“But I like doing makeup.”
“So do makeup.”
These were meaningful parts of the life I had built on my own. That life held its share of loneliness, but it also held independence and pride. And here was Edward, seeming to understand that, seeming willing to accept me on my terms, to take what I treasured and work it into a future.
I felt a stab of frustration. “How can you ask me to be happy with my best friend locked up?”
“I’m not—”
“You are. These things make me happy, Edward.”
“Good,” he said and gave a grin that stole my breath.
Suddenly, I needed space. From the start, back in that art gallery in Boston, Edward had been a force of nature in my life. It wasn’t that I couldn’t think straight when he was around, more that I simply wanted to go with his flow. Actually, no. It was more like his current was strong enough to carry my flow right along beside his.
That hadn’t changed. It would be all too easy to jump in now and be swept along. But that wasn’t what I had become. I needed a minute of separation to remember myself. Something still bothered me. I needed to figure out what it was. Edward’s presence was too strong here to allow that.
Pressing a kiss to a corner of his mouth, I slipped from his lap. On my way to the built-ins, I traced the long edge of the desk and, then, because its texture was too tempting to resist, the fluted edges of the bookshelves. The millwork was striking. It just needed a little love. Edward would give it that. He had the resources and the desire. It was a good mix. But something nagged.
I went out into the front hall, which was wallpapered and bare. Money would fix this, too. Same with the living room, whose wide oak planks needed polish, stain, shine, something. Same with the winding staircase, whose newel post was worn and whose iron balusters should have been wood. Edward would fix all of these things.
I sat there for a heartbeat but rose in the next and went to the front door. The instant I opened it, I felt relief. Breathing in the cool air, listening to the night sounds, I reached out. Here were my woods, the distant gurgle of my river, my creatures, my Devon.
But my alone space wasn’t out there, either. It struck me that being alone just didn’t do it for me anymore. My happiness involved others.
Short term, that meant Grace, Chris, and Michael Shanahan. Longterm, it meant Lily. I wanted to be happy, really I did and, yes, I could find happiness here, in this house, with Edward. Whether I had the right to it was something else—but even that wasn’t the immediate problem.
Confused, I remained at the open door looking out at the street. There were no lights, no cars, no human sounds other than Edward’s footsteps when he approached.
“Do you have neighbors?” I asked.
He came up beside me, a tall, warm presence with his arm brushing mine. “One,” he said. “The house is farther down the street. It’s a biggie, impressive since they’re retirees. This is their summer home. They also have places in Palm Springs and Vail.”
“Must be loaded,” I said and stood straighter. This was the last piece, I realized, the only other qualm I had. Trying to put it into coherent thought, I looked back at the living room, the stairs, and the library. By the time he was done, Edward’s house would be as impressive as anyone’s in the town.
It was light-years removed from my tiny cabin, my modest life, even my pickup truck. I had chosen this lifestyle for a reason. The last one, fully loaded, had been a disaster.
I looked up at him. His face was shadowed. With the lights flanking the front door either non-functioning or simply not on, the glow of the moon on the edges of clouds had too big a job. But I could see he was looking at me. So I said, “We had a three-car garage once before. Is that a bad omen?”
He didn’t frown or flinch, didn’t seem to spend a single second weighing the matter, but said with utter calm, “Absolutely not. Our lives, our minds, our dreams are different now. They have nothing to do with the way we were. They aren’t even about the way we are now. They’re about the way we want to be.”
There it was again, the issue of hope. That was what my mother’s love gave me. It was what Liam’s arrival had brought. It was what my friendships here in Devon added.
With that realization, the final piece very softly clicked into place.I still had issues with me. But other people did not. They saw me as I was now, even as I might be in the future, not as I was back then. At some point, I had to hear what they were saying.
Only when I was silent did Edward show the slightest doubt, but it was more about wanting my agreement. No dictator, my Edward, no philosopher spouting lofty sayings. We might have failed to communicate after Lily died, but that wasn’t the way we wanted to be.
“Aren’t they?” he asked—our lives, minds, and dreams about the way we wanted to be.
Turning into him, I slipped my arms around his waist. I inhaled deeply, and, when his arms closed around me, exhaled into a smile. “They are.”
EPILOGUE
Six months later, we were still in Devon, still together, still in love. But love was like wrinkles on the faces I made up. They could be frozen, peeled, and pulled tight. They could be moisturized and concealed. They could be minimized by drawing attention to other features, say, cheekbones or eyes. But they were the price of living, and they never fully disappeared. The older the face was, the more we had to work at keeping it smooth.
Same with love. Edward and I loved deeply. After losing track of that once, though, we were leery of kinks. And they did come. Take the third of October, the anniversary of Lily’s death. Each year since moving to Vermont, I had driven down to Massachusetts to be with her on that day. This year Edward came with me, and much as we tried to be upbeat, the old litany ofwhat-ifswas a shadow that followed us the whole way. We were silent in the car going, silent at her grave, silent in the car returning. It was only later that night, after lying in bed in separate crypts of grief,that I broke down, Edward reached for me, and we began to talk. It was about sharing memories of her and yes, sharing dreams of what might have been, because those dreams were valid and couldn’t be ignored. It was also about sharing the pain of loss, understanding that it was different for each of us and, like crows’ feet, could be temporarily hidden but would never be gone.
Our minds had owned that. Our hearts were simply slow catching up.
