Chapter Thirty-Two Lily
Outside on the deck, I hold a cloth filled with ice to my cheek and a pool towel around my shoulders.
Beside me, Thomas is icing his right knee.
Neither of us speak. The fog rolls off the lawn and onto us like a curtain closing.
I lift my face into it, as if it possesses some sort of purifying power.
My jaw is sore, and my lips feel swollen. All of my words come out thick and slow.
“Kill me,” I say to Thomas. “Just kill me now.”
He gives me a heavy pat on the back but remains silent. A text comes in from Jade. Let’s talk. Tonight?
Under other circumstances, I’d be thrilled, but I’m too tired to feel the relief.
Theo approaches us, his too-big jacket askew and his hands tucked into the mismatched trousers.
“Can we talk?” he asks, and Thomas nods in our direction before hobbling off to sit on a lawn chair a few yards away. I hear the grunt of him landing in the seat.
I turn to Theo. “I’m sorry,” I say automatically. “For everything.”
He’s looking at the deck. I notice he’s wearing sneakers with his suit, and the sudden surge of affection I feel for him makes my chest ache. “I’m sorry, too,” he says. “I should’ve told you I was leaving, but I didn’t want to ruin all of the fun we were having.”
“I understand,” I say, and then smile sadly. “But I do wish I had known. I would have wasted less time.”
He turns to me with a surprised, eager expression. It makes him look like a little boy. “So, you’re not mad?”
I shake my head. “No. Are you mad at me for getting drunk and making a fool of myself at the brewery?”
He laughs and then sighs. “No, I’m not mad. I’m sorry for getting so weird after our date, too. It just felt like so much pressure, like we were getting too deep, when I knew I was leaving. Maybe I shouldn’t have ever asked you out, and we could’ve just stayed friends. It was selfish.”
I grab his hand and squeeze it. He adjusts to face me, and the sneakers make a squeaking sound against the damp deck.
“No, I’m glad you did. You’ve been the best part of my summer. And you’re going to be a fabulous teacher. I’m really happy for you.”
He smiles the smile I’ve come to love: the chipped incisor, his blue eyes bright and filled with optimism. “Thanks, Lil.”
“So, friends?” I ask, dropping his hand and then offering it to him again for a handshake.
“Friends.” He smiles. “For now.”
I try to ignore the butterflies. “For now,” I agree.
Our hands stay pressed together for a beat longer than necessary until I hear someone approach to our left. Walking out of the glass doors of the country club is William.
“Hello,” he says, approaching. “I, um… Well, I wanted to apologize for getting physical out there. It wasn’t very gentlemanly.”
To my surprise, Theo stands up first, anger making his features look scrunched. “Back off,” he says. “The jig is up.”
In the chaos of the night, I almost forgot about the mysterious text Theo sent me, but now, I realize that must be why he’s acting like he’s in some sort of bad detective show. The jig is up? What on earth is he talking about?
William appears confused, too. “I’m not sure what you’re going on about, but I assure you, I mean no harm.”
Theo scoffs. “Does the name Bunny Andrews ring a bell?”
I look between the two of them, trying to make sense of the nonsensical. Bunny Andrews? The name does sound mildly familiar, and I realize, after some brainstorming, why. She’s a new member at the club: one of Theo’s more recent regulars.
William backs away a step. “No,” he says, but he sounds less confident. “What are you going on about?”
“Bunny moved to the island. Bet you didn’t know that, and she told me a little story about you in Palm Beach. How you tricked her into a relationship and then siphoned off her assets.”
I feel my jaw drop and have to physically remind myself to close it. Rose appears behind William, looking utterly exhausted and wary.
“What’s this now? Please, I can’t handle another fight,” Rose says, but William doesn’t turn around. I watch as his face becomes increasingly more red, almost purplish.
“This is slander,” he says, but his voice wavers. “Rose, ignore them. They’re talking crazy.”
“What?” says Rose. “Theo, what’s going on?”
Theo’s angry expression smooths when he looks at Rose and is replaced with pity. I can sense him hesitate, knowing he doesn’t want to hurt her.
“One of my tennis clients told me that William regularly preys upon single, rich women and uses them for their money. That yacht apparently isn’t even his. Bunny bought it, but he convinced her to give over the deed for what he claimed were ‘tax purposes.’ She’s been trying to fight him in court.”
William stands frozen, only his eyes moving frantically, like he’s a cornered animal searching for a path to escape. “Rose, don’t listen to them.”
My mom, to my astonishment, doesn’t yell or cry or even look horrified. Rather, she just laughs.
“You thought I had money?” she asks, incredulous.
William must finally decide the jig is indeed up, because his shoulders slouch and he sighs. “You have a house on Nantucket. What do you mean? Of course you have money.”
Mom laughs harder this time, nearing hysteria. She bends over and tries to catch her breath. I wonder if she’s lost it, if the drama of the day has cracked her open and done irretrievable damage to her psyche.
“Yes, I’m lucky enough to have inherited a small cottage in ’Sconset, but that’s pretty much all the assets I have,” she says between laughs. “I’m a community therapist.”
I remember William encouraging her to sell the house and leave the island. This must be why. He always intended to use the profits for himself.
“Rose.” William reaches toward her. “You must know that my feelings were real. Whatever misconceptions I had about your financial situation, I care for you. I… well, I love you.”
Mom cringes away from his touch, her laughter replaced by a disgusted scowl.
