The Lost Girls of Devon

by Barbara O'Neal

  It was extreme, and it scared me. I didn’t want to live like that forever. I liked new shoes and pretty clothes. I wanted to travel and explore the artists who’d inspired me by tracing their footsteps. There were many times I wasn’t sure that I could have had that life with Cooper.

  But that wasn’t what had wrecked us. I’d done that. We had nearly destroyed each other. That much was true. We broke up in a great conflagration, and he did not speak to me for nearly two solid years. It still grieved me that I’d been so stupid, sabotaging such a solid relationship.

  Why had I done that?

  I thought of that awful week. The teacher who’d demolished me. The comfort of the boy who’d stood up for me. My anger when Cooper hadn’t had time for me.

  The answer whispered through me: I had to ruin it before he broke my heart.

  God.

  A knock came at the door. “Come in,” I called.

  Gran poked her head in. “I’m going to my study, my dear. Why don’t you come along?”

  It was an honor to be asked. Her space was off limits to everyone except me and, once a month, a cleaner who came in from the village to tidy and dust and took the job very seriously.

  “Okay,” I agreed and followed her to the end of the hall, where an arched door opened to a stairway that had been refitted a decade or so ago to have wider, safer steps. It was good to watch Lillian climb them so adroitly. She had to use the rail, and she wasn’t the fastest human on the planet, but up she went in her pretty floral dress with its pleated hem and all her jewelry and her hair done.

  The stairs led to a tower with a pair of rooms joined by an ancient brick arch. It might have once been a bedroom and sitting room, but now one side held her desk, which overlooked the countryside and her garden. The other room was a library with a generous window seat that faced the sea.

  I headed straight for the window seat. It was here where I’d learned to draw by sketching everything outside while my grandmother typed in the background. An unexpected sense memory swamped me—a soap bubble of time, me at nine with my crayons and pencils. A series of sketches was still pinned to the wall, a handful of cat studies tumbling across time to me here. I touched the corner of one. “I can’t believe you still have these.”

  Lillian stood beside me, smaller and thinner than she had been but still entirely herself. “Those were some of the happiest days of my life,” she said.

  “They were?”

  “Mmm. I was not ready for motherhood when your mother was born. Pregnancy made me fat and stole my beauty, and then I brought forth this astonishingly beautiful child. Your grandfather doted on her, but all I saw when I looked at her were all the things I would never be able to do.”

  I’d never heard this before. “Like what?”

  “Oh, travel the world and dance with princes. Become someone.” She plucked at her necklace, lost in time. “I so desperately wanted a whirl of a life, full of adventure and excitement, and I thought your grandfather would give it to me. He was so charming when we met, the life of the party.” She sighed, and I filled in the gaps. My grandfather had been a philanderer and a drunk who’d grown sloppier every year until he died of cirrhosis at the age of forty-two.

  I took my grandmother’s papery hand. “But you have a great career.”

  “I do. But I didn’t start until I was forty, and by then I’m afraid your mother had borne the brunt of my bitterness.” Lillian raised her eyes, took my hand between her own. “Perhaps I breathed all my longing into her somehow, and she found the courage I did not.”

  A thin arrow of understanding slid between my ribs, and I closed my eyes, resisting even the smallest crack in my walls.

  “You do not have to forgive her, my dear,” my grandmother said. “But you must allow her to know Isabel.”

  “Must I?”

  Lillian only gave me a small, sad smile. “I have to work now. You are welcome to sit in your corner and sketch.”

  Unsettled, I did just that. It was a clear, beautiful spring morning, and I drew the landscape with pencils and the stubs of crayons, feeling myself at five and eight and ten, imagining I would become a great and celebrated artist with paintings hanging in galleries and museums around the world.

  When had I given up so thoroughly on my dreams?

  The thought was soft, whispering through my mind, blowing away dust and debris to show me a vision of myself crouching at the edges of my life, fearful of losing even more if I stepped forward.

