by Mia March
“It’s so impossible to know,” Isabel said. “While watching Defending Your Life, I kept thinking about those moments I would have to defend, when I acted out of pure fear, or whatever. And then I started thinking, what if I hadn’t met Edward that day at the center? What if it had been a different teenaged mentor? Who would I be now?”
Kat turned onto her stomach, her hands folded under her chin. “Do you think you’re that different? I mean, at heart? Deep down?”
“I was pretty wild,” Isabel said.
June smiled. “I can vouch for that.”
“Yeah, I remember that too,” Kat said, “but isn’t that because you were drawn to be? Drawn to those wild girls? Just like after the accident you were drawn to Edward. That was about you and what pulled you in or away.”
Isabel seemed thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose so. I do like the idea of having more control over my own self than I thought I had. Like it was me reacting to circumstances rather than circumstances controlling me.”
Kat nodded. That was what she was worried about now. Circumstances controlling her. There was a difference, but it seemed such a fine line that she had one foot on either side, but couldn’t find the line itself.
“You know what I wonder?” Kat said. “I wonder if my father hadn’t died, if my aunt and uncle hadn’t died, if my mother’s whole world hadn’t changed with a phone call from the police, if I would have gone to college. If I would have gone to cooking school or taken a year abroad in France. If I would have ended up with Oliver.”
“Destiny would say so,” June said. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that maybe I would have met Edward anyway,” Isabel said. “If not at the Boothbay Regional Center for Grieving Children, then somewhere else.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“I guess we can always defend our lives,” Isabel said. “Why we made certain choices. Not that we’d necessarily get into heaven. But I think the movie’s point was so important. That if you’re afraid of something, find out why and then act without fear. Make a decision you really mean.”
Kat turned over on her bed and stared up at the ceiling fan. “What if you’re afraid you’ll make the wrong decision, though? Like, just saying, what if marrying Oliver isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing? What if I’m meant to be doing something else?”
“I’d think you’d know,” June said. “You do, don’t you, Kat?”
Kat sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. She nodded. But she didn’t know.
“You’ve known Oliver your whole life,” Isabel said. “I love that you’re marrying him after knowing him all this time. It’s like the opposite of what I did with Edward. Met him at sixteen and married him at twenty-one. You know exactly what you’re getting. You know who you are.”
“Do I?” Kat asked—and then was surprised to discover she’d said it aloud. “I mean, I know who Oliver is. As much as you can absolutely know someone. But I’m not so sure of the ‘I know who I am’ thing.”
“Really?” June stared thoughtfully at Kat. “I always think of you as being lucky for having your life on such a great set path now. Baking. Oliver. The inn. There’s such security.”
“Sometimes I want to take off for Paris and just walk around tasting cakes in every neighborhood. Kiss every cute guy I see. Sleep with a few too. Is that crazy?”
“You’re asking the wrong two people,” June said. “I mean, here we are, our lives totally up in the air. Security and a bright, shiny future handed to us sounds pretty good.”
“Are you having second thoughts about getting married?” Isabel asked. “If you are, don’t do it, Kat.”
But it’s my mom’s dream to see me married. To see me pronounced husband and wife with the man my father adored and declared I’d marry at five. How can I take that away from her when it’s the only thing kicking my ambivalence in the tush?
“I’m not having second thoughts,” Kat said, but they were both staring at her.
“Kat,” June said, eyeing Isabel, “let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that Isabel and I were throwing you a small, surprise engagement party tomorrow afternoon here at the inn. And let’s say we invited Oliver’s parents and his brother, and some friends of yours from town. You’d be okay with this?”
Kat could jump up and say, No, cancel it, cancel the whole thing. If there was an engagement party, it was real.
But she looked at her ring and thought of her mother, asleep on that hospital bed, and said, “Of course I’m okay with it. And thank you.” Isabel was staring at her, so Kat changed the subject. “Do you think my mom’s okay? Is she just worried about…” Kat couldn’t even say it.