“Oh, give it up, already! I was trying to break up with you before my speech regardless.” That explains his sullen expression, trailing after her before she took the podium.
“This just makes my decision easier. Now, get the fuck out of my face.”
This might be the only time in my entire life I’ve heard my mom curse, and I feel a certain pride. Theo and I clap as William slinks off, like a dog with his tail between his legs.
When he’s gone, I stand and offer my mom a high five. “Go, Mom!”
Rose ignores the gesture. “You, get in the car. We’re going home.”
On the ride home, Rose and I don’t say a word.
Aunt Elizabeth and my grandfather decide to stay out later.
Apparently, they ran into old friends from Branford.
They said something about “going for a nightcap at Gaslight.” We sit in the dark of the car.
The fog has turned to rain, and the windshield wipers squeak against the glass, emphasizing the quiet.
I didn’t show Mom the scratch on the bumper yet. That particular reckoning can wait.
“How did the rest of the night go?” I ask. “I mean after the speech. Were you able to keep going once the fight was broken up and we went outside?”
“How do you think it went?” says Rose. I’ve never heard my mom sound so cold.
“I’m really sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am—”
“Can we just not tonight? I’m exhausted. Let’s just sit in the silence.”
The rain is coming down hard, crashing onto the roof.
Headlights flash by, blinding us. Nantucket is unrecognizable in this weather.
The island changes during a storm. You realize how isolated it truly is, a sand bank thirty miles out to sea, an anomaly, a miracle.
I consider warning my mom to watch out for deer but decide against it.
Rose doesn’t need the kinds of warnings I need. She always knows what to do.
“I just, I need you to know how incredibly sorry I am. You’re the most important person in the world to me and I just—”
“Please! Lily.” Rose’s voice cracks. “Please. Enough. Can you respect this one thing? I just want to be in silence.”
I stop talking, staring out the window at the dark, unknown shapes.
Rose breaks her own vow of silence first. “I just can’t believe you would act so irresponsibly. I love you, Lily. You know that. But you have to grow up.”
“Mom, that’s not fair,” I beg, but I know she’s right. Tears glide down my cheeks and into my mouth. They taste like the ocean. “I never wanted to hurt you like this.”
“Life is hard, Lily. The hits will keep coming and you’re not a kid anymore.”
The words sting on my skin, like I’m taking a physical lashing. “I know, I’m trying to be better. I made a mistake, that’s all.”
My mom’s knuckles are flexed around the wheel, turning white. “I mean you and Henry broke up so long ago. He’s getting married. And you wrote him some sort of letter this morning? What did you think was going to happen?”
The tears are coming faster than the rain outside. “I just wanted to leave everything on a positive note.”
“All of this fuss over Henry?” she says, staring at the road like it’s somehow to blame. “Why do you even care about him? He’s always been a spoiled brat.”
I’m confused. “What do you mean? You always liked Henry.”
Mom scoffs. “I was nice to him, sure. I pretended to like him because I didn’t want you persuaded by my opinion, but really? All of this drama over a boy who wears designer sneakers?”
In another universe in which tonight’s events did not unfold, the sentence would make me laugh. But tonight is not that night, and Rose has already moved on to something else.
“And you invited Thomas tonight? What did you think that would do? Like I wasn’t nervous enough already? Why do you think you can interfere in my life like that? You’re the child, Lily. Not the parent.”
I’ve never heard her speak like this. Even when I was a teen with raging hormones, we never fought. Sure, we bickered here and there. But not like this. The road in front of us is narrowing, the trees curving around the car like hands reaching out at us, grabbing.
“So, what?” I yell back through my sobs. “I made a mistake, and now you’re going to ditch me like you ditched Lottie. You abandoned the bucket list because she wasn’t perfect. Now you’re doing the same to me.”
I know my words are cruel, but I sling them at her anyway, wanting to feel the full impact.
Her mouth tightens. “That’s not fair. You know, last week one of my patients was a single mother of three who was just diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
I sat with her, and held her as she sobbed into my shoulder, because she doesn’t know who is going to take care of her children when she dies. The youngest is only six.”
I cover my mouth, horrified. Something solid is stuck in my windpipe, making it difficult to swallow.
“That’s why tonight was so important to me, Lily.
For them. To raise enough money to keep supporting community programs that are quite literally saving lives.
Or, at the very least, sitting with people in their grief at the hardest points of their lives.
I know I put on a happy face, but it is hard work. ”
The indicators beep as she pulls up to the cottage, headlights lighting up the kitchen. I see the reading nook with its soft, tan cushions. It’s almost like Lottie’s shadow is still visible.
We sit there, neither of us moving.
It reminds me of all the times in my childhood when we would linger in the car after school, sitting in the driveway, just chatting.
I told her everything: which girls were bullies, which boys were gross, which teachers were unfair.
Rose listened to it all. She never made me question whether a topic was off-limits.
She always made me feel seen, heard, validated.
Sometimes, in college, I would call her, and when we ran out of topics to talk about, we would let the line go quiet, cleaning our respective rooms or sending out emails.
I could always hear her moving on the other side of the line; every ten or so minutes, one of us adding something we forgot to mention before.
Before she opens the door, Rose reaches out to touch my face. My skin is still tender from where Mary slapped me. “I love you, Lily. It’s just been a long summer. Let’s talk in the morning.”
She puts the car in park, switches off the engine, and walks into the house. It takes me several minutes before I can follow her, ducking from the raindrops that land on my head, harsh and certain as bullets.