  On the paper beneath my hands, I made rough hard marks, fierce and black and powerful, as if I could change by making different art. But it didn’t feel like anything, just the temper tantrum of a woman who’d missed her chance and settled for second place in all ways.

  Except with Isabel. With her, I was first place.

  Was I jealous? Afraid my mother would usurp me?

  No. It just didn’t seem fair. Why should my mother be able to just waltz in and do whatever she wanted after being gone for decades?

  I looked out at the flat blue sea, aching, imagining my daughter and my mother engaged in a lively, cheerful conversation. I thought of myself at ten, drawing on postcards I sent around the world, and of myself at seventeen, fighting for the art school I wanted, even if Cooper had to stay behind.

  And I thought of myself only five years ago, sitting at a computer screen and discovering via scandal rag that my husband was cheating on me with a singer he’d been touring with.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, feeling like Isabel, wishing for a hoodie of my own to hide in. The world seemed very strange and dangerous just at this moment.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Poppy

  My mother called after Zoe and Isabel had gone off to meet Sage. I quickly drove to Woodhurst Hall, anxious to check on her again.

  When I returned to England for good seven years ago, I lived in Glastonbury, first establishing a shop there. It felt too hard to return straightaway to Axestowe, and it gave me time to feel my way back into the village.

  But primarily it had given me time to reestablish some sort of relationship with my mother. She’d never cut me off the way Zoe had, but she’d grown very chilly indeed over the years. I started slowly, bringing her bedding plants on my way through, as if it didn’t mean anything, or stopping to tell her some bit of gossip I’d heard. Over time she occasionally invited me in for tea, later for a meal. It took quite a long time, but when I bought my cottage, I began to stop in every day to see if she needed anything—a little something from the village, a basket of groceries, her prescription, a drive to the GP. If Zoe came to town, I stopped for the duration, and I had never minded, but Lillian had declined in the past year, and not seeing her made me worry.

  I found her in the garden, wrapped in a thick jumper, her feet in flowered wellies I’d bought her for Christmas. With a steady hand, she deadheaded the pale-pink rosebush that grew along the wall, tucking the spent heads into a pocket of her apron so they wouldn’t litter the beds. “Hello, Mother,” I said, kissing her head. “How do you feel today?”

  “I’m well,” she said, and her voice was strong, not quavery as it could be sometimes. “I wrote nearly five pages on the new book.”

  “Good.” I squatted, rather awkwardly since my knees no longer worked the way they once did, and plucked a few weeds from the midst of the ranunculus, following a stubborn vine beneath a leaf. “How’s Zoe?”

  “All right.” She straightened, gave me a sad shake of the head. “She’s not at all ready to forgive you. Still. And now she’s worried about Diana, as we all are. It’s good to have her home.” She moved out of the bed, rounded a particularly threatening rosebush, and began to clip a scraggly shrub. “You seem to be enjoying Isabel’s company.”

  “She came to my shop and introduced herself.” I smiled. “So much like her mother, I had to laugh.”

  “You didn’t know her mother at this age,” she said without sharpness. It still stung. “The one
she reminds me of is you.”

  “Really? Do you think so?” I bent and yanked out tendrils of grass trying to spread into the tulips.

  “She’s a seeker, I believe. Restless, like you were, even then.”

  I nodded. “She’s troubled, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, yes. All those clothes!”

  “No idea what happened to her?”

  “Zoe said it has something to do with social media, but she hasn’t been able to learn what.”

  I thought of the number of things that could mean. Isabel didn’t strike me as a nervous sort, so it must have been something substantial. It infuriated me. “Children are so cruel to each other now.”

  “What do you mean, now? They’ve always been cruel—far more cruel and conniving than adults.”

  I brushed my hands together. “She took part in a workshop with me this morning.”

  “Be careful, my dear. Zoe tried, but did not take it well.”

  I sighed, half-exasperated, half-understanding. “She’s nearly forty. I wish she could make peace with the past.”

