“Got it.” I looked toward the horizon. The lighthouse shone in the sun, and I suddenly feltdeterminedto see its view. Annie had been here; I wanted to see everything she’d seen.
“You seem especially fired up about this,” Connor noted once we’d paid our five-dollar entrance fee and were spinning up the spiral staircase. “Any particular reason why?”
“My grandmother came here,” I said with sweat trailing down my spine, the humidity almost fooling me that I was out of shape. “I don’t know exactly when or why, but she visited the island.”
“You haven’t asked her?” Connor responded at the same time Teddy loudly sighed and said, “Do you think the fudge has melted?”
“It’ll be fine, Ted,” Connor said. “We’re almost at the top.”
The top.
My knees weakened, but I pushed onward and upward, and when we stepped out onto the balcony and I saw Edgartown’s idyllic harbor and the Cape Cod coast in the distance, I was too awestruck to worry about how high off the ground I was. This was even more breathtaking than the bridge.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Connor snapping a picture.
Stay cool, I told myself, and for the next couple minutes, all was lovely and quiet.
“Fudge?” Teddy eventually suggested.
“Fudge,” Finn concurred.
Connor dutifully broke out the provided plastic knife. “So,” he ventured upon slicing me a piece of double chocolate fudge. “Did your grandmother go anywhere else?”
“Yes,” I told him, breaking into a smile. I couldn’t help it, not when it came to Annie. “Would you like to see?”
Twelve
I took a photo of the lighthouse—to pair with the watercolor—and on our way out of Edgartown, Connor pulled over near the Greek Revival masterpiece that was the Old Whaling Church. Originally built for Methodist whaling captains way back when, it now hosted various events. A few celebrities had even gotten married there. I didn’t have Annie’s Polaroid with me, but I knew it showed her posing near one of the columns with a straw bag and a small bouquet of daisies. A sign that her love for freshly cut flowers had bloomed ages ago.
I’d kept Annie’s diagnosis to myself, but I did show Connor the list and tell him about my plan to make her a new Shutterfly book, this one full of both her Vineyard memorabilia and photos of me in the same places two generations later. He’d grinned, a smile that I hated to admit rivaled today’s sunshine. “Oh, she’s going to love that!”
I nodded, knowing she would…
Especially if she recognized and remembered her summer here.
Connor offered to take a picture of me, and I put my hand on my waist and smiled when he’d framed me in my iPhone’s crosshairs. “Relax!” he called to me. “You don’t need to be so stiff.”
“I wasn’t aware Iwasstiff,” I said, but I rolled my shoulders back. He wordlessly took a couple shots, both horizontal and vertical, then stepped closer and even crouched down a little.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Covering every angle,” he answered as a light breeze rippled through the warm air. “Liam taught me this one!”
I started giggling.
Smiling, Connor captured it.
“Thank you,” I said after he handed back my phone. “Hopefully there are one or two good ones.”
“Olivia, come on.” Connor lifted his sunglasses, to give me a look that made my stomach drop. His eyes—his eyes were so hypnotically blue that I felt the urge to dive into them. “You know you’re gorgeous,” he said, then turned toward Teddy and Finn. “Right?”
“Right!” the boys echoed, both cracking up when I shrugged and casually flipped my hair to play off the moment. Hopefully no one caught the embarrassment warming my cheeks.
You know you’re gorgeous.
How was I supposed to respond to that?
Even if I knew, I couldn’t. I was tongue-tied.
