But she had better things to think about right now. Like how blue Simon’s eyes were. And how intensely he was looking at her, just like when they were younger. No one had ever looked at her that way since. Surely that still meant something?
“So, tell me everything you’ve been up to.” He leaned forward, giving her his full attention, and her heart began to race. “What’s it like living here year-round?”
“Quiet. Lots of inspiration for my work, of course.” She wasn’t so sure that she sounded convincing.
“Winters must be tough,” he remarked, looking at her as if genuinely wanting to hear what she had to say about that.
Oh, she had to a lot to say. Being a resort island, most of the businesses closed down in winter. Many restaurants were seasonal—their owners had primary residences in Michigan or Wisconsin, and the gift shops took long breaks too. Sales were low, she’d expected that, telling herself it gave her time to boost her inventory, and that she had done. She had an entire closet full of winter landscapes. But there were only so many snow-frocked trees that you could paint, she realized…
“Christmas is really magical here,” she said, holding onto the one shining moment of that long, cold stretch. She didn’t say that after the holidays, it was all downhill until April, when the snow finally began to thaw. “They put a tree right there—” She motioned out the window to the edge of Main Street, but Simon didn’t follow her gaze. Instead, she realized with a flutter, he was looking at her.
She felt her cheeks heat. She took a sip of her coffee. She’d forgotten to add sugar to it, but she found that she didn’t even care.
“And you?”
She glanced up to see the waitress already delivering their food, looking rather smug about that, if Ellie did say so herself. Couldn’t she have postponed things a little longer? Really, did the kitchen have to be quite so efficient?
Simon swallowed a mouthful of hash browns. “I started my own law practice, actually. It’s not easy, but it’s given me the opportunity to spend some time out here this summer.”
She didn’t let on that she of course knew he was a lawyer, just as he’d planned to be. It was forgivable, she supposed, given how small the island was and that all the locals knew all the locals and all the seasonal people too. And Simon and his family were seasonal people. They were property owners. That made them islanders. And that made their business, well, everyone’s business.
“My mom hasn’t been well,” he explained, “She wanted to get back here for the season and it seemed like an opportunity for me to help.”
“It isn’t anything serious?” She felt guilty for not knowing, even though she hadn’t seen Mrs. Webber on this island in at least two years.
“She had pneumonia over the winter,” he explained. “And she’s been struggling to get back on her feet. I’m hoping the warm weather will help her improve.” He grinned, and Ellie set a hand on his arm. Warm and soft, she let it stay like that for a moment.
“I’m sure that having you here will help her improve.” She grinned. Like old times.
“I’m fixing up the house for her, not doing much, of course, but more than my father can do. He’s getting on in age.”
“And you work remotely?” she asked, sipping her drink. She couldn’t peel her eyes from him. She feared that if she did, she would wake from a wonderful, delicious dream, one that she had had many times over the years, flashbacks, really, to the last summers she had spent on this island before it became her permanent residence. When Evening Island and Simon Webber were interconnected, one and the same, where it seemed that one couldn’t exist without the other.
He nodded. “I’m a contract lawyer, not a trial attorney. I spend a lot of time reading.” He went on to describe a current case.
Ellie nodded, opening her eyes, pretending to find this not only interesting but also new information, despite Gran filling her in on all she’d heard in her weekly quilting club. But what she was really thinking was that his smile was just as adorable as it was ten years ago.
“And you’re doing all that while helping around the house too?”
“Well, my fiancée is better with the domestic side of things…”
She felt the blood drain from her face. For a moment, she wasn’t even sure she was breathing. She stared at him, and his brow flinched, forcing her to recover, and quickly.
“Fiancée? Well, this is news!” She smiled brightly, even though her heart felt like it was breaking into a million pieces, just like it had all those years ago, when he’d left the island, gone to college, and the year after that, when he’d stayed at college to take summer classes instead of come back to the island like he used to.
Like he’d promised.
He shrugged, looking nonplussed. “Thanks, I guess. It’s what people do, right? Grow up? Get married?”
She nodded, smiled tightly. Yes, it was what people did. But not what she had done. It wasn’t by choice. It was more that her life had never been one to follow a conventional path, even if she’d tried.
And just like that, it seemed all too clear. Simon might have been the guy who splashed with her in the water and kissed her on the sandy shore and trotted alongside her through the woods that divided their two houses, always going faster than her, even though her horse was definitely faster, who picked berries with her off wild bushes and then biked home, only to stop and eat them all before they made it to the kitchen. His skin was always bronzed, bringing out the blueness of his eyes, but even then, way back then, he had plans.
And she…she didn’t.
She glanced at her watch, pretending to find surprise in what she saw, even though she barely registered the second hand. “Oh! I completely forgot that I’m meeting a client to hand over a commission.”
“A commission?” He looked impressed.
Ellie slid out of the booth. On a few occasions, someone saw her work in one of the shops in town and then made a point of finding her studio, where they asked for something specific to be made, a portrait of their child playing down near the water, or one of their sailboats, docked at the harbor. But today, there was no commission to hand off. The season had just started.
And now, she realized, it was going to be a very long season indeed. Just as bad as the winter.
Maybe, between her sisters and now Simon’s fiancée lingering about, worse.
Chapter Six
Hope
Hope was prepared for the drive. That was the thing about her, she thought, as she pulled into the ferry lot at the northern tip of Michigan. She was always prepared. She had snacks for car trips, Band-Aids in the small pocket of her handbag for scraped knees, and an extra five hundred in cash in her bedside drawer, for emergencies. She had spreadsheets made up for all their family vacