Chapter 47 Rosemary
Rosemary
Rosemary McDonnell directed the arrow to the refresh button and clicked.
She was the most tech savvy of her friends at the club, and she relished the looks on their faces when she mentioned navigating emails and text messages with ease.
Her bloodred nail varnish shone in the glow from the screen.
There was a chip in the polish on her pointer finger. She bristled.
Her inbox loaded. No new messages.
An icicle feeling cracked up her spine into the base of her skull.
“Siri,” Rosemary said curtly with command, just like her mother had taught her, “call Lorraine.”
She glared at the nick on her fingernail. Just painted and already falling apart.
Lorraine picked up. “Mom?”
She skipped the pleasantries. “Anything?”
Rosemary heard her daughter take a deep breath and release it in a sigh. “No. You?”
The calendar of family photos Lorraine gave Rosemary for Christmas, just like she did every year, hung limply against the wall in the dim light. She squinted.
“Nothing.” Rosemary chewed her bottom lip without thinking, then stopped and pinched the skin on her hand as the voice of a woman long gone scolded her for the nasty habit. “Darling?”
Lorraine sounded sharp and frazzled—like static before it gathers into a spark. “Yes, Mom?”
Rosemary hated the smell of rain. “I’m assuming you did what I asked you to do?”
“Which thing?”
She could almost hear her daughter thinking—needing.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and popped the cap of a large red marker (she believed in the power of large red markers) to circle a block of squares on the calendar.
March’s photo was of Rosemary, Lorraine, and Delilah gathered around a table with a tower of tea sandwiches, scones, and little chocolate cups piped with raspberry cream.
Delilah had come to the door in a band T-shirt.
They’d nearly been late after waiting for her to change into something suitable for high tea.
Rosemary traced over her large red circle a few more times.
When Callum had left her and her girls and sent them back to California so he could wither and die in that godforsaken cottage, Rosemary McDonnell swore she’d never set foot in that village again. She’d never count the waves, the gulls, the clusters of heather from the cliffside.
She’d only broken that vow once for a noble attempt, and she had failed.
Delilah was just a girl. So impressionable.
And Rosemary could not fail again. She was running out of time.
“Your passport, Lorraine.” She shook the bottle of the cherry polish she kept in her purse at all times. “You renewed it, correct?”