Growing up, Tilley wanted to be an actress. Or, maybe, shewasan actress. Her mother took her to her first theater camp—at the Cape Carolina Playhouse—when she was eight. She didn’t yet realize what a big deal it was to land the starring role in the town’s production ofOliver Twist. (Although her very conservative father wasn’t all too thrilled about her playing aboy.) But she started to realize, after that production, when she kept acting and kept getting the starring roles, when everyone kept saying, “We’re going to see your name in lights, Tilley,” and “Broadway, here she comes,” that maybe she was pretty good.
It didn’t matter much to her, though, whether she was Broadway good. She just loved it. Purely, absolutely, totally. Up on that stage, she could become anyone she wanted to be. Up there, she was a princess, an orphan, a fairy, a swan. She could become anyone and anything she chose to be simply by going to this place deep within herself and pretending that it was so. She couldn’t speak for famous actors, but that, to Tilley, was the magic of acting, that ability to morph and merge souls and lives with people she would never be, never meet.
But she could also attest to the fact that, sometimes, when you spend so much time pretending to be someone else, you forget who you are. When all you think about is what motivates a character, sometimes you forget what motivatesyou.
Yet none of that mattered. Because she never got the chance to see her name in lights. She never left the sleepy town that raised her, the people who knew her, who accepted her for exactly who she was, no matter who she decided to be that day. And choosing who she got to be every day? That was what kept her breathing. When the pain and agony of the life she had led got to be too much, that was okay. Because she could just be someone else.
But tonight, now, in moments like these, Tilley could just be herself. And, more and more, as time passed, as the past and the present blurred like the edges of an old photograph, as time molded and mended the pain of what was, replacing it with the happy moments of what was now, she could step into Tilley. She could find herself again, bit by bit.
Around her, the others were chattering. “Well I, for one, think the girl is darling,” Tilley’s sister Elizabeth was saying. Elizabeth, Olivia, Amelia, and Tilley were sitting on the back porch of Dogwood, the wind rustling through the trees, the grasshoppers illuminating the night with their voices. In the distance, the moon shone over the sound, the marsh grass waving in the breeze.
“Well, that darling girl should just run, run, run away as fast as she can and never look back,” Olivia replied. “Because, if poor Lisa from Pilates whose eight o’clock class is suddenly ‘too full’ for me and the too-many-women-to-count before her are any indication, my handsome, charming son is going to ensnare her but never give her what she truly wants.”
“I hope not,” Amelia said. “I hope this one is different. I want someone amazing for him.”
Tilley put her hand on Amelia’s. She was a good girl. Tilley knew that no one really wanted her aunt living with her, her husband, and her children. But she seemed to understand that Tilley needed to be here. Tilley needed to be within the walls of the house where she could feel her loved ones, where time and space collided and she could, for hours on end, feel safe and happy and cared for, the way she had when she was a girl.
If she thought about it, she was certain that her being at Dogwood had put some strain on Amelia’s marriage with poor Parker, but, really, Tilley kept to herself. Amelia and Parker spent their days in the office, and Tilley spent hers in her cluster of rooms in the east wing or down at Elizabeth’s house or walking the property. (Sometimes with a parasol, sometimes not, depending on who she was that day.)
“So she’ll babysit?” Elizabeth asked a little too snappily. “So you and Parker can flit off to the islands?”
Tilley hated the way her sister said that. Amelia worked so hard. She deserved some time off.
“Yes, because if it weren’t for darling Daisy rushing in to rescue everyone, who in the world do they know who is responsible enough to manage a pair of grandchildren for a few days?” Olivia chimed in.
Tilley couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Oh, enough,” Amelia said wearily. “It isn’t as though I don’t let you babysit.”
“Yes, for large swaths of time,” Elizabeth said. “Minutes, even hours.”
Squeezing Amelia’s hand, Tilley jumped in. “Yes, she lets you keep them for hours at a time, and when she does, what happens?”
“She’s having a spell,” Elizabeth whispered, amused.
“Uh-huh, I am having a spell because I am the only one who will tell the truth,” Tilley said. “The two of you take George andGreer and you feed them whatever they want and don’t adhere to any bedtime or rule. And then you bring them home exhausted and sugar high and spoiled rotten, and poor Amelia and Parker have to spend days getting them back on schedule and properly behaved.”
Tilley knew this well because, when this happened, she lived it with them.
“She doesn’t seem to be having a spell to me,” Amelia said, grinning at Tilley. “I believe Aunt Tilley, who lives under the roof with my beautiful and spirited children, might be the only one who properly understands my plight.”
Elizabeth and Olivia shared a look. “What if we promised to behave?” Olivia asked.
Elizabeth nodded. “What if we stay here with them and keep them in their beds and don’t let them watch TV, etcetera.”
“Well, just a little TV, Elizabeth,” Olivia said. “She’s so strict with them.”
“Okay,” Amelia said, interrupting. “Thank you for the very kind offer, but I believe I will stick with the neonatal nurse who not only understands the consequences of too much screen time and FD&C red number forty, but who I will also pay to do what I need her to do. But you may visit as often as you like, and please do take them off her hands a little. Four days is too much for anyone with no breaks.”
“Do you hear that?” Elizabeth trilled. “We get to be the ‘breaks,’ Olivia!”
“I’m so honored!” Olivia said with faux delight.
“All right, enough,” Tilley said. When she had to be the voice of reason, things really were getting bad. “Can we please get back to the more pressing matter at hand?”
“Oh, the baby!” Amelia said, rocking in her rocking chair. “Whose baby do you think it is?”
“I’m just so proud of Mason,” Olivia said, “rescuing a baby like that. Good for him.”
