by Jen Gilroy
Naomi’s face heated. Seeing her aunt kissing Ty’s dad was even more embarrassing than the time back in seventh grade when she’d gotten toilet paper stuck in her skirt and the boy she’d had a crush on had been behind her in the lunch line. Her thoughts whirled and she pointed to a patch of greenery. “Studying nature.”
Her heart thudded. Auntie Charlotte couldn’t have seen her snooping around. She must have taken a shortcut. There was no other way she could have gotten to this part of the trail this soon. “My science teacher says plants are the lungs of our planet.”
Auntie Charlotte grinned. “That’s poison ivy.”
Naomi scooted backward and caught her sandal on a tree root, staggering to keep her balance. “I couldn’t sleep. I’m not used to sharing a room with Emma.”
Which was true. Her seven-year-old sister had to be the noisiest roommate ever. She tossed and turned like her bed was a trampoline. She talked in her sleep. Then Emma would wake up and want the bathroom, a drink of water, then the bathroom again. And since she was scared of the dark, she refused to go on her own.
“It’s different for you here, huh?” Auntie Charlotte’s brown eyes were warm and loving, like she remembered being Naomi’s age. Almost fifteen and not sure who you were or who you wanted to be.
“It’s like some museum.” Naomi wrinkled her nose. “The cottage doesn’t have a television or air-conditioning, and the water smells weird.” She checked the ends of her hair, surprised the strands were still dark and as glossy as ever. “I’ll have to get Alyssa to FedEx me more conditioner. There’s no way that store we stopped at in town has any brand I’d use.”
Auntie Charlotte laughed. “You’re a lot like your mom.”
Naomi linked an arm with Auntie Charlotte’s. “Maybe, except Mom doesn’t like being here, but I think you do, so I’m cool with that. Really.” Also, Ty was the cutest boy she’d ever met, which counted for a lot.
“I may not see you very often, but you’re an excellent niece.” Auntie Charlotte tucked her camera into her hoodie pocket.
“Really?” Naomi gave a little skip and smiled. Auntie Charlotte flew in and out of Naomi’s life once or twice a year bringing presents, like dolls in national costumes and wooden boxes that smelled of spices and that Naomi kept on a special shelf in her bedroom. She might not know Auntie Charlotte well, but she still told all her friends how fabulous she was. And although she’d never tell Alyssa or anyone, she wanted to be as fearless and independent as Auntie Charlotte when she grew up. Those sexy curves wouldn’t hurt either.
“Absolutely.” Auntie Charlotte gave her a thumbs-up.
Naomi moved closer. “Mom never talks about Firefly Lake. What was it like coming here when you were my age?”
“A lot like it is now.” Auntie Charlotte’s eyes got a faraway look, like she remembered something happy but sad too. “This place hasn’t changed much.”
“There isn’t anything to do. No mall. No Starbucks.” Naomi slowed her pace because Auntie Charlotte’s left leg dragged.
“When we go into town, I’ll take you to a diner where I used to go. There’s probably still a movie theater and a bowling alley.” Auntie Charlotte gave her a half smile. “I was never bored. I canoed, played tennis, rode my bike, and swam in the lake. Hung out with some of the local kids too.”
None of which, apart from maybe the tennis, sounded exciting. “Any cute boys?” Naomi made her voice light, like she didn’t have a special reason for asking.
“Sure there were.” Auntie Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “You and Ty Carmichael seemed to hit it off.”
Naomi gave an elaborate shrug like it wasn’t important. Nothing much got by Auntie Charlotte, which was probably why she’d won all those awards for her job. “He’s okay.” She made her tone casual.
“Okay?” Auntie Charlotte stopped, and although it sounded for a second like she was trying not to laugh, she cupped Naomi’s chin in a gentle hand. “You be careful, honey. With a boy like Ty, before you know it, you could be in over your head.” She dropped her hand and started walking again, faster this time. “Besides, your mom doesn’t want you dating until you’re sixteen.” Her voice was serious, amusement stripped away.
A stupid rule and one more example of how her mom didn’t understand her. Naomi lengthened her stride to keep up. “Who said I wanted to date him?”
“Even though you may find it hard to believe, I was a teenage girl once. Your mom was too.”
