Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
She should have gone back to the shop to give Jessica a hand, but as she wandered past the airport, she had the bitter notion that she should make the most of her freedom while she could.
Before long she wouldn’t have Jessica to take care of the shop for her.
She wouldn’t be able to come and go as she pleased.
Arriving at Glynis’s house, she didn’t hesitate on the doorstep, but gave a short, loud knock on the wooden door.
“Hi,” Maria said, answering it a moment later. “How are you?”
Lily opened her mouth to say she was fine, but the words got stuck in her throat. “I don’t know,” she said limply. “Do you have time for a chat?”
Smiling warmly, she stepped aside to let Lily in.
“Is Glynis here?” Lily asked, following her through to the kitchen.
“No. She’s out for lunch with a couple of friends. Can I get you a drink?”
Lily accepted a glass of water, and they moved out to sit on the patio. The neatly manicured lawn and bright flowerbeds should have been calming, but Lily’s thoughts continued to race.
“Jessica’s leaving,” she told Maria after a few minutes of companionable silence.
Maria set her glass on the table. “The girl who works for you?”
“Yes.” Lily chewed on the corner of her thumbnail. “When she started working for me, it was only supposed to be a temporary thing, so I don’t know why it feels like a surprise… but this week she told me she’s going to spend the winter on the mainland. She’s leaving in September.”
Maria nodded. “She’s doing you a favour. You won’t need an employee over the winter, and it saves you the uncomfortable conversation of telling her that.”
“I’d have kept her on,” Lily said.
“You’ll barely make any money. If you’re paying staff over the winter, you’d be running at a loss.”
“So I’d run at a loss for a few months.”
Maria smiled sympathetically. “There’d also be nothing for her to do. She’d be bored stiff. It’s good that she’s going to the mainland for a while.”
Lily shook her head as a surge of irritation hit her.
“You could plan on having a holiday in the winter,” Maria went on. “That’s what I used to do. Just close completely for a couple of months and get away for a while.”
Lily’s mind went to a conversation she’d had with Flynn about spending time in London with him. Her chest tightened at the thought. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said through gritted teeth.
Maria shifted in her seat. “It’s up to you, of course. But expect things to be much quieter here.”
“I wish we’d stayed here,” Lily said, the words taking her by surprise.
Maria’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“I wish Uncle Derek hadn’t dragged me off to Italy after my parents died. If he wanted to be with you, he should have stayed here.”
The sorrow in Maria’s eyes should have been enough for Lily to leave the conversation alone, but the anger simmering in her veins wouldn’t settle.
“Why did we leave?” she asked, desperate to know if Maria knew more than she’d been letting on.
“I guess Derek thought it was for the best.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lily snapped. “He wanted to be with you… and I understand he thought a change of scene would be good for me… but why not stay here? This is the perfect place to raise a child. Why did he feel the need to take me to a country where I couldn’t speak the language?”
“He had the job offer…”
“Which he presumably applied for,” Lily put in. “That didn’t just come out of nowhere, did it?”
“No, but he’d always been someone who liked to move around…”
“Really?” Lily asked, her tone softening.
Maria nodded. “That’s how I met him, remember?”
“Yes,” Lily mused. So it wasn’t only after he’d taken custody of her that he’d felt the need to constantly be on the move.
“He always loved seeing different places,” Maria said. “I suppose he wanted you to experience different cultures too.”
Lily nodded. “I was thinking it must have been upsetting for him when there was a fire at your shop so soon after my parents’ fire.” She let the words hang in the air, waiting to see how Maria would respond.
The small twitch of her cheek and the flash of panic in her eyes would have gone unnoticed if Lily hadn’t been paying attention.
“I’m not sure he even knew about it,” she said, clasping her hands in her lap.
“Did it happen before we came to stay or after we’d left for Italy?” Lily asked bluntly.
Maria shook her head as though trying to get her thoughts in order. Or more likely, trying to keep up with her own lies.
“After you’d left,” she said. “But the fire in the shop wasn’t a big deal.”
“Big enough that there was a newspaper article written about it,” Lily pointed out.
“It didn’t exactly make the national news,” Maria said, sinking back into her seat and seeming to relax. “It was a lot of fuss about nothing.”
Lily swallowed hard, not sure what her next move should be. Should she tell Maria she remembered being in the shop when it happened? Demand to know why she was lying, and what secrets her uncle had been keeping from her?
“Are you okay?” Maria asked softly. “You seem agitated?”
“I’m angry with Uncle Derek for dying and leaving me with so many unanswered questions,” she said sulkily. “And I guess it upset me when Jessica said she was leaving.”
“Just Jessica?” Maria probed.
Lily winced. Of course it wasn’t only about Jessica leaving. Flynn was leaving too – but that hurt too much to talk about.
“Sorry,” Lily said, standing abruptly. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“You’re always welcome here,” Maria said. “I’m only sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
Lily shrugged, suspecting Maria could be more helpful. She just chose not to be.