“What did I miss?” Daniel asked.
James ignored Daniel and picked up the business plan, waving it around. Ivy had never felt more stupid in her life. Mortified, she gripped her thighs and willed the moment to pass.
“Sure, Ivy,” her father said, wiping tears from his cheeks. “Sure, I’ll lend you the money. But only when you prove to me you’re ready.”
At the worst possible time, Lily began to cry upstairs, drawing Ivy away from her father and away from her fight. Ivy got to her feet and nearly fell to the floor again.
“Your assignment,” her father said, “is to arrange the finances at the Bluebell Cove Inn. I imagine you’ve seen what a mess they are. Now that you have all this business prowess, you must understand.” He laughed, as though this were ridiculous.
Ivy swept away from the table, her heart pounding as she hurried upstairs to tend to Lily. It was only when she had the door behind them both that she burst into tears. Her crying joined Lily’s. Almost immediately, Lily stopped crying and blinked at her, as though surprised that her mother could cry as well.
“It’s okay, honey,” Ivy breathed. “I’m going to figure it out. I have to.”
When she returned downstairs, she found Daniel fast asleep on the sofa and her father asleep on the chair beside him. Wren was in the kitchen, scrubbing the pan they’d cooked the turkey in. Rage was etched across her face. But when she opened her lips to speak, Ivy felt a roiling in her gut and raced to the bathroom on the other side of the kitchen.
Something was wrong, she knew. It was as though throughout the past few weeks of planning for her big business talk with her father, she’d allowed herself to ignore the bigger issue at play. When she limped back to the kitchen, she slumped at the table and watched as Wren hurried to make her a mug of tea.
“He’ll come around,” Wren said. “Or he won’t. But you’ll come up with something else. You’ll figure it out! You’re entirely capable, Ivy. This is your life.”
It took all of Ivy’s strength to tell Wren what had just occurred to her. It had nothing and also everything to do with the flower shop. It had everything to do with the next steps of her life.
“I think I’m pregnant,” she breathed, then burst into tears again.
Wren bent to hug her sister. Ivy was grateful she couldn’t see Wren’s face, that she couldn’t see how disappointed Wren was in her. A more responsible woman wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the face of achieving her biggest dream. A more responsible woman wouldn’t have brought another child into the misery of her marriage to Daniel.
But in the same breath, Ivy felt a glimmer of excitement. If anything in the world had given her power, it was being a mother. Maybe another baby would activate her all the more. Perhaps it would force her to find more hours in a day.
She imagined Lily and the new baby, years from now, as best friends and confidants. It hadn’t happened for Ivy and most of her sisters, not till recently with Wren. But maybe Ivy’s children would get lucky. Perhaps they’d look at one another and know they were soulmates.
Chapter Seven
Present Day
Ivy’s head rang with the police officer’s call. Standing in a panic in the center of the Autumn Festival, she blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what she had to do next. Elliot Rhodes, of all people, stood before her with a half-eaten whipped-cream dessert, his thick brow furrowed. She could just barely make out his sturdy, deep voice as he asked, “What’s happening? Ivy, are you all right?”
Lily, Celia, Juliet, and Wren returned then with little chocolate chip cookies speckled with sea salt. Lily tried to hand Ivy one but soon realized she was nonresponsive. “Mom?” Lily demanded. “Mom, what’s going on?”
At the sound of her daughter’s voice, Ivy was startled back to reality. “I have to go take care of something,” she said, taking a step away from her sisters and daughter and this handsome man who, for whatever reason, showed her the time of day. She pictured Tyler in the kind of prison she only knew from movies: shackles, wet stones, and screaming in the distance. Had she raised a criminal?
Lily tore after Ivy, her questions urgent. “You have to tell me what’s going on.”
“Tyler got arrested,” Ivy murmured, praying she didn’t say it loud enough for the others to hear.
Lily’s lips formed a round O. Before she could respond, Elliot bungled toward them with a promise to do whatever he could to help them with whatever it was. Before Ivy could stop her, Lily turned to look at Elliot, smacked her thighs, and said, “It’s my brother. He’s going through this phase lately. I don’t know? Something happened, apparently.”
A phase? Tyler? Ivy felt her jaw drop with alarm. She’d known that Tyler was moody and preferred to spend hours in his room alone rather than sitting with the family for dinner, but his grades hadn’t faltered. He still did most of his chores. What was she missing? Had the flower shop distracted her so much that she no longer saw her own son and his struggles?
Elliot took this news in stride. “How old is he?”
“He just turned seventeen,” Lily answered. “So I mean. He’s going through it.”
Elliot nodded sagely, as though being seventeen meant anything to him. Ivy wanted to scream. She wanted to tear all the plastic flowers from all the ridiculous autumnal decorative stands.
“Man, I remember being that age,” Elliot said, mostly to Ivy and with entirely too much kindness. “I was a mess of hormones and fears. Do me a favor and go easy on him, okay? He’s probably in over his head with guilt. Hating himself.” Elliot shrugged. More empathy than Ivy had ever seen echoed from his eyes.
But Ivy couldn’t fathom that the seventeen-year-old Elliot she’d known back in the early 2000s had been at all “over his head with guilt.” He’d had the beautiful Shelly and a promise of their future together. He’d had the world at his fingertips. Was he making things up to make her feel better? Did he secretly think she was a bad mother? Maybe she was!
“We’d better go,” Ivy said. She spun on her heel and fled the festival, headed for her car, which was still parked back at the house.
