He nods and looks down, and I see the emotion there.
“But if you like, I would be happy to show you her music room properly at some point.”
“Would you?”
I nod. “Of course.” With a smile, I add, “You know where to find me.”
“Yes,” he says and stands. “Thank you.” He gives a rather formal bow.
“Adhita,” I say as he’s about to go. “I hope you will take your time. At the bank.”
He gives me the faintest tilt of the head, and I see his eagerness. The pleasure he will bring to holding a work of art that he will then return to the world. “Yes. Yes, I will.”
When he leaves, I look at Matthew and hold out my own hand, which has a visible tremor. “I’ve been so afraid that something would fall through.”
“I was fairly certain it would be all right.” He selects a small twisted danish. “I have other news, as well.”
“Oh?”
“The painting. The nude?”
“Yes, yes. Has it sold?”
“It did,” he says. “To a collector who was always a rather large fan of the portraits of you.” He passes me a check that makes me blink.
“Well, then.” I pick it up and tuck it into my purse, thinking it will be great fun to split it with the girls. After a moment, I ask, “Any news about what they’re doing with Isaak? Will they send him to prison for a long time?”
“I don’t know. It seems there has been some trouble with the evidence.” He shrugs lightly. “Time will tell.”
Time will tell, I think and look out to the treetops sliding into their spring jackets, the tulips sprouting in planter boxes, and the moment is ordinary and precious beyond words.
But not pictures. I pick up my phone and take a photo.
Spring in New York City.
And I’m here, in it.
Chapter Sixty
Gloria
Several months later
On a soft June day, I’m deadheading flowers in the pots along the rooftop garden. Clouds, blown by a wind high above the earth, make shadows as they move across the sunlight. I’m lost in the task, enjoying the view across the river, taking pleasure in the scent of lemon geraniums and a pot of pink carnations. I pluck one and tuck it behind my ear.
“G?” Willow calls. “You have a visitor.”
Miriam was going to bring me some lemon marmalade she’s made. “Send her back,” I say and clip a frond of rosemary, which I lift to my nose. In the distance, a plane takes off, nose pointing up to the heavens. Such a great life.
A sense of hush catches my attention, and I’m aware of a presence, and I turn.
Isaak.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. My mind can’t comprehend his presence, and as if he knows, he only stands there, a faint smile on his wide mouth. He wears a crisply pressed shirt and beautifully cut trousers with a crease. His hair is thick, curly, mostly white, and his hands are in his pockets.
My breath catches. The face is dark and craggy, heavily lined, his nose more aggressive than I remember, his mouth wide and sensual. But those eyes, those eyes . . .
“You are still so beautiful,” he says, and the voice, too, is what I remember, so rich and lyrical.
My hand flutters up to my throat. “Isaak,” I whisper. A thousand moments rush through me, moments of love and longing and loss, moments of laughter and pure connection and ecstatic pleasure. But always, always, always this wild longing.
“Ma bichette,” he whispers and pulls me into his arms.
Something I’ve been holding together for longer than I can remember, longer than I can calculate, years, decades, centuries . . . suddenly shatters. I bend into his neck and break into pieces.
“Oh, my love,” he says, his arms strong around me, bracing my body with his own as I weep, soaking his shirt, my body shaking with my emotion. He strokes my hair, holds me, murmurs soft things, nonsensical things.
I raise my head at last, slapping away tears even as new ones pour from me, like a river suddenly unfrozen. “Isaak,” I whisper and touch his face, look into his dark, dark eyes.
He kisses me.
The first kiss is gentle, a greeting. We pull away, look at each other again, and then there is simply no question—he crushes me close, and we kiss as if we are twenty, kiss and kiss, our bodies pressed hard together. It’s as if no time has passed. It is just the same. Always the same.
“How long will you be here?” I ask.
His hands roam restlessly on my back, awakening cells I’d forgotten existed. “As long as you’ll allow me to stay.”
I close my eyes and hug him with all my being.
There is more than one way to love a man the whole of your life.
Epilogue
Sam
Five years later
“Does everybody have what they need?” I ask. “Once I sit down, there’s no way I’m getting up again.”
“Get off your feet, Sam,” Tina says. She and Nuri have moved back to New York after four years in Atlanta. “Your ankles look like peaches.”
