“Can I drive you back?” Elliot asked.
“No! No. It’s okay. I don’t want to get you sick.”
“Maybe Georgia can call you tomorrow, and you can talk more about flowers then,” Elliot said. “If you’re feeling up to it.”
“Maybe,” Ivy breathed. She let her eyes trace the gorgeous redesign that Elliot had been straining to finish by the beginning of February. She let herself take in his handsome face, his urgent eyes. Yesterday, she’d been able to feel her budding love for him so clearly. But today, she felt as though she was sinking to the bottom of her memories. She felt used-up and old.
Georgia had been able to start over. She’d even married someone before this, had a whole story with him before Elliot had had to go pick her up in Washington. Georgia had had so many different eras, so many different lives. She’d probably hiked mountains, traveled abroad, gone to therapy, and healed herself.
Ivy had been in Bluebell Cove, raising her dead husband’s children, waiting for something to happen.
Ivy felt a great distance between the person she was now and the version of herself who could be “healed” enough to date Elliot or good enough for her children, for her sisters. Her eyes filled with tears. She was terribly embarrassed, and it all felt like her fault. She had half a mind to tell Georgia and Elliot to leave the flower shop and get out of her life forever. She’d sell the shop by tomorrow. She’d give up.
“Ivy,” Elliot called, right before Ivy slipped out of the flower shop and hurried down the block. She pulled her hood over her ears, praying that he wouldn’t come after her. But her ears craned to hear his footsteps in the snow, sounds that didn’t come.
When Ivy got home, she went upstairs, put on her pajamas, and crawled into bed. That was when she allowed herself to fully sob and let her emotions take over. She cried for the better part of an hour. A part of her could still feel Daniel in the house with her, as though he’d just left the bedroom to grab a coffee downstairs, or as though he was in the bathroom, scrubbing himself clean after work.
She hated that she’d allowed that man to haunt her all these years. But more than that, she hated Georgia for traipsing back into her life and reminding her of all that loss.
It was so much worse that Georgia was Elliot’s sister. It meant that the beautiful, nuanced, and kind-hearted relationship she and Elliot had been building over the past few weeks, months (or years?) had to end. Ivy couldn’t handle falling in love with the brother of the woman who’d stolen Daniel away from her. It felt too gruesome, too tragic.
And she knew that if Elliot ever found out about what had happened between Georgia and Daniel, he would look down on Ivy. She was the woman Daniel hadn’t been able to love enough. She was, therefore, unlovable—as she’d always expected.
It was a pity party of epic proportions. Ivy felt as though it had been brewing in her for years.
All morning and into the afternoon, Ivy slept fitfully. She had countless nightmares and found herself chasing Daniel, Georgia, and Elliot through her subconscious. Everything felt rocky and off. When she woke up in the afternoon, she choked down a sandwich and a glass of water, then got back into bed again.
It wasn’t till that night at ten, when she clambered out of bed and saw how much it had snowed during the evening, that she realized she’d missed her dinner with Tyler.
She pictured him alone at the taco place, watching the door. She pictured him coming home to yell at her, only to find her asleep in bed—a pathetic excuse for a mother.
Panic throttled through her. She ran out of the room and down the hall to Tyler’s. But his door was open, and the light was off. She went downstairs, but he wasn’t there either. “Tyler?” she called out, feeling stupid. She searched for her phone, yanking the bedsheets off her bed and pulling up the sofa cushions. Where could it be? When was the last time she’d had it? Could it still be at the flower shop? She stood at the kitchen counter, her eyes closed, her heart pounding. And when she opened her eyes, she saw, through the window, that Celia was in the eco-lodge's office, her glasses perched on the bridge of her nose.
Ivy bolted out of the house and over to the lodge, leaving her coat behind. Snow melted across her forehead and over her arms. Once inside the eco-lodge, she gasped, “Celia?” and then burst into tears.
Before she knew it, Celia had her arms around her. She murmured into her hair, “What’s going on?” But Ivy couldn’t speak.
It wasn’t for another ten minutes of sobbing into her sister’s shoulder that she could explain. “I was supposed to meet Tyler for dinner. I forgot. And now who knows where he is?” It suddenly occurred to her that someday, one of her children might not come home, the same way Daniel hadn’t. Had she been secretly waiting for that horror all her life? Had she secretly assumed that everyone she loved would abandon her again and again?
Was that why it had been so hard to let Lily go?
Chapter Seventeen
Autumn 2009
The funeral for Daniel was held at the McClullen Family Funeral Home, four blocks from Ivy’s flower shop. Refusing anyone’s help, Ivy piled her own car with chrysanthemums and white roses and white tulips, funeral flowers she thought best suited her husband’s funeral, then drove them over and set them up herself. Plenty of others had bought flowers from the other flower shop in town, sending them to her with notes of well-wishes and sorrows.
As Ivy set up the flowers around her husband’s closed casket, Lily played quietly in the center of the room with her doll. Tyler was on the blanket, watching her on all fours. Recently, he’d been trying and failing to walk, drawing up on two legs before dropping down on his diaper.
But as Ivy splayed a gorgeous flower arrangement across the casket itself, Lily let out a shriek of joy. Ivy turned to watch as Tyler took a tentative step toward her, his smile enormous and mischievous. After two more, he fell onto his bottom and clapped his hands. Ivy hurried over to him, collected him in her arms, and covered him with kisses. “You’re such a strong little boy,” she told him, tears streaking her face. “You’re amazing, you know that? Lily, won’t you tell your brother how amazing he is?”
Ivy knelt on the blanket and watched as her eldest child hugged Tyler, congratulating him on this enormous, literal first step. With Daniel’s casket just a few feet away, Ivy searched for the sense that Daniel was watching over them, that he had seen this beautiful scene. But she knew in her heart of hearts that Daniel was gone. More than that, he hadn’t treasured their life together to care enough about something like this.
James Harper suddenly appeared in the doorway. He wore his funeral suit, and his face was pale and thinner than she’d seen it in a while.
“Grandpa!” Lily called. “Tyler walked!”
James offered up a crooked smile. “Is that so, sweet pea?” He stood over them and beckoned for Tyler to do it again, but Tyler didn’t understand. He giggled.
