“I never wanted any of it, Caroline. All I ever wanted—”
“Her name is Lily, by the way,” she blurted, cutting me off abruptly. “After her aunt. Roland hated the idea, but I insisted. I thought it was a nice touch. Very . . . sisterly.”
Lily.
Her name is Lily. At least she’ll have that.
We stood there a moment, facing each other in that hideous apartment, but there was nothing left to say. I was out of words, out of understanding, out of tears, or so I thought. There was a noise in the foyer, the opening and closing of a door. I tried to steel myself for what I knew was coming, but it was too late.
Roland went still as he stepped into the room, his face stony as he registered my presence. I could feel Caroline’s eyes darting between us, could feel her waiting for me to throw myself into his arms and blurt out my side of the story, that there had never been anyone but him, that I had only lied about Jasper to protect him, that I’d been tricked into giving up my child.
But I didn’t do any of those things.
If Roland believed me heartless enough to turn my back on our baby, he deserved no explanation. He’d been only too willing to go along with Caroline’s scheme, to think the worst of me and take my child. Well, he had her now, and there was nothing I could do about it. But I’d be damned if I’d stand there like a martyr at the stake.
I was barely aware of my legs as I crossed to where he stood. It took everything I had to look him in the eye. I saw it then, through the shimmer of my own tears, a glimpse of remorse beginning to kindle in the depths of those soft brown eyes, but it had come too late.
I drew back my hand, landing it squarely on his cheek, the blow so sharp it rippled up my arm like an electric shock. I stood there a moment, frozen as the mottled imprint of my palm slowly bloomed along his jaw, then turned and blundered toward the door before the tears began in earnest.
Lily.
My little girl’s name is Lily.
FORTY
1995
Hideaway Key, Florida
“How?” The single word was all Lily could manage as she stepped out onto the deck. “How could you have done it?”
Caroline closed the notebook and looked up, her expression carefully blank. “I was wondering when you’d come find me. You’ve hardly spoken a word in two days.”
It was true. They’d been giving each other a wide berth over the last two days, eating in shifts so they wouldn’t have to sit down together, Lily keeping to the bedroom, Caroline to the deck.
“Answer the question,” Lily snapped, fighting off a fresh wave of tears. “How could you do it—and why?”
Caroline sat stonily. “You read them?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know why. It’s all there, just like she wrote it.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say for yourself? You ruined her life—and Daddy’s—because you were jealous?”
Hot flags of color rose in Caroline’s cheeks. “I did not ruin your father’s life.”
“You tricked him into marrying you when you knew he didn’t love you, when you didn’t love him, either.”
“I did!” The words burst out of her like a sob. “I did love him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Caroline was staring at her hands, spinning the almost ludicrous marquise-shaped diamond on her ring finger. “Not in the beginning, maybe. But eventually I came to care for him. But he never saw me. Ever. Just once, I wanted him to look at me the way he used to look at her, like the sun rose in my eyes. But he never did. To your father—to most people, actually—I was never anything but a second-rate imitation of the real thing.”
Lily dropped into one of the deck chairs, stunned into momentary silence. It had never occurred to her that Caroline might have harbored real feelings for her father.
“Did you ever tell him?”
Caroline’s eyes widened, as if horrified by the very thought. “Certainly not.” She fumbled with the silver case, extracting another cigarette. This one lit more easily. “There was no point,” she said, pushing a thin pall of smoke between her bare lips. “I knew that only too well. I got him into bed once, early on, but only because he’d had too much to drink and was missing her. I thought if I could make him want me that way, the rest would come.” She paused to take another drag, exhaling quickly. “It didn’t. He never touched me again. Not once in all these years.”
Lily squirmed, eager to steer the conversation to less awkward ground. “That time I found the magazine picture, the time you slapped me—”
Caroline’s face crumpled as she looked away. “You called her Mother.”
“Because I thought I was holding a picture of you. That’s why I said Mother—and you slapped me for it.”
“You don’t understand. You can’t.” She pressed a hand to her eyes, shook her head. “I was so afraid you’d find out, that I would lose you. Every day, every single day, I expected her to come take you away, to take you both away. I just knew that was how I’d be punished.”
“You were afraid of losing me?”
“I may have won your father, Lily, but it wasn’t fair and square. One way or another we pay for things like that.”
Lily gaped at her, astonished by this unexpected admission.
Caroline smiled bitterly. “You look surprised. Did you think I didn’t have a conscience? I knew what I did was wrong. I knew it the minute Lily-Mae slapped your father’s face that day. He hated me after that, because I made her despise him, and that was something he could never forgive. If there was ever a chance for us, it died that day. But I still had you, someone who was mine, and mine alone.”
“But I wasn’t yours. Not really. You only wanted me because Lily-Mae was my mother. I was something you could take from her.”
“I’m your mother. I raised you from a baby. You belong to me.”
