Justonce more.
She’s taken Everything: your mother’s inheritance, your father, the title. She took your heart too? don’t give her what’s left of your self-respect.
Forget her. move on.
Did moving on usually feel like swallowing knives?
He needed a distraction. What better than a complicated financial fraud case in Switzerland? It would occupy his mind and fill every waking hour.
It wouldn’t fill the aching, twisting hollow in his abdomen, though. Nothing could.
Learn to live with it.
Later the same day.
The entire staff seemed to have closed ranks around Millie. Even discreet Mrs B, who must have had a soft spot for George since he was a little boy, found lots of little ways to show Millie support. It was Mrs B who had first realized how the misunderstanding occurred. She had collected the torn gift card, the diamond pendant, and taken them to DuMontfort.
And in that first week, it was she who saw that Millie couldn’t face going into her room. The mirror in front of which, for so long, she had dressed carefully, thinking of George. The bed where she had lain, waiting to hear his footsteps on the stairs, and more recently where she had kept her phone by her pillow in case he called or texted. Even the faint scuff marks on the door where George had kicked at it. All became pieces of their lost relationship.
Mrs B had helped Millie move to a different room with different furniture and even a window looking over a different part of the garden so the view wouldn’t bethe same.
Millie had friends here, real friends.
Joanie set supper on the kitchen table. A warm Spanish omelette, a salad, and a basket of bread; it lookeddelicious.
“You can’t be serious about leaving the island,” Ann said as she helped Joanie dishthe food.
“If I can turn down the job at the Adelphi Hotel and stay here then so can you.” Joanie Sliced the omelette into triangles. “I’d rather cook chopped-up rubber balls than take a job that came through George’s help.” she put a generous portion on Millie’s plate.
“Oh, Joanie, I love you, but I don’t think I can eat.” In truth, all food looked like chopped-up rubber balls now. Once upon a time, she’d have welcomed a chance to stop eating and lose weight.
“I’ll cook you whatever you like ifyou stay.”
Millie kept her heart locked on all feelings and spoke from that superficial place where nothing touched her.
“The property was a gift for his future daughter-in-law. I am not that person. It would feel like I got it on false pretences.”
Mrs B and Joanie exchanged a look, but it was Ann who spoke. “Millie,” she said, putting down her fork and knife. “It’s early yet. Don’t give up before the sun rises. He loves you. He’ll be back.” Her kind words stripped the bandage from Millie’s wounds.
“I think I need to go to sleep. All this good advice takes it out of a girl.” She stood up to leave the kitchen.
Mrs B looked up at Millie, her face full of love. “All right, dearie,” she said quietly. “Forget all that. We won’t about it anymore. But I hope we are yourfriends.”
They were trying their best, and it was hard on all of them. “Of course we’re friends.” Millie sat back inher chair.
“Then it’s the duty of friends to speak truth, even when you don’t want tohear it.”
Joanie agreed. “Who else is going to stop you from making a bigmistake?”
Hell must have frozen over.“Joanie when did you start believing in compromises?”
Joanieshrugged.
“I thought,” Mrs B said. “It was your dream to renovate the cottage. Wasn’t it?” She spoke gently, but her tone was serious. It reminded Millie so much of her granny. “You certainly talked enough about painting tables and chairs and repairing the jetty so boats could dock there.”
“I remember,” Joanie buttered a warm roll. “With flower pots hanging from the railings to make a—how did you say, ‘a beautiful border on both sides of the pier, visible from the sea.’ That’s whatyou said.”
“you have a very good memory. If I’d known you would use it against me, I’d have kept my mouth shut.” Millie took a deep breath. They were forcing her to talk about a subject she wanted to avoid. “If I accepted the gift he meant for his ‘future daughter-in-law,’ then it would always remind me of—of what I lost.”
