Chapter 14
Lily
“You showed him my paintings? Without telling me?” Lily put her coffee mug down and stared at Cecilia. It was horrifying to think of her work being assessed by a stranger. Like stripping naked and walking into a crowded shopping mall. She wished now she hadn’t shown them to Cecilia. It was so personal. Painting was her joy and her escape. She didn’t want that ruined by someone trampling all over it and telling her she had no talent.
“I thought if I told you, you’d be anxious. Also, you would have tried to talk me out of it and then I would have found myself being in the difficult position of going against your wishes. Easier to beg for forgiveness. He wants to meet you.” Cecilia took a jug from the cabinet and filled it with water. “He wants to see more. This is good, Lily. An opportunity. Try not to look as if you’re being tortured.”
“It’s terrifying.”
“It shouldn’t be. He’s very excited about your work.”
A stranger was excited about her work. A stranger who owned a gallery.
Lily felt something inside her lift, but she was afraid to hope.
“But you know this guy. He’s a friend, so he would say that. He’s doing you a favor.” She eyed the bunch of cheerful sunflowers that had arrived an hour before. They’d been accompanied by a note, which Cecilia had read with a quiet smile and then promptly slipped into the pocket of her linen dress.
Lily’s brain was buzzing with questions but felt it would be intrusive to ask them.
Cecilia arranged the flowers in the jug, snipping stems and moving them around until she was satisfied. “I’ve known him for a long time, although we haven’t seen each other for many years.”
Lily noticed that Cecilia seemed different. Calmer. Softer. As if she’d just returned from a long walk in the country or a spa day. Was that Seth’s influence? The flowers?
“And you reconnected. That’s nice. That flower arrangement is perfect. You could put them on the table on the porch and paint them.”
“That’s exactly where I’m going to put them, but you’re the one who is going to paint them.” Cecilia carried the jug outside and placed it carefully in the center of the table.
The deck was bathed in sunlight, the ocean sparkling under a cloudless blue sky.
Todd was on his knees, fixing one of the planks on the porch. He looked up as they came out.
“Nice flowers. Who is your admirer, Lily?” He wiped his brow with his forearm and stood up.
“Not me. No admirers.” Her love life was moribund, but she’d made her peace with that. At least she thought she had until he’d shown up. “These were sent to your grandmother.”
And Cecilia was smiling in a way Lily hadn’t seen her smile before. As if everything was right with the world.
Todd obviously noticed it, too.
“Nanna?” He poured himself a glass of lemonade from the jug on the table. “Tell us everything. The more detail the better as Lily and I are both going through a fallow phase on the romance front. We need some vicarious action.”
Lily’s heart thudded. She would have preferred some real action, but since the only man she was interested in wasn’t interested in her she was going to have to settle for vicarious. And as for Todd, she’d assumed that someone whose relationship had just ended would be more upset, but he didn’t seem upset. She kept wondering what that meant, but wondering had a nasty habit of leading to hope, so she tried to shut it down.
Instead, she thought about what Cecilia had just told her about her friend admiring her paintings. The fact that he wanted to see more was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
“Nothing to tell.” Cecilia made a final adjustment to the flowers. “There. That’s better.”
“Nanna!”
“What? He’s an old friend, that’s all. No one you know.”
Todd wasn’t about to give up. “And he lives here?”
“He owns a gallery in town. Took it over from his father. It’s been many years since I saw him. Lily’s paintings gave me the excuse to make contact again. I probably shouldn’t have needed an excuse, which just goes to prove that even someone of my mature years can still feel insecure and unsure.”
If she’d felt unsure, Lily thought, then that must mean she cared.
“It’s good that someone has finally recognized Lily’s talent. That’s great. Long overdue.” Todd rested his hip on the edge of the table. “And now tell us more about this guy. You said it has been years since you saw him. How many years?”
Cecilia raised her eyebrows. “Is this an interrogation?”
“That depends on whether you’re hiding something juicy.”
Lily was only half listening. She was still absorbing the news that Cecilia had shown her paintings to someone who owned a gallery. And that Todd thought she had talent.
Cecilia paused. “I knew him before I met your grandfather.”
“Knew?” Todd folded his arms and waited. “An old boyfriend? Nanna Lapthorne, you’ve never talked about that time in your life. This is a story I need to hear.”
