Chapter 23
The night that Lorelei Whitmore performed for the White Oak Lodge, Aurora and Kenny were seated in the corner, feasting on Roberto’s delicious Italian fare—pasta and chicken seasoned with oregano and sun-dried tomatoes.
Throughout each of Lorelei’s prepared pieces, Aurora was speechless, frequently glancing at Kenny to make sure what she was experiencing was real.
How had her mother hidden this away for so long?
Under his breath, Kenny said, “Your parents are insanely talented. But I guess I should have guessed that. You’re their daughter, after all.”
Aurora didn’t want to admit that for many years, as her father’s restaurants had failed and her mother had hidden herself away, helping her father and not doing much else, Aurora hadn’t thought much of them. She saw how wrong she was now.
When Lorelei’s performance was over, and the applause had died away, Aurora’s hands ached from clapping so hard.
As conversations began again around her, she laughed, throwing her head back, and watched as her mother and father went to join her grandparents.
Kenny poured what was left of the red wine into both of their glasses, then pressed a kiss onto her cheek.
“I love the way you support your mother,” Kenny said.
Aurora gazed at him. Since they’d gotten together, Kenny had told her the specifics of his mother’s death and the harrowing weight of it on his chest. He’d opened his heart to her, and she’d in turn opened her heart to him, telling him about Sebastian and Nico and all the ways she’d felt she’d failed herself and others over the years.
He’d told her, “We’re at the beginning of our story.
Nothing else matters anymore. The past can be rewritten. The past can be thrown away.”
Now, they finished their drinks and floated through the veranda, which was lit up with fairy lights and lanterns, and followed the trail down to the beach, where many of Aurora’s cousins were seated around a bonfire, gushing about Lorelei’s music.
Gwen was there, throwing her arms around as she spoke, as though she’d never had a broken bone at all.
She waved, and Aurora sat beside her, grinning.
Gwen remembered Kenny from the night of her accident and said hello to him, blushing. Aurora wondered if Gwen thought Kenny was kind of cute.
“How’s the arm?” Kenny asked.
“Like new,” Gwen said. “But I kept the cast. It’s a work of art.”
“Yeah, but it smells,” her brother Conor said, wrinkling his nose.
Everyone laughed. Aurora put her head on Kenny’s shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head.
Here and now, as the Nantucket Sound lapped on the sand and her American cousins cackled and chatted, Aurora felt about a million miles away from Rome.
She wondered when—if ever—she’d get back there.
She wondered if she’d still feel connected to it when she did.
But she wasn’t ready to think about going back to Italy, not even for a visit. Now that she and Kenny were together, they had no interest in spending any time apart.
Their schedule was tightly wound up in one another’s.
When Aurora painted in the evenings, Kenny worked on his scripts, or wrote in his journal, or read books he thought would help his art, or studied various films that he wanted to emulate when he finally made his own.
Often, he asked for Aurora’s advice, and she asked his, so much so that they began to operate more like a single artistic unit.
They couldn’t do anything without asking the other.
It felt beautiful. Aurora also realized how lonely she’d felt for years—at least since Sebastian’s accident, if not before.
It felt delirious not to be alone anymore.
It felt delirious to make art that she truly believed in.
By mid-August, Aurora had made nearly twelve thousand dollars from her paintings alone.
She had an offer from many agents, who wanted to show her work to their ritzy art collector clients.
It meant she needed a proper studio so that she could work.
It meant she needed to move out of her little room at the White Oak Lodge.
But she didn’t want to go far.
“Do you think I should ask Kenny to move in with me?” she asked Lorelei one afternoon. They were walking through the historic downtown neighborhood of Nantucket, viewing apartments and studios big enough for Aurora and her dreams.
Lorelei considered this and traced a hand down Aurora’s hair. “What do you think?”
“I think I love him,” Aurora said gently. “I think I always want to be with him. But I also think…” Aurora was unsure how to fully translate what she meant.
Lorelei stopped walking. Around them, tourists milled around, eating ice cream cones, discussing where they wanted to get an afternoon glass of wine or dinner later. It was hard to believe that it was still summer, as Aurora felt that summer had been going on for years.
Maybe it was even harder to imagine that it would ever be autumn.
“We haven’t known one another very long,” Aurora finished. “I think, what’s the rush?”
Lorelei grinned, as though Aurora had just said exactly the right thing. “You’re not even twenty-three yet,” she said softly. “You have so much time to figure things out. Kenny can be with you during that figuring-out time. If you both want that.”
“I think we want that,” Aurora said, although she knew life was long and meandering. She knew that things were always apt to change.
That night, as they drank a glass of wine sitting on the sand in front of the White Oak Lodge, listening to the sounds of Lorelei’s piano playing coming across the grounds, Aurora explained to Kenny that she wanted to rent an apartment in downtown Nantucket.
“I still haven’t signed the lease, but I feel ready to.
It has an attached studio, so I can work on numerous paintings at once,” she explained.
“There’s a bedroom and a kitchen and an old-fashioned bathtub.
It has character. And…” She trailed off.
“And I want you to move in, maybe. Down the line. But not yet.”
Kenny’s smile was enormous. “That’s funny,” he said. “I was looking at an apartment downtown, too.”
Aurora felt her chest opening up. He wasn’t angry. He was pleased.
“We could be neighbors?” she suggested.
“I think that would be nice,” Kenny said. “You can borrow a cup of sugar from me, sometimes. If you want to.”
“I think that’s about what I’m ready for. For now,” Aurora said, laughing.
“For now,” Kenny finished. But his dark eyes spoke of a future both of them ached for.