Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to rest despite knowing damn well my head isn’t going to stop spinning long enough to make that possible. But I need to calm down so I can come up with a game plan.
There’s no internet access on the island—my grandfather contacted the local phone company once, and they were told there was not enough infrastructure to support running cable or DSL lines to Rose Crossing at the time, and then they said that running those lines to the island would’ve been humanly impossible. The only options he was given were satellite or dial up. My grandfather made the executive decision to forgo both—deciding that the island was better off with as minimal technology as possible because family time was too priceless to sacrifice for “computers and video games and the like.”
I grab my cell from my pocket and check the service. It’s always been spotty out here, even at the highest point, which happens to be the attic of my grandparents’ house, so I don’t hold my breath.
One bar.
One bar is enough to make phone calls if you’re okay with the sound cutting in and out, but it makes any internet capabilities virtually useless.
I try to refresh my email inbox as a test … my point proven in under two minutes when the app times out before it has a chance to load.
I’ll have to try and sneak away to town in the next day and use the computers at the library.
I’m sure a quick online search will tell me exactly where she is …
Placing my phone aside, I close my eyes once more and listen to the crash of the ocean outside my windows.
It doesn’t sound the same without her here.
And it sure as hell doesn’t feel the same.
I close my eyes and try to get some rest.
I’ll look for Lila forever if I have to.
I’ll start first thing tomorrow, and I won’t stop until I find her.
PART TWO [present)
May 2019
Chapter 28
Lila
“Junebug!” My grandfather’s eyes light when I walk into his room at the Willow Creek Care Center the Thursday before Mother’s Day.
Exhaling, I take the seat beside him and softly shake my head. “No, Grandpa. It’s me: Lila. Grandma Junie isn’t here.”
I decide not to explain to him, for the dozenth time, that Grandma passed away last year. It’s been a hell of a day and I don’t think I can bear to watch him reduced to tears like the first time all over again.
“Lila?” His wrinkled face is washed in confusion. It always depends on the day, but sometimes he remembers he has a granddaughter. Other times he doesn’t. Every once in a while, he mistakes me for my late mother, but that hasn’t happened in weeks. “Oh. Yes. Lila.”
He places his hand on mine, but his moment of clarity is gone in a flash.
His Alzheimer’s is progressing and the meds aren’t helping as much as they did in the beginning. Sometimes he gets combative with the staff. Lately he’s refusing to eat, as evidenced by the way his clothes hang from his once strapping and broad-shouldered physique.
The TV in the corner plays some black-and-white Western on mute and his eyes focus on the screen for a bit.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. One of his nurses stopped me on the way in, asking if I could coax him to eat. He skipped breakfast this morning and only ate a few bites of his lunch, and he can’t take his meds on an empty stomach. “Grandpa?”
He reaches for the remote control beside him, staring at the buttons in silence, as if he can’t quite recall which one he needs to push—or perhaps he’s forgotten why he grabbed it in the first place.
“Grandpa, you need to have some dinner,” I say. “Grandpa ...”
He ignores me, and I rise from my chair, heading out to the hall to find a nurse. I ask her to have his dinner delivered to the room. I’ll stay here as long as it takes to get him to eat. His mind might be wasting away, but I refuse to let him die of physical starvation.
I return to his room—a private double suite at the end of the hall, one with every amenity Willow Creek has to offer and not one but two picture windows with a view of a small courtyard with a koi pond, flower garden, and a walking path.
Sometimes I catch him staring out the window with this wistful look in his eyes, smiling. Waving. And when I follow his gaze there’s nothing, no one.
I imagine he thinks he’s seeing Grandma.
Or maybe he does see her … in his own special way.
I can only imagine the reunion those two are going to have on the other side. And my mother, too. I’m sure he can’t wait to see his daughter for the first time in almost ten years.
One of these days I’m going to have to let him go.
And probably sooner than later.
“Knock, knock,” a voice calls from the doorway. An orderly in pink scrubs brings a food tray in and places it in his kitchenette.
“Thank you,” I say, hopping up and situating his meal at his little table for two by the window. “Grandpa, come eat. It’s your favorite. Beef and noodles. And orange Jell-O.”
None of those things were his favorites, but I don’t think he remembers, nor does he care at this point.
To my surprise, he pushes himself up and uses his walker to push his way across the room to the table, having a seat in the chair I’ve pulled out for him. He eyes the plastic tray filled with hospital-grade food and smacks his lips a couple of times before reaching for a spoon.
I take the spot across from him, hand resting beneath my chin, and watch him the way I always do, wishing I could have asked him more questions when I had the chance, wondering what goes on in that once-brilliant mind of his during his bouts of mental lucidity that always tend to happen when I’m not here.
“You’re not eating,” he says. “Tell that waitress to come back here and take your order.”
“Already had dinner,” I lie.
“Get yourself a slice of pie then,” he says. “I’m buying.”
“No, thank you, Grandpa.”
