“Well, you can try all you like, Alice, but I expect it will be next to impossible. You feel things deeply. You always have.”
I wipe my cheek. “I hate that about me.”
Her laugh is kind. “It’s one of your best qualities. In the long run, it will be more difficult to keep pushing your feelings aside than it will be to stare at yourself in the mirror and accept who you are and what you want.”
“But what if what I want gets me hurt?”
“There are no guarantees in this life. But I’ll be proud to have a granddaughter who is brave enough to follow her heart.”
“I think you’re a lot stronger than me.”
She scoffs. “Just older. I don’t have many regrets.” After a moment, she says, “But I do wish I hadn’t run away from John. I wish I’d stuck around long enough to talk to him about what had happened, even though it would have been difficult. All those years we lost.”
“I’m scared.”
“Yes, I imagine you are.” Nan pats me on the shoulder. “Falling in love is terrifying.”
I spend three days avoiding Charlie. I tell him I have some last-minute edits to do for a client. It’s not a lie, but it takes me under an hour. I send one-word answers to his text messages, decline his invitations for Jet Ski rides and movie nights. He asks if he can take me to the hospital to have the stitches removed, but I don’t reply until after they’re out. I stay in the boathouse when he comes over one afternoon for tea.
“You’re torturing that poor man,” Nan says when Charlie drops her off after euchre. “He’s not daft. He knows you’re giving him the runaround. I don’t think he’s shaved all week, poor thing. He’s looking rather mangy.”
“I’m trying to sort out how I feel,” I tell Nan, and she replies with amused silence.
“Okay, I’m avoiding him.” I throw up my hands. “I like him!”
Nan laughs so hard that she has to dot away tears with her embroidered hankie.
“You’re priceless,” she says once she’s collected herself. “But you’ll have to face the truth—and Charlie—sooner rather than later.”
I barely sleep that night. I stare at the light from Charlie’s house. I imagine how I’ll possibly keep a seal on everything that’s brewing inside me. I’m a human kettle on high heat, and I don’t want to see him until I’ve cooled to a simmer.
But I don’t have that luxury.
The next morning, Charlie fills the doorway to the cottage, arms folded across his chest, looking thoroughly unimpressed. Nan was right—he hasn’t shaved. Charlie has the beginnings of a beard, but it’s not mangy.
He glances at Nan over my shoulder, and she passes him a tote bag. Before I can ask what’s inside, he lasers his eyes on me.
“You’re coming with me.”
44
Wednesday, August 20
12 Days Left at the Lake
“Please tell me we aren’t breaking into your old high school.”
Charlie and I are parked outside of a large brown brick building. I’m sitting on my hands to keep from fidgeting. I don’t know what his plans are, but I’m nervous. It feels like we’re on the brink of something, but I can’t see whether what lies ahead is treacherous or wonderful, or whether it’s both.
“We aren’t breaking into my old high school.” It’s the first thing he’s said in fifteen minutes.
“So what are we doing at your alma mater?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Charlie reaches for the tote my grandmother gave him out of the back and opens his door. I watch him get out of the car, baffled.
“What’s in that?”
Charlie ducks down, one arm on the frame. “If I’d known all it would take to get you to speak to me was a surprise, I would have done it sooner.”
