Ivy felt as though everyone had had this conversation without her and had been searching for ways to clue her in. She rubbed the back of her neck. She felt a thousand years old.
“I know she needs this,” Ivy murmured. “I know that.”
But what about what I need? What is it that I need? Why is that question so difficult to answer?
“You have to let her,” Tyler said.
Ivy was quiet. She thought about how, in October, she’d decided not to punish Tyler for the vandalism that had gotten him picked up by the cops. She hadn’t known how to handle him and had felt herself drifting away from him, unable to look him in the eye. He looked so much like his father. He couldn’t possibly know how looking at him hurt her heart.
“Will you please just come back?” Tyler asked, his voice ragged. “We can’t celebrate Christmas without you.”
Ivy forced herself upright and peered across the sofa, across the living room, where, through the window, she could see the bright Christmas lights around the Christmas tree they’d only just set up together. She could still hear Christmas music, if only faintly, traveling on the wind outside.
“Please, Mom,” he said again. “We need you.”
Ivy wasn’t accustomed to hearing her son say anything so open and honest. It was true what Wren had said. Ivy and Tyler were more alike than Ivy knew. And perhaps because of this, she stood and followed Tyler back to the eco-lodge, where Sophie, Lily, Wren, Juliet, and Celia stood in the kitchen, surrounded by bottles of wine and bottles of soda, their faces expectant and nervous, as though they were sure that Ivy was a bomb about to go off.
Ivy reached for a bottle of wine and poured herself a glass, raising it to her sisters, her daughter, her niece, and her son. “It sounds like we have something to celebrate,” she said.
At this, Lily threw herself forward and wrapped Ivy in a hug. Ivy was so caught off guard that she nearly dropped her glass of wine. Lily’s tears stained her cheeks. “Thank you, Mom,” Lily breathed. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
That night for dinner, the Harper sisters and the children who were joining them decided on pizza: ten different flavors that ran the gamut of ham and sausage and chicken and black olives and hollandaise sauce and so on. Together, the pizzas lined up on the counter seemed to represent the broadness of the Harper personalities. Ivy slid her second slice on her plate, refilled her glass of wine and joined the others in the living room, where Sandra Bullock wandered through a bone-cold Chicago and fell in love with Bill Pullman. For a little while, Ivy watched Lily’s face as she watched the film, a film she apparently loved. Ivy wondered how her daughter had ever fallen in love with the concept of love, especially when she’d never really seen it at home herself. Maybe Ivy hadn’t prepared Lily for the real world. Again, her heart ached with fear about what awaited Lily out there.
She took a bite of pizza and told her head to stop spinning. Eventually, it did.
Chapter Ten
On Christmas morning, Ivy and Lily sat on the sofa downstairs, drinking coffee and looking at Lily’s potential class schedule for the following semester. The University of Southern Maine was a coastal college that would allow Lily to specialize in environmental science with a concentration in coastal climates and ecosystems. Now that Ivy had opened the door, so to speak, to these sorts of conversations, Lily had spoken endlessly to Ivy about the professors she wanted to work with, the careers that awaited her after a four-year degree, and what internships she hoped to get as soon as this summer here in Bluebell. Most notably, Celia’s boyfriend, Landon, had offered her a position at his lab, if everything went well, for her first semester. As she was so keen on saying to everyone, Celia was sure that Lily would ace all her classes.
Ivy knew Celia was right. It felt as though everything was rolling out easily for Lily, as though she was smart enough to make anything work. Ivy felt a strange mix of pride and fear.
Ivy had never been the sort of person who could make everything work. Neither had Daniel. Where had Lily inherited this spirit from? Why did she have to take this gorgeous spirit so many hours away?
“If I take Biology 201 and Linguistics 101 back-to-back,” Lily said, furrowing her brow and gesturing at the screen, “do you think that’ll overwhelm me?”
Ivy could only say it wouldn’t. “Do you have enough time to get from one class to another?”
“That would give me fifteen minutes,” Lily said. “And it says the distance is like a five-minute walk.”
“You’ll be fine,” Ivy said. “Make sure to pack yourself a snack.”
Lily smiled and lay her head on her mother’s shoulder. Together, they regarded the smaller Christmas tree they’d set up in the house. Presents were piled underneath it, and the decorations featured photographs of Lily and Tyler at various stages of babyhood and toddlerhood. There was even a photograph of Ivy and Daniel on their wedding day all those years ago. Ivy wore a strappy white dress with a tiara, and Daniel wore a tuxedo. Ivy had felt like the most beautiful woman in Bluebell Cove—for one day only.
How she was going to miss Lily! She wasn’t sure if she could bear this.
To make matters worse, Wren had recently announced she planned to travel again soon, now that she more or less had her Graves’ disease under control. It meant that the grand Harper House would hold only Ivy and Tyler, that they would pass by each other like ghosts until Tyler graduated and either decided to go to college or left town for some other reason. Ivy was trying to wrap her mind around the idea of being an empty nester. But after a lifetime of giving herself over to everyone else, she couldn’t fathom it.
Everything was about to change.
That afternoon, Celia hosted the entire family at the rental she had down the road. Ivy, Lily, and Tyler carried platters of food and bottles of soda and wine, entering a throng of people eager to hug them hello. They’d spent almost all week at the eco-lodge watching movies, eating food, and trying to reconnect after so many years apart. But Ivy had kept an emotional distance, nursing her wounds after Lily’s announcement via Celia. She knew she had to make peace with it, but she didn’t know how.
Dinner was roasted ham, garlicky starches, leafy salads, and stuffed mushrooms. They sat at a long table, half of which offered a beautiful view of the snow sweeping down outside. It looked like a long white sheet. Juliet was back in Manhattan, spending time with her family—a family they still knew very little about, which meant it was just Landon, Celia, Wren, Sophie, Landon’s children Isaac and Mallory, Ivy, Tyler, and Lily.
Everyone agreed it was a gorgeous day out there. “A perfect Christmas,” Celia declared with a smile. She’d just published another article for the Bluebell Cove Gazette, one that involved a takedown of a few of the not-so environmentally friendly restaurants on the outskirts of Bluebell Cove. Ivy listened, surprised. Celia hadn’t mentioned her research on this particular article. It sometimes felt as though Celia had more hours per day than the rest of them.
While Landon passed a platter of roasted tomatoes over to Lily, he asked her about her coursework for the University of Southern Maine and whether she’d signed up for all the classes she wanted.
“I was debating over a few different ones just this morning,” Lily said, blushing. “I don’t want to make a wrong move.”
