Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
“ I —I can’t call my parents,” Corrie said. “They’ll be mad.”
“I know who to call.” Ivy dialed Max.
“Hello?”
“Max, it’s Ivy.” Her words came out small and shaky.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m with my friend Corrie in her car and we ran out of gas.”
“Where are you?”
Ivy punched the speaker button. “On the side of the road. GPS on my phone says we’re forty minutes away from Corrie’s house.”
“Which road are you on?”
“Route 1,” Corrie said. “Going north.”
“Have you passed Damariscotta yet?”
“Yes,” Ivy answered, “but we’re not in any town right now.”
“Did you pull over to the side?”
“We did.”
“Did you turn on your hazard lights?”
“No,” Corrie answered. “How do I do that?”
He explained to look for a button with a red triangle. After some searching, Corrie located and pressed it.
“I’m already in my car on the way there,” Max told them. “I keep ten gallons of gas in my garage in a portable tank, so I have that with me. We can either give your car gas to get it going again or you can climb into my car, and we can leave Corrie’s car on the side of the road.”
Corrie cleared her throat. “Can we, um, please get my car going again? If I leave it on the side of the road, I’ll have to explain that to my parents.”
“I see,” Max said without judgment. Ivy had known he’d react that way, which was why she’d called him. “In that case, we’ll get your car going once I arrive. Stay on the phone with me until then. It definitely won’t take me forty minutes to get there. I have a very fast car.”
“Thank you for coming to get us.”
“Sure. I’m glad you called me.”
Even if he got here in thirty minutes, that still felt like a long time to wait. Light came from the headlights of cars roaring toward them from in front and behind. Ivy had five-percent battery left on her cell.
“If anybody pulls over and approaches you,” Max said, “and they’re not the police, keep the windows up and the doors locked. Thank them through the window for stopping and tell them that you’ve already called an adult who is almost at your location.”
“Okay,” Corrie said. Her skin had turned ghostly white.
Regret washed over Ivy. She was never going to break another rule or do anything behind Aunt Sloane’s back or her parents’ backs again.
“It’ll be just fine, girls,” Max said. “I like getting to play the part of the rescuing hero.” Max’s certainty had meant a lot to Ivy in Boston, and it was calming her again now. She wouldn’t feel totally better until he got here. But while they waited for him, it made a big difference to have him on the phone.
“How about you take this opportunity to explain to me, in full,” he suggested, “how you ended up forty minutes outside of Groomsport in a car that ran out of gas?”
While Ivy and Corrie were tag-teaming the explanation, one stranger stopped. Then, later, another. Both men, both seemed friendly. Nevertheless, Ivy and Corrie panicked each time, followed Max’s advice, and sent the men away.
Max made it clear when he was pulling up so that they wouldn’t panic a third time. He parked behind them and approached the passenger side of the car—a dark figure against the headlights of his Porsche. Ivy rolled down her window.
“How’s your evening going?” he asked nonchalantly.
They both giggled.
“Perfect,” Ivy answered.
“So fun,” Corrie agreed.
A giant surge of relief brought tears to Ivy’s eyes. Max had reached them. They were going to be all right.
“Your gas attendant will now pour fuel into your tank.” He disappeared from sight.
Ivy rolled her window back up.
“You didn’t tell me he was so good-looking,” Corrie whispered. “He’s like a movie star or something.”
“I know,” Ivy said with pride. “I think he has a crush on my Aunt Sloane. Isn’t she lucky?”
“ Very lucky.”
Once he’d transferred gas into her tank, Corrie started her car. Max pulled in front, and they followed him. He might have driven fast to get to them, but now he was going exactly the speed limit. They stopped at the nearest gas station to fill Corrie’s tank the rest of the way.
Max and Ivy stood next to the Subaru as Corrie darted inside to the restroom.
“I can’t thank you enough for doing this for us,” Ivy said.
“You’re welcome. I’m more than willing to do this kind of thing for you anytime.”
“I’m really sorry to have disturbed your evening.”
“Like I said, anytime .”
“How can I pay you back for helping us?”
“Just one way.”
Ivy waited.
“Come clean with your Aunt Sloane about this.”
Ivy gritted her teeth.
“Please,” he added.
It would be really nice if Ivy could bury this whole thing the way the rat boys sometimes buried food beneath their bedding. However, there was no way that she could turn down Max’s one request. Also, she was feeling so guilty about everything that it was giving her a stomachache. It would probably be better to confess than live with this stomachache. “I’m going to Corrie’s now to spend the night, but I promise I’ll tell Aunt Sloane about this tomorrow, when I get back to our apartment. Will that work?”
“That will work.”
Corrie came back and the girls followed Max’s car all the way to Corrie’s house. He did a U-turn on Corrie’s street but didn’t drive off until he saw them enter safely through the front door.
The following day, Sloane waited inside the parked SUV, watching as Ivy exited Corrie’s house and approached down the walkway. The teenager had twisted her hair into a claw clip, the top tail of which swung as she walked. Her sweatshirt that read Most Likely to Bring Home a Rat was wrinkled after having been crammed into her overnight bag.
