Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Present Day
Seeing her things piled up in the guest bedroom at her mother’s place was bizarre.
There were her art books, her novels from her literature classes, and her old sheets that she’d stretched over nearly every bed during her tenure at Columbia.
There were her pens, her paintbrushes, and her old sweaters, pilled and worn.
She had the sense that they wouldn’t fit in the next iteration of her life, that Yoko Reynolds would take one look at them and throw them out.
Lily leaned against the doorway and sipped her tea, reminding herself that nothing about the arrangement of living at home with her mother was permanent.
After Liam returned from Los Angeles, they would get a place here on Nantucket.
Their lives were going to begin. Yoko could hate her sweaters, but she couldn’t control everything.
From the kitchen, Lily could hear the voices of her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, Ben, a veteran whom Rebecca had fallen in love with during the year-plus since she’d returned to Nantucket from Maine.
Lily liked Ben. She liked his spirit, his humor, and the way he looked at her mother.
She didn’t always like that her mother had “moved on,” or whatever that meant.
Lily knew her mother still loved her father, that she always would.
Happiness was key, and you couldn’t turn your back on it when it came to find you—even in the direst of circumstances.
Lily went upstairs to find Chad, who was playing a video game on a big monitor in his new bedroom. Shelby was away at university, celebrating a freedom that Lily had forgotten to fully appreciate. Now that she was back on Nantucket, she thought of her college years as vague and explosive dreams.
“How was school?” Lily asked, sitting on Chad’s bed and eating chips from the bag open beside him.
“Huh? Oh. Good.” Chad was distracted by his strategy game, something to do with a man with a bow and arrow and a castle in the distance.
Lily watched for a little while, keeping vague tabs on her phone.
She knew that Liam’s first day of work out in LA was today, and she didn’t want to pester him with too many questions.
He said he’d call her after he left the set, and she had to believe he’d do what he said.
That was what marriage was, right? You were meant to trust each other.
Trust that the other wouldn’t hurt you, mistreat you, or ignore you.
Trust that the other would love you unconditionally.
Later, Lily was on the back porch of her mother’s house with her Grandma Esme and baby August, Valerie’s son.
Valerie was inside with Rebecca and Bethany, chopping vegetables for a salad, and Lily and Esme were doting on the little baby, gushing with love at his little smile.
It was hard for Lily to believe that sooner rather than later, she might have a baby of her own.
She tried to picture her baby with Liam’s adorable smile, but couldn’t quite form the baby in her mind.
“How does it feel to be on the island full-time?” her grandma asked, arching her eyebrow, as though she suspected Lily would have a substandard answer.
“It’s bizarre,” Lily said, her voice low. She didn’t want her mother to hear. “I mean, on the one hand, I’m thrilled to be here with my family. I’m so happy to spend time with baby August.” She squeezed his foot lightly. “But Liam and I were supposed to come here together.”
“And now he’s off in LA,” Esme said.
“And I’m so happy for him,” Lily hurried to say. “I’ll go out there and see him one of these days. But I don’t want to feel like I’m chasing him.”
“You’re a brilliant young woman with your whole life ahead of you,” Esme said, touching Lily’s hair. “Liam knows that and respects that, I’m sure. He doesn’t want to drag you around.”
Lily wondered if Esme was implying that it was better not to chase a man.
She considered Esme’s life experiences: two husbands, one of whom now lived with her after the terrible death of her second husband.
There were rumors about an epic road trip Victor and Esme had taken last year from San Francisco to Nantucket, after they’d moved Valerie out of her place.
They’d fought and fallen back in love, apparently.
But Esme hadn’t come the entire way across the continent with her ex-husband.
Frightened of both their past and their potential future, frightened of her own broken heart, Esme had fled Victor and visited her ex-stepmother and ex-stepsister in Wisconsin.
Sometime after that, Esme and Victor had reconvened—with plenty of therapy to guide their way.
No denying that Esme was a woman with a fascinating past. Lily guessed she was awash with advice that she was, nevertheless, too kind to toss out. She wasn’t arrogant enough to do that.
Suddenly, Lily’s phone lit up with a call from Liam. She handed baby August back to his grandmother and hurried to the water, her feet digging into the sand. She answered it, a smile in her voice. “Hi, baby!”
Liam laughed in that gorgeous, genuine way of his and said, “It’s so good to hear your voice. It’s been a crazy day.”
Lily sat down and let her feet dip into the water as it rushed in and out of shore. “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. What happened?”
Liam explained that he “stupidly” got lost on his way from his rental house to set, that he forgot his lines during a read-through, and that he had a bloody nose when they met with some of the executives. “I don’t want to seem weak,” he said, his voice a string.
All Lily wanted in the world was to wrap her arms around her fiancé and remind him that false starts like this were common.
People probably thought it was adorable that he was obviously trying so hard to be “perfect.” But before she could say anything else, Liam broke into a laugh and said, “But the cast members are fantastic, Lily. Really. I couldn’t ask for a better team.
Most of us are up-and-comers, you know, so we can go out after, have dinner, and not be recognized.
Yet.” Liam cackled. “You’re going to love them when you come out. Oh! That reminds me.”