“You might need to hear it, but you’re not going to hear it. How is my porch? Can you fix it?”
“Easily. But first you need to give me details. No censorship allowed. What’s his name?”
“His name,” Cecilia said, “is Seth. Now, will you finish the boards? Because if I trip and break a hip, I’ll be blaming you.”
“I’ll have it finished by tonight,” Todd said. “Tomorrow I will start on the window frames.”
“What’s wrong with the window frames?”
“Some of them are rotten. Don’t worry. I can fix it, but I work faster if my head isn’t full of questions. It affects my concentration. Is Seth married?”
Lily couldn’t help smiling. He was asking all the questions she would have wanted to ask if good manners hadn’t held her back.
Cecilia sighed. “If I asked you these questions, you’d be telling me to mind my own business.”
“Not true. I’ll answer any question you ask. Try me.”
“All right.” Cecilia narrowed her eyes. “What happened with Amelie?”
“Ah. Amelie. I realized I made a mistake.” Todd answered without hesitation. “I’m making that sound as if it was a sudden revelation. It wasn’t. I knew it was a mistake from the beginning.”
“If that’s the case, why did you propose?”
Lily held her breath, waiting to hear the answer to that.
Todd levered himself away from the table and pulled out a chair. “If it’s confession time, then I need to be sitting. And the answer is, I didn’t.”
“You didn’t propose to her?”
“No. She proposed to me.” His eyes had lost the laughter, and Lily saw for the first time that under the smile and his easy manner he looked tired. As if he hadn’t been sleeping well.
Cecilia sat down, too. “She proposed to you? How very modern.”
“Yes. And at this point I should add that I have no problem with it in principle. But she chose to do it in public. With no warning.” He tapped his fingers on the table, a tense rhythmic drumming. “It was her birthday. Fifty of her friends, looking on, waiting. Primed. Phones at the ready to record the moment.”
Fifty friends? Lily tried to imagine it. She didn’t have fifty friends. How did one even stay in touch with fifty people? But that was Amelie. She collected people like trophies as if the number of contacts in her phone was somehow a measure of her worth.
“She’d told her friends what she was going to do?” Cecilia looked astounded. “Why?”
“It was a filmable moment. I’m lucky she didn’t live stream it.”
“And because there was an audience, you said yes. Because you’re you, of course.”
“I didn’t want to humiliate her,” Todd said. “It was the wrong decision. I realized that pretty quickly, but in that single second, with no warning that it was going to happen, I couldn’t think clearly. I intended to put it right before we even left the place, but it snowballed. I couldn’t get near her for her friends screaming and hugging her. The right moment just didn’t present itself.”
Cecilia ran her fingers across her forehead. “How did she propose? Did she expect you to go shopping for a ring?”
“She already had a ring. She had everything covered. It was her grandmother’s. She had it sized and gave it to me to give to her.”
“Goodness. That doesn’t sound like my dream proposal.” Cecilia sat up straighter. “What do you think, Lily?”
Lily blinked. “I haven’t ever thought about it. I wouldn’t want it to be public, I know that. A proposal should be something intimate, surely. Something between two people.” Her cheeks were hot enough to fry an egg and she saw Todd’s gaze linger on her face as if he was trying to figure something out.
She felt a stab of acute longing and something else. Something much more complicated, and at the same time she felt a thrill of relief.
Todd hadn’t proposed to Amelie.
He hadn’t asked her to marry him.
All those hashtags, #soulmate #manofmydreams #truelove, had been wishful thinking on Amelie’s part.
“She proposed and provided you with a ring to give her. She’s obviously a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it,” Cecilia said.
Lily thought about the Amelie she knew. Top of the class in everything. Captain of every team. A winner. “It probably didn’t occur to her that you wouldn’t be feeling the same way.” In her experience, Amelie focused on her own feelings, not the feelings of others. And what Amelie wanted, Amelie always got.
But not Todd.
She didn’t have Todd.
“Or maybe,” Cecilia said, “she knew you were too much of a gentleman to turn her down. She knew that in the end your ingrained kindness and decency would ensure that you went along with it.”
Lily thought about that.
And then what? A miserable marriage and a divorce? You couldn’t force love, could you?
