“Many of you know that I’ve spent the better part of seventeen years traveling,” Wren said. “I’ve been to countless countries. I’ve met people from all over the world. But when I returned to Bluebell Cove for health reasons, I realized that I’m nothing without my sisters. I’m nothing without all of you. Thank you.”
Wren passed the microphone over to Ivy, who held it with both hands and scowled out across the crowd of people, all of whom shifted gently beneath the bright September sky. The clouds had cleared, as though Celia had ordered them to. What could Ivy say to any of them? How could she illustrate how complicated her emotions were?
She’d never felt understood by anyone. She’d always felt like she stuck out like a sore thumb.
Feeling out of sorts, she said, “I’d like to thank my daughter, Lily, for sticking around in Bluebell Cove for this difficult yet essential transition. And I’d like to thank my son, Tyler, for his patience as we move through the world without his father and grandfather. I look forward to a bright future with all of you in Bluebell Cove. And I can only hope that my sisters will stick around a bit longer to see how everything transpires.” She felt a crack at the edge of her heart.
After she handed the microphone back to the DJ, she felt her sisters’ angry and curious eyes upon her. But when she blinked, they all dispersed, headed to different areas of the immaculate yard to talk to other Bluebell Covers and drink more wine and laugh. They weren’t going to let Ivy’s fear that they were going to leave her behind darken a gorgeous day. Maybe she’d imagined their anger, anyway.
Before she did any more harm, Ivy turned on her heel and went into her father’s old office, the office that now belonged to all four of them, and sat at his ornate desk. With her eyes closed, all she could hear was a party out back, a party that could have been happening in any other year. She could half imagine she was still a teenager, that Celia hadn’t abandoned the family yet, and that Juliet and Wren were scampering around outside. She could half imagine that her life had only just begun and hadn’t fully devastated her yet.
Chapter Four
June 2007
It wasn’t till Daniel drove Ivy and baby Lily home from the hospital that Ivy heard what happened to Daniel and where he’d been when she’d gone into labor. Infant Lily was in the car seat Ivy had brought several months ago, tucked in and fast asleep, and Ivy couldn’t help but spin back to look at her, watching as Daniel drove them the twenty minutes back to Bluebell Cove.
“It was chaos,” Daniel explained, clutching the steering wheel and scowling out the front window. “I mean, one minute, the sky was clear, and the next? The storms came on fast. I had to sail my way to the coast and tie up the boat. I took refuge in a little shack that hasn’t been used in years. I mean, it was grim. I wasn’t sure how to get word back to the other fishermen.”
“That must have been frightening,” Ivy said, although she couldn’t look at him while she said it. Something about the story felt off to her, crooked. But she was too tired to fight with him. She was always too tired to fight with him.
“Yeah. The storm went on for hours. Eventually, I fell asleep. You know how hard it’s been for me to sleep lately. It was almost like a blessing, as crazy as that sounds. When I woke up, the sky was clear, and I sailed back to the docks. A few guys were floored that I made it back. They said I had to get to the hospital right away. They were like, ‘We thought you were gone for good.’ I couldn’t fathom that. I felt like that guy from the story who sleeps for a thousand years.”
“Rip Van Winkle?” Ivy asked. “I don’t think he slept that long.”
“Whatever his name is,” Daniel said. He’d never been one for stories or facts.
Ivy’s heart felt black and blue from hours of labor, and her body felt ravaged. She forced herself to look at her husband, at the father of her baby, and she smiled at him. “I’m glad you made it in time for the birth,” she said. “I don’t know what Lily and I would have done without you.”
She wondered where Elliot had gone when Daniel arrived. She wondered if he’d waited in the waiting room to learn if she was all right.
She wondered if Daniel had asked Elliot to go, deeming it inappropriate. She could imagine that, she supposed. Her heart felt dim.
Daniel parked in the driveway of their house and hurried around the truck to help Ivy pull the car seat from the back seat. Slowly, she walked up the front steps and entered the house, the same house her mother and father had brought her and her sisters back home to, and where she’d been raised. The nursery was waiting upstairs, freshly painted and bright with sunshine. She pulled the curtains and willed her baby to keep sleeping for a little while. She collapsed in the little daybed she’d put in the nursery, praying that everything would be all right.
She couldn’t manage Daniel’s needs right now. She could barely keep herself afloat. The baby was all that mattered right now.
The next few days were a blur of nursing, of finding a rhythm and accepting gift after gift from members of the community. Ivy’s father came by a few times to say hello and dote on the baby. Wren, who was a teenager and still living in the house that Ivy and Daniel had taken over after their wedding, was mostly with friends, although she often came home to make Ivy dinner and clean up.
Daniel, of course, had to work. He woke up every morning at three thirty, drank an entire pot of coffee, often ate a ton of bacon and eggs, and sped off for the docks, where he sailed over the black and thrashing ocean to catch pounds and pounds of fish. When he returned, he frequently smelled so wretched that Ivy insisted he shower before he went near the baby. She wondered if Lily was already associating that fishy smell with her father, a gruff man who clearly didn’t know what to do with an infant.
He’s the father of my child, Ivy often reminded herself. He’s the man I love.
The fact that Elliot Rhodes had been the one to drive Ivy to the hospital when Daniel had been missing came up exactly once. They were on the back porch of their place, hosting James and Wren for grilled fish, potato salad, watermelon, and cheesecake. Baby Lily was asleep upstairs, with her monitor on full blast so Ivy could run up when needed. It was a pleasant evening, sixty-five degrees, with a gentle breeze fluttering the cedar leaves.
“So, Daniel…” James used the rough tone he so often did when he spoke to men. “How did it feel to come back from the dead?”
Daniel let out a strange laugh. He should have been accustomed to James’s moods by now, but Ivy knew he wasn’t, that perhaps he never would be.
“I guess you’re referring to one of the scariest nights of my life,” Daniel said. “I almost missed the birth of my first daughter. I don’t take it lightly.”
“No, I imagine you don’t,” James said, leaning over the table. His eyes were fiery. “You know who had to take my daughter to the hospital, don’t you?”
Daniel clenched his jaw. Ivy wanted to tell her father to calm down, to keep his trauma or whatever it was to himself. But James couldn’t be stopped.
“It was kind of Elliot to drive me,” Ivy stammered. “He happened to be coming down the stairs when I went into labor. He was more frightened than I was. Probably I should have told him to wait till Daniel came back.”
“You’d been told that Daniel was missing,” her father interjected. And then he pressed it. “Where were you on the coast, exactly, Daniel? I know that coastline like the back of my hand.”