“At least get one to take back to Junie,” he says. “She loves rhubarb, you know.”
Sighing, I say, “I know.”
He reaches for his glass of cranberry juice with a shaky hand before finishing the rest of his dinner. When I spot his nurse peeking in the doorway, I give her a nod, and she returns a few minutes later with his evening meds.
“That one there reminds me of Eloise Bertram,” he says under his breath as the nurse stands by the door and makes a note on his chart.
I peer across the table.
He hasn’t mentioned Eloise Bertram in ages … not since her husband forced my grandparents into retirement and gave us a three-hour notice to pack our things and leave.
“You remember the Bertrams?” I ask.
He chuffs. “Of course I do. You don’t work for a family for thirty-six years and forget them, do you?”
The nurse places a white paper cup filled with an assortment of colorful pills between us, followed by a plastic glass of water. I push them toward him.
“What do you remember about the Bertrams?” I follow up with another question.
He takes his meds without so much as a fight, and his nurse and I exchange looks.
“Grandpa, what do you remember about them?” I ask again.
He places the cup on the table, eyes narrowing. “Who?”
“The Bertrams,” I say.
Grabbing his fork, he clears his throat. “Never heard of ‘em.”
Deflated, I bury my head in my hands and let it go. I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish anyway. Maybe a piece of me wanted one last validation that that part of our life happened.
It feels like forever ago.
And sometimes it feels like it was all a dream.
After what happened the summer of ‘09, Howard made his demands and my grandparents had no choice but to accept them. The moment we left the island, the two of them quickly swept our former lives under the rug, refusing to so much as utter the name “Bertram”
in any context.
This August will mark ten years since we left Rose Crossing Island, and while we’ve never set foot on that soil in all the time that’s passed, there’s still a piece of me there.
And his name is Thayer Ainsworth.
Chapter 29
Thayer
I stand in the doorway of my Granddad’s Rose Crossing kitchen the Saturday before Mother’s Day, watching the pockets of conversations taking place as the rest of the family settles. My father talking shop with my uncle. My mother and her sister passing a newspaper between them. Whitley chatting her dad’s ear off about her upcoming nuptials while her dead-eyed fiancé scrolls his Instagram.
Once again, Westley’s nowhere to be seen.
Ever since the summer of ‘09, he’s been a completely different person. More withdrawn, less engaging. Sometimes he visits the island. Most of the time he doesn’t.
“Oh my goodness! Thayer’s here, everyone.” My mother throws her arms in the air as she abandons the kitchen table chit-chat the moment she sees me.
I had no intentions of returning to Rose Crossing this year, and if it weren’t for my cousin, Whitley, getting married next weekend, I’d likely be holed up in my Manhattan office wearing my workaholic badge of shame like an Olympic gold medal.
But ever the loyal family man, here I am.
“So good to see you, lovey,” my mom clasps her hands on my cheeks and kisses my forehead like I’m not a full-grown man. “We’re so glad you’re here. The last few years … haven’t been the same without you.”
I glance away, unsure of what to say.
I stopped summering in Rose Crossing with the family years ago. The first couple of summers after the Hilliards left filled me with dread and anxiety. Dread because I wasn’t looking forward to spending another June, July, and August without knowing where the hell Lila was. And anxiety because despite all of my best efforts and intentions, I still couldn’t find her, and being trapped on some private island with limited cell and network connectivity only amplified that helpless feeling.
No matter how many years have passed, I’ve never quite been able to accept the fact that one summer she was here and the next she was … gone. It was like the sea swallowed up all those promises of forever without any kind of warning, leaving nothing but a gray island and a gaping void in my heart I’d never be able to fill with anyone else so long as I lived.
My life trudged forward, but only on paper.
After my senior year, I landed a paid summer internship in the city and shared a place with a handful of guys I knew from school. That fall I started law school and before I’d even graduated, I was looking at five job offers. Took the best one and never looked back. Every May after that, like clockwork, I always managed to come up with plausible work-related excuses as to why I wouldn’t be able to make it out that summer.
“Anyway,” my mother says, placing her hand on mine for a brief instant. “I was just telling Aunt Lorelai about your latest case,” she says, wearing a humble smile to hide the brag she’s about to drop in her sister’s lap.
My phone buzzes in my pocket—which is shocking because very rarely do I ever get a signal out here. Then again, cell towers are more powerful now than they used to be and my phone’s a 4G.
Checking the caller ID, I’m taken aback when I see it’s the private investigator I’ve been working with the last couple of years. He only calls when he’s got a lead and his last couple of leads were dead ends, so I try not to get my hopes up.
“Excuse me. I have to take this.” I make a beeline for my grandfather’s study and close the door behind me.
Unbeknownst to my family, I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on private investigators over the years, some of the best of the best, and every search has stopped at the same dead end—as of August 2009, Ed, Junie, and Lila Hilliard seemingly vanished off the face of the earth.
