Chapter 26
Twenty-six
He wore a green visitor’s badge and sat at the edge of Annie’s throne, paging through her Golden Hour Girls book, but he looked up at the sound of my steps. The book snapped shut. “Olivia,” he said, rising from the chair and clearing his throat. “Hello.”
“Hi.” I tried to keep the mood light. “You forgive me then?”
Christian tilted his head, not quite following.
“For standing you up for lunch?”
He chuckled. “It’s been years since I’ve been stood up, so my ego was a little bruised, but of course I do. Erica called and explained what happened…” He drifted off to glance at Annie, who stirred but stayed sleeping. “Which is how I ended up here.”
Why didn’t Erica warn me? I wondered.
“She didn’t know I was coming,” he clarified. “She only gave me the details.” He rubbed his forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?” I asked, and I gestured for him to sit back down. I perched at the foot of Annie’s bed, careful not to crush her toes. “How long as it been since you’ve spoken?”
“A very long time,” Christian answered. “We ran into each other at JFK airport once; it had to be ten or twelve years ago. I was flying out to Amsterdam, and she had just deplaned from…”
“Australia,” I finished for him. “She took a six-week cruise to Sydney then flew home.”
“Yes.” He nodded, a bittersweet expression on his face. “And that’s all she told me. I noticed her wedding ring, but she didn’t mention if she’d had any children or where exactly she lived. It was only a quick hello.” He chuckled. “I suppose she didn’t want to devastate me further.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You never knew she was Annette Lupo?”
“Never,” Christian said. “I only knew her by her maiden name; before the airport, the last time we’d spoken was when she broke off our—”
“Your what?” I asked after he cut himself off. “When she broke off your what?”
Although the answer was suddenly obvious.
I thought of Annie’s favorite ring, safely stowed in my jewelry box.
She’d worn it almost every day, as much as or more often than her engagement ring.
My dad had brought back the two sapphires from Thailand, but the diamond’s origin was a mystery. I’d surmised it was a family stone.
I tried to keep my voice from leaping an octave. “You two were engaged.”
“We were.” Christian nodded. “For a time.”
My pulse pounded. I needed more information; I needed to know what happened.
“We spent four summers together,” he continued. “Four incredibly meaningful summers on the Vineyard. They always went by too quickly, and it took a lot of strength to say goodbye to each other before returning to school. I was at Georgetown, and she was, of course, at Vassar.”
“For two years,” I whispered. Annie had only gone to college for two years before deciding that it wasn’t for her. After that, she’d enrolled in secretarial school and started her life in New York.
“Mm-hmm,” he hummed, and I sensed some type of subtext there.
“Before that, we did everything together. Swim, sail, read, paint, dance, fish, and we played so much golf and tennis. Explore too.” He half-smiled.
“We truly were inseparable. I proposed toward the end of our fourth summer. I snuck back to Boston one day to buy the ring.”
“What happened?” I asked quietly. The Foxes struck me as the type of family who’d pass down heirloom jewelry.
“My parents,” Christian said.
“They didn’t like her?”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “They loved her; my father called her enchanting.”
“Then what was wrong?” I folded my arms across my chest. Annie was enchanting.
“I did not grow up with her,” he told me matter-of-factly. “We did not attend cotillions together, and she did not have a debutante ball in Boston.”
I couldn’t help it; I rolled my eyes. Thwarted by the Junior League?
What bullshit. Annie was classier than every one of those girls.
“I thought my parents would accept us after I proposed,” Christian said, “but they did not; in fact, things grew worse. They were no longer kind toward Annette, when she had been such a part of the family for the last few years… She ended things in December…god, over fifty years ago now. I was supposed to stop in New York on my way home for Christmas, but she wrote me a letter earlier that month and told me not to come. She thought it was in both our best interests if we called off the wedding whose date hadn’t even been set. ”
“And you listened?”
Before Christian could answer, Annie groaned in bed. I smiled when she blinked open her eyes. They were so blue. “Hi, Annie,” I said softly. “Someone’s here to see you…”
“Clearly, dearest.” She was blunt. “You.”
I shook my head, then gestured to her visitor.
My grandmother’s eyes didn’t widen, but I caught something spark in them. She recognized him, right? “Oh, Chris,” she whispered, and when her summer love reached out to take her hand, she added, “Must you still bite your nails?”
