Wren clasped her hands in front of her. “That is such a relief to hear. You know, I have always loved your family—”
“And soon you will be officially one of us!” Bella said this in reference to Daisy’s upcoming wedding to Jake. “I only wish our parents could be here to witness all of this love.”
Lacy pressed her lips together, so many emotions vying for her head and heart. She swallowed back the darkness and changed the subject. “Bella and I were just talking about the map that our parents put up many years ago. It’s one of the few things I haven’t removed from the walls.”
Wren turned, her expression pure delight. “I remember it well. You know, sometimes your mother and I would sit here and talk for hours. I would bring a pie and she would make a pot of coffee. Those are some of my fondest memories.”
Bella said, “Oh I remember your pies, too, Wren. So delicious.”
“Thank you, dear.” Wren’s eyes turned toward the map, her gaze thoughtful. “You know, as I remember, your mother made some kind of display behind that old map up there. I can’t remember exactly what it was.”
Lacy tilted her head to the side. “Really? Behind the map?” She looked at Bella. “I’ve thought about taking that old thing down, but frankly, I was afraid to find out how dingy the walls might look once I did. Plus, it has so many memories attached to it.”
“You old softie,” Bella said.
“Not like me, I know.” She sighed. “Well, shall we take a look?”
“Let’s look!” Bella nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you repaint or clean the wall!”
Lacy shrugged. “Fine.”
Bella squealed a little, as if they were about to discover long-lost treasure. Lacy wasn’t so sure. She touched the frame, her fingers landing on dust. “For heaven’s sake.” Bella handed her a napkin and she wiped down the edges of the frame, all the way around. Carefully, she lifted the massive map from the wall.
Bella jumped up to help when it began to wobble. “I wonder where Momma and Daddy found this thing.”
But Lacy didn’t hear her over her own gasp. There, where the map had hung for as many years as she could recall, was a collage of photographs. Selfies, every one of them. Of her.
Bella stepped forward, scrutinizing the collection in silence.
Wren spoke up. “Now I remember! Your mother placed all those pictures there, Lacy. For safekeeping.”
Lacy turned to Wren. “Safekeeping?”
“Your mother became a little eccentric in her later years.” Wren offered a good-natured smile, as if what she was saying was the most natural thing in the world. She chuckled. “Your poor father. He couldn’t always understand why she wanted to do certain things, but I know that she did them out of love. Like putting those pictures up there where they didn’t get lost and she would always know where to find them.”
“If she remembered,” Bella said.
“Oh, I think she knew they were there somehow.”
Lacy examined the wall, all the photos that she had taken long before iPhones could be found in homes all over the world. It was much more difficult to take a selfie back then, a challenge that had been part of the draw for Lacy. It was also the reason so many of them showed only part of her face, such as her eyes, her summertime freckles, and there was even one of her face split down the center, one eye peering mysteriously into the camera.
Her eyes welled. She blinked rapidly, her long-held belief that she had always been the invisible one disintegrating faster than she could try to prop it back up.
“You know,” Wren said, “I think your mom once told me she thought you might become a famous photographer someday.”
Lacy inhaled and smiled. “Yeah?”
“Mm-hm. She was quite proud of you and, if I recall correctly, a little wistful too. I remember she and I sitting here, looking at those pictures and her saying, ‘My Lacy is growing up too fast!’” She sighed. “There are a lot of memories that your mother left with me.”
For the next hour, Lacy and Bella were regaled with stories of their mother, many they had heard before and some new, such as how much she enjoyed sushi until she was pregnant with Bella and could no longer stand the smell of it, and how she would sneak over to the Mcafee home late at night to sneak a glass of wine with Wren while their families slept.
“Momma sounds just like you,” Bella quipped to Lacy.
“Your Mom was a little like all of you,” Wren said.
It was all too much for Lacy and she felt pretty, well, silly right now. Though it was difficult to pull her gaze away from her mother’s careful placement of all her photographs, Lacy turned quickly. She bent down and wrapped her arms around Wren and hugged her.
“Thank you so much for sharing your memories with me.” She sniffled through a smile. “It means more to me than you will ever know—and has explained so much.”
Finn had been in Las Vegas for more than a week and the place had never seemed so … dull. The lights dreary. The shows uninteresting. The only thing that had helped him from going mad was the constant work. Adrian had been in the hospital longer than anyone had expected. As it turned out, he was not as forthcoming about his medical issues as Finn had hoped.
Thankfully, though, he was about to be released into the comfort of his own golf course-view home.
For now, Finn would continue to kneel down in the weeds of work. He had stayed in the sales and marketing offices until late each night, meeting with staff and digging through files of upcoming events that would be held at the resort. The catering and sales teams had stepped up, taking on additional clients, and he himself had familiarized himself with every detail.
What had surprised him most was Lacy’s touch on nearly every file. After picking up the tenth file containing her notes, he put in a call to Adrian’s executive assistant.
“Am I missing something here, Drew?” he said. “Or is Ms. Morelli involved in every large event slated for this year?”
“I believe she is, sir.”
“I’d like you to pull Ms. Morelli’s employment records and give me an accounting of the number of hours she has put in since January.”