“I was cowardly.” Todd topped up his glass. “I should have said no right away. I should have said that it wasn’t the time or the place, but I was taken by surprise. I didn’t want to humiliate her. I ended up doing that anyway, and by the time I found the words and the guts to end what never should have begun, she’d already picked a date and found a venue for the wedding.”
Knowing Amelie as she did, Lily could easily picture it.
She could just imagine how much pressure Amelie had put on him.
But in the end, he’d resisted.
“She’d found a venue after just a week?” Cecilia sounded astonished. “Not a woman to hang around.”
“At last count my mother had twenty voice mails from her mother. Probably a good thing you steered clear of your party. She turned up and threw champagne over me.”
Cecilia gave a faint smile. “I saw that.”
“You did?”
“I was in the window, looking at the gardens.”
“And you didn’t come and rescue me?”
Cecilia’s smile widened. “You’ve always been able to take care of yourself, Todd. And having your grandmother riding to your rescue probably wouldn’t have enhanced your reputation. Also, I had no idea what was going on and I’ve made a point of never interfering in other people’s relationships. Your Amelie seems like a young woman who likes to live out the big life moments in front of an audience.”
“Not my Amelie. And as I’m a person who likes a laid-back lifestyle, I think you can see we weren’t a match made in heaven.”
Lily said nothing. All she could think was that Todd hadn’t proposed to Amelie. Todd hadn’t even wanted to marry Amelie.
And that didn’t really change anything of course, but somehow it made her feel better.
“So now it’s your turn, Nanna.” Todd removed his sunglasses and leaned forward. “Seth.”
“Seth.” Cecilia breathed the name like a sigh. “He was my first boyfriend. I was here for the season, with two girlfriends. There were a bunch of artists living here and we all spent time together. We hung out on the beach—painted, swam, ate, drank, talked about everything.”
“You met Seth before you met my grandfather?”
“Yes. We arrived in spring, and Cameron appeared on the scene late in the summer.” Cecilia paused. “Life was delightfully uncomplicated. We came from all over, but Seth was local. His father owned a gallery. He was influential in the art world, but I didn’t know that then. We didn’t care about things like that. We didn’t think about the future. We lived for the day. None of us thought ahead. It was self-indulgent, but at the time we didn’t see it like that.”
Lily could picture it easily. Long summer days and lazy summer nights. Milky dawn mornings and rose gold sunsets. A group of young people with no commitments and no responsibility.
She felt a twinge of envy. She’d never experienced that carefree lightness. From the moment she’d moved to the exclusive school her parents had chosen for her, she’d felt the weight of expectation. Occasionally she’d felt as if she was drowning, and that the weight of those expectations was going to pull her right to the bottom.
Todd lounged back in his chair, his attention on his grandmother. “You were together. You and Seth.”
“We were together for that whole summer.” Cecilia gazed out across the ocean and Lily wondered which part of that time she was remembering.
Todd was obviously wondering that, too. “What happened?”
“What happened?” Cecilia turned to look at him. “We got a little too serious a little too quickly. Seth didn’t want that kind of relationship. He ended it. And Cameron and I became involved.” She said it as if that short statement should have explained everything, but of course it didn’t.
“He broke your heart.”
There was a long silence. “Yes.” Cecilia gave a sad smile. “And that’s when I started spending time with Cameron.”
“Whoa.” Todd sat back in his chair. “So you and my grandfather—major rebound relationship.”
“I suppose it was, yes. At least, at first. But then it deepened to something more. You’re going to ask me what it was about him, and I’m going to struggle to find the words to describe it. He was handsome and charming of course, but it was so much more than that. He had a fire inside him that drew me. At the time I saw it as passion. It was only much later that I understood that the fire was insecurity. That part of the reason he strived was to prove to people that he was good enough.”
Todd shook his head, as if he was trying to reconcile this version of his grandfather with the version he knew. “You fell in love.”
“Yes. Deeply in love. I was willing to sacrifice anyone and anything so that we could be together. I imagined us living this life forever. I didn’t imagine anything would ever change. I had unrealistic expectations of relationships I think.” She turned pink. “I can’t believe I just said that aloud to my grandson.”
“I’m pleased you did. I want to understand,” Todd said. “You don’t have to sugarcoat things for me. I’m old enough to know that all relationships, even good ones, can be complicated.”
