“Your skin is exquisite.” Olivia leaned in a little closer so that her lips, her tongue, brushed ever so softly across his left nipple and Isaac sucked back a sharp breath, so hard and fast that it felt like he’d just been kicked in the gut.
He tried not to moan. But he failed miserably.
Olivia looked up into Isaac’s eyes, and the look on his face was a mix of insecurity and blatant lust, and it was that lust that would get him into trouble. But trouble sounded good, and it felt even better.
So, he took Olivia’s hair in his hands and he pulled her gently toward him. The warmth of her breath and the sweet taste of her mouth drowned out all the doubts in his head until there was nothing else but Olivia’s lips, and Olivia’s tongue, and the smell of wallpaper stripper filling his senses.
The kiss was deep, wet, hot, and searing and it fed the sensations that were quickly building inside both of them.
Isaac’s mouth trailed off her lips and headed south along her throat, sucking and biting her neck in her most sensitive spots, and then he laughed and spat out a mouthful of sloppy wallpaper that he’d just devoured by mistake.
Olivia groaned. “Jesus, way to kill the mood, Stone.”
“Sorry, but… this shit’s everywhere.” Isaac wiped his tongue down the sleeve of her shirt and Olivia laughed as she climbed from his lap and hurried down the hallway to grab a damp cloth from the bathroom.
But the floorboards were slippery and she lost her footing as she rushed down the hallway, clutching at anything to stop herself from falling. And she stumbled once, then twice, and threw her hand out for the wall, knocking the oddly placed photo frame from the hook, watching in horror as it crashed to the floor beneath her feet.
Glass shattered everywhere and the frame split into pieces, the plans of the old Ackerman house falling out from behind the frame, before sliding underneath the antique sideboard on the opposite side of the hallway.
Olivia stared down at the mess, not game to move a muscle.
“You’re terribly clumsy. Anyone ever mentioned that to you before? Here, I’ll fix it.” Isaac moved toward her, carefully assessing the situation. “You’ve already had one cut finger. You don’t need another one.”
“I’m fine. I can get it.”
“Just tell me where you keep the dustpan and broom.”
“Kitchen. Under the sink.”
“I’ll be back in a second. Don’t move.”
“Okay.”
Isaac disappeared back down the hallway, and Olivia fought back a sigh of what felt like complete and utter loss. She wasn’t sure where things were heading with her and Isaac, but she sure had been looking forward to finding out.
She suddenly paused, looking closer at the mess on the floor around her feet. A small square of dull paper snagged her gaze. It wasn’t the plans of the house that had been hanging in the frame just moments before.
This was something else.
Olivia carefully bent over and picked it up.
It was a photograph, not much bigger than passport size, but it was old, that much she could tell.
The colors had been added later by an artist after the photograph had been taken. At a studio, perhaps? And there was a signature in the bottom right corner that she couldn’t quite make out.
The edges of the photograph were stained with age, the color of warm tea, and Olivia wasn’t sure where it had come from, or why it was hidden behind the house-plans in the frame, but the image that stared back at her was unmistakable.
“What have you got there?”
Isaac watched Olivia curiously as he walked down the hallway. He stopped in front of her, the dustpan and broom dangling from his fingertips.
“It’s a photograph. It fell out from the back of the frame.”
“A photograph of what?”
“A baby.”
Isaac leaned in closer to get a better look, and Olivia flipped the photo around so that they could both see.
An adorable face stared back at them. The baby couldn’t have been more than six months old. She was sitting outside in the sunshine, on a fluffy blanket spread over green grass, and she was smiling a big gummy grin that made Olivia’s insides melt.
The baby was dressed in a frilly pink frock with a matching lace bonnet and shoes that tied up with ribbons around her ankles. She was chubby and beautiful, with blonde hair that curled up a little around her ears and her blue eyes were so round they almost looked too big for her tiny face.
Isaac frowned. “Is that you?”
“What?” Olivia asked, shocked.
Isaac’s shoulders tensed as he watched her. The baby in the photo looked exactly like what he imagined Olivia might have looked like as a baby, so much so that he just assumed it was her. “The age of the photo is off, I’ll admit, but… well, this baby looks just like you.”
Olivia let out a stilted breath.
Twisting the faded photograph over in her hands, she noticed words written on the back, words that made her heart sting and her eyes water.
She felt a lump swell in her throat, and she could hardly breathe.
All the air had suddenly been sucked clean out of her body and it was quickly replaced by a heavy sorrow that made her hang her head when the realization of what they were looking at sounded loud and clear.
Lilly Jane Ackerman
April 10th, 1958–October 27th, 1958
All my unconditional love,
Mommy.
Olivia’s arms tightened around herself. She didn’t even care that Isaac was watching her so closely; she couldn’t have stopped the tears from falling even if she’d wanted them to.
Mrs. Ackerman had a daughter?
A beautiful little girl, who had passed away so many years ago now that she had almost been forgotten. But she had been loved and she was missed and Olivia’s heart broke for a dear old woman who had lost something precious, and tried to replace it with things that would never dare come close.