“I think so,” June said. “I’m sure all that talk of heaven and judgment and defending your choices just got her thinking about her own life.”
“Sure got me thinking about mine,” Kat said.
On Saturday, Kat acted all surprised when she and Oliver walked into the backyard of the Three Captains’ Inn and found a small engagement party in their honor. Oliver’s parents had come down from Camden, along with his brother and his girlfriend, and some old friends from childhood also mingled in the yard, sipping mimosas and sampling hors d’oeuvres. Kat smiled as Lizzie had Lolly rapt at the picnic table, Lizzie’s bridal magazines spread out as she explained her color-coding system.
Kat stood with a trio of friends she knew all the way back to preschool and watched Oliver being hugged by his brother, a younger version of himself, and then by his pretty girlfriend. Oliver’s parents, Fred and Freya, stood chatting with the Nutleys, who’d bought their house next door years ago. This will be my family, Kat thought as she sipped her mimosa. She’d known these lovely people forever, been the recipient of Freya Tate’s kindness many times over the years. But as she tried to imagine spending holidays and birthdays and special occasions with the Tates, she found herself watching Lolly and Isabel and June with a fierce protectiveness. They’d never felt like hers, even her mother, yet now she wanted to run off with the three of them to the parlor and watch Silkwood or The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
“You know what would be wonderful?” Oliver was saying to Lolly. “A Thanksgiving wedding, right here. I know Thanksgiving is your favorite holiday, Lol.”
And just two months away, Kat realized, her stomach tightening. Oliver was being kind and practical, wanting to ensure Lolly would watch her daughter walk down the aisle. Over the past few days, he’d text things like Paris=Honeymoon. Taste our way through patisseries, though none could match your pastries.
Had he forgotten she was unsure? That she might have accepted his marriage proposal in a weak moment when she’d been so upset about her mother’s diagnosis?
Then again, he knew it had always been her dream to go to Paris. To taste her way through those patisseries. To learn from master bakers. Was he taking advantage of the moment—again? Or just hoping to break through her thick head?
This would be one of the moments she’d have to defend in Judgment City. She knew it.
Paris is perfect, she’d texted back. And it was. Just everything else wasn’t. Like the part about the honeymoon.
As Oliver’s brother’s girlfriend told her in detail what kind of gown she herself would want, a sleeveless version of Kate Middleton’s, if, say, Declan Tate, proposed to her, Kat’s cell rang. Matteo. Concerned that his call had something to do with her mother’s recent round of tests, she excused herself into the house and went into the first-floor powder room.
“Matteo, please tell me everything is okay.”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “I’m so sorry to alarm you, Kat. Her results aren’t in yet, won’t be until Monday morning, but we’re not expecting changes. Try not to worry. The reason I’m calling is just to check up on how Lolly’s doing. She wasn’t feeling well at all when I sa
w her. How is she holding up?”
Kat’s shoulders sagged with relief. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Matteo. She’s doing much better.”
As he spoke of what to expect from the second round of chemo coming up and its effects on the body and how Lolly might react, she was struck by how much she wanted to just reach out, feel his knowledge and words of wisdom and let them seep into her.
“I need to get back to rounds, Kat. But if you ever need to ask a question, if you ever need help with all this, just page me. Oh, and I almost forgot. I told my father about you and he’d like to teach you how to make his famous cannoli in exchange for you teaching him to make your famous muffins. Muffins are not his thing, but he’d like to learn. He tried your muffins at Harbor Lights Coffee and said they melted on his tongue.”
Kat’s smile started in her toes and worked its way up. “I would be honored to show the incomparable Alonzo Viola how I make muffins. And a cannoli lesson—I’d love that. It would almost feel like I was in Italy, learning from a master.”
“Someplace you’ve always wanted to go?”
“Italy. France. Spain. England. Russia. Sweden. I used to dream of traveling all over the world, learning to bake in each country. But I’ve always been needed here, so it’s been put off.”