No paper trail. No proof of life. Not a bread crumb of any kind.
My biggest fear is that something unspeakable happened to them and that’s why I can’t find them.
“What do you have for me?” I ask when I answer. When it comes to these matters, I don’t have time for formalities.
I hold my breath and refuse to get my hopes up.
They’ve been dashed far too many times.
“Well, I came across something interesting,” Roland says on the other line. “So I’ve got my new software set to scan obituaries and the like, and it alerts me if any names match the ones on my list. One of the features it comes with searches for partial matches and we got a hit on a Jane Hill in Summerton, Oregon. At first glance, Jane Hill seems like it’d be a pretty a common name. Nothing unique or remarkable or strange. But I took a look at the obit and saw something else. It mentioned she had a granddaughter named Delilah and a husband named Ted. So then I thought … what are the odds that Ted, Jane, and Delilah Hill are actually Ed, June, and Lila Hilliard?”
My heart’s racing so fast I forget to breathe, and I take a seat in Granddad’s leather wingback. Dragging my hand through my hair, I say, “Go on.”
“So I wasn’t able to find anything social media-wise on this Delilah Hill, but I did find a mention in a newspaper article where it said she made the dean’s list at some community college. No pictures or anything. Honestly, this could be a coincidence. A strange coincidence, but if it isn’t, it sure as hell explains why you haven’t been able to find them all these years.”
“Where did you say they live?”
“Summerton, Oregon. Looks like it’s about sixty miles from the coast. Nice little town from what I can gather.”
“Was there a picture with the obituary for Jane Hill?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Thanks, Rol. Going to head out there. I’ll keep you posted.”
I end the call and run a search for airline tickets from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.
I’m going to take the next flight out. If this is her, if this is my Lila, it’s not something that can wait.
As absurd as it seems, the three of them living under aliases is the only thing that would make sense. It would mean all those fruitless searches for her were simply due to the fact that she was living under another name—which actually begs an entire new set of questions that I plan to address once I finally find her.
The pages take forever to load, timing out a handful of times before finally filling out, and I manage to find one seat on a red-eye that leaves tonight.
“Thayer, you doing all right?”
I glance up and find my grandfather standing in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his khakis and his lips shaped into a concerned frown.
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I rise. “Something came up at work. I’m going to have to take off for a couple of days.”
He frowns. “It’s Mother’s Day weekend.”
I wince. “Yeah. I know.”
“And Whitley’s wedding is next week. We’ve got a full itinerary, family coming in from all over the country. Whatever this is, I’m sure it can wait. Or maybe one of your associates can handle it for you?”
I head toward the doorway, but I get the sense that he’s blocking me in.
“I would strongly advise you not to leave,” he says. It’s funny, now that he can’t hold my tuition over my head, his threats have a little less weight.
“Excuse me,” I say, glancing over his shoulder then back to him.
His chest rises for a moment. Even at eighty-five, it's amazing that he still has his wits about him, still has his broad shoulders and barrel chest, even if he moves a little slower these days.
“Mom, I’m so sorry. I’ve got a work emergency,” I say to my mother when I pass through the kitchen. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Is everything all right, lovey?” she asks as I give her a peck on the cheek.
“Yeah, no need to worry,” I say before making my rounds and giving everyone a quick goodbye. “I’ll be back in a couple days. Thre
e max.”
I grab my suitcase by the door and head to the boat dock, dialing a local guy I know to see if he can come get me as soon as possible.
I offer him three hundred dollars cash to get me off this God-forsaken island.
He tells me he’s on his way.
Forever is a promise.
Love is a promise.
Someday, too, is a promise.
I’m a man of my word and no amount of time or distance, no amount of unanswered questions will ever change that. She’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted.
I won’t rest until she’s in my arms again.
Chapter 30
Lila
"He’s refusing to eat again.” A nurse from Grandpa’s assisted living facility is on the line. “And this morning he attacked one of our dietary aides. She had a pitcher of coffee and was making her rounds at breakfast and he grabbed her arm. Wouldn’t let go. That could’ve ended very badly.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, burying my face in my hands. “He’s on a wait list at the Alzheimer facility in Northrup. They say it could be a few more months still.”
"Do you have time to come in today? He always seems to calm down after he sees you.”
I glance at the mile-long to do list I scribbled onto a piece of yellow legal paper. I’d planned on running a million errands today, getting caught up on laundry and the like, and I was going to visit him after dinner, but family comes first. Always.
“Give me a half hour,” I say.
I take a quick shower, throw my hair into a wet ponytail, and change into leggings and a t-shirt before hightailing it across town to the Willow Creek Care Center.
I’m stopped at a red light at 5th and Vine when I happen to look over at the car beside me—a red sedan of some kind. For whatever reason, the driver reminds me of Thayer. Same mussy brown hair, same strapping shoulders. But he’s wearing sunglasses and I can only see him from the side, so maybe it’s wishful thinking.
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