“Yes, sir.”
Finn hung up, still questioning how Lacy could manage being so intricately involved with back-to-back upcoming events. His stomach sank. She had obviously worked non-stop, despite the lack of a promotion. He wondered how she felt, if perhaps she suspected she had been lured to the company under false pretenses.
She should have been the one here handling things in Adrian’s absence—not him. Though his staff was quite capable of picking up the files and running with the details, Lacy had the intimate knowledge to make each event shine. He was sure of it.
Finn had never intended for her to feel bypassed, ignored. And yet … had his motives been entirely pure? Had he unintentionally hoped that Lacy’s presence would nudge his brother into early retirement but never explicitly promise her this would happen?
A heavy sigh escaped him. He shoved the file cabinet drawer shut, sending dust flying. On one hand, spending this much time touching base with clients and details had helped his quest to dull the pain of rehashing all that had occurred between him and Lacy in Colibri Beach.
On the other hand, he now second-guessed himself about … all of it. His mouth twisted as he stood awkwardly in the file room, considering the last few weeks. He could have handled things better, could have been upfront with Lacy about his thoughts, but would she have trusted him anyway?
He had been rash. Moved too fast. It was unlike Finn to move forward on a project so quickly, to gut react when he spotted a potential property. He usually preferred to sit back and allow vultures to squabble over a prime piece, then swoop in when they had all but cannibalized each other.
Maybe that’s what he thought he had been doing with Paige, too. If he were truthful, he had to admit he had been rather blasé about their relationship. At least in the beginning. He enjoyed the heads turning when they walked into a restau
rant together, the flurry of attention nights out with her had brought him. But he had been in no hurry for marriage mainly because—and this was difficult to admit—he never believed he had too much to lose.
Unlike now. Now, it was as if his entire future balanced so precariously on the edge that one small misstep could send him into the abyss.
By Sunday, Lacy had stripped the walls of anything that felt personal to the house. Everything, that is, except the beloved map. After she had removed the myriad photographs and safely tucked them away in her belongings, she wiped down the map, had it framed at a shop to the south of Colibri, and with Bella’s help, hung it back on the wall.
Bella stuck around for the weekly call, saying it was the least she could do after Seabiscuit had shed all over the place and caused all kinds of ruckus in the form of chewed-up sandals and a thong-on-his-head incident during Lacy’s final week at the house. Bella had plans to do some wandering up the coast for a few days before taking her turn in the house for a month, but figured she could wait another day before leaving.
Lacy didn’t mind the company at all. She welcomed it, actually. She had turned a corner, so to speak, where her family was concerned, no longer blaming them for bygones so stridently.
“I don’t think we need much catching up, Lacy,” Grace said when they were all on the call. “The walls looked fairly sparse when we were there the other day and, in some respects, it didn’t look as much like our house anymore.”
Bella frowned. “It’s sad.”
Grace half-frowned into the camera. “I didn’t mean it that way. What I meant is that it will be much easier to sell the house if it doesn’t feel like home to us, at least not the home we once knew.”
“If that’s the direction we ultimately decide to go,” Jake said.
Maggie nodded, her expression introspective.
Lacy was spent. She didn’t feel as if she had all that much to add at the moment and found herself sinking deeper into the couch that she had, ultimately, decided not to replace.
She couldn’t seem to bear it.
“I can’t believe Mom hid all those photos behind that map,” Grace said, pulling Lacy into the conversation.
“I can.” Maggie, already back from her brief honeymoon, looked tan and relaxed through the screen. “Lacy, you were so shy about those pictures. Don’t you remember?”
Lacy shrank back. “Me?”
Jake cut in, “Yeah, her? Shy?”
“Yes, you were. One time I remember you telling Mom to burn those photos. And for all I knew, she had done it.”
Bella gasped. “That would have been a tragedy!”
“It’s okay that you don’t remember.” Maggie had opted to don satiny pajamas and call in from the comfort of her new home several blocks away. She fluffed her pillow and sat back. “It’s a symptom of growing old.”
“Speak for yourself.” Lacy took a sip of wine and adjusted a pillow behind her own back, which had been twinging all day. She wanted to avoid a repeat of the day Finn had found her sprawled on the floor. Well, a repeat of the pain she felt radiating through her back—not of seeing him. She missed him more than she ever imagined she would.
Jake said, “I would just like to point out, ladies, that I am still quite young and virile.”
“Oh gag!” Maggie laughed.
He chuckled. Bella giggled. And Grace huffed out a few belly laughs.
Lacy’s mind, however, tumbled back to the other day, when Wren sat with her and Bella at the family’s old dining table. The only thing she remembered right now is how much she had, over time, forgotten.
“Something on your mind, Lacy?” Grace, who seemed to have taken the lead tonight, zeroed in on her.
“I was just thinking about some of the things Wren told us the other day and I”—she licked her lips, thinking, then placed her glass of wine on the coffee table—“I think I owe you all an apology.”
Grace frowned. “Really? What did you do to us?”
“I’ve been hard on you all—not that you’re perfect or anything.”
“Nice apology!” Jake cut in.