The sweet little baby did look like Olivia. There was no disputing the fact. It was right there in her hand, and it was etched in her memory. And so many things made sense now. That’s why Mrs. Ackerman was always so fond of Olivia. She reminded her of the daughter she’d held so dear, the daughter she’d lost anyway.
Olivia hadn’t been the child she’d always wanted. She was just a reminder of the child she’d had, the child who’d been ripped away from her.
And so Olivia cried with everything she had bottled up inside her. She cried for a precious soul that she would never know. She cried for the unimaginable pain that Mrs. Ackerman must have endured over all those years.
And after a few long minutes, Olivia stared down at the photograph until she felt like she could cry no more. Like she had no more tears left to cry. Her chest ached and her swollen eyes were red and blotchy, and while at first Isaac didn’t know what to make of things, he wasted no time in reaching across and helping her away from the shattered glass. He dropped the dustpan on the floor, pushed the broken glass away with his shoe and helped Olivia to move carefully down the hallway. They could clean it up later. The glass could wait. The urgent, panicked tears streaming down Olivia’s face could not wait.
Walking her back into the living room, Isaac sat her down on the end of the couch, holding her in his arms, resting her small face in the crook of his neck.
Her wet cheek was cool against his skin. A balm. Solace for the broken.
Just then, an overpowering sense of loss filled Olivia’s entire being and she was overcome with the strangest sensation.
The hairs on her arms all stood to attention and a cold shiver raced through her body, one that had nothing to do with the setting sun, and just about everything to do with the bizarre train of thought that was suddenly coursing through her mind.
It was demanding, unrelenting.
And it wouldn’t leave her alone.
She pulled back from Isaac’s embrace and stared up at him, though she wasn’t looking at him. She was almost loo
king through him, and no matter how hard she tried to push it away, the thought kept fighting its way back through the haze until she couldn’t ignore it a moment longer.
“The baby, Isaac.”
“Yeah?”
“The baby’s name was, Lilly.”
Olivia swallowed hard, in complete disbelief. She knew she wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, and Isaac’s dumbfounded expression only confirmed her suspicions.
“I’m not keeping up. What am I missing?”
Olivia’s labored breath filled the silence with something else, something more. Her mind emptied and filled within seconds of each other, and she dragged her fingers over her face as she pushed herself to remember the words Mayor Dell had read out the day of Eleanor’s funeral…
We are all capable of knowing unconditional love, no matter how difficult the circumstances. You just need to dig deep and take a look inside. That’s the key to unlocking your heart, and when that happens, you’ll find what you’ve been searching for the whole time.
Olivia suddenly jumped to her feet, ignoring the look of complete and utter confusion on Isaac’s face.
Was it even possible? Had she just solved the mystery? Was the key to the box buried beneath… the lilies?
She tucked the photo inside her bra. Her hands and feet were numb, maybe from the cold, or maybe from the shock of all the things that didn’t possibly seem real anymore. All the pieces of the puzzle were suddenly falling neatly into place. It was as though she could feel Mrs. Ackerman right there beside her, guiding her, telling her where to turn for the answers.
And as she raced out onto the porch, she felt the old woman’s presence again when she bent over the half-barrel beside the front door, winning and losing a dozen different arguments with herself.
Had she completely lost her mind?
Or was she really about to dig up Mrs. Ackerman’s prized lilies in the off chance that there was a rusty old key hidden somewhere at the bottom of the pot?
The key was old and rusty, the sort that came from an era long forgotten, but Olivia let the weighted metal sit heavily in the palm of her filthy hands.
She and Isaac had spent the last twenty minutes out on the freezing porch, scraping away the layers of dry, tired potting mix, trying desperately not to unearth or damage the roots, and now they were both left feeling a little breathless and weary as a result.
The elegant blade was long and thin, the bow a swirling configuration of twisted metal that came together to form an elaborate heart-shaped pattern in the center and Olivia had never before seen anything like it.
She sat beside Isaac on the top step of the porch, his knees bent at an awkward angle, the timber box resting in his lap. She handed him the key. “Here, you open it.”
“Are you sure?”
Olivia nodded, and watched as Isaac slid the key effortlessly into the rusty latch. On the third turn the lock popped open, the lid fell back and both Isaac and Olivia took a deep breath as they looked inside.
At first, neither one of them said a word. The silence was almost deafening, and it seemed there was no clue as to how long they both sat there staring down at the strangest assortment of things either one of them had ever seen.
A brochure for the Forrester Motel.
A map of Louisiana.
A page torn from an old Bible.
What did it all mean?
Olivia closed her eyes for the briefest of moments and an image of Mrs. Ackerman suddenly glimmered and grew behind her lids—it was a more youthful image though, the woman’s hair was long and golden, flowing down her back instead of gray and curly.
Her eyes were alive with anticipation and excitement, not a wrinkle in sight. It was as if she were standing directly in front of her, like there was something unsaid between them, a lesson that needed to be shared and so Olivia squeezed her eyes closed even tighter and she let the image take a hold of her, allowing herself the time and space she needed to revel in all that she saw, and heard, and touched, and all that she felt deep down inside.
And just like the image, the lesson couldn’t have been clearer.
