Chapter 42 Alice
Alice hadn’t meant to snoop.
It was just that when she let herself into Thistle Dew to solicit help with the crossword, she heard voices out back on the
screened porch. And what was she supposed to do? Walk away and pretend she hadn’t heard?
“The marriage thing took me aback, I’ll admit,” Clyde was saying. “I may not have the most scrupulous conscience, but that’s
one line I try not to cross.”
Alice figured she should dart out of the house but didn’t want to draw more attention to herself. She stayed quiet in the
kitchen, tucking herself behind the refrigerator.
It had been quite the couple of weeks. Alice had found herself hoping this might be the time Gus stayed on the island for
good. He had made mistakes, and big ones, but people could change. Forgiveness was important.
Not only did Eloise still love Gus, but they were still married! What a shock that had been. Though, selfishly, Alice was
rather happy about it. It made her feel better about keeping a secret of her own.
And it gave her more reason to think Eloise and Gus might get back together once and for all. It was better for Eloise to
be with her husband and the father of their children than with someone new and unpredictable. Gus was unpredictable too, but
his unpredictability was predictable, which held its own sort of comfort.
But Eloise had been the one to tell Gus to leave this time. Alice felt disoriented by it all, and Clyde’s thick accent wasn’t helping.
“It’s my fault,” Eloise said to Clyde. “But the divorce is in motion. Gus signed the papers before he went. I can finally
move on. We can finally move on. If you’ll have me back.”
Alice had heard that Europeans weren’t emotional. But Clyde was positively gooey, all that sniffing and gulping. It was excessive.
“I’m just not sure I can get so invested again knowing I leave in a few short weeks,” Clyde said. “I know I was the one saying
let’s stay in the moment, but the last couple of weeks showed me how much I care about you. I love you, bonny Lou.”
Alice flinched, both at Clyde’s confession and at the way the ice gave a rumble in the freezer. She felt exposed and took
another step back into the shadows.
“I care for you, Clyde,” Eloise said, and Alice hoped this was a lead-in to the letdown. “There’s just a lot going on. I can’t
say anything more definitive right now.”
“I understand,” Clyde said. “Though may I ask, is that because you’re not sure how you feel, or because you don’t want to
sound crazy?”
“Because I don’t want to sound crazy,” Eloise said. “Just yesterday I was with Gus and now here I am with you. I don’t want
people to think I’m having a midlife crisis.”
“Who cares what it looks like?” Clyde said. “What does it feel like?”
It took a moment for Eloise to reply. “Love,” she finally said. “It feels like love.”
Alice couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I suppose we could try long-distance,” Eloise went on. “Maybe even split our
time, go back and forth.”
“You’d come to Scotland?”
There was a pause as Eloise seemed to be considering it. Alice was sure she would decline. Eloise thought Traverse City was
too far away, let alone Scotland.
“Sure I would,” Eloise said. “If I had a local tour guide.”
Alice blinked away her shock.
“It would be an honor,” Clyde said.
Silence followed. Alice suspected they were kissing. She peeked out but couldn’t see anything and didn’t want to risk moving
closer.
“So what do I call you?” Eloise asked. “My boyfriend? I don’t really like that word. Too adolescent.”
“I’d rather you called me your fiancé,” Clyde said. “At my age, I’m not looking to be in an intercontinental relationship
unless it’s with my future wife.”
Alice leaned her head against the refrigerator wall. What was he doing putting such foolish ideas in Eloise’s head? At least
she could count on Eloise to bring him to his senses.
“You have a ring,” Eloise was saying. “Clyde, you have a ring!”
“That I do,” he said. “Figured my chances were low, but when I heard Gus had left, I took the next ferry to the mainland and
went shopping over there to avoid gossip. I’m all in, Eloise. For the rest of our lives, I’m yours if you’ll take me.”
Alice waited for Eloise to say no. Surely she was going to say no.
“I’ll take you,” Eloise said. “On Mackinac and in Scotland, I’ll take you.”
“What about on Neptune’s moon?” Clyde asked.
“Even there.”
Alice hoped her hearing aids were giving out on her. It was all very hasty, very rash.
“I don’t know how I’m going to tell the girls,” Eloise said.
“They already know,” Clyde said. “I talked to Gigi last night. We FaceTimed Rebecca.”
Alice grew very still. If David were here, surely Clyde would have asked him. Alice was all for tradition, but if the daughters
were going to be consulted, the mother should be too. It was only fair.
