by Sophie Moss
“No.” Becca handed her the envelope and strode into the turn of the century row house that had been converted into two separate apartments—one upstairs and one downstairs—and climbed the steps to the second floor.
Grace followed, the old wooden steps creaking under her bare feet as she peeled the flap open and pulled out the contents of the envelope. She stopped walking when she got to the landing and saw the photographs. “Is that Lydia?”
“Yeah,” Becca said, turning back to face her.
Grace glanced up, her eyes widening. “Who’s the guy with her?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you would.”
Grace looked back down, flipping through the pictures more slowly this time. “I’m not sure. His face seems vaguely familiar, but I can’t place him.” Walking into the living room, Grace set the photos on the coffee table and pulled out the rest of the papers inside the envelope. “Where did you get these?” she asked, thumbing through the financial statements.
“Lydia.”
Grace looked back up. “Lydia gave you these?”
“Well, she didn’t exactly give them to me,” Becca admitted. “I took them from her house.”
“When?”
“Just now. Right before I came here. I went to talk to her about the school—”
“Wait,” Grace said, cutting her off. “Hang on. Back up.” She set the financial statements on the coffee table with the photos. “What does this have to do with your wedding?”
Becca let out a long breath. Laying her hands on the back of the sofa, she told her friend everything.
After she’d finished, Grace stared at her for several long moments. “Are you sure?” she asked finally. “Are you sure it’s over? It’s really over?”
Becca nodded.
“You’re not going to change your mind?”
“No.” Becca looked down, picking at a thread coming loose from one of the sofa cushions. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“Tom,” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”
“Hey.” Grace walked over to where she stood and took her hands. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I knew you’d figure it out eventually. I’m just glad you did before the wedding, and not after.”
The wedding. Becca looked up at her as the reality of the situation began to sink in. “All that planning,” she said. “All those people. What am I going to tell everyone?”
“The truth,” Grace said, leading her over to the sofa. “That the groom turned out to be a dick. Maybe some of the vendors will be willing to give you your deposit back.”
Becca covered her face with her hands. How had she let this situation get so out of control? She needed some time to think, to process it all…and to officially tell Tom that it was over. But she didn’t know how long it would take for Lydia to realize the envelope was missing. She lowered her hands back to her sides, looking at the papers on the table. “We need to find out who the man in the pictures is and what those financial statements mean.”
Grace’s eyes grew concerned again. “Are you sure you don’t want to press pause for a few hours? We could get some lunch, split a bottle of wine, do a little shopping? You just called off your wedding. Maybe you need some time to breathe.”
Becca shook her head. She didn’t need time to breathe. She needed to find a way to save the school. And she needed to reach Colin. Fishing her phone back out of her purse, she checked the screen for a missed call. Nothing. “Do you know where Colin is? I’ve been trying to reach him since I left Annapolis.”
Grace shook her head as she snagged her laptop from the kitchen counter and carried it over to the coffee table.
“I’m going to call Annie and see if she knows,” Becca said.
“Okay,” Grace said, already pulling up a search engine and starting to type.
Becca walked out onto Grace’s small balcony. She could hear sirens in the distance and the steady whoosh of traffic from Pennsylvania Avenue a few blocks away. She dialed the number for the café, watching a robin hop over the pavement as she waited for Annie to pick up.
“Wind Chime Café. This is Annie.”
“Hey, Annie. It’s Becca.”
“Hey, Becca. What’s up?”
“I’m trying to find Colin and his phone keeps going straight to voicemail. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s probably still in the air.”
“In the air?”
“On his way to Colorado.”
“Colorado?”
“To meet with Austin Turner,” Annie explained, as if that was supposed to mean something to her.
“Who’s Austin Turner?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I thought he would have told you.”
“Told me what?”
Becca heard voices in the background, two women speaking to each other in hushed tones—most likely Annie and Della. A few moments later, Annie came back on the line and it was quieter in the background.
“There’s another SEAL who’s launching a program for vets in Colorado,” Annie explained. “He’s got a ton of money behind him and he wants Colin to come out there and work for him.”
Becca’s mouth fell open. How was this the first time she’d heard about this? “But what about the inn? What about Will?”
There was another long pause. “Will’s probably going to start looking for another partner soon.”
Becca stared across the alley, at a telephone line dipping between two neighbors’ homes. Colin couldn’t leave. Not now. Not before she’d had a chance to tell him how she felt.
“Hey,” Annie said gently. “Are you okay?”
“I have to go,” Becca said, and hung up. Another siren wailed in the distance, closer this time. How long had he been planning this? How long had he been thinking about leaving? He’d told her only a week ago that he wanted to buy a house on Heron Island, that he loved it there, that he wanted to live there forever.
What had changed?
“Hey,” Grace called from inside. “I think I found something.”
Becca turned, slowly. What if Colin had left so that Lydia would leave them alone? What if he’d realized that if he took himself off the island, his mother would have no reason to come after them? What if he’d done this simply to protect them?