Naomi could picture Auntie Charlotte being her age, but her mom? Never in a million years. Naomi made herself laugh, like it was all a joke. “Forget about Ty. Let’s talk about Ty’s dad. When he and Ty brought that canoe around, it looked like the two of you knew each other pretty well.”
“The Carmichaels’ cottage was next door and my dad kept a boat at their marina. Ty’s dad and I knew each other as kids. We were friends. A very long time ago,” she added in a lower voice.
To Naomi it looked like they’d been a lot more than friends. Still were, if how the two of them locked lips on the beach was anything to go by. But that was the thing with grown-ups. Even as nice a one as Auntie Charlotte never told you the whole truth.
“Why don’t we make some breakfast?” Auntie Charlotte’s voice turned bright and breezy. “Surprise your mom and Emma with pancakes.”
“You can make pancakes?” Naomi choked back a laugh. “Mom says you can barely boil an egg.”
“She’s right.” Auntie Charlotte grinned, like she was Naomi’s age and they were friends, getting away with something. “But when your mom wasn’t looking, I picked up a pancake mix at the grocery store. The instructions on the box say all you have to do is add water.”
“Mom doesn’t like us eating processed food.” Naomi stopped where the path opened out of the forest at the back of the cottage, the shadows cast by the towering trees giving way to a cloudless blue sky. Although she loved Auntie Charlotte, she loved her mom too, and her mom was the best cook ever.
“One pancake mix won’t kill us, and I won’t tell if you don’t.” Auntie Charlotte wrapped Naomi in a hug. It was the kind of hug Naomi remembered Auntie Charlotte giving her when she was little. “Besides, we’re on vacation.”
“I guess.” It didn’t seem much like a vacation. Not with her dad back home working and her mom and Auntie Charlotte talking about lawyers and Realtors and other boring stuff.
“That’s my girl.” Auntie Charlotte flashed Naomi another conspiratorial smile and went into the cottage.
Naomi lingered behind and scanned the line of trees that curved into the hazy blue of the point where Ty told her the Carmichael’s workshop was. Auntie Charlotte was right. She was on vacation and deserved to have some fun. Hanging out with Ty could be a lot of fun.
She found her phone again. This time she could text Alyssa. She’d been fifteen for a whole four months, and she knew lots about boys. She was also an expert in those flirting tips they’d pored over in Seventeen magazine.
Ty was the hottest guy Naomi had ever met. And meeting him was more exciting than Christmas, the last day of school, and Fourth of July fireworks rolled into one. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. How he’d looked at her with those dreamy blue eyes. How he’d tossed her the Frisbee, then leaned in so close his warm breath brushed her cheek.
Alyssa would help Naomi figure out this thing with Ty. Figure it out so her mom and Auntie Charlotte wouldn’t suspect a thing.
“Of course I’m listening to you.” Two days later Charlie twirled the straw in her chocolate milk shake, as thick and creamy as the ones she remembered from when she and Sean used to stop by the North Woods Diner on Saturday night after a movie.
“No, you weren’t.” Mia’s breath caught, and she glanced toward the diner exit. “I said there’s no reason for us to stay here a whole month. Once the land survey’s done, the Realtor says Tat Chee Properties will make us an offer. After we do some token negotiating, we sign the papers and the cottage is sold. Then we can be out of here
.”
“Just like that?”
Mia’s chin jerked. “Mom’s estate settled. For a small-town lawyer, Nick McGuire seems to know what he’s doing.”
Charlie picked up her vegetarian burger, then set it down again. Tucked into one of the diner’s high, red-padded booths, the scarred wooden sides bearing the initials of several generations of Firefly Lake teenagers, she was cocooned from the rest of the world. “I want to be out of here as much as you do, but let’s not rush into anything.”
“Why not?” Mia nibbled a piece of lettuce like an elegant rabbit. Immaculate in a white shift dress, her long dark hair caught in a twist at the back of her head, she still looked every inch the beauty queen she’d once been.
“Mom never wanted to let the cottage go.” And although they were very different women, Charlie had loved her mom with all her heart. She pushed her plate away, half the burger and most of the fries untouched. “I think we should take our time and make sure it’s the right decision.”