Her sister’s child. Goofy, sweet, wonderful Ivy. Emotion clutched within Sloane’s chest because this girl, raised by Brooke and Jared, had transcended the mire of poverty and neglect that had sucked at the ankles of Harper and Sloane.
Ivy climbed into the passenger seat. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“You’re welcome. Did you have a good time?”
“Yep.”
Quiet settled while Sloane steered them toward The Gables. Ordinarily, silences between them rested easy. But she clocked Ivy shifting self-consciously. “So . . . I have something to tell you,” Ivy said.
“Oh?”
“Corrie and I drove to Massachusetts yesterday.”
Sloane blinked, trying to compute her words.
“We met with an Anna Thomas that I found on Instagram. I thought she was my sister. But it turned out that she wasn’t. Then, on the way home from Massachusetts, we ran out of gas. And Max came to rescue us.”
Sloane had literally just been complimenting Ivy in her head. And now Ivy was saying she’d taken an unauthorized trip to Massachusetts ? “Please explain.”
Ivy did so. Blotchy color appeared on her cheeks as she poured out the story.
Sloane was Ivy’s temporary guardian. That was a huge, huge responsibility. Ivy’s parents were counting on Sloane to keep their daughter safe. Sloane was counting on herself to keep Ivy safe. She’d been too gullible, which had resulted in Ivy going on a road trip with a sixteen-year-old driver and getting stranded.
What if they’d been in a car wreck? What if the person they’d found online, the one they’d believed to be Anna Thomas, had actually been a predator or child trafficker? What if another car had slammed into Corrie’s car while the girls had been stuck on the side of the road?
Thank God. Thank God the girls were all right.
“Max was great,” Ivy was saying. “He drove toward us right away and never got off the phone with us the whole time. He brought gas and had us follow him to a gas station and then all the way to Corrie’s house.”
Ivy’s wellbeing was one of the most important things in Sloane’s life. There was nothing Max could have done that she’d value more than the actions he’d taken to protect Ivy.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d found an Anna Thomas on Instagram?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t want me to contact her, that you’d want to wait to hear back from the email to Stephanie.”
“True. That’s because your parents and I agree that it’s important to go about this search for your biological relatives the proper way. With a lot of care for all concerned.”
“I know. You’re right. I messed up.”
“How come you didn’t call me when you ran out of gas?” She was shaken but somehow sounded just the way she was trying to sound—rational and composed.
“Because at that moment Corrie and I weren’t planning on telling you or her parents what we’d done. But then Max made me promise I’d tell you.”
Sloane parked at the garage apartment and turned to face Ivy.
“I’m very sorry, Aunt Sloane. Can you forgive me?”
“Yes, sweetheart. I forgive you.”
“Hug?” Ivy stretched her arms across the center console, and they embraced.
“You know,” Sloane said against her niece’s head, “that we have to call your parents and confess this to them, too?”
They straightened apart. Ivy nodded dejectedly.
They remained in the car to FaceTime Brooke and Jared. Ivy relayed the story again to them. Brooke and Jared didn’t lose their tempers but did ground Ivy for the next two weeks. The girl accepted her punishment and Sloane remained on the call as Ivy exited and preceded her into the apartment.
“I’m sorry,” Sloane told Ivy’s parents. “I take responsibility for my oversight.”
“I’m not going to let you feel badly over this,” Brooke replied. “If I’d dropped Ivy off for a sleepover at Corrie’s, I would’ve trusted that she and Corrie had remained at Corrie’s house just like you did.”
“It sounds like Max was a huge help to the girls,” Jared said.
“Absolutely,” Brooke agreed. “Will you thank him for us?”
“I will.”
An hour later, Max answered Sloane’s knock on his front door, wearing a hoodie and track pants. His hair was in even more disarray than usual, endearingly so. He truly did have the most thick and beautiful head of hair. Women the world over would kill for that hair.
“May I come inside for a moment?” she asked.
“I hope you’ll come inside and stay for many moments. Millions of them.” There was undiluted affection for her in his eyes. So much so, it rendered Sloane slightly dazzled and unsure of herself.
She entered, hands in the pockets of her wide skirt. The door remained open, letting in air scented of the sea. “I’m here to thank you for helping Ivy and Corrie last night.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m grateful. Brooke and Jared asked me to pass along their gratitude, too.”
“It wasn’t a problem. I’d do anything for you and, by extension, Ivy.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “It’s . . .” She cleared her throat. “It’s terrifying to think about the danger the girls put themselves in. I didn’t realize Ivy was capable of hiding something like that from me, of making that caliber of mistake.”
“As you know, I haven’t always been a stickler for doing things the responsible way. That was always more your territory and Jude’s territory. So, as someone who was once a rule-breaker?—”
“Once?”
“I’m reformed.”
“Mm-hmm.” She couldn’t deny how great it felt to have her old, friendly rapport with Max back. It was like slipping into a dress you’d had for a long time and realizing that you’d forgotten how much you loved it, how comfortable it was, and how well it suited you.
“I think there’s a silver lining to the fact that Ivy snuck out on her own and did something gutsy.”