Even if they found a way to discredit Lydia, even if they found a way to save the school, and the veterans’ center, and everything went back to the way it was before, life on Heron Island would never be the same.
Not if Colin wasn’t there.
Two days later, Becca woke to the sound of mourning doves cooing. Through a gap in the drapes, she spied the first hints of dawn breaking over the island. The faint blue light filtered into the room, revealing her grandmother’s handmade quilt lying on the floor, her cranberry-colored comforter a rumpled mass at the end of the bed, her white cotton sheets twisted and tangled around her feet.
She’d finally left Grace’s apartment in D.C. after spending the past thirty-six hours uncovering enough dirt on Lydia to open an investigation into her entire professional career. It hadn’t taken Grace long to identify the man in the pictures as Henry Cooper, and to realize that it must have been Lydia who’d made the promises to the casino owner, not Nick Foley. As soon as they’d known what to look for, they’d started digging into the financial records of every school district Lydia had managed.
They’d found dozens of inconsistencies—state grants that had been received but never dispersed, after-school programs that had been created and heavily funded but had never gotten off the ground, endowments that had come in from anonymous private donors and then mysteriously disappeared six months later. It hadn’t been entirely clear where the money had gone at first, but in most cases, it hadn’t gone back to the schools.
When it had, it had been funneled into the larger schools in the primarily white, wealthy communities, never the smaller schools in the lower-income communities that desperatel
y need it. The smaller schools had been shut down, while the larger schools had received lavish remodels: a new set of LED lights for a football stadium at one of the high schools, a fancy equestrian center with an indoor ring at one of the elementary schools, a state of the art technology lab with heated floors and ergonomic chairs at one of the middle schools.
It wasn’t a coincidence that the schools that had received the most extravagant upgrades were the same schools where the children of major political donors had gone.
For years, Lydia had been using her position of power as a politician’s wife to collect huge donations into her school systems, making her look like an incredibly effective and efficient administrator, in exchange for favors that would be doled out later, once her husband was elected governor.
Becca had spent most of the past two days on the phone, calling every teacher who had ever worked with Lydia, including the ones in the Dominican Republic. Some of them had refused to speak with her when they’d found out why she was calling, but a few had cautiously offered bits and pieces to round out the story. The last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place when she’d reached a woman named Caroline Strang in New Hampshire, the same woman who’d given the photos to Tom’s firm.
Caroline was an American who’d spent a few years teaching at the school in the Dominican Republic and had become friends with Lydia when she’d been down there. They had lost touch over the years, but she’d heard from some of teachers at the school that Lydia hadn’t fulfilled any of her promises recently. Books hadn’t been ordered. Teachers hadn’t been paid. Repairs to the school hadn’t been made. Despite the fact that there was plenty of money in the account, no support was being provided anymore.
Caroline had tried to contact Lydia to confront her about it, but despite leaving several messages, she’d never gotten a response. When she’d caught the clip on the news about Richard Goldwater accusing Nick Foley of corruption, she’d known it was a lie and had decided to come forward.
According to Caroline, Lydia had never planned to divorce Nick Foley. She’d been perfectly willing to remain part of a political power couple while continuing her affair with Henry Cooper, a man who had his own wife—a wealthy heiress—who he had no desire to divorce. Making frequent trips down to the island to “oversee the school” had been the perfect cover for both of them.
But when Hayden had been killed, everything had fallen apart. Within months, Lydia’s marriage had crumbled. Henry had slowly withdrawn, and eventually ended the affair. Lydia had quit her job, giving the Maryland school system only a few days’ notice, and she’d let the school in the Dominican Republic fall into disrepair as she’d retreated into a cloud of grief so thick she couldn’t see anything but her own pain anymore.
Shifting onto her side, Becca watched the morning sky turn a paler shade of blue. There was a part of her, a small part, that felt badly for Lydia. Losing her son had destroyed her. But instead of seeking help, of trying to find a way to deal with the grief, she had searched for someone to blame.
There was a point at which you had to take ownership of your grief. You couldn’t let it hold you back, crippling you in the past forever. No matter how much tragedy or trauma you’d suffered, there was always a choice, every day, to stay in that place of sorrow, or to get out of bed, put one foot in front of the other, and move forward.
You could bury your pain in work or alcohol or drugs or even focusing all your attention on helping others instead of yourself, but at some point you had to face it. You had to deal with it. You had to let it work its way through you and then find the strength to release it.
You weren’t doing the person you lost any good by living in the past. You weren’t honoring them. You weren’t serving anyone but yourself and your own selfish need to cling onto their memory.
Easing her feet over the side of the bed, she felt the cool wooden floorboards brush against the soles of her feet. It was way past time she let some of her memories go.
She had seen a small glimpse of herself in Lydia two days ago, and she hadn’t liked what she’d seen. She hadn’t liked it at all. She might not have pinned the blame for what had happened to her mother and Tom’s mother on anyone else, but she had been harboring her own guilt for that accident for far too long.