“What other decision is there?” Mia’s voice was flat. “The cottage is a shack, a waterfront shack, but still a shack. If I were that developer, I’d bulldoze it.” She raised one groomed eyebrow. “Give me a place in Florida any day.”
“You have a place in Florida.” Charlie rolled the paper place mat between her fingers. If she and her sister were closer, they could talk openly instead of in this stilted way like polite strangers. But they hadn’t been close in years.
“True.” Mia gave a high-pitched laugh, and her perfect features were strained. “You’re not worried about that petition, are you?” She picked up the yellow sheet Charlie had plucked from the stack on the diner’s front counter. SAY NO TO RESORT DEVELOPMENT was splashed in thick black letters across the top. “People in small towns like this don’t want change. Once they see the resort and the jobs it’ll create, they’ll support it fast enough.”
“I’m not sure.” Charlie read the sheet again. “Grassroots protests can be pretty powerful.” Especially with someone like Sean behind it, someone who loved this place with every fiber of his being.
“Which you’d know all about.” Mia dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “You’ve been protesting things since the day you started to talk.” Her voice softened. “I know the cottage always meant more to you than me, but you have to be sensible.”
“Why? Did you ever think being sensible is overrated?” The one time she’d been sensible, she’d paid for it with a lifetime of heartbreak. Charlie finished her milk shake and shook her head at a petite waitress bearing down on her with a wedge of apple pie as big as a doorstop.
“Charlotte…” Mia paused as the waitress removed her plate and replaced it with a bowl of fruit salad. “You’ve been through a lot and maybe you’re not thinking clearly. Selling the cottage is the best thing. There’s nothing for either of us here.”
Except memories. And regrets. Charlie bit back a sigh. Why had she let Sean kiss her the other day? If she’d stopped him, she could have kept on pretending her feelings for him were over years ago.
The instant his warm lips hovered over hers, she yielded, sucked in by a surge of desire so strong she hadn’t been able to resist one sweet taste of him, then another. Before she knew it—and despite all her good intentions—she was sucked into the past again, the girl she’d once been, the choices she’d made. Choices she never thought of. Until now.
“Do you really think Mom would have wanted us to sell to Tat Chee?”
Mia wrinkled her perfect nose. “Mom would have done what Dad wanted. And Dad would have sold the place, no question.” She levered a watermelon cube onto her fork. “Besides, where else are we going to get that kind of money?”
“I need money, sure, but it’s not everything,” Charlie said. At least it never had been here.
She looked out the diner window. Dusty pickup trucks with canoes on top were parked next to shiny city cars that belonged to the summer people and the New Vermonters—people from Boston and New York who came to the Northeast Kingdom for the natural scenery and slower pace of life.
People who didn’t see her Vermont. The Vermont that was picking blueberries in the patch of tangled bushes behind the cottage. Catching fireflies in a cracked mason jar on summer nights when the moon bathed the dark hills in white light. And the sense of belonging and being at home in her skin Charlie had never found anywhere else.
“This isn’t about Sean Carmichael, is it?” Mia’s caramel eyes narrowed. “Why did my husband have to rent that canoe in the first place, let alone from Carmichael’s?” She reached for Charlie’s hand, her fingers cool. “Having Sean turn up on the doorstep our first day, it’s no wonder you’re all churned up.”
“Of course it’s not about Sean.” Charlie pulled her hand away and bit the inside of her lip. “And I’m not all churned up. Jay wouldn’t remember about Sean and me.”
“I suppose not.” Mia’s expression was doubtful. “Besides, there probably isn’t anywhere else to rent a canoe around here.”
“It’ll be fun for the girls.” Charlie peeked around the corner of the booth. Her nieces leaned against the battered jukebox at the front of the diner. Naomi wore cute denim shorts and a teal halter top. Emma, a blond pixie in a pink sundress, tapped her feet to the beat of a country song about big-city blues.
“Charlotte?” She swiveled her head at Mia’s voice. “Maybe coming back here was a mistake. Sometimes it’s better not to go digging up the past.” Mia raised a hand to signal the waitress for the check, and her diamond tennis bracelet slid up her slender forearm.
