Chapter Seventeen Lily
It is well after two a.m. when I return home.
I tiptoe through the cottage, avoiding the floorboards that creak. Curiously, I notice a light still lit on Thomas’s side.
My hair smells heavily of smoke and wood. I hold my sandals bunched together in my left hand. Over my sweater is Henry’s worn, red sweatshirt.
He gave it back to me on the ride home and insisted I keep it. I wonder why—did he want me to have a reminder of him? Or was he eager to rid himself of any vestige of me? Does the difference matter? Or better yet, should it matter? Can it matter anymore?
We talked for longer than we should have.
At first, we danced around the subject of his fiancée, Mary.
I still have a hard time thinking of her name.
It’s too familiar. But eventually, Henry brought up the wedding festivities, the drama between their two families, Mary’s expensive tastes somehow conflicting with Henry’s mother’s equally expensive taste. It was unavoidable.
“It’s been a lot of back and forth about the stupidest stuff,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Last week, we actually got into a fight about whether the beige tablecloths should be ‘sand-toned’ or ‘camel-toned.’ I don’t know. Sometimes, I wonder if it was all a mistake. Maybe we’re just too young.”
I shrugged, digging into the cold sand. “There’s actually a big difference between sand-toned beige and camel-toned beige,” I said, thinking of my painting palette. “But should we really be talking about this? It feels wrong.”
The beer and the vertigo were making the dunes look jumpy. Their hunched backs moving behind Henry’s head like sea creatures writhing beneath the long grass. I worried a panic attack was rising, my breathing becoming shallow. What was I doing?
He nodded in a noncommittal way. “Anyway, I was thinking of Lottie the other day, about that time when we all went whale watching and how she kept trying to take photos with her crappy camera but they turned out all blurry. Remember, how you secretly took your own pictures before you got too seasick? Did you ever frame it for her like you said you would?”
Hearing Lottie’s name thawed me instantly. The dunes stopped shaking. It was easy to be carried away by the past, like letting myself be washed ashore.
I told him about the bucket list we found.
“That’s wild,” he said. “You have to complete it, right? For Lottie.”
I agreed. “That’s what we thought, too. It’s almost like she wanted us to find it.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Lottie was always sort of witchy that way. I can imagine her still pulling strings from the other side.”
I laughed, feeling a surge of love. Here was the Henry I fell in love with, the one who would sit in the garden with Lottie and help water her flowers while the mist rolled in every morning like an act of God and then scattered into sunshine by noon.
When I looked at Henry, I missed Lottie’s laugh, and the soap operas she watched, and the cherry tree she planted in my great-uncle’s name and how its little white flowers batted its eyes against the windowpane in the kitchen bathroom.
I missed the levity of a wide-open future, all of our big dreams in a world still big enough to fit them. Anything was possible. We had youthful ignorance on our side—impossible to bet against it.
I miss everything I can never get back.
Toward the end of the night, he asked about my job again. “You know if you ever need help finding a new gig, my father has a lot of friends at Sotheby’s. He’d be happy to make some introductions.”
“Henry,” I said. “Thank you, but you know I can’t.” He had offered the same to me before, years ago, but I didn’t want to take a favor or cheat the system. I didn’t want to owe his family like that, either, or always wonder if my success was only because of my boyfriend.
Now I wondered if I was being a fool.
When we walked out of the party, Theo was drinking a beer with the tennis crowd. I waved him goodbye, but he didn’t return the gesture, so I let my hand drop back to my side, limp and uncertain.
I hope he’s not mad at me.
I try to sleep now, but I can’t stop smelling the bonfire smoke that still clings to my hair and skin. I consider taking a shower, but I’m worried it will wake up Rose, so instead, I lie awake in the twin bed. There’s a dampness to the ocean air coming through the window.
I keep thinking, What would Mary say if she knew?
I feel guilty for talking to Henry. Even though we technically didn’t do anything wrong, it was still a moral trespass.
I imagine when he tells her the story of this night, I’ll be erased from the picture, and the thought makes me feel dirty.
I’m done, I decide. I’m not going to talk to him again. What’s passed is past, and there’s nothing to do about it now. I will not be complicit. I will not be the Mistress.
I was eighteen years old when I met Henry, and I didn’t know if I could recognize my own face if I happened across it in a crowd.
That’s what I really wanted out of romance back then: for someone to hold my face between the palms of their hands and simply say, “I see you.” And then in the process of being seen, maybe I could finally catch a glimpse of myself, too.
When I miss him, this is what I miss most: being known, feeling seen.
But it’s over. It has to be. Tonight was a mistake, but I’m done. I’m done.
I’m done.
Over the course of the next week, I do everything I can to put Henry out of my mind. I am determined to turn over a new leaf, to become someone Lottie would be proud of. Whenever I recall the bonfire, Lottie’s face floats into my mind’s eye and I shudder at what she would think.
“If you play with fire, don’t be surprised if you get burned,” I imagine her saying.
When I return to work the day after, I receive a chilly welcome.
“Hi, Theo!” I call out to him, placing my bag on the front desk. “How was the rest of your night after the bonfire?”
Theo is walking out the door when I catch him, and he pauses, looking torn. He’s in his tennis whites again, and he twirls the racket between his hands, catching it before it can fall. I follow the worn yellow tape as it jumps in the air.
