Lily Rose

by Deborah Robinson

  “Oh, how clumsy of me!” she exclaimed as Finn gallantly began picking up her things. “I’m so glad I ran into you. I know how smart you are, and I was wondering if you could help me with my geometry homework? I just don’t understand anything Mr. Donahue says, and if I can’t pass this class . . .”

  Lily continued to jabber, not even sure of what she was saying, but it appeared to work. Finn looked as if he didn’t care if she asked him to wash her car because she was too stupid to turn on the hose—he would have done it.

  “Sure, I’ll help you,” was all he said.

  “That would be great. When are you available?”

  Finn handed her the last book, maybe taking a little too much time to release it so that their fingertips almost touched. “How about right now?”

  So they went to the school library, which on a sunny Friday afternoon was almost deserted, but Lily didn’t mind. Although she was trying her hardest to concentrate on what Finn was telling her, she was distracted by his closeness. He was tall, with gleaming dark brown hair and warm brown eyes, and when he looked at her, earnestly explaining something about complementary angles, her mind wandered off to other places.

  “So the thing to remember about complementary angles is that they always come in pairs . . . Lily?”

  “Yes?” Lily blushed, embarrassed at being caught, but Finn only smiled.

  “I don’t blame you for not being able to concentrate. Why don’t we stop here? It’s getting late and you probably have plans for tonight.”

  “None at all,” Lily blurted out. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” It was only from the widening grin on Finn’s face that she realized he hadn’t been asking her if she had a date.

  “Do you need a ride home?” he asked, and she gladly accepted.

  Sitting beside Finn in his old convertible Porsche that really belonged to his father, Lily didn’t wonder why he knew to drive her to Red Rose Farm. Many of her classmates were aware of her story, that she was an orphan living with her aunt and uncle at what was still one of Kentucky’s most notable horse farms. What Lily didn’t know, as Finn later told her, after a few weeks of tutoring and he finally got up the nerve to ask her out on a real date, was that he had long since noticed her, way before she’d come up with the transparent idea of running into him in the hallway at school.

  As fall turned into winter, Lily and Finn’s tutoring sessions moved from the school library to Red Rose Farm, where they sat at a proper distance apart from each other at the dining room table. Lily was careful of how she and Finn acted around each other in her aunt and uncle’s home, but she needn’t have worried. Aunt Martha and Uncle Grant adored Finn, not only because he was helping Lily improve her math grades, but because he was helping to bring Lily back to life. They were more than happy to have him around, and, knowing his family, who were highly respected in the area, on late nights they invited him to stay over in a guest bedroom.

  When that happened, Lily lay in bed, trying not to think about Finn just a few doors away down the hall. So far they held hands almost everywhere they could, and indulged in heavy petting in his car and a few other places that only Finn could come up with, but Lily couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to go further. She remembered what her mother had told her when she’d first gotten her period, that she now had a responsibility to her body and what it was capable of doing. She didn’t want to accidentally get pregnant, like some girls at her school. But at the same time her body yearned for Finn, and he was relentless in his pursuit to be her first and only love. She adored watching him play the guitar, his long, meticulous fingers delicately stroking the chords. She was certain that those nimble fingers would be gentle and sure with her, but at what cost? Lily was overrun with guilt, as her parents had strong, religious beliefs that sex before marriage was a sin. She certainly didn’t want to bring shame to their memory. It would help so much if Finn would only just say he loved her and wanted to marry her someday.

  At least part of that happened one warm night when Finn arrived at Red Rose Farm to take Lily to the spring dance. Aunt Martha snapped a picture of the shiny young couple, Lily in a daffodil yellow taffeta dress and Finn in a white dinner jacket and black trousers. Before they left for the dance, Finn presented her with a gift-wrapped box. After Lily opened it to reveal a bottle of Chanel perfume, he said, “This is what my mother says you should bring the first girl you fall in love with.” Lily’s hungry heart soaked up these words, and in that moment she felt she wanted to give Finn everything.