  “Oh, I think she’s made peace. She just hasn’t forgiven you.”

  “That’s what peace is—forgiveness.”

  “Perhaps,” she said mildly.

  “You could help, you know.”

  “I do try.” She moved out of the bed, swayed slightly as she stepped in the grass, and I forced myself not to reach out and urgently brace for a fall. We’d talked about falls quite a lot in recent months, and she’d agreed to safety checks, but she’d also made me promise not to fret about it all the time. I did anyway, and brewed her pots of bone broth to strengthen her thinning skeleton, but I tried not to show my concern in front of her.

  She had always been so mighty when I was a girl, in constant motion while my father was alive, rushing hither and thither, hosting a tea or a party or a fundraiser while my father drank and drank and drank himself to death.

  After he died, she’d only grown in power—writing her books, publishing them, and finding success, much to everyone’s surprise in the village. They’d thought her a shallow female and expected her to fall apart after my father died. Instead, she became a publishing star and poured funds back into the manor, employing people to help garden and keep house and repair the inevitable issues that arose with such an old pile.

  Now she was their darling, the star of Axestowe.

  Even when I’d finally returned to England seven years ago, weary at last of lands that were not my own and longing for the bonds of family, she’d been sturdy and strong. The decline had arrived silently, and it had taken me some time to recognize. She was so thin and moved so slowly. Her doctor said it was nothing more than age, and we needed to help her.

  Which I’d done. Diana and I had cooked up the plan to hire a housekeeper, and we took turns making sure she was safe and fed and looked after. Now it had fallen to me entirely. I did not wish to return to the Hall and the site of some of my loneliest memories. The girl I’d been had not been loved enough, and look at the damage that had caused over time!

  “I am quite severely missing Diana,” she said. “It isn’t the same without her.”

  “I know, Mum.”

  “Who could want to hurt such a good woman?”

  “I wish I knew.” I glanced at the lowering sun and brushed off my sadness for the moment. It would be there when I finished here. “Shall we head inside and make sure you have everything you need?”

  “Zoe can do it,” she said.

  “I know,” I said, swallowing the hurt her words delivered. “But I’d like to, if you don’t mind.”

  She allowed me to lead her inside. As we walked slowly, her arm linked in mine, I thought maybe my actions were all for me. That I was trying to make it up to her for running away.

  “We talked this afternoon,” Lillian said. “Your daughter and I.” She paused and faced me. “I told her that I was not the mother you deserved, but it occurs to me that I’ve never told you that.”

  A swell of something blue and dark and sad bubbled up through my chest. I clenched my teeth together to stem the tide of tears. “You were good.”

  “No,” she said. “Look at me.”

  I did. She raised a hand to my cheek. “I resented you. I wanted a different life, a bigger life.” She dropped her hand. “Perhaps I breathed that into you, and off you went into the world to see what it held.”

  I closed my eyes, unable to speak. Emotion boiled up and through me, and I breathed through my nose, calming it all down. Finally, I said, “Thank you.”

  “I love you, my dear. I hope you know that.”

  “I do,” I said, and I did. But the words carried great weight. They soaked into my soul, rich and thick, a bulwark against the sorrows of the world.

  I tried not to wish she’d said so before.

  She took my arm again. “I am trying to help move things along with your daughter too. Before I die, I’d like to see this family reunited.”

  “Me too, Mum.” I tucked my hand around hers. “But I’d like you to hang around for a lot longer. Wouldn’t it be lovely to see Isa married?”

  “Oh,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose.”

  I left it at that. What did I know of great age?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Zoe

  Just after seven, Isabel and I drove up to the farm to meet Cooper. Poppy had gone to stay with Lillian, so I didn’t have to worry about her, and I felt an urgent need to be out on the moor in nature, away from all the madness.