I snuggle into the couch between her and Asher, on my right. In his lap, my daughter Mia offers me a Cheerio, and I open my mouth happily. She’s three, the very image of my sister with her wild curls and big eyes, and adores her father. Since my entire lap is taken up with her sister, still inside but due in four weeks, I’m just as happy to have him hold her for now.
Asher and I bought the brownstone last year, with money from the second game in the new series from Boudicca, which landed on the top-ten lists of every gaming magazine and website out there, blowing our first release, so long ago, right out of the water. Our team is powerful in more than one way.
Gloria, sprawled across the chair she’s claimed as her own, shushes us. “Here it comes.”
On the screen of the television, a woman in a caftan walks up to the microphone. “The nominees for best folk albums are . . .” She reads them, and the last one is My Sister’s Dreams, by duo Willow and Josiah.
The album, their second, has done remarkably well, a crossover success with the muscular backing of such superstars as Lucinda Williams and Patty Griffin. The sound is intensely original and fresh, and people can’t get enough of it.
We all cheer. Mia throws Cheerios in the air, and Asher cracks up. One lands in my hair, and I toss it back at her, grabbing her hand to pretend to munch it.
“And the winner is . . . My Sister’s Dreams.”
Gloria leaps to her feet, still amazingly fit for her age, and dances and cheers. Isaak has come to live with her in New York, but his gout has flared up tonight, so he stayed home with the cats he adores and texts every few minutes. “I knew it, I knew it!”
The camera zooms in on the duo. Josiah bends down to scoop Willow into his arms and swings her in a little circle before he sets her down.
The two of them make their way up to the stage, holding hands, both of them beaming.
Willow takes the mike. “We are staggered and so very, very thankful for the reception to this album.” Cheers and whistles break out, and she laughs, completely at home on the stage. “I’m grateful to all of you, and to my partner”—she raises their joined hands—“because it was magic from the first night we sang together.” She pauses and looks into the camera. “I also want to thank my aunt Gloria; my mother, the great Billie Thorne; and most of all, my sister, Samantha, who has been my most beloved friend all my life. This is for you, Sam!”
I rub my belly and grin like a crazy person. Asher rubs my upper shoulders. “That was beautiful.”
Next to me, Mia toots a little tune on the harmonica she discovered last week and will not put down. I look at Asher. “Did she just play the first bars of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”
“I did!” she cries and does it again.
“Brava,” Gloria says, clapping. “Brava all around. Excuse me. I have to go call Isaak.”
Briefly, I feel my mother, happy at last, cheering all of us. I rub my belly and realize
the new baby will be called Billie.
On the television, Josiah holds Willow’s hand and raises the award high in thanks, and Mia toots her harmonica, and all is well.
All is well.
The End
Acknowledgments
I could not be on this journey without readers, and all of you make my life so very rich. Thank you for your notes and letters and Instagram posts and private messages. I love walking with you.
Deepest thanks and gratitude to my entire publishing team: my agent, Meg Ruley, barracuda, wise woman, and as bighearted as the world; Alicia Clancy, editor extraordinaire; Tiffany Yates Martin, dev editor, who makes me swear as I polish; Danielle Marshall, especially for that amazing conversation we had one day in New York City; and Gabe Dumpit and the marketing team. Also thanks to my friends, who see me through the hard days. You know who you are.
Big, big thanks go to my longtime friend Judith Arnold, author of the Bloom series, who wrote the lyrics for the song “Write My Name Across the Sky,” copyright Barbara Keiler. Find her at JudithArnold.com.
And always and ever, thanks to Neal Barlow for holding up the tent while I’m lost in the writing. And to Rafe, for keeping my feet warm.
About the Author
Photo © 2009 Blue Fox Photography
Barbara O’Neal is the bestselling author of fourteen novels of women’s fiction, including The Lost Girls of Devon, When We Believed in Mermaids, The Art of Inheriting Secrets, and How to Bake a Perfect Life. Her award-winning books have been published in more than a dozen countries, including France, Great Britain, Poland, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Germany, Israel, Croatia, Russia, and Brazil. She lives in the beautiful city of Colorado Springs with her beloved, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent.
To learn more about Barbara and her works, visit her online at www.barbaraoneal.com.
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