“Ah. Helen.” Her smile bordered on a smirk. “Did we ever.”
Noah kept his voice polite—a cool politeness I recognized as plastering over other feelings. “Oh?”
“We were teenagers the first time she showed up. What a time we had.”
Something clicked, something that charmed me. Nancy had been my grandmother’s best friend; she’d been on O’ma’s side, the way I would always be on Niko’s side, or on Jane’s. Helen had probably been their nemesis.
Nancy switched from mischievousness to decorous, from past to the present. “Your grandmother is a real gift to the island, Noah.”
Nice save. I took a sip of lemonade. “If Edward and my grandmother didn’t really know each other until they were teenagers... did they not have... a typical sibling relationship?”
“Oh, no,” Nancy said firmly, switching her pale eyes to me. “They were madly in love.”
Noah started coughing.
“It was all very proper,” she assured him. “Over and done with before he married your grandmother.”
“Youknew?” I said. “Did everyone know?”
She spat out a laugh. “Not likely! No. No, I think only we knew. I hope!”
“What happened?” I asked. “How did they fall in love?”
A smile teased her mouth and she looked away, into the rolling fields. “It was a long time ago.”
I waited. Noah waited. Nancy’s daughter waited, then finally broke the expectant silence. “Seriously, Mom?”
“A lady likes to keep some things private.” She winked at me. “Though I’m not much of a lady.”
“Why did they fall out of love?” Noah asked. “Can you tell us?”
“Oh, they never fell out of love.”
Noah clasped his hands between his knees as he leaned forward, gaze intent. “They must have. If they loved each other, they would have gotten married.”
“Sounds like a question for your grandfather.”
“Something must have happened.” Noah leaned back, frustration clear in every line of his body.
Nancy set her drink down, unsurprised and unfazed as she took in Noah. “He’s a Barbanel,” she said, clear and precise. “And Barbanels always do what’s best for their family.”
When we finished our lemonade, Noah turned us toward a path he said would lead to the sea. “If you don’t mind,” he said.
“Of course not.”
We waited a respectable distance before talking. “This makes more sense, doesn’t it?” I said. “If they mostly only saw each other as teenagers, it’s not so weird they fell in love.”
Noah took a moment to respond. “She didn’t like my family very much.”
“What are you talking about?”
“‘Barbanels always do what’s best for their family’?”
I was silent a few steps. “But you do, Noah. Not to beat a dead horse, but you’re literally majoring in something you don’t want to because it’s best for you family.”
A flash of surprise crossed his face. “That’s different.”
“Is it, though?”