“I knocked on your mother’s door but she wasn’t home,” Clyde went on, as if hearing Alice’s thoughts. “So I figured we’d tell her together. It all happened rather impulsively.”
At least he admitted it, Alice thought.
“Not that the decision is impulsive,” he clarified. “I’ve known since the moment I met you, I really have.”
“Better that I tell my mother myself,” Eloise said. “I’m not sure she’ll approve.”
Alice felt hurt and very misunderstood. She should leave now, exit quietly through the side door and let Eloise come to her
in her own time, on her own terms.
Just then, she saw a penny at her feet, lying there on the tile of the kitchen floor. She picked it up, gave it a rub. Was
David here with her? It felt less like a love note and more like a lecture. It wasn’t Alice’s job to tell Eloise how to live
her life or where to live it or who to live it with. It wasn’t her job to vet Eloise’s suitors or warn her away from an engagement.
Maybe it had been, back when Eloise was fresh out of high school. But not now, when Eloise had two grown daughters herself.
Alice had always assumed that letting go of motherly control would get easier as she got older, but it was proving the opposite.
Now that habits had been formed over so many years and Alice’s life was so entwined with her daughter’s, it was even harder
to release the grip, to accept that Eloise’s path might be diverging from her own.
Alice wanted to make her daughter proud with how she responded. She wanted to make David proud. And more than anything, she
wanted to make herself proud.
“I do approve, actually,” Alice said, walking out onto the porch, feeling like the heroine in one of her favorite dramas,
the kind of thing she watched now that David wasn’t around to put sports on the TV every night. “So long as you don’t kidnap
my daughter and take her to Scotland full-time.”
“Mother,” Eloise said, standing up. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” Alice said, her own eyes damp as she looped her daughter for a hug. “You found love a second time. That’s nothing to be sorry about.”
The words didn’t feel as difficult to say as Alice anticipated. They came out quite naturally, as if she had been preparing
for this moment for a very long time. Which she supposed in some ways she had been. There was nothing more instinctive for
a mother than to love her daughter unconditionally. Except perhaps to protect her daughter, which was really just a manifestation
of that same love, though sometimes distorted.
It became clear to Alice as she watched Eloise and Clyde basking in their happiness that Eloise wasn’t some fragile, weak
thing. She didn’t need to be protected against making the wrong decision. She needed to be trusted in making the right one.
They toasted with a bottle of champagne that Clyde had brought along (he seemed very prepared for someone who thought he was
going to be turned down, Alice noted).
He and Eloise looked cartoonishly blissful. It made Alice ache for David and also think, accidentally, of Liam. Their first
kiss up by the cannon at British Landing when Alice was only fourteen. The way the whole world felt like it was imploding
and exploding and Alice had never wanted it to stop. But when you’re that young, love doesn’t last. If it doesn’t blow up
on you, you find a way to blow it up. Which Alice had done, spectacularly so.
She didn’t regret any of it. It led her to David, to Eloise and Penelope, to her grandchildren. But in another life, she would
be curious to see where that fork may have taken her. The fork where her seventeen-year-old self apologized to Liam about
their fight—what it had been about, she honestly couldn’t remember—instead of seeking solace in David’s arms. It was foolish
to think that way, but it was liberating too, looking back on the past without being consumed by guilt or pain, longing or
regret. Just appreciating it for what it was, where it led.
“What do you think Dad would say?” Eloise asked.
Alice thumbed the penny she’d found in the kitchen. She tried to be content with it, tried not to hope that someday David might give a sign even clearer than stray coins.
A loud sound came from just outside the porch. It was the generator turning on, buzzing to life.
“That’s odd,” Eloise said. “The generator already did its weekly test yesterday. Why is it going off on a Wednesday?”
Alice checked her watch. She couldn’t believe it. It was 3:03 p.m. Goose bumps peppered her skin. David had always been a
few minutes late.
She didn’t feel she deserved such a gift from David, given how she’d betrayed him. But she received it nonetheless.
“Your father would be so happy,” Alice said to Eloise. Her voice cracked. She was newly aware of how the broken bits were
what let the light in, let the love in. She took Eloise’s hand and admired the elegant amethyst ring, how it seemed to release
the sunlight rather than catch it. “He is happy. We both are.”
The generator gave a loud shudder, then turned off.