There were things in life that simply couldn’t be controlled—like the rise and fall of the tides, or the setting of the sun, or the ever-changing faces of the moon—nature took care of all those things without so much as a second thought.
But there were other things too that were equally as important, and they went hand in hand, like love and heartache, joy and sorrow, glory and grief—and Mrs. Ackerman had lived each and every day knowing that she had no control over those things.
What she could control however was the way she lived her life. So she had embraced it wholeheartedly, with a sense of strength and courage, and over time and through the never-ending tears and the long periods of mourning, she learned to fight the good fight and she may have even learned a few lessons along the way herself.
Lessons she would have taught her own precious daughter, if only she hadn’t been taken too soon.
But Lilly was gone, an angel resting high up in the sky above, and Mrs. Ackerman had closed her eyes late that night and she entered the Kingdom of Heaven with a patient heart, having waited so long for the day to finally come.
She felt heavy somehow as she wandered toward the light, like something profound was about to happen, but she didn’t know where to start looking. Yet as she walked through the beautiful garden toward something—something safe and warm and full of wonder—she soon realized that perhaps she was closer than she thought.
A bright shaft of light suddenly caught her eye and Mrs. Ackerman turned to find the bluest set of eyes blinking up at her.
She knew those eyes, and she loved those eyes.
Those eyes were a part of her, the very best part of her.
And she had never forgotten them.
Lilly was cradled in her father’s arms, and he smiled up at his wife as he held their daughter. He’d missed her so very much for all the years they’d spent apart, but that would have to wait. There was a union that preceded all others and even in death the bond between mother and child could never be broken.
Lilly reached out her little arms and Mrs. Ackerman buried her face in her daughter’s perfect blonde curls, feeling the silky locks brush against her cheek, and she remembered that feeling as if it were just yesterday. It was sharp and clear, and she never wanted to let her go.
So she held Lilly as close as possible and poured out a lifetime’s worth of love into her tiny heart so that she knew her mother had finally come back to her, and then she kissed the tip of Lilly’s perfect button nose.
She was warm and wriggly, and her skin was as soft as a cloud, light as a feather, and she noticed how she smelled too—of soap and straw and that unmistakable aroma that all babies encompassed—the one that made women’s insides ache and their limbs all weak for the emotions it stirred up within them.
And Mrs. Ackerman knew she was finally where she was meant to be. In the most beautiful place she would ever call home.
Isaac sat perfectly still on Olivia’s front porch step. Despite now having a frozen backside, and fingers the color of the cobalt sky, he didn’t dare move a muscle for fear of breaking the perfectness of the moment with the lowering sun and the promise of nightfall not too far away.
The land surrounding Briar’s Creek was vast, and peaceful, the creek beyond the house and the soothing drip, drip, drip of melting snow falling from branches the only sound as he gazed out over the snow-covered pastures.
The cold air made his fingers stiff, but the afternoon sky was alight with the colors of the coming sunset, both dazzling and blinding at the same time.
The screen door squeaked as Olivia stepped out onto the porch behind him, handing Isaac a mug of hot tea and she sat down on the step beside him.
She took a quick sip of her own tea, before lowering her mug to her lap, wrapping her fingers around it to soak up some warmth.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
Isaac
turned to look at her, his dark eyes catching the light for a moment. “Yes, you are.” He nodded slowly. “None of this makes any sense. None at all.” His smile was cautious, his voice as deep and as fascinating as his eyes. “But I’m sure it will.”
“Here, let me take another look.”
Olivia set her mug down on the porch beside her. It hadn’t snowed all day, but they’d had a decent dumping overnight, and while the porch was clear, the wood was still damp and the cold rose up through the bottom of Olivia’s shoes, making her shiver.
She took out the brochure for the Forrester Motel, turning it over in her hands a couple of times. She studied it closely, the address, the phone number, the photograph of the front of the motel that was printed on one side, and then on the other side were three small images of different sized rooms that they had available to rent overnight, or apparently on a weekly basis too.
“What if we’re just wasting our time with all this?” Olivia took a deep breath and looked out over the yard. “What if Mrs. Ackerman had completely lost her marbles by the end? What if the box has absolutely no relevance to anyone, or anything?”
“Is that what you really believe?”
Olivia stared straight ahead, considering. “No, I guess not,” she said quietly. “It’s just… I don’t know. It’s like Mrs. Ackerman’s talking to us from beyond the grave, trying to tell us something but we just can’t hear what she’s saying.”
“Sometimes the world around us makes too much noise for us to hear properly.” Isaac let his head fall back on his shoulders so that he was staring up at the rotting rafters overhead. “If you let the noise take over, let the noise drown out everything else, you’ll never hear what’s really important. We miss so much because we aren’t listening. I mean, not really listening.”
Olivia grimaced slightly as Isaac sat forward again, linking his fingers, elbows resting on his knees as he looked over at her. She was guilty of letting noise fill her mind, thoughtless and pointless noise—social media, the news, idle gossip—and she swallowed loudly, wanting desperately to hear what Mrs. Ackerman was trying to tell her.
The Winter Before Page 16