“Well, spend a few hours baking with my father and you’ll feel like you’ve been to Italy for sure.”
They made arrangements for next week, and Kat realized she’d better leave the bathroom just in case anyone else was waiting. “So you’ll call Monday if there’s news about her results?” she said, opening the door. She glanced at Isabel, who was waiting just outside the door, a mimosa in her hand. “Okay. Thanks again.”
“Was that Dr. Viola?” Isabel asked as Kat slipped her phone into her purse.
Dr. Viola. He’d become Matteo to Kat. “He was checking up on my mom. Seeing how she’s holding up.”
“That was very nice of him.”
“His father is going to teach me how to make cannoli,” Kat added, staring down at her sandals, at her pink-red toenails. “His father is Alonzo of the Italian Bakery. I had no idea.”
“Have you always wanted to learn to make cannoli?” Isabel asked, her sharp hazel eyes on Kat’s. And asking much more, Kat knew.
“I didn’t know that I wanted to learn until it was offered,” Kat whispered. “And then the moment it was, there’s nothing I wanted to learn more. Does that make any sense?”
“Yes,” Isabel said, squeezing Kat’s hand for a moment. “I know just what you mean.”
Kat wanted to drag Isabel upstairs and ask how she could be so attracted to another man if she loved Oliver, if it did mean she didn’t love him, shouldn’t marry him, or if this was normal, if women were attracted to other men here and there and it meant nothing. Or did it always mean something? This was an emotional affair. An affair of the heart. Wasn’t that more intimate than sex?
Until she figured out something, she’d keep her feelings to herself.
CHAPTER 13
Isabel
On Monday morning, Isabel began her first official day as a volunteer in the Coastal General Hospital neonatal intensive care unit. She was assigned to two babies who had jaundice and needed to be under the bilirubin lights for at least six days. Her job was to sit between their incubators and, if they were awake, to reach inside the two armholes and gently stroke what she could reach. At their feeding times, she could bottle-feed and change diapers under the supervision of a nurse. She’d gone through an orientation and three training sessions on everything from proper hand-washing before entering the NICU to proper procedure and how to hold a newborn. Now that Labor Day weekend had come and gone, and with it the summer rush, Isabel felt okay taking a little time away from the inn to volunteer. Although it was a Monday, a week after Labor Day, two of the three guest rooms were booked, and Kat had offered to relieve her for Isabel’s first official day.
She sat with three-day-old, six-pound-two-ounce Chloe Martel in her arms, her white-cotton-capped head a beautiful, soft weight against Isabel’s arm. She held the tiny bottle, three ounces of the baby’s mother’s expressed breast milk, and fed Chloe, her heart swelling so much Isabel thought it might truly burst. I’m meant to be doing this, she thought. Whether with my own child or through being right here.
She thought about what life might have been like if Edward had said okay to having a baby. They’d have a newborn, a toddler, a preschooler—and one day she’d get the anonymous note or see him skulking through backyards herself. She was grateful now that she’d been unable to budge him.
A couple walked through the nursery and spoke quietly with the nurse. They were the parents of two-months-premature twins, one of whom wasn’t doing well. Isabel saw tears in the father’s eyes; he swiped them away, then the couple embraced and Isabel could hear the mother crying.
I’m so sorry you’re going through this, she said silently to them, and said a silent prayer in the direction of their twins, little fighters. The nurse had explained to Isabel during orientation that things could change in an instant, from so-so to bad or bad to worse or worse to better and then fine. Isabel knew all about that.