“Still, he was your grandfather. And I did love him very much. I don’t want you to think I didn’t. Many relationships hit bad patches and of course there are some circumstances when it’s probably best to walk away, but the danger of giving up is that you miss the good. And there was so much good. The truth is our years together were extraordinary. I was lucky to have him in my life. Talking to Seth reminded me of that. And I needed reminding.” She paused. “And Cameron was lucky to have me. And he knew that.”
Todd nodded. “Were he and Seth friends?”
“They knew each other, but friends? No.” Cecilia shook her head. “That was partly because of me of course, but also because they were so different. Seth was everything Cameron aspired to be. Confident, sure of himself. He didn’t have Cameron’s burning need to prove himself to everyone.”
“If Seth hadn’t ended it, do you think you would have stayed together?”
Cecilia was silent for a long moment. “I don’t think so. Not back then. We wanted different things. We were different people. The person I was then needed Cameron. I admired his ambition. I respected his desire to be the very best he could be.”
Lily swatted an insect away from her arm. “And this is the first time you’ve seen Seth in ages?”
“Yes. After all this time it felt like something I needed to do. I have no idea why. Maybe I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been trying to work out who I could show your paintings to.”
“Was it difficult?”
“The idea of it was more difficult than the reality. I wasn’t sure what his response would be, but he was just Seth. In some ways he hadn’t changed at all.” Cecilia gave a half laugh. “But of course we both have. None of us can stay the same person we were at twenty. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say we’re a different version of ourselves.”
Lily was intrigued. “You were gone all day.”
“We went for a picnic on the beach. It was delightful.”
Todd frowned. “Should Lily and I be worried? He broke your heart once before. Should we be asking him his intentions?”
Cecilia smiled. “You should not. I can handle this.”
“In that case you should invite him over,” Todd said. “Lily and I can occupy ourselves somewhere. We will take a long walk on the beach. Or we can go out for a meal and give you the run of the place.”
Lily nodded. “Definitely. Or we could just hide in the closet. Not make a sound.”
Todd grinned and Cecilia turned pink.
“I don’t know what you’re both thinking, but—”
“We’re thinking that you deserve some fun and happiness, Nanna.” Todd eyed the flowers. “Did he used to come to the cottage?”
“No. This was our place. Cameron and mine. In the early days of our relationship, we lived here. And it was a blissful, perfect time.” Cecilia was distracted. “Then Cameron was discovered and our lives changed. Suddenly he was in demand. And as his career took off, I became pregnant. After the children arrived, we used this place as a weekend escape occasionally.”
“But then you stopped coming here altogether.” Todd frowned. “I suppose you were busy.”
“We were busy, but that wasn’t why I didn’t come here.” Cecilia paused. “The place ceased to be special.”
There was a long silence.
Lily caught Todd’s eye.
She sensed they were close to getting an answer to the question that had been nagging at her since before Cecilia had arrived at the cottage that night. Why had such a special place been empty for so long?
Cecilia put her hands on the table. “Cameron had an affair, you see.” Her voice shook slightly and the look she gave them was uncertain, as if she wasn’t quite sure that she was doing the right thing by telling them. “Here. In our special place. In the bed that had been ours alone. And after that it ceased to be special. I never came here again.”
There was a tense silence.
“Nanna—” Todd reached across the table and took her hand.
“It was hard.” Cecilia took a deep breath. “And I can’t believe I just told you that. Your mother doesn’t know, and you must never tell her.”
“Why?”
“Because she simply adored her father. He could do no wrong in her eyes and I don’t want to be the one to change that, particularly now when it’s all in the past anyway. All she has is her memories. She has a right to keep those.”
It seemed from Todd’s expression that he didn’t agree, but he nodded anyway. “Whatever you want, Nanna. I’ll respect whatever you decide. Did my grandfather come back here?”
“I don’t know. For many months our relationship hovered on the brink. I couldn’t see past the betrayal. If I hadn’t loved him so much it wouldn’t have hurt so badly but I did love him, and the hurt was almost unbearable.”
Love, Lily thought. Who needs it?
“But you stayed together.”