“No, you didn’t. Daddy did, when he was home. Or the housekeeper, or the maid, or whoever was around. But never you. And you still don’t get it, do you? People don’t belong to other people. We’re not possessions or prizes, not things to be won or traded. You say you loved Daddy, that you loved me, but the truth is we were just things to you, bargaining chips in some childish little game you’re still playing.”
“I wanted to love you, Lily. I swear I did.”
“You never showed it. Not once. Not ever.”
“I know.” Caroline’s voice crackled with unshed tears. “I didn’t know how to share you with your father. He loved you so. The way he looked at you was the way he used to look at her: like you were his whole world. He never let me forget you weren’t mine. You were a part of her, a part of them, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I was an outsider in my own marriage. As long as you were there, she was, too.”
“So you hated me in her place.”
“No.”
“Yes, you did. It’s why you were so eager for me to go away to school, and then stay on in Paris, and why you waited so long to tell me Daddy was sick and that I needed to come home. I made you uncomfortable because I reminded you of what you’d done. And then Daddy left me this place, and you knew the truth was going to come out.”
“Yes,” she said, quietly, her voice suddenly faraway. “I knew. I knew the minute Stephen Singer said your father left you this place. I think Stephen knew it, too, and was glad. He never liked me very much.”
“And so you came down to Hideaway to head me off at the pass.”
Caroline’s eyes fluttered closed, a pair of tears tracking slowly down her cheeks. “I came to ask you to forgive me.”
Forgive her?
Lily stared at her, at this woman she’d been calling mother for more than thirty years, and tried to imagine the circumstances under which such a thing might be possible. She couldn’t. There was no way to go back and change
the past, no way to erase the hurt that had been inflicted or repair the lives that had been altered. It was too much to comprehend—and too much to ask.
Lily lifted her chin a notch, forcing herself to meet Caroline’s red-rimmed eyes. “After everything I’ve heard, everything I’ve read, I don’t know if that’s possible. I know it isn’t possible today, if that’s what you were hoping for.”
Caroline looked as if she’d been slapped. “But I came all this way. I brought you the journals. You would never have known otherwise. Don’t I get credit for that?”
“Credit? For doing what you should have done thirty years ago? This was damage control, and we both know it, Moth—” Lily bit off the word before she finished it.
“You won’t call me Mother?”
Lily met her gaze without flinching. “No, I won’t. I suppose I could call you Aunt Caroline, but that doesn’t feel quite right, either.” She was being cruel but somehow couldn’t help herself.
Caroline looked down at her lap, absently fingering the book lying closed on her knees. “So, where do we go from here?”
Where indeed? Lily glanced back out over the sea, where a bloodred sun was already beginning its descent, then back at Caroline. Without makeup she looked haggard and unwell, as if the last two days had aged her twenty years.
“I’m going to go scare us up some food,” she said at last, knowing full well it wasn’t the answer Caroline was waiting for.
Caroline stared blankly. “Food?”
“We still need to eat.”
Truth be told, food was the furthest thing from Lily’s mind just then, but eating was what families did when they grieved; they sat down together and chewed and swallowed, because when mouths were full nothing needed to be said.
She had scrounged up the ingredients for sandwiches and a salad, and was rinsing a handful of romaine leaves when Caroline stepped into the kitchen and picked up a tomato and knife. Lily watched from the corner of her eye, saying nothing as she began tearing her lettuce into a scarred wooden bowl.
It felt strange, preparing a meal together in the wake of such startling revelations. Maybe because Lily couldn’t recall a single time they’d ever done it. Caroline wasn’t the domestic type, and there had always been some cook or other to handle meals, though with Roland frequently away on business they had rarely eaten as a family.
As a child she had envied families who sat down together, dinner tables where Mom and Dad shared their day, then quizzed their children about math homework and spelling tests. She had adored her father, but in some tiny corner of her girlish heart, she had blamed him for being gone so much. Now she understood why he’d stayed away. Home must have been an unbearable place.
They ate in the small breakfast room off the kitchen, eating their salad and sandwiches in silence. Lily opened a new bottle of wine, pouring them each a glass. She watched now as Caroline refilled her glass and lifted it with shaky hands.
“Is Lily-Mae the reason you drink so much?” It was a blunt question, and one Lily already knew the answer to, but she wanted to hear Caroline’s reply.
“I’m not . . . proud of the things I’ve done.”
“If you felt so bad, why didn’t you at least try to make things right? You could have bowed out and let them be together. Or is this shame of yours relatively recent?”
Caroline shot Lily a look of maternal warning, then seemed to remember she no longer had the right. Her shoulders slumped. “I told myself it was because I couldn’t bear the scandal, for Roland or myself, but the truth was I kept hoping . . .”
“That he’d learn to love you?”
“He didn’t, of course. And then Lily got sick.”
“Cancer.”
“Yes. In her left breast. They took it off. She went through chemo and radiation, but it must have come back. Roland tried to go to her when he heard, but she refused to see him.”
“And what about you? Did you try to go to her?”
“No.”
Lily was appalled, though not surprised. “She was your sister. How could you not want to at least say good-bye?”
