there had been a time when Ivy’s independence was a sore point. An uncharitable part of her wondered if he would be secretly glad she’d gotten sick. It would put her back in his court, dependent on family money. “If you’d become a surgeon,” she could hear him saying, but she hadn’t, and fighting imaginary battles was a waste of time.
“How is that woman you went to school with? What was her name—a flower, wasn’t it? Lily? Rose?” asked Prudence.
Ivy stilled. “Lillian.”
“The one you hate?” Madison perked up at the prospect of drama.
“She hasn’t changed.” But I wish the subject would.
“It does seem a shame you ended up working with her.” Prudence refilled her wineglass and waved the bottle. Ivy covered her drink with her hand, but the rest of her family accepted.
“It’s a small field.”
“It isn’t that small,” said Richard. “I feel like I see a new vet hospital opening every day.”
“She isn’t making your life difficult, is she?” Prudence asked.
“No.” The breeze off the water might as well have come from Seal Cove, it was so frigid. None of the others shivered. “I’m going to grab a sweatshirt. Anyone want anything?”
• • •
Lillian surveyed the living room. Her favorite people filled it, digging hands into bowls of snacks and sipping festive drinks while the fireplace crackled merrily and a cold December rain slicked the windows. It might turn to
snow later, or perhaps sleet. The weather app on her phone changed its mind every few minutes, and in the end it didn’t matter. Anyone who needed to crash here would have a bed if the roads got bad, or at least a couch. She counted: Stormy, Morgan, Emilia, Stevie, and Angie, along with Georgia and Shawna and a few other clinic people. Plenty of room, and plenty of food. Veterinary gods knew she’d made enough. Cookies and spiced breads and pies and latkes and dumplings and her mom’s sweet rice balls and moon cakes, not to mention the casseroles and sweets provided by the guests. They’d hardly made a dent. The counters looked like they might collapse under the weight.
“Get out of the kitchen,” Angie ordered from the living room.
“Just a second.” Something was in the oven. Blanking on what exactly, she opened the door. Stevie’s pigs-in-a-blanket or whatever those tiny hot dogs wrapped in canned crescent rolls were called. She reached for the tray, recognized she wasn’t wearing an oven mitt just in time, and remedied her mistake without burning anything.
“I thought Dr. Holden was coming,” someone said as she emerged from her fortress of baked goods. She retreated again under the pretense of getting another drink. Mulled wine couldn’t dull the sharp sting of that name.
“She’s in Florida with her family for a few days,” said Shawna.
“Generous of you to cover,” Georgia said, presumably to Morgan.
“Not really. I’m taking a week off this spring and said I’d cover the holidays if she covered that.”
“Where are you going?” asked Stormy.
Sensing a shift toward safer conversational currents, Lillian made a second attempt at reentry.
“She’s going to New Zealand with Emilia,” said Stevie. “And she doesn’t even like Lord of the Rings.”
“There is more to New Zealand than a bunch of long-ass movies.”
Angie, Stevie, and several other voices pounced in outrage. Lillian took a seat beside Stormy and warmed her hands on her mulled wine.