“Which is?”
“Until yesterday, I would’ve said that Ivy was so timid that she’d get eaten alive in the jungle of the real world. I’m not as worried about that now.”
She nodded. It was true that a certain amount of gutsiness was required in the real world. Sloane had needed to develop truckloads of that in order to survive. “Well.” She stepped toward the doorway. “I won’t keep you.”
“Stay, please. May I get you something to eat or drink?”
She tilted her head, considering.
“You can’t remove my ability to spend time with other women from my life,” he said, “then let me sit here alone all weekend every weekend.”
Her lips parted. “I didn’t remove your ability to spend time with other women from your life!”
“You kind of did. It’s because of you that I’m not spending time with them, so now you owe me your company.”
“That’s preposterous. Also preposterous for you to pretend you’ve been sitting here alone all weekend when you’ve been gone most of the day. I had to wait for the sound of your car to know you were home.”
“You listen for the sound of my car?” he asked in a sexy undertone.
“Anyway! I’m off. Thanks again for helping Ivy?—”
“I have something to talk to you about before you go.”
She looked at him with prim expectancy, as if she was a governess and he was her most adorable yet trouble-making charge.
“Felix is missing a priceless, one-of-a-kind tiara,” he stated, apropos of nothing.
She squinted at him. He might as well have said, My mother is standing on the Great Wall of China. Or Jude just caught a fish . “Felix,” she repeated slowly, “is missing a priceless, one-of-a-kind tiara.”
“Correct. It belonged to the last empress of France.”
A huff escaped her. “Excuse me?”
“He thinks my mother stole it because it went missing around the time my mom and I left Maple Lane after it came out that he was my father.”
The last thing Max would want? For his mother to have taken something that belonged to Felix Camden. Max had spent decades proving that he neither needed nor expected anything from his biological father.
“I have to return the tiara to Felix,” he said, “before he sics investigators on my mom, but I don’t know where to look next.”
“Are you telling me about this because of my extensive background in detective work?”
He grinned wolfishly. “I’m telling you about this because I’m stuck. You’re smart. And you have a fondness for tiaras because you follow Princess Kate. I could use a fresh viewpoint.”
“What steps have you taken to find it so far?”
He listed them.
It would be much easier to remain immune to Max if A) his mouth didn’t bring back visceral memories of their kiss and B) he hadn’t lowered her defenses by becoming Ivy’s hero yesterday. “What does the tiara look like?”
“I have a picture of it on my phone.” He pulled up the image and passed her his cell.
She released a whistling breath. “Oh my goodness. That’s stunning.”
“Three hundred and twenty carats of square-cut diamonds.”
“I’m officially intrigued. Give me time to research this tiara and think on it.” She handed his phone back. “If anything comes to me, I’ll let you know.” She moved to go?—
“Sure you don’t want to stay to eat or drink something?”
It surprised her, how much she longed to say yes. She’d love more time one-on-one with him, more minutes to simply look at him, more echoes of the old partnership that had existed between them once and accomplished so much. “I’m sure,” she lied as she departed.
She was leaving because her heart was softening toward Max in a way that scared her to the core.
These days, Fiona rarely turned photos into prints. But she’d done exactly that with the photo of herself and Nicole so that she could tuck the photo inside an envelope and send it to Isobel.
She sat back in her desk chair at work and read over what she’d written.
Isobel,
I’ll admit that it threw me for a loop when I received your letter asking me to forgive Nicole. I understood why you made the request. It’s just that I was reluctant to reinstate communication with someone who’d hurt me so badly long ago. Which made it extremely clear to me, how difficult it is, this thing I asked you to do when I requested that you come to Maine and experience the total solar eclipse with me.
I want you to know that ending our estrangement is of the utmost importance to me, so I met with Nicole, talked with her, and told her that I forgive her . . . even though she did not appear to desire or enjoy my forgiveness. I’ve included the photo of myself and Nicole.
I am still a woman of faith, though I admit that I haven’t always lived out my faith well. I’ve tended to put myself first. It couldn’t have been easy to be my sister even before my affair with Felix. Not just because I was selfish, but because I was also demanding and emotional, and always seeking our family’s attention.
You managed me with more grace than any older sister could have been expected to show. The younger version of me took your love for granted. That version of me was jealous of your success and beauty and wanted Felix for myself.
I’m very sorry for what I did.
I don’t expect you to forgive me, but it would mean the world to me and the rest of our family if you and I could be civil to one another at family gatherings. I still want, very much, for you to come to Maine for the eclipse-watching party in early October. I’d truly love to see you there.
A lump formed in Fiona’s throat. What a stupid and recklessly destructive twenty-something she’d been.
Picking up her pen, Fiona signed the letter.
Sniffling, she sealed it, addressed it, then placed her palms on top of it. She closed her eyes and prayed that God would speak to Isobel through this letter and that His will would be done.
Other people no doubt deserved their spot at the foot of the cross more than Fiona did. But she was abundantly thankful that God had made space for her there, even so.
She walked the letter to the end of the block and inserted it into the post office box herself.