  It was a beautiful drive, on winding roads that twisted between hedgerows that would suddenly part to make way for an old farmhouse, its door so close to the road you could reach out and touch it. The hedgerows themselves bloomed just now with wood sorrel and campion, the colors popping out of the ancient earthen walls that had been here since the Celts and Saxons had first farmed the hills.

  We had always done our best talking in the car, and for a long stretch of moments, I wondered if I might be able to nudge her into confessing her secret.

  But she was showing signs of healing, and my own anger at what felt like a betrayal had eased a bit. Sometimes it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

  I gathered myself and gestured to the landscape opening up as we topped a hill. Around us spilled the fields and hedgerows and ditches of my childhood. Queen Anne’s lace bobbed along the road as we turned into the drive. “This was my world until I was seven.”

  The farm sat against the back of a hill, the house looking toward Axestowe and, in the distance, the sea. The house sat amid a cottage garden I remembered my mother working, long ago. It was two stories, with small windows to keep the heat in. A thousand threads of memory and emotion wound through me as I stepped out—the years I’d lived there as a child, the years I’d spent there with Cooper.

  Diana, too, was everywhere. A longing to see her, touch her, apologize for everything, moved through me.

  A dog barked, and Cooper came from the back garden, feet in worn green boots, his hair loosely tied away from his face so that curls escaped to catch the breeze. I parked and took a slow breath to calm my reaction. This was the Cooper I’d loved so wildly, his long body framed against the sky and clouds, everything about him capable and calm and strong. In my memory was the day I’d tumbled out of the car to run to him when we were both fifteen, and I wished that I could do it again, that he would catch me up and hug me for so long it would become embarrassing for anyone watching us.

  He raised a hand in greeting and then waved to give the dog permission to run toward us. Matt, from the pub the other night, trotted over eagerly, giving our hands licks. “Hello, Matt,” I said. “This is my daughter, Isabel.”

  Cooper joined us. “Hello.”

  “I guess you’ve met,” I said.

  He gave a nod. With a glance at the sky, he said, “We should get moving so we can get out to the moor by sunset.” He’d wanted us to meet him at the farm. “You have your camera?”

  Isabel p
atted the case.

  “You bring waterproofs?”

  “Of course.” I had a pack over my shoulder, filled with bottles of water, raincoats, and woolen scarves.

  He gave me the faintest of smiles. Our eyes snagged, held. “Good.”

  We followed him around the house and up the hill to a level spot where we’d always parked. From here you could see the farm itself, the vegetable plot, and the barns and sheds and pens. “Do you work this all yourself?” I asked.

  “I have a man. He lives in the second house.” He opened the door to the Range Rover. “We bring in more hands when we need them, for shearing and the like.”

  Isabel looked around. “I can see why Grandad liked it here,” she said. “It’s kinda like his land, isn’t it? Sort of lonely, different trees, but you know what I mean?”

  I’d never thought about it, but she was right. “I guess so. He lived here a fairly long time, I think. Six or seven years.”

  She nodded and asked Cooper, “What kind of sheep do you have?”

  Cooper hid his surprise quickly. “Dartmoor whites, mostly, and some longwools. You know sheep, do you?”

  “My granddad has merinos. He let me raise one for 4H a couple of years ago.”

  He gave me a quizzical glance. “4H?”

  “County fair.”

  “That’s great, Isabel. Not so many girls like farming work these days.”

  “I don’t love it, honestly.” She climbed into the back seat. “But I like to know about things.”

  He gave me an actual smile this time, one that made it to his eyes. “Still good.”

  I sat in the passenger seat, as I had the other day, and Matt climbed in next to Isabel, who rested her hand on his neck and scratched his ears. Cooper watched her in the mirror for a moment, then started the car. “How is your dad?” he asked me. “He was one of my favorite people when we were small.”

  “I remember. He’s good.”

  “Why did my grandparents get divorced, anyway?” Isabel asked as we bumped down the lane. Sunlight blasted over the top of the hill into the car, and I put on my sunglasses. “They’re really kind of alike.”