Emmy Dean had been six weeks premature, Griffin had told her on the phone last night. He’d called every night since checking out of the inn last Monday, sometimes just to say good-night, sometimes to talk. She liked that he respected her need to get to know him, slowly, before she could even think about kisses on long walks by the water. She hadn’t been with another man since she was sixteen, and as attracted as she was to Griffin, she was hardly ready to feel another man’s hands on her. But she anticipated his nightly phone calls, almost holding her breath when her cell phone would ring. She’d told him that she was starting her first day as a NICU volunteer, and he’d said that was incredibly kind of her, that Emmy had been in the NICU for over two weeks before she was strong enough to come home. He’d come see her three times a day, morning, noon, and night, and every day at noon, the same sweet volunteer, a grandmotherly type named Ernabelle, would be rocking Emmy. It was how she’d gotten her middle name, Belle, because the woman had been such an angel.
As he’d told Isabel this story, she realized that, ready or not, she was falling for him in a no-turning-back kind of way. He was coming over later that afternoon to work with Happy. “Okay, I’m really coming to see you again,” he’d added, and she’d gone warm all over.
After Chloe finished her bottle, Isabel gently burped her the way the nurse had taught her, burp cloth on her shoulder. Then she settled the baby back in her arms and rocked her, the wooden rocking chair slightly creaking. Isabel hummed a lullaby she’d heard June singing to Charlie one night, but she couldn’t remember the words. Chloe’s little eyes closed, then opened a crack, then closed again.
“You’re a beautiful, strong girl,” Isabel whispered before she put the baby back in the incubator.
While she waited for four-day-old Eva Rutledge to wake up, Isabel straightened the diapers, then the nurse came over and told her she could rock a newborn boy whose parents couldn’t come until three o’clock. Isabel leapt up and headed across the NICU, where impossibly tiny preemie Logan Paul lay with his wires. The nurse took him from the bassinet and placed him carefully in Isabel’s arms. She sat back in the rocking chair and rocked back and forth, humming the lullaby, more at peace than she’d ever before been in her life.
It was almost four o’clock, Griffin was due to arrive any minute, and the inn was in order. Isabel had updated the Three Captains’ website, spoken with two of the local travel agents to introduce herself, and hit up Home Depot for a new doorknob for the Bluebird Room. The books were up-to-date, her calendars synced with guest arrival and departure dates, and the inn’s many plants were watered. There’s happiness in being on top of your life, Isabel thought. She’d never had much of a life to be on top of, and this purpose, this
direction, felt good.
Happy lay on his back in a patch of sunlight, his favorite toy, a squeaky, comical rubber rat, half in his mouth. Griffin had worked magic with the dog over the week he’d been a guest, turning him into a well-behaved, if mischievous, pet. Even Lolly liked Happy and enjoyed having him curl up next to her while she read at night. Isabel took Happy for walks every day and played and cuddled with him as much as she could, but her sweet nephew had commandeered the dog for his own, and that was fine with Isabel. They could share him.
When she spotted Griffin and his girls walking up the front path, Isabel’s excitement started in her toes and worked its way up to her stomach. Happy-nervous butterflies. She was so attracted to him, Isabel almost couldn’t believe it. She’d found men attractive before, of course, noticed a good-looking man, swooned over a movie star or two, but she’d never been attracted-attracted. As in I would like to kiss you and I can kiss you because I’m available for the first time since I was sixteen.
Alexa had her ubiquitous iPod clipped to her white shorts and earphones in her ears. She didn’t say hello. She lay on a chaise, turned her face up to the sun, and moved slightly to the music. Emmy stared up at Isabel as usual and had one hand behind her back.
“This is for you,” Emmy said, and pulled out a pink flower.
Isabel, her smile wide, knelt down in front of her. “I love it. Thank you. How about if I tuck it behind my ear?” Isabel shifted her hair behind her ear and slid the flower in. “How do I look, Emmy?”
The girl beamed. “You look nice.”
Emmy ran over to Happy and started rubbing his belly. He moved his comical head from side to side in joy, which made Emmy laugh that huge laugh of hers.
“You look beautiful,” Griffin whispered, right in her ear, sending goose bumps up her spine. He looked hot in his army-green cargo pants and a black T-shirt. “Okay, girls, I’m going to work with Isabel and Happy. Lex, you’re in charge of keeping an eye on Emmy.”