“We did. And I don’t regret that. But for me the affair changed something. Before that I’d loved him totally. Unreservedly. But the affair took something away that never came back. If you break a pot there will always be a fracture line, even if you manage to glue it together again. There will always be that area of weakness. And I’m not sorry we stayed together, and I don’t regret the life we had—but it wasn’t the life it might have been.”
She glanced back at the cottage. “It was two losses. I lost him, and I lost this place that was very special to me. I remember wishing he’d had his affair in a faceless corporate hotel somewhere. Anywhere but here. He promised me he’d sold it but after he died I discovered he hadn’t. Another lie. At first I assumed he’d been using it, but then you told me no one had stayed here—” she glanced at Lily “—and I realized that whatever his reason for keeping it, it wasn’t that.”
“Maybe he thought that one day you might come back.”
“He knew I wouldn’t. Any mention of the place made me think of her. The cottage is forever associated with betrayal for me. I don’t want to feel that way, but I do.”
Lily felt her heart ache. “Perhaps he didn’t sell it, because he couldn’t. Because the place meant as much to him as it did to you.” She thought about it. “What if we were to get away from the past altogether? What if we could make it feel different? I mean really different, not just a few pots and a bookcase.”
“Different how?”
“This was your place, the two of you. It reminds you of your relationship. But what if we make it your place. What if it’s all about you?”
Cecilia’s eyes shimmered. “You’re kind, but a coat of paint isn’t going to erase the past.”
“I think Lily is intending to give the place much more than a coat of paint, Nanna.” Todd was on his feet, fingers in his hair. “I think it’s a brilliant idea. Let’s do a walk-through.”
“A walk-through?”
“See the place with fresh eyes. Decide what could be done.”
“But—”
“If you don’t like our ideas, you can say so. The position is spectacular, but the cottage is tired. It hasn’t changed at all, has it? So let’s change it.” He walked back into the living room and Lily followed.
She was excited that he agreed with her idea, but unsure how to proceed.
She glanced over her shoulder, but Cecilia was still standing on the porch looking at the ocean.
“Maybe we’re wrong to push her.”
“We’re not wrong. You saw what I saw. You saw how much she once loved this place.” Todd was restless, his gaze skimming over the building.
Lily thought about the paintings. “We need to make it feel different. But how?” She was starting to think she’d been a bit ambitious suggesting it. Cecilia was right that a coat of paint wasn’t going to be enough. “The walls look horribly bare. I suppose we could find more paintings. Different paintings.”
“Not paintings.” Todd tilted his head, measuring the distance to the ceiling. “Bookshelves.”
“Bookshelves?”
“Floor to ceiling. It will transform the place.” He walked the length of the room and back again, muttering to himself. He seemed to have forgotten she was there.
Lily cleared her throat and he turned.
“What?”
“Just reminding you I exist, that’s all.”
He gave a funny half smile. “I know you exist, Lily. I’m hardly likely to forget.” His gaze lingered on hers for a moment and her heart started to beat a little harder and faster.
“You’re staring.”
“I was just wondering something.”
She was wondering something, too. She was wondering whether she should just tell him how she felt. Get it out there, because the strain of holding it in, of watching herself all the time, checking she wasn’t giving anything away, was exhausting. Her feelings for him seemed to be growing by the day and she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be able to keep her love for him a secret. Maybe she should just kiss him, right here, right now.
It wouldn’t be the first time, although he’d never mentioned it since.
It had been the summer before, at a party full of people who were mostly drunk. Lily had danced for a while, then retreated to a corner to worry about an exam she had in two days.
She’d been about to leave the party when Todd had arrived with a couple of friends.
He’d leaned in to kiss her hello as he had a hundred times before, except that this time they were jostled by the crowd and then somehow, and she could never figure out exactly how it had happened, they were kissing. Not polite greeting kissing. But properly kissing. Mouths locked together, hearts pounding. And having started, she couldn’t stop. Or maybe she could have done, but she hadn’t wanted to. Why would she want to? The kiss was the best thing that had ever happened to her, the gentle touch of his fingers against her cheek the best thing she’d ever felt. And then one of his friends had dragged him away and she’d stood for a moment, dazed, wondering what had just happened.
He’d never mentioned it, and so neither had she.
But that didn’t mean she’d forgotten.
She tugged herself back to the present and realized he was still staring.