  That summer Lily and Finn did almost everything together. She watched him play baseball; even though the season had ended, he had started his own league. At night they lay under the stars at Red Rose Farm and listened to Beatles songs. Finn felt there wasn’t another band on earth that could compare to them, so Lily learned many of their love songs by heart, her heart soaring with the music. Other times, she and Finn literally flew together. Finn had access to his father’s small planes, which were kept on the family’s tiny, private airstrip. On Sunday afternoons, with a picnic lunch in tow, they would fly a Cessna to the Eastern Kentucky Mountains and land on Pine Mountain, which Lily remembered seeing off in the distance from the back of her house in Cumberland Falls. As they hiked the trails, Lily would tell Finn everything about her parents and how much she missed them. He always listened, taking her hand in sympathy, and it made her love him even more. Once, Finn took her back to the family cemetery where her parents were buried. After climbing the steep hill there, they sat beside her parents’ graves in silence. Lily was overcome with sadness but found some peace in being there. That feeling would be part of the bond she’d have with Finn for the rest of her life.

  As the lush green of August gave way to the faded gold and red of September, the reality of forever set in. Finn was leaving to go to Georgia Tech in Atlanta, hundreds of miles away, to study aeronautical engineering like his father and grandfather. Lily was terrified at the prospect of him leaving her. She was also afraid whenever Aunt Martha and Uncle Grant left the farm together, even if just for an afternoon; her grief therapist had told her that this was a natural reaction due to the way her parents had died. During these sessions, Lily had often sat in stony silence and wondered just what this therapist knew about grief. Had she ever lost anyone or really grieved, or was that just what she had learned to say in school? Did the therapist know about the fear that welled up inside of Lily that made her heart beat so fast, she thought she would faint? The fear that made her feel as if she couldn’t catch her breath? Yes, Lily was afraid for anyone to leave, period. She felt like fear was her constant companion. And it was just her fate that her first boyfriend—the first love of her life— was leaving her, too, less than a year after being together.

  Lily fully expected Finn to propose breaking up, but he had other ideas. “We need to give this a chance,” he told her. “We need to see what this could be.” Finn gave Lily a gold necklace with a tiny airplane and a heart pendant to represent their love, and she saw him off to college with tears in her eyes but conviction in her heart that they were meant for each other.

  * * *

  When it came time early in her senior year to think about college, Lily had already made up her mind. Uncle Grant’s health had not been well for some time, and he’d gradually ceded most of the decisions about the farm to his longtime manager Ray. Aunt Martha had always been in a fragile state. Lily couldn’t in good conscience leave her ailing relatives, not when they’d taken her in after her parents’ deaths; not when they were the only family she had left. With their approval, she applied to the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The campus was a mere 15-minute drive away, so she could live at home while attending classes. Maybe she’d miss out on some of the more social aspects of going to college, but she wasn’t angling to find a man—she had Finn, and even at a distance their relationship remained firm and true.

  The day she received her college acceptance letter, Lily eagerly called Finn with the good news. />
  “Do you really want to know what I think about it?” he asked.

  “Of course I do,” Lily replied cautiously, knowing by his tone of voice that she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

  “You should have aspired to an Ivy League school. Why don’t you think about your future?”

  “Because my future is with you,” Lily said. “And because I want to stay here. Besides, what does it matter? You’re still so far away.”

  “But I have plans to be an aeronautical engineer. What do you want to do?

  “Well, I thought we would get engaged soon. . . .”

  “Why is it that all girls from Kentucky think about is getting married? Don’t you want a career?” Finn’s voice evinced a hint of disdain.

  Despite herself, tears crept into Lily’s eyes. She blinked them away, glad that they were on the phone so that Finn couldn’t see them fall. “You don’t think I have any dreams? Don’t you think better of me than that?”

  “You never talk about them,” he pointed out.

  “Well, I do.”

