“Why am I getting kicked out, then?”
“I’m not kicking you out,” she said. She licked her lips. “I’m thinking about whether we should get back together. You know. After…after we’re both home. What that would look like.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all along?” Tom asked, thick dark brows lowering in confusion.
Rose pressed her lips together. She’d thought they might do any of several different things, but none of them had involved any degree ofback. She’d buried the dream of Tom as someone she’d spend the rest of her life with so deep that just to name it felt like breaking her own heart again.
She shook her head. Her fingertips snagged in his shirt.
“But is that…is that what you really want?” she asked.
Tom’s mouth twisted, and he tried to run a hand through his hair, finding it tied back instead.
“I meant what I said at the beginning,” he said slowly.
Although it was hard to breathe normally, she tried. She nodded. She’d try to think about it.
“Let’s not just fall into things, okay?” she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing. “Let’s be thoughtful about this. Aware of who we are and what we need to be happy.”
Tom sighed. “Okay, Rosie. Okay.” He slung an arm around the back of her neck and pulled her in to his chest. “Whatever you think is best.” He kissed the part in her hair and left his chin digging into her scalp. She squirmed, but not to get away. It felt heavy and urgent.
“But I just need the same thing I always needed,” he said, and she supposed he got to put all his cards on the table too. “You.”
Rose closed her eyes and breathed against the V of his collarbones. If this was going to work, they needed to start being honest with each other. Even about the things that scared her.
“I love you too,” she said.
21
March
Rose’s phone screen displayed a close-up view of Aunt Max’s jowls, chin, and pensive expression. The image occasionally shifted to show the ceiling of Max’s Watertown condo. On her own side of the video call, Rose arranged her choices in furnishing for Max’s approval.
She turned in a slow circle to transmit the video of the main reception area. All of the whaling paraphernalia had been banished, replaced by birdcages painted in bright colors and filled with wooden parrots, feathered hats, and mismatched porcelain bird tchotchkes. The new wallpaper was up. The floors had been refinished. It all smelled like new paint and hot coffee and the casseroles baking in the oven in the next room, which Max couldn’t smell from Boston, but which marked the biggest difference from the day Rose and Tom had entered two months ago. It felt lived in.
“Do you like the curtains?” Rose asked when Max didn’t immediately respond at the end of the tour. Rose liked the curtains, but this was her first time picking out windowtreatments. She held her breath until Max nodded once, very firmly.
“It’s perfect,” Max ruled.
The wave of relief that swept through Rose was so strong as to nearly leave her dizzy. She’d made so many decisions without any good image of what it was all supposed to look like at the end, she’d been afraid of what the rest of her family would think of the result. If they hated it, she knew she’d cry.
“Yeah?” Rose asked, as eager for Max’s approval as she’d been at eight years old. “What about the suite? You don’t think people will think it’s too frilly?”
“What people?” Max asked grumpily. “It’s my inn. I don’t care what the boys think. Will it all be ready by Thanksgiving?”
“Thanksgiving?” Rose asked, confused. “Don’t you want to come before that? Memorial Day? Or the Fourth of July, maybe?”
Seth and his manager had come by yesterday and begrudgingly allowed that the inn might be ready to reopen by the beginning of the season. If they were a little late in opening the place to tourists, that would be fine though. Rose could work out any issues with, say, housekeeping or landscaping while it was just family here.
Max scowled, reorienting herself to the day’s date. “Of course I do. Just didn’t have a calendar handy.” She sat up straighter, and Rose saw that although it was midafternoon, Max was sitting in bed. “I’ll come for Memorial Day,” she said decisively.
“I’ll drive you down,” Rose said. She brightened as she imagined it—they could do something like a grand reopeningparty. Get the whole family here to see all the renovations. Soft-launch her relationship with Tom. That was the right tactic: build up a little goodwill with all the improvements, then casually slip into conversation that Tom had been responsible.
“Where is that handsome boy of yours?” Max demanded, punctuated by a dry cough. “I didn’t see him on the tour.”
Rose froze. She hadn’t mentioned anything about Tom to Max yet. Maybe Seth had said something?
“Ah, you know that Tom and I are…working on things?”