Letting Sean kiss her and kissing him back, that was a mistake that she regretted as soon as it happened. But coming back to the cottage? No. That wasn’t a mistake. The cottage was where she felt closest to her mom, where she needed to come to truly say good-bye to her.
“Who said I was digging up the past?” Charlie got out her wallet from the buttermilk leather bag she’d tossed on the seat beside her and pulled out some bills.
“I didn’t. I only meant…” Mia paused, and for an instant the sister Charlie barely knew looked younger, vulnerable even, like the sister who’d bandaged Charlie’s skinned knees when she’d fallen out of the tree behind the cottage and soothed away the pain with a story, cookies, and cuddles. “You’re my little sister. When you got hurt, I wanted to come to you, but Jay had a big deal going on at work. He was in California and I couldn’t leave the girls alone.”
“I understand.” Charlie pushed the bills across the table to her sister, then fumbled with her bag.
“Do you?” Mia looked at her empty water glass. “I was so scared I might lose you. As for you and Sean, the two of you were intense. Sometimes I worry you never really got over him and then Dad, after he loaned that money to Sean’s dad, what he made you do—”
“Stop.” Charlie glanced around. “That loan’s always been a secret. As for Sean and me, it’s over, done.” In spite of, or maybe because of, that toe-curling kiss. “I’m not digging up anything. I’m letting go of the past. I need the money—that’s what selling the cottage is about.” She grabbed her bag and slid toward the end of the booth. “And you didn’t lose me.”
“I know.” Mia fingered the clasp on her bracelet. “We’re back here together, one last time. And we’re doing the right thing. I’m sure of it. No matter what anybody around here thinks.”
Halfway out of the booth, Charlie stopped, catching something in Mia’s eyes. “Is everything okay with you and Jay?”
“Of course.” Mia’s laugh tinkled out. “He works a lot. You don’t get to be vice president of sales for a Fortune Global five hundred without working pretty much twenty-four/seven.” She dug into her clutch purse, not meeting Charlie’s eyes.
“You’d tell me if you ever needed help with the girls or anything, right?” Charlie searched Mia’s face. Something about her sister’s expression troubled her and made her wonder what Mia wasn’t telling her. “I…” She stopped. She couldn’t ask her sister outright
because she didn’t see Mia often enough to talk about anything beyond the superficial.
“The girls and I are fine.” Mia’s phone rang. “Wait a second. It’s Jay.” She plucked the phone out of her purse and waved Charlie into her seat. “Don’t go.”
Charlie slid back into the booth as her sister greeted her husband.
“What?” Mia’s voice sharpened. “You promised Naomi. And me.”
Charlie studied her sister’s oval face. Her bow-shaped mouth pursed as she frowned.
“No, I’m not telling Naomi. You have to tell her yourself.” Mia glanced at Charlie, her brown eyes like flints. “Not tomorrow, today. Call back in ten minutes and I’ll make sure Naomi can talk to you. In the meantime, think about how you’ll tell her.” She clicked off without saying good-bye.
“What is it?” Charlie gulped at the pain on her sister’s face.
“Jay has to go to Dubai for work. He’s not coming here for Naomi’s birthday.” Mia swallowed hard.
“No.” Charlie put a hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
“Life happens.” Mia’s face was wan. “But Naomi…I’m not telling her. Jay has to do it.”
Charlie reached across the table and patted Mia’s hand, still clenched tight around the phone. “We’ll make it up to Naomi. I’ll help you.”
“Thank you.” Mia’s voice cracked. “Jay’s calling back in ten minutes, and I already promised Emma she could buy candy at that store across the street. Can you meet us at the car in half an hour?” The black BMW Mia had rented in Burlington was sleek and elegant. Just like her.
“Are you okay?” Charlie took a deep breath.
“Fine. It’s not the first time…” Mia stopped and again dug in her purse. “I must have left it at the law office.”
Charlie slung her bag over one shoulder. “Left what?”
“The pen Jay gave me for Christmas. Gold, engraved with my initials.” Mia’s expression turned hopeful. “If it’s not too far for you to walk, could you go back for it?”
“Of course.” Today was one of Charlie’s good days. A pain-free day when she could almost pretend the accident hadn’t happened. “But you—”