Lacy waved him away. “Seriously, I have always felt somewhat—I don’t know—invisible in this family. You all have to admit there are far more pictures of all of you than of, well, of me.” She shook her head. “Then I realized, I wasn’t really angry at all of you, but inexplicably at our sweet mother.”
Bella wore a sad pout.
“I have to hand it to Wren, though. The old bird set me straight.”
“Careful. That’s my future mother-in-law you are referring to.”
Lacy playfully stuck her tongue out at her brother, then wiped away an errant tear with the back of her hand.
“Oh, honey,” Maggie said, “that’s grief.”
“I agree with that one hundred percent,” Grace added.
Even Jake nodded solemnly.
Lacy hauled in a full and lingering breath. “Well,” she said, carefully, “seeing everyone together at Maggie’s wedding gave me renewed hope. It gave me faith that”—she shrugged—“maybe we aren’t all a bunch of knuckleheads after all.”
“Oh, swoon!” Grace said, gentle laughter in her voice. “Do you use those same kinds of sweet nothings on Finn?”
Lacy swallowed and flickered her glance away from the screen toward Bella, who gave her an appropriately stricken look.
Maggie’s voice broke through the thick silence, her question posed softly. “What is happening with Finn, Lacy?”
She returned her gaze to the group. “While there are some things that I have learned to hold onto this past few weeks, my future with Finn isn’t one of them.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Grace said. “But I think he’ll come around—even Chase commented on what a good match you two were.”
“Yeah, I really like that guy for you,” Mags added.
“Want me to rough him up?” Jake asked.
Lacy cast her brother a blithe look, one that neither accepted his offer nor completely shut it down.
“No matter what happens, we’re here for you, kiddo.” Grace gave Lacy a pointed, unwavering gaze.
“Here, here!” Maggie added.
Bella leaned over and looped an arm around Lacy’s neck. “It’s true! We got you.” Bella’s dog climbed into Lacy’s lap. “See? Even Seabiscuit agrees.”
Lacy’s eyes flitted from person to person. “Got it. You’re all here for me. Check.”
“Now don’t get all sassy on us,” Maggie said. “Or else I might have to come over there in my jammies and join you and Bella for a group hug.”
Lacy collapsed back onto the couch. “Give! I’m okay, you guys. Really, really!” Liar, liar.
“You’ll be all right, Lacy. Promise,” Grace said.
“You’re right. I will.” Lacy pulled herself off of the couch. Her heart might be twisting in confusion right now, but she had gained so much these past few months, how could she allow a little thing like heartbreak to shatter her? She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. “Are we done? Because I’ve got a project calling my name upstairs.”
One by one they each said good night, except for Bella who wistfully whispered, “Until next time.”
After the screen went black, Lacy washed and rinsed her wineglass and set it on a mat to dry.
Bella followed after her. “Want me to help you with your project?”
“No, thank you.” Lacy stopped before heading down the hall. “I think I’m going to go for a walk on the beach first.”
“At night? All by yourself?”
Lacy gave Bella a sad little smile. “Don’t wait up.”
Ten
“Thank you, Lillian.”
Finn ended his call with the dragon lady of Colibri Beach, the smile of his heart leading the way. Thousand-thread-count sheets hadn’t cured his insomnia. After spending the past week tossing around sleeplessly each night, he’d finally received the call he had been waiting for. And this time, his quick thinking did not give
him pause.
With his pilot at the ready, Finn boarded a flight to California bringing a packed bag and a loaded question with him. He only hoped that Lacy Morelli was as ready for him as he was for her.
After landing, he eschewed his need for a driver and instead rented a Tesla for the ride. He would have plenty of charge to make it to Colibri in one try.
In his haste, it had not occurred to him how late he would arrive. Chalk that up to another change from his usual plotting and planning ways. He pulled into the driveway of the vacation rental, glad he had not yet officially vacated the place. Oh, he had left with no plans to return, but perhaps it had been serendipitous that he had neglected to tell anyone about that.
Quickly, he put his bags inside and flung open the back door to let the sea air in. He wanted to speak to Lacy now, but he’d have to wait. He stretched slightly and allowed his gaze to fall on the Morelli home. For all he knew, she still had a full house over there and what he wanted to say was meant only for her ears—and heart.
He stewed. And paced. And ultimately wound up leaning onto the railing of the back deck. He wished that he could blink and watch the sun rise, ushering in a new day. Instead, with night fully upon him, Finn grunted and pushed off the railing.
He was just about to go inside for the night when he spotted a flash of something. He narrowed his eyes, focusing. Someone was walking away from the shoreline toward him, her gait slow and uneven, yet achingly familiar.
Lacy.
Finn sucked in a breath. Without further sound, he kicked his shoes off the deck and descended the stairs two at a time. He jogged toward her, his feet landing deeply in the sand, his heartbeat quick and erratic.
She said nothing when he reached her, but let her eyes traverse his face, her gaze washing over him like a million fluttering wings. He reached for her and she … winced.
He dipped his chin. “Are you all right?”
She tried to smile. Her hand went to her side and he noticed then the limp when she shifted from one leg to the other.
“Are you hurt?”
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