“I know a thing or two about that.” Dahlia didn’t have the heart to tell him about her mother being gone just yet. But she did need to get something else off her chest. “Did you know she was married when you were together?” Dahlia blurted.
“Who?” he asked.
“My grandmother.”
“Dahlia, Lil was sixteen that summer. I was nineteen. Neither of us were married.”
“No, she wasn’t. She was …” Dahlia looked up and did the math in her head. “Twenty-six. Wait, did you sayLil?”
“Yes, that’s who I figured we were talking about.”
“But the letters, they were addressed to Lizzie,” she said.
“Her sister Lizzie covered for us, but that was all.”
Tears filled her eyes like a rising tide during a storm, and it became hard to find air. L wasLil, not Lizzie.“Are you saying you had a relationship with Lil?”
“Yes, and the age difference didn’t bother me. She was wise beyond her years. She saw life through a bright and beautiful lens. I never knew anything like it.”
Her heart pounded through her shirt. Dahlia couldn’t think straight. Her eyes darted around the room.
“When did she die? And how?” he asked softly.
“A few months ago, of cancer,” Dahlia said, barely able to think. It was like a tornado in her head and a cyclone in her heart.
She heard him start to whimper on the other end.
“Gene, I’m sorry.” This time, she felt sucker punched and left for dead. She couldn’t breathe. Her skin boiled, and the barn walls spun. “May I call you back tomorrow? I need to process this.”
“Sure.” His voice fissured as if he was going to break the moment they hung up. “Dahlia, I’m so glad you reached out.”
“I am too,” she said, feeling the heat rise higher in her body. “Night, Gene.”
“Night, Dahlia.”
Dahlia stood up and paced the rickety wood floor. She tried to steady her erratic breaths by inhaling over and over again, but that just seemed to make them worse.
Her grandmother hadn’t written that letter; it wasLil. Had Lil actually been her grandmother? So, she had a boyfriend when she was a teenager that she never spoke about. But why? Was it because of her mother? And Daisy had recently discovered that Pop didn’t share the same DNA. It was all adding up, but there was no real proof.
Dahlia was drowning with no lifeboat in sight, and now she had even more unanswered questions. If she was right, and Lil was actually her biological grandmother, why would she have let Gran and Pop raise Rose as their own and never tell anyone the truth? There would have had to be a really good reason for it.
“I have to find that key if it’s the last thing I do.” She wiped her eyes, making eye contact with the row of coffee cans on the top shelf. She grabbed the stool and lifted them off the shelves one by one in a fury of blind fury. Finding that key and maybe even proof had never felt so urgent. Catching them as they fell, she peeked inside each one and tossed them to the ground. There was one left.
“Please, please be in here.” Dahlia inhaled the stale air one last time and reached for it slowly. She peeked inside the worn old tin and started to weep. Slowly, she reached in and pulled out a gold key, pressing the cold metal between her fingers. She leaned her shoulder against the nearby wood beam, hoping it would hold her emotionally taxed body upright.
Whatever was in the box had better be an explanation—and a good one at that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
July 22
The next morning, Dahlia settled into her worn bucket seat, waiting for the bank to open so she could finally retrieve the contents of the box. She nursed a latte, her eyes glued to the gold key on her dashboard, while she counted the minutes until she could go in.
Dahlia couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that Lil could have been her grandmother, and all these years saidnothing. Not even on her deathbed. Dahlia wanted to feel something besides betrayal—she wanted an explanation.
She rolled the window down while she waited. The town was quiet for a weekday, but it was also a summer Friday on the North Fork. The air was crisp and fresh, inviting Dahlia to find the silver lining. She could hear the landscapers already at work, gearing up the mowers for a full day ahead.
She pondered what Kara had said about feeling likeherselfhere. This town and its people made her feel whole and, more importantly, healed. But she couldn’t let herself go there until sheknew what was in that box. She rested her head on the doorframe, closed her eyes, and wondered if Noah would respond to her call and text from this morning asking if they could talk. It was her second attempt, and most likely her last.