She had carried that guilt around for so long that the lines between love and obligation had begun to blur. Somewhere along the way, she had lost all sight of what she really wanted.
All she had ever wanted was a simple life on this island. She wanted to wake up every day and walk to the elementary school and make her living teaching at the same school her mother had taught at. She wanted to raise her children in this neighborhood, a place where they could ride their bikes without worrying about traffic, a place where they could spend their weekends exploring the shoreline and marshes instead of going to the mall.
As much as she’d hoped that one day Tom would change his mind, she had always known, deep down, that he had no desire to ever come back to this island. He had turned his back on it years ago. For some reason, he had held onto her—a bridge to a past he desperately wanted to forget.
A warm breeze blew into the room through the open window, teasing the curtains in a gentle dance over the sill. Lifting her left hand slowly, she gazed down at the tear-shaped diamond still glittering from her ring finger. She’d been so focused on helping Grace, she’d forgotten to take it off. She hadn’t even had a chance to cancel a single vendor yet, or tell anyone besides Grace, Tom, and Shelley that the wedding was off.
Rising, she walked over to the wooden bureau to pull out some clothes. She dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a lightweight sweater and headed out to the living room. She would start boxing everything up and making a list of everyone she needed to call after breakfast. But, first, there was someone else she needed to talk to.
Slipping her feet into a pair of flip-flops from the pile of shoes by the door, she quietly let herself out of the house. A soft mist rose over the marshes, tinged with pink. Workboats threaded through the still waters and she could hear the deep voices of several watermen calling out to each other in greeting as they laid their morning traps. She reached down, snapping off the stems of a few purple irises growing along the side of the road as she started down a dirt path she could walk with her eyes closed.
When she came to the small white chapel overlooking the water, she made her way to the familiar resting place behind it. Streaks of pink bloomed in the sky as she laid the flowers on her mother’s grave. Stepping back slowly, she lowered herself to the cool stone bench facing the headstone.
“Hi, mom,” she whispered.
The marshes rustled. An egret high-stepped through the shallow waters. In the distance, a bald eagle glided toward a solitary oak tree clinging to a sinking finger of land.
“I think I made a mistake,” she said, twisting her engagement ring slowly around her finger. “I think I was too scared to see it before, but I’m…” She looked down at the diamond, testing the words out loud for the first time. “I’m not in love with Tom.”
Bluebirds sang from the branches of a weeping willow. The faintest scent of roses drifted through the air as a pink sunrise bled over the horizon. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love with him.”
She twisted the ring again, round and around her finger. The mists rose, curling over the surface of the water like smoke. “All I ever wanted was to follow in your footsteps, to have what you and dad had. I think I always knew, deep down, that I didn’t love Tom. Not the way you’re supposed to love someone. But I thought that was okay, because I didn’t want to love anyone that much. I thought it would be safer to be with someone who I could never give my whole heart to, because if I ever lost him, it wouldn’t destroy me.”
She looked back at the flowers lying at the base of the headstone. “After the accident, I almost lost both of you. I think…there were times when Dad wanted to die, when he wished that the alcohol would just take him and numb the pain forever. And I
think I’ve been afraid of a love that strong my whole life—a love that could kill me if it ended. I thought it was something I could protect myself from.”
She looked back down at the ring as a single tear rolled down her cheek. “But you can’t protect yourself from it, can you? You can’t stop yourself from falling in love when you meet the person you’re supposed to be with. There’s nothing that can stop that, is there?”
She twisted the ring around one more time, then slowly eased it off her finger. Laying it on the bench beside her, she felt a weight—a weight she’d been carrying for years—begin to lift. She looked back out at the water, breathing in the scent of spring flowers, of morning dew, of new beginnings. She sat for several minutes in silence, watching a workboat motor slowly through the mists until the sound of the engine faded, and there was nothing but the songs of the birds and the whisper of wind playing through the marsh grasses.
She didn’t hear the footsteps of the man walking up behind her until he was only a few feet away. She glanced over her shoulder and froze when she caught sight of her father. “Dad,” she said, looking away and quickly swiping at the tears on her cheeks before he could see them. “What are you doing here? I thought you were out on the water.”
He walked around to the front of the bench, sitting down beside her. “The hydraulics are leaking again.”
“Again?”
He nodded. “I thought I had a few extra gaskets in the truck, but I couldn’t find any. I was heading home to check the garage when I saw you walking this way.”
If he’d seen her walking from home and followed her, how long had he been here? How much had he heard?
Slowly, answering her question before she had to ask it out loud, he reached for her hand. “Have you told Tom?”
Becca let out a shaky breath. He’d heard everything. “I told him yesterday.”
“How did he take it?”
“Not well.” She looked back out at the water. Tom had been furious, not because she’d broken his heart, but by how the partners at his firm might react to the news. He was sure they would see him as unstable now, unfit to be a part of the family at the firm because he couldn’t get his own fiancée to walk down the aisle.