“What?” What, what, what...she sounded like a parrot. “You said you were wondering something?”
“How are your sewing skills?”
“My—sewing skills?” Of all the things she’d hoped he might say, that hadn’t made the list.
“Yes. This sofa is the focal point of the room. It needs to change.”
Lily tried her hardest to concentrate on the sofa. “Right.”
“Don’t waste time covering it.” Cecilia joined them in the room. “It has been here for decades. Those cushions bear the shape of everyone who has ever sat on them and it’s beyond resurrection. If we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do it. We’ll change the sofa.”
Lily saw Todd wrestle with his natural aversion to throwing things out.
“It’s lumpy and horrid,” she said helpfully. “It’s the most uncomfortable sofa I have ever sat on.”
“That’s true. It has more humps than a camel. Okay then—” He looked at the kitchen. “Those cabinets—”
“Todd Buckingham, you are not ripping out my kitchen.” Cecilia folded her arms, ready to do battle but Todd shook his head.
“I’m not ripping anything out. Unlike the sofa, those cabinets are good quality. They’re wood. I’m going to sand them down, and Lily is going to paint them.”
She was? Lily was still dealing with the fact that Cecilia had called it “my” kitchen. Her use of the possessive pronoun had to be a good sign, surely?
“And when are you planning on doing all this work? You’re installing a kitchen in Provincetown.”
“They called this morning and put it on hold. Illness in the family. These things happen. Sometimes it’s frustrating, and sometimes it’s fortuitous. This time it’s the second. I’m free for the next month. I’ll fix up the cottage, if that’s what you’d like. Can I take a look upstairs?”
When he set his mind to something he was a bit like a bulldozer, Lily thought.
“Lily has a job,” Cecilia said as she followed him up the stairs. “She won’t have the time to help you.”
“She can help me after work.” Todd walked into the second bedroom, where Cecilia was sleeping. “I see why you thought that bookshelf would look good in here, Lily. And if it’s my room, I’m going to need bookshelves.”
Cecilia followed him into the room. “The master is your room.”
“By the time Lily and I have finished with it, you’re going to be kicking me out and claiming it as your own,” Todd predicted. “I’ve already decided what to do with the master. Do you want to take a look with me and hear my plans?”
“No. Just do what you feel is right.” Cecilia left the room so hastily she knocked her arm on the doorframe.
She can’t even bear to go in there, Lily thought. If there was a room they needed to completely transform, it was that one. She was determined to do just that.
Todd caught Lily’s eye and then nodded. “Whatever we want. Great. I love it when a client gives me free rein.”
“And on the subject of clients, if you’re going to do this, then I insist on paying you,” Cecilia said. “You can’t work for nothing.”
“If you let me stay here for a few weeks and feed me, that will be payment. I fancy a few weeks by the sea. It will be relaxing. I can work the way I want to work and not have to deal with a fussy client on a daily basis.” Todd walked past her and headed up to the attic room that was Lily’s.
Lily and Cecilia followed.
“This is a nice room.” He peered out of the skylight and then looked back at the twin beds, which were tucked under the sloping roof on either side of the room. “We could remove the bed on one side and replace it with a rollaway that tucks under the other one. Gives more flexibility. What do you think?”
“I’m not going to be sleeping here,” Cecilia said. “I don’t mind what you do.”
“Good. Because once we agree on the changes in principle, you won’t go into the rooms until they’re done. It’s going to be a surprise so that you get the full effect.”
Cecilia seemed torn between amusement and exasperation. “And where am I supposed to stay while you’re remodeling my kitchen and living room?”
Lily noticed that she was no longer talking about rushing back to Boston. Did Seth have something to do with that?
Todd was obviously wondering the same thing. “Maybe Seth has a spare room?” He dug the tape measure out of his pocket and winked at his grandmother, who shook her head.
“You’re trouble, Todd Buckingham.”
Lily didn’t disagree with that assessment.
Todd had just announced that he would be hanging around for the summer.
She and Todd would be working on the cottage together. And in the meantime, Cecilia would be seeing more of Seth. Seth, who liked her paintings. Seth, who wanted to meet her and talk to her.
She wasn’t sure which was the most challenging—the idea of meeting Seth, or the idea of hanging out with Todd without revealing how she felt.