  At least, she did. In the days that followed, Lily thought about her dreams of going to New York. How long ago they seemed! When her parents had died, the part of her that had those hopes for her future had died, too. What Finn had said rekindled something in her, though. She’d show him and everyone else that she had big plans for herself, that she wasn’t just going to be the girl who stayed in Appalachia, got married, and had babies. No, she was going somewhere that would allow her to rise to the very top—a place where she would finally feel like she belonged.

  That fall, when she enrolled at the sprawling, picturesque campus of the University of Kentucky, Lily decided to become a business major with an emphasis on marketing. As lofty as her renewed desire to go to New York was, she was practical enough to realize that she needed a solid plan and real-world experience to get there. Remembering the beautiful clothes that her mother had made for her, she decided to get a part-time job at a designer boutique in town, because she honestly loved fashion. Aunt Martha and Uncle Grant weren’t too pleased, as they feared it would interfere with her studies, but, as Uncle Grant liked to say, “It’s best to let this filly frolic a bit.”

  Although, Lily and Finn made up quickly after their conversation on the phone, she didn’t forget how he had chastised her for not having dreams of her own. He was also starting to bring up the idea that they should “go all the way.” It was a reasonable request, Lily thought; after all, they’d been together for over two years. Although Finn never pressured her, she knew it was on his mind, and it had been on hers, too, more than he was aware. Her old fears of getting accidentally pregnant and her parents’ religious beliefs pricked at her mind. But she was an adult now, and she made the adult decision of going to the school clinic to get birth control pills, just in case, for the next time she saw Finn.

  She thought it would be over the Thanksgiving holiday, but one gorgeous afternoon in October, when the leaves on the giant old oak trees shimmered gold in the late afternoon sun and the blue-grass was still thick, there came a knock on the door at Red Rose Farm. The man in front of her wore a baggy shirt and jeans, carried a rucksack, and had a guitar slung over his shoulder. A few days’ growth of beard covered his face, but his brown eyes were as twinkling as ever.

  “Finn!” Lily exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought I would surprise you. I hitchhiked all the way up from Georgia Tech.”

  Throwing her arms around his neck, Lily kissed him, then whispered in his ear, “Aunt Martha and Uncle Grant are home.”

  “Then we’ll have to go somewhere else,” he whispered back, and she giggled at the secrecy of it all.

  After telling Aunt Martha that she was going out for a drive— even though she was eighteen, she still felt obligated to let her aunt know where she was while living under her roof—Lily and Finn got into her car. She knew exactly where they’d go: a romantic little inn they’d passed dozens of times before.

  The room was perfect and cozy. There was an old-fashioned, four-poster oak bed and two wingback chairs covered in red tartan plaid in front of a blazing stone fireplace that filled the space with a golden light. While the walls were all rough-hewn wood, soft lace curtains hung from the windows. Lily couldn’t help feeling nervous now that the moment had come. She was about to bare herself, body and soul, to the man she loved, and she didn’t know how it would change her. But then Finn emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, his dark hair gleaming, a towel wrapped around his fit, trim torso, and she knew she had made the right decision.

  Afterward, as Lily lay in Finn’s arms, she thought she had never felt closer to another person. Finally, she knew this was what love felt like.

  * * *

  Over the following two years, Finn’s love kept Lily afloat during difficult times. During her sophomore year, her beloved dog Rebel passed away at the ripe old age of 14. He was buried at Red Rose Farm under one of Lily’s favorite grassy knolls, with a special granite stone marker bought especially for him by Uncle Grant. The occasion Uncle Grant took Lily to see it would be one of the last times the two of them would ride side by side out into the far reaches of the farm. For at the beginning of her junior year, Uncle Grant suffered a fatal stroke, plunging both her and Aunt Martha deep into grief. With his passing, Red Rose Farm remained a working farm but not nearly as active as it had been in its prime. The plans that Lily had slowly but surely been building to move to New York after college suddenly felt hollow. How could she leave the place that had nurtured her in the raw, immediate aftermath of her parents’ death? How could she leave Aunt Martha, who had become like a second mother to her?