* * *
I slipped out of the room to give them some alone time after Annie told me that Christian was a man she had “once corresponded with.”
Some things she was always going to keep private, I guess. Even if the secret was standing and smiling a little cheekily right in front of us.
I hung out nearby, in one of the hallway’s small alcoves. Phones weren’t exactly encouraged in Finlay House, but they also weren’t prohibited. “Hey, Liv,” my dad said. “I’m just grabbing some dinner stuff at Acme. Everything okay?”
“Better than okay.” I beamed at no one. “Annie has a visitor.”
The line was silent for a beat, until he asked if said visitor was the ghost of Kathy Ryan. Like me, my dad wasn’t impressed with the foot traffic of Annie’s friends.
Or lack thereof.
“Two words,” I told him. “Christian Fox.”
“Huh,” he said. “He drove all the way down here? At his age?”
I admit, he had a point. We knew plenty of octogenarians who drove…but six hours? Across multiple states?
“Dad!” I whisper-yelled. “He and Annie were once engaged !”
My dad, again: “Huh.”
“She broke it off because the Fox elders were Knickerbocker snobs back then,” I hurried. “But her sapphire ring’s diamond? That was from him.”
“And our names are suspiciously similar,” he said wryly. “Did she love my father at all?”
I gasped. “Dad!”
“I’m just kidding, Liv.” He chuckled. “Although I’ve always wondered where she got that diamond…”
“He has so many stories about Annie.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I’d really like to hear them.”
There was another pause on his end, but I didn’t think he was hesitating. Just thinking. “I would too,” he said after several seconds. “If he likes chicken piccata, he’s welcome to come for dinner.”
I smiled and speed-walked back to Annie’s room once we hung up. “And I have the sweetest daughter-in-law,” I heard my grandmother saying, which made me stop short. Her voice was soft and a bit strained, but this was the chattiest and most coherent she’d been since her surgery.
And Erica? The sweetest? What happened to calling her that woman?
“She is such a good mother to my grandchildren and tries so hard with…” She lost her train of thought.
“And she’s just so wildly creative. I used to love decorating the house for the holidays with her”—her voice soured—“but my family no longer lets me leave this place. Did you know Olivia stole my car?”
The corners of my eyes prickled. I hadn’t stolen her Mercedes, but guilt still coated my skin. Because I’d lied. “Please, Annie?” I remembered asking a couple years ago, playing it so cool. “The Jeep’s going to be in the shop for a few days, and I need a car to get around…”
I’d convinced my grandmother to let me borrow her car, with no plans to return it.
Annie couldn’t be trusted on the road anymore, so my dad had sold it back to the Mercedes dealership.
She’d asked about the car a few times, then she stopped one day.
I still didn’t know if it was because she’d forgotten about it or realized it was never coming back to Elkins’ parking lot.
“Oh, Annette…” Christian laughed as I edged toward the doorway, not sure I wanted to interrupt. “Believe me, my daughter wants to steal my car too. Especially after today’s road trip.”
“Daughter?” Annie asked.
“Yes, Elise. I have two sons too.”
“Oh, that’s nice…” She didn’t ask any follow-up questions, which meant she was no longer comprehending. My heart twisted. “You took a road trip?”
“Yes,” he said. “A road trip to visit you.”
“Why?” she asked. “We saw each other just last month.” She laughed. “You almost drove the tractor into Job’s Neck!”
Christian was quiet. “Right,” I just barely heard him say. “Right, I’m so happy to hear that you haven’t forgotten.”
“Oh, I could never,” she said as two tears slipped down my cheeks. “Never.”
* * *
Christian didn’t say anything once we’d said goodbye to Annie; instead, he wrapped me in a firm hug. I’m so sorry, it seemed to say.
“Would you like to come over for dinner?” I asked.
Swede barked up a storm when we got to Haddonfield, my dad immediately offering Christian a drink.
If either of them thought this dinner date was weird, you’d never be able to tell.
He smiled fondly at the photo albums I showed him while my dad cooked, and he beamed at Annie’s old Polaroids and watercolors.
“She nicknamed the Farm ‘Summer Camp’ as soon as she set foot on it,” he confirmed, then he pointed out his inked but hidden initials.
