“Australia,” I finished for him. “She took a six-week cruise to Sydney then flew home.”
“Yes.” He nodded, a bittersweet expression on his face. “And that’sallshe told me. I noticed her wedding ring, but she didn’t mention if she’d had any children or where exactly she lived. It was only a quick hello.” He chuckled. “I suppose she didn’t want to devastate me further.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You never knew she was Annette Lupo?”
“Never,” Christian said. “I only knew her by her maiden name; before the airport, the last time we’d spoken was when she broke off our—”
“Your what?” I asked after he cut himself off. “When she broke off your what?”
Although the answer was suddenly obvious. I thought of Annie’s favorite ring, safely stowed in my jewelry box. She’d worn it almost every day, as much as or more often than her engagement ring. My dad had brought back the two sapphires from Thailand, but the diamond’s origin was a mystery. I’d surmised it was a family stone.
I tried to keep my voice from leaping an octave. “You two were engaged.”
“We were.” Christian nodded. “For a time.”
My pulse pounded. I needed more information; I needed to know what happened.
“We spent four summers together,” he continued. “Four incrediblymeaningfulsummers on the Vineyard. They always went by too quickly, and it took a lot of strength to say goodbye to each other before returning to school. I was at Georgetown, and she was, of course, at Vassar.”
“For two years,” I whispered. Annie had only gone to college for two years before deciding that it wasn’t for her. After that, she’d enrolled in secretarial school and started her life in New York.
“Mm-hmm,” he hummed, and I sensed some type of subtext there. “Before that, we did everything together. Swim, sail, read, paint, dance, fish, and we played so much golf and tennis. Explore too.” He half-smiled. “We truly were inseparable. I proposed toward the end of our fourth summer. I snuck back to Boston one day to buy the ring.”
“What happened?” I asked quietly. The Foxes struck me as the type of family who’d pass down heirloom jewelry.
“My parents,” Christian said.
“They didn’t like her?”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “Theylovedher; my father called herenchanting.”
“Then what was wrong?” I folded my arms across my chest. Anniewasenchanting.
“I did not grow up with her,” he told me matter-of-factly. “We did not attend cotillions together, and she did not have a debutante ball in Boston.”
I couldn’t help it; I rolled my eyes.Thwarted by the Junior League?
What bullshit. Annie was classier than every one of those girls.
“I thought my parents would accept us after I proposed,” Christian said, “but they did not; in fact, things grew worse. They were no longer kind toward Annette, when she had been such a part of the family for the last few years… She ended things in December…god, over fifty years ago now. I was supposed to stop in New York on my way home for Christmas, but she wrote me a letter earlier that month and told me not to come. She thought it was in both our best interests if we called off the wedding whose date hadn’t even been set.”
“And you listened?”
Before Christian could answer, Annie groaned in bed. I smiled when she blinked open her eyes. They were so blue. “Hi, Annie,” I said softly. “Someone’s here to see you…”
“Clearly, dearest.” She was blunt. “You.”
I shook my head, then gestured to her visitor.
My grandmother’s eyes didn’t widen, but I caught something spark in them. She recognized him, right? “Oh, Chris,” she whispered, and when her summer love reached out to take her hand, she added, “Must you still bite your nails?”
* * *
I slipped out of the room to give them some alone time after Annie told me that Christian was a man she had “once corresponded with.”
Some things she was always going to keep private, I guess. Even if the secret was standing and smiling a little cheekily right in front of us.
I hung out nearby, in one of the hallway’s small alcoves. Phones weren’t exactly encouraged in Finlay House, but they also weren’t prohibited. “Hey, Liv,” my dad said. “I’m just grabbing some dinner stuff at Acme. Everything okay?”