Lily focused on her breathing and watched a seagull flap its wings overhead. He hasn’t forgotten about me, she reminded herself. He’s living. He’s working. He’s doing what he can to pursue his dreams. Isn’t that beautiful?
“Have you ever heard of Bex Shepherd?” Liam asked.
“I haven’t.”
“She’s a sort of pop singer slash actress slash artist,” Liam explained.
“She’s number six on the call sheet, and it’s looking like we’ll have a lot of scenes together.
She’s hilarious. She became famous on social media and built a career out of it.
I mean, she’s young still, but she’s got that energy, you know? ”
Did Lily have any of that sought-after energy?
She dug her fingers into the sand and heard herself ask questions about Bex Shepherd and the script and Liam’s house in LA.
Her heart pounded. What if Liam was falling in love with Bex already?
Or worse, what if he was falling in love with someone else and using Bex as a story to block the real story?
“The thing is, like me, Bex is brand-new in the LA world,” Liam continued, “and she really wants to date someone. Like a normal person. Not a famous person. I told her about your matchmaking service, and she was fascinated. Do you have people you could match her up with in LA?”
Overwhelmed with a wave of relief, Lily let her shoulders sag. He was trying to help her career, give her a leg up in a different city. She imagined LA was just as lonely for singles as New York City, if not more so. And it seemed that he’d already told Bex that he had a fiancée.
“I have some friends out there,” she said. “Let me make a few phone calls.”
“That would be fantastic!” Liam cried. “Maybe by the time you come out here, we can all go on a double date.”
Lily closed her eyes and felt the sweep of the late August evening wind across her cheeks. Liam was three hours behind and thousands of miles away. But they could do long-distance. They had to. Her heart belonged to him.
The following evening, Lily stepped into a server’s role at the Sutton Book Club, zipping through tables, filling wineglasses, and hurrying between the kitchen, where her mother was, and the front door to greet newcomers.
They were short-staffed because Esme had a book club downstairs, Valerie was with baby August, and Bethany had just gotten out of a twelve-hour surgery and was in recovery.
This left Lily and Chad. To Lily, serving reminded her of her teenage years, when she’d helped out at her mother and father’s restaurant back in Maine.
Although she still looked back on those days with aching nostalgia, she had to admit that her mother’s newest recipes for the Sutton Book Club restaurant were nothing short of incredible.
It was like Rebecca had moved to another tier in her career as a chef.
Lily was proud, watching the diners eat, unable to speak because they were so overwhelmed by the flavors before them.
It wasn’t till they closed up at eleven that Rebecca threw up her hands and cried, “I forgot!”
Because Chad had left to get a good night’s sleep before school, Lily was alone with her mother, cleaning the kitchen counters.
“What did you forget?” She wasn’t too worried; they’d already gotten through the dinner rush and locked the doors behind the last customer.
Whatever the issue was, it could wait until tomorrow.
“A friend of a friend gave me a contact for your matchmaking business,” Rebecca said, wiping her hands on her apron and searching through the pockets until she found a little business card. She handed it over, looking proud of herself.
The card read: Mick Hamilton, artist, sculptor, writer, and teacher.
There was no photograph. Lily pocketed the card. “What do you know about him?” She was picturing a man in his fifties or sixties, divorced or widowed.
“He’s twenty-eight, I think,” Rebecca said, untying her apron and throwing it in the basin near the sink. “He moved here to paint and be a loner.” She laughed. “That’s what my friend of a friend said. But I think the loneliness has gotten to him. He wants a companion.”
“Someone to watch him paint?” Lily joked.
Rebecca threw her head back, then winced and touched her neck. “Ouch. I have to stop laughing like that. I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
Lily hurried over and gave her mother a brief yet powerful shoulder massage.
“You’re the best, honey,” Rebecca said. “Thanks for filling in today.” She winced again and settled her head. “Oh, I meant to ask. How’s it going with wedding planning? Any update?”
“I’ll let you know when I have a more concrete idea,” Lily said.
Lily had googled “Nantucket wedding” and perused what felt like three hundred gorgeous, dreamy photos of other people’s perfect weddings.
She’d tried to visualize what her and Liam’s wedding would be like but hadn’t been able to.
Ultimately, she’d closed all her wedding tabs and thrown herself into visualizing who would suit Bex Shepherd as a romantic partner best. She’d reach out to potential Los Angeles-based candidates: “regular” people who weren’t, in any case, boring.
She had a call scheduled with Bex for tomorrow evening, after Bex and Liam left set, during which she’d explain her process and give Bex a sense for the men she’d found so far.
Whenever Lily was “hunting” for matches for other people, she was shivery with excitement. She felt as though she were opening a door to a new reality for them.
“I’ll call the loner tomorrow.” Lily imagined a guy with long, straggly hair. Maybe he could fit a paintbrush into his tangled curls. Perhaps he’d forgotten it was there.
That night, after Lily and Rebecca returned home for much-deserved sleep, Lily tried to call Liam.
It rang and rang across the continent, but he didn’t answer.
For hours, she stayed awake, staring into the darkness over her bed and twirling her wedding band around and around her finger.
Outside, a storm picked up, casting sand and water in all directions on the beach.
She missed the thrum of the city. She missed Liam beside her.
She missed knowing what was coming for her next.