My favorite was a tiny CDF twisted into a tree trunk.
My dad and I loved hearing about Annie’s adventures on the Vineyard—she ran around barefoot, she grilled the best tuna, she had the worst luck with skunks, and she won every late-night poker game—and I could tell Christian was enraptured by my dad’s stories about growing up with Annie as his mother.
“Really?” he asked when my dad started telling him about the time he and his best friend canoed as fast as they could down the Delaware River. “She refused to pick you up afterward?”
“Well, the guide told her that the route was supposed to take four hours, but if you don’t stay with the group…
” My dad shrugged. “Edwin and I did it in two hours, and afterward, we called her from the pay phone. She briskly told us her bridge guests just arrived, so we had to hang around the general store until the full four had passed…”
Christian was also heartwarmingly interested in my grandfather, but when my dad started telling him how Pops and Annie met, my phone started to chime from the kitchen counter. “My bad,” I said, hurrying to silence it.
But once I saw the name on my screen, my heart slipped into my stomach, and it wasn’t so easy to send the caller to voicemail.
Because the caller was Connor.
“Hello?” I said after I’d sequestered myself in our house’s screened-in porch. “Connor?”
“Hi,” he said evenly. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. We’re in the middle of dinner.”
“Oh, of course.” He coughed. “I can call—”
“No, no, it’s fine.” I guess that was my word of the day. Fine. “How are you? Isn’t Topper and Peggy’s anniversary dinner right now?” (Erica had texted my dad some photos of the oasis that was the Outermost Inn.)
“It is,” Connor confirmed. “And they invited me, but I stayed back and made some pasta. I’m not really part of the family.”
“I get it,” I said, even though I had thought about the Carmichael dinner more than once after calling Peggy today. I knew their grandchildren had an original song to sing, and Erica and her siblings had each prepared a toast. Plus, the scrapbook. Had Erica finished her pages?
“You have FOMO?” Connor joked when I didn’t add anything else.
“A little, actually,” I admitted, feeling my lips twitch in amusement. “It sounded like a really nice night.” My heart twisted. “But I’m meant to be here.”
Connor didn’t say anything, then sighed. “I’m so sorry, Olivia. I can’t believe I said or suggested that you should stay here. Of course you should’ve gone home to see Annie.” He went quiet again. “It was nothing but selfish of me, and I’m sorry. I feel like such an asshole.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Please. I was the asshole, Connor.”
I am the asshole.
He shifted the subject. “How is Annie? Erica told me her surgery went well, but she hasn’t said much since. Just that you and your dad are visiting a lot.”
“Every day.” I nodded. “And she’s okay but still pretty weak. She sleeps most of the time, and when she’s not sleeping, she’s irritated by her sling.” I bit my pinkie nail. “Although she did have a non-blood-related visitor today.”
“Oh, really?” Connor sounded intrigued. “A white-haired man with a baseball cap, perhaps?”
“Wait, he told you?”
“He mentioned it to me on the beach the other day, that he might go.” Long pause. “He also offered to give me a ride, in case I wanted to visit too.”
A hard lump formed in my throat.
“And I thought about it,” Connor went on, voice a little strained. “I know the Carmichaels would’ve understood and covered Teddy and Finn, but…” I could see him running a hand through his hair. “I really wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me.”
“Connor.” I gripped my phone tighter. “It would’ve meant so much to see you. Really, it would’ve. You turn everything to sunshine and magic.”
So incredibly corny but also so incredibly true.
“I’m glad,” was all he said.
We sat on the phone in silence. “I should go,” I said after a minute of hearing nothing but blood pump through my ears. “Christian is telling us about Annette in exchange for stories about Annie, and I don’t want to miss any good ones.”
“Of course,” he said. “I bet all of them are good ones. Please tell him I’m happy to hear he made it down okay.”
“I will,” I said, and even though his young charges had FaceTimed me with Bryce yesterday, I added, “Please tell Teddy and Finn hi from me.”
His words were the equivalent of a salute. “You got it.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, aware I initiated a goodbye but not wanting to be the first to say it. “And let me know if they share any funny sound bites from dinner, okay?”
“Sure,” Connor said, then took a breath. “Have a good rest of your night, Olivia.”
He hung up before I could whisper it back.