“Hmm. Something’s on her mind. If I get enough wine in her, I can usually get her to talk. But I think she’s onto me about that now.”
Emily looked over her shoulder anxiously, half expecting to see Grandpa Vance coming home. “She hasn’t said anything to me.”
“Well, if you see her, tell her I’m looking for her.” Stella nodded to the Oldsmobile at the curb. “Where are you going at this time of morning?”
“To the lake. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m just getting in,” Stella said, then paused. “Crap. I can’t believe I said that to you. Erase that. I’m not setting a very good example. Crap. Just… do as I say, not as I do.”
That made Emily laugh as she got in her car. Stella walked back to her house, taking off her heels and shaking her head to herself.
There was so little traffic at that time of morning that Emily arrived at Piney Woods Lake in record time. The parking lot was nearly empty. She parked and turned off the ignition, then sat in silence while the engine ticked as it cooled. She knew she was too early, but she’d wanted to leave before Grandpa Vance got home. She didn’t want to lie to his face. She didn’t know if he would understand why she was doing this.
Finally she got out of the car. The murky morning air was so heavy that it beaded on her skin as she walked to the boardwalk and sat on one of the benches overlooking the lake. There were very few people there. She propped her feet on the railing while watching the fog roll off the water. Some of the lake houses had their lights on, but not many.
She heard footsteps approach on the boardwalk behind her, then Win appeared by the bench. She stared up at him, not knowing what to say. She had no idea he would be here this early, too. He waited a moment, then he sat beside her and put his feet on the railing beside hers. He stared intently at the water as if he would miss something important if he looked away. He had a strong, angular profile. Austere, proud, full of secrets. She wanted in. She wanted to know those secrets. Was this how her mother felt? She wondered if there was a curse, one that impossibly attracted the women of her family to the men of his.
Yet here she was. Still doing this.
“Come to my family’s lake house and have breakfast with me,” he finally said.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“A while. I didn’t want to miss you.” He took a deep breath, then stood. “I’m glad you came.” He held out his hand to her.
It didn’t take long for her to accept it.
Chapter 13
She relaxed this stance only when Penny, the housekeeper, came out and served them frittatas. Penny was sixty-three years old, widowed, and extremely set in her ways. But she had a soft spot for Win, and Win adored her. When he was a little boy, he used to think of Penny and the lake house as a single entity. He’d thought she sat alertly on a stool in the kitchen all day and night, waiting for his family to visit so she could cook for them. The first time he’d seen her outside the context of the lake house, on one of her days off, he’d been downtown with his mother. He’d seen Penny walk down the street and he’d thought she’d escaped, so he’d yelled at his mom to catch her and bring her back. He’d been absolutely hysterical. His limited understanding at the time had been that, because of who he was, he couldn’t leave Mullaby, but other people could. They could leave and never come back. And that had petrified him.
He and Emily ate breakfast in a silence that wasn’t entirely comfortable. He made her nervous, and she made him feel off balance. It felt like too much, like he was taking more than he should. But he couldn’t seem to help it. He’d spent his life accepting what his father told him he could never change, and forcing himself not to covet the freedom other people had. Things had to change. He couldn’t go on following rules that were made for a different time. It all made sense when he met Emily. She could make this right. She could take away this stigma. If Dulcie Shelby’s daughter, of all people, could accept him for who he was, then his family would have to take notice. Emily was the first step to a whole new way of life.
At this point, he couldn’t even consider the possibility that he was wrong about this. He had to be right. He
After breakfast, they sat side by side on the Adirondack chairs, quietly watching the sun burn the morning fog away. The beach was slowly filling with people, and the noise was beginning to swell.
“Are you out here a lot in the summer?” Emily finally asked, watching a boat zoom across the lake, leaving a trail of churning water that looked like soda foam.
He’d been biting his tongue, waiting for her to say something, not wanting to rush her. “My family uses this house all year round. It’s a home away from home. It drives Penny crazy, though. She likes to keep to a strict schedule, and we always throw her off it by showing up unexpectedly, like I did this morning.”
“I get the feeling she doesn’t mind. I think she adores you.” She looked over to him with a smile that made his chest feel full. He was manipulating her. He knew that. But for the first time, he realized how easily she could be doing the same to him. He needed to be her friend to make this work. He never expected to have these other feelings. One well-placed smile and he forgot what he was going to say. All he could think was how different she was than he thought she would be, after all the stories he’d heard about her mother. She was striking and sweet… and had the most interesting hair. It always looked like a gust of wind was hiding in there, waiting to blow out. It was so endearingly quirky.
In the silence that followed, her smile faded and her hands went to her hair. “Do I have something on my head?”
“No, sorry. I was just thinking about your hair.”
She gave him an odd look. “You were thinking about my hair?”
This was the same hiccup he’d felt on the Ferris wheel with her. He couldn’t lose focus. “Yes. No. I mean, I was wondering if you ever wore it down.”
She shook her head. “It’s in that weird growing-out stage right now.”
“How short was it before?”
“Really short. My mom wore her hair short, so I wore mine short, too. But I started growing it out a little over a year ago.”
“What made you stop wanting to be like her?”
“I’ve never stopped wanting to be like her. She was a wonderful person,” she said vehemently. Then she turned back to the water. “It was just a lot to live up to.”
This wasn’t working. They had to shake some of this awkwardness off. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said as he stood.
They left their shoes by their chairs and went back down the deck steps. They walked close to the water and got their feet wet. They didn’t talk much, but that was okay. Walking together, their strides in rhythm, getting used to each other, was enough.
When they reached the cove, Emily looked toward the grotto where his sister’s birthday party had been held. There were two elderly couples sitting on folding chairs there today, away from the crowds and out of the sun. He knew what she was going to do before she took the first step.
Without a word, Emily left him and walked away from the water, toward the trees. He hesitated a moment before following her. She passed the elderly couples and went to the tree where her mother’s and his uncle’s initials had been carved. Win stopped to say hello to the elderly couples, to put their minds at ease, because they were looking at Emily strangely, then he went to stand by her.
The past few months of her life had been marked by a chaos he could only imagine. Looking at her like this, he could see her grief. He could see how alone she felt with it. But he understood that. He knew about things you