Caroline blinked, as if surprised by the question. “I didn’t know. Your father didn’t tell me any of it until . . . after. And even then it was only to throw it in my face.”
Lily traced a finger around the lip of her wineglass, recalling the day as if it were yesterday. She’d been home on a break—from work, and from Luc—when her father returned unexpectedly from an extended business trip. He’d been so steely, so coolly matter-of-fact as he relayed the news that Lily-Mae was dead. It never occurred to her that he might be hiding his own raw emotions, rather than trying to spare his wife’s.
And then at the memorial, he’d stood so grave and still. She had taken his stoicism as a show of respect, or perhaps lingering anger that Caroline had refused to attend her own sister’s service, never suspecting the horrible grief he’d been struggling to conceal. So much made sense now—such terrible, terrible sense. And yet, there were still questions that needed answering, tiny details not mentioned in Lily-Mae’s journals.
“How did Daddy learn that Lily-Mae was sick?”
“From Stephen Singer, I suppose. He always knew where she was and what she was up to. I think your father paid him to know. I had no idea she planned to leave him the cottage when she died. I should have guessed, I suppose.” She paused, shook her head. “And then your father left it to you. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
“You think he wanted me to know the truth?”
Caroline managed a pained half smile. “Can you think of a better way to get back at me than to turn you against me?”
Lily shoved back her plate, not bothering to hide her annoyance. “He would have told me years ago if that’s what he was after. God knows, he had the right. What I don’t understand is why he stayed with you. After everything you did, why would he stay?”
Caroline flashed another look of surprise, though this one held no malice. “He stayed for you, Lily. Because he knew what would happen if he ever tried to go to her. I would have ruined us all, in any way I could. And I made sure he knew it. He would never have let me hurt you that way—or her.”
Lily blinked back a sudden sting of tears. “He had a good heart.”
“Yes, he did,” Caroline answered almost wistfully. “It was one of the things he had in common with my sister.” She glanced up then, her wineglass hovering halfway to her lips. “How does one end up with a heart like that, do you suppose? The kind that always does the right thing, no matter the personal price?”
Lily had no answer. Instead, she took another sip of wine, watching as the last sliver of sun eased into the sea.
“My return ticket is for tomorrow,” Caroline said when the silence began to lengthen.
Lily nodded.
“Should I change it?”
“No.”
Caroline’s face crumpled. “But we haven’t . . . settled things.”
“Is that what you think we’re doing? Settling things? Do you honestly believe, after what I’ve read—what you’ve admitted—that I can just let it all go? Water under the bridge? No big deal?”
Caroline shrugged helplessly. “I thought if I stayed—if we talked some more, that we could work it out, and maybe get past it.”
“Past it?” Lily repeated, incredulous. “You want us to just . . . get past it? What about Lily-Mae? Do you think she got past it? Did Daddy? Somehow I doubt it. Perhaps mine isn’t the only forgiveness you should be worrying about.”
Caroline stuck out her chin, lower lip quivering. “There’s nothing I can do about them now.”
“No,” Lily said flatly. “But there was, while they were alive. You’ve had years to be sorry—and to make things right—for them and for me. But you didn’t. It’s only now that you suddenly feel so bad. Do you really? Or are you only sorry th
at it’s all come out?”
Caroline sighed heavily as she let her eyes drift out to the beach. “Would you believe me if I said I really do feel bad? I do, by the way, if it’s of any use now. Jealousy is a hideous thing, Lily. As bad as any cancer once you let it get hold of you. And I did. I wish there were some way to go back, to do things over. We were close once, she and I. She used to call me Bitsy. Did I ever tell you that?”
Lily’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Of course you didn’t. You never told me anything.”
Caroline’s expression was suddenly hopeful. “I could tell you now. Anything you want to know.”
Lily pulled in a deep breath, praying for patience. “It’s a little late for storytelling, don’t you think? And as for getting past all of this, I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. I haven’t had time to process anything. But I do know that I don’t want to see you for a while.”
Caroline’s face fell, but she made no further protest. “Will you be coming home before you leave for Milan?”
“I’m not going to Milan,” Lily told her flatly. “And I am home. I’m staying here in Hideaway. Not because of anything in the journals, but because I think I can be happy here. I at least want to try.”
“You’re going to live here? In her cottage?”
“In my cottage, yes. At least for a while.”
“I see.”
“No, I don’t think you do. I didn’t, either, in the beginning. But I think I finally know why Daddy left me this place. He was happy here once. No matter where he lived this was always home for him, like it was for Lily-Mae. Every time something went wrong, every time she sought solace, this was where she came, and where she stayed. Because her memories lived here. The good ones at least.”
“I never knew . . .” Caroline said, setting down her empty glass. “What she felt for your father—I never knew it was real. It all happened so fast. Running off together in the middle of the night, shutting themselves away in some shack on the beach, and then a few weeks later, married. Affairs that begin that way don’t last. Only theirs did. I didn’t want to believe it was real.”
Summer at Hideaway Key Page 33