  One day, Aunt Martha asked Lily to sit down close by the side of her wheelchair. Reaching for both her hands, she said, “I don’t want to you set aside your aspirations, my dear. Your mother would not want you to give up, not ever. She had big dreams herself of being a designer or artist, but got caught up taking care of her parents in Cumberland Falls, where she could never have followed through with them. She would want you to go find those dreams and make them real.”

  So in honor of Carrie Ellen, and with Aunt Martha’s blessing, Lily decided she would continue to work toward the goal of New York. She had not, however, revealed to Finn the seriousness of her plans. At the end of her junior year in college, and the end of his senior year, Finn called her on the phone.

  “Listen, I have some great news,” he said. “I’ve gotten a job offer in Houston, at NASA. They want me to be part of their flight systems team.”

  “That’s wonderful, Finn.” Of course Lily was happy for him, but her joy was tempered with the question of what this would mean for her—for them.

  Finn quickly filled the silence that followed. “I know you probably want to stay with your aunt at the farm now that she’s alone. But would you maybe consider coming out to Houston after you graduate?”

  Lily’s heart was torn at the hopeful note in his voice. It was as if he already knew what her answer was, although it wasn’t for the reason he thought. “I’m not going to stay at Red Rose Farm after I graduate,” she said. “I’m going to New York.”

  “What on earth? Lily, why would you want to do that?”

  “I’m thinking about my future, like you told me.”

  “When did I say that?” Finn sounded genuinely puzzled.

  “Four years ago, you told me I should have applied to an Ivy League school. That I didn’t have any goals or career plans. Well, I have them now, and I’m going to follow them.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” Lily interjected gently. “But I have to thank you for what you said that day, Finn. Without it, I might not have thought about leaving home.” And leaving you.

  When Lily said goodbye to Finn that evening, she knew it wasn’t just the end of that conversation, but the end of what had been the most solid thing in her life for the past five years. She wasn’t sure it was the right
decision, but she knew that she had to find out why New York City had intrigued her since she was a little girl. It was without question that she would always love Finn. He had brought some joy and optimism back after the death of her parents, showed her what it meant to be loved by a good man. She knew there would never be a true end for her and Finn, but it was over for now. After college graduation she would be off in pursuit of the dreams he had revived in her from deep within her soul.

  * * *

  The week that Lily prepared herself to leave for New York was a blur. Her stomach was aflutter with apprehension and fear, but she was excited, too. She had done as much as she could to get ready for the move to the big city, with some help. Aunt Martha had let her pick out some furniture and decorative items from the farm to make her new Upper East Side apartment feel warm and homey. Her aunt had also chosen the location and secured the deposit so that Lily would have an advantage that many young New Yorkers couldn’t afford. The job Lily had secured as an assistant fashion coordinator at a large department store was a very stylish position, but it would not pay for a chic or fancy apartment.

  Late afternoon on the day before she left for New York, Lily went out to the stables and tacked up one of her favorite horses, who was gentle and well suited to a leisurely, calm ride. They slowly made their way across the miles of the farm she now loved so much, stopping so that she could put red roses on Rebel’s grave. As she looked around, she knew that no matter where she went, Kentucky would always be her home. Her heart belonged to the mountains to the east and the bluegrass under her feet. Slowly riding back to the farmhouse, Lily somehow knew that things would never be the same.

  While she was putting the final touches on her packing, Aunt Martha called her downstairs, telling her that she had something important to give her. Lily expected some kind of memento, maybe a good-luck charm, but instead her aunt handed her a small, folded piece of paper that was yellowed with age. As she opened it, her hands started to tremble when she recognized the elegant penmanship of her mother, Carrie Ellen. But the words written there— “Anna James Jefferson”—meant nothing to her.