“Fine,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “I have a lesson, but I’ll catch you later.”
My next shift continues like this. He isn’t ever outright rude, but he’s stopped taking his lunch breaks at my desk, and he no longer goes out of his way to tease me.
I don’t understand what I did wrong to upset him except for talking with Henry, but the absence of his friendship hurts. I was starting to rely on him.
I decide to channel my extra alone time into work. I still haven’t heard from Marie Chen, the gallery owner, since I sent her over another copy of my résumé. I still haven’t received any responses to my flyers.
Almost out of boredom, I start going through some of my old work on my iPad and come across a picture I took of Lottie a few summers back, before she received her diagnosis.
In the photo, Lottie is bent over in the garden, hands in the soil, dirt up to her wrists.
The way the light is hitting her face makes it look like there is a spotlight on her, illuminating her in some sort of heavenly, impossible glow, like a halo.
I start playing around with the composition, highlighting certain colors and creating more of a contrast with the plants.
“Beauty takes work to sustain,” Lottie used to say, so I write the phrase across the image. With a stylus, I add in some drawings of flowers wrapped around her wrists, climbing up her arms. The earth is rich and dark. It’s the kind of photo you can smell: sulfuric and metallic.
Only after I’m finished do I realize it looks like the earth is grabbing Lottie, pulling her under.
The next day—coincidentally on the nineteenth of June, Father’s Day, my least favorite holiday—Thomas and I meet again. We’re walking the bluff again, this time all the way to Sankaty lighthouse. It sits firmly in the distance, waiting: red-striped, like a lollipop planted by a child.
“I don’t know,” he says. “She seems happy. We shouldn’t get involved.”
In the last couple of days, it’s become obvious my mom is seeing someone, although she’s trying to hide it.
She keeps leaving the house for “business dinners,” and I once saw her get into a red convertible that was parked on one of the small side streets near our cottage.
What I don’t understand is why she’s hiding it from me.
Besides, she’s been too busy for the bucket list.
I spend so much of the year worried about my mom, out here on this island alone, and then when I’m finally able to be back, Rose is off with someone else.
This is something people with siblings will never understand.
There’s the stereotype of an only child being selfish because they never had to share, but they also never had anyone to share the burden of worry with either.
“I know my mom,” I say confidently, wondering if the sentiment is true. “She still cares about you.”
Thomas looks at me. “Do you really think I should be here? I feel like I’m trespassing.”
Behind us, I can hear the roar of the ocean, particularly angry today.
As I stare at him, he reminds me, bizarrely and all at once, of my favorite history teacher.
Mr. Meyers had scruffy gray hair and thick brown glasses and engaged in easy repartee with the students that never bordered on creepy or inappropriate like some of the younger male faculty.
He never felt like our friend but everyone trusted him just the same.
Maybe we trusted him more because of it, because of his clearly defined boundaries.
I used to secretly wish he was my dad. Every parent-teacher night, I would pray for a connection to spark between him and Rose.
“You can’t give up,” I say to Thomas. “Remember what you said about my mom? Just give me one chance, please. I’ll get the two of you together in a room, you can talk, and if there’s nothing still there, I promise I won’t interfere again.”
“Fine,” he says, sounding exasperated. “One chance.”
We keep walking. A group of tourists pass by, forcing us into the bushes. The path is too narrow to accommodate all of us at once. I wonder if I should give them one of the flyers I made, offer my photography services.
“What are you doing next weekend?” I ask Thomas.
“I’m going to a wedding, actually,” he says. “My old friend from the Coast Guard extended a last-minute invite to his daughter’s ceremony. He told me to invite my sister, too. She’s arriving tonight for a few days.”
In the shade, Thomas looks years younger, the stress lines around his eyes disappearing.
“A wedding?” I repeat, smiling to myself. I have an idea. “That could be perfect.”
Thomas frowns at me. “Perfect for what?”
“Well, I told you about Lottie’s bucket list, right?”
“Yes?”
“Number nine says to ‘crash a wedding.’ ” I smile mischievously, waiting for him to connect the dots. “Two birds, one stone.”
“Lily,” he says, sounding suddenly like a stern father. Again, the image of Mr. Meyers returns. “You cannot crash my friend’s daughter’s wedding.”
“We wouldn’t cause a scene or anything! I swear. It’s a perfect opportunity to get the two of you together in a romantic setting, and we’ll be super discreet about it.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “This sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
“Trust me,” I assure him again. “Please.”
He hesitates before responding. The tourists pass, their phones pointed to record the clapboard houses, flags whipping in the wind, and the ocean churning to our left.
I can imagine their reactions—seeing the island in all its glory for the first time.
A couple poses for a staged kiss. I imagine how quickly their trip is passing, the way summer always flashes forward for those in love.
“Fine,” he agrees reluctantly. “I’ll send you the information.”
I jump up and down. “Yes!” I yelp. “This is going to be so much fun.” A few of the tourists look back at us to check out the commotion. I shoot them a wave.
Thomas lets out a small smile. “Okay,” he says. “But remember: No drama.”
I’m ecstatic. I can feel the certainty glowing inside me like a flame. This is right. Rose deserves to be happy, and I am going to help her get there.
“No drama,” I repeat, jumping up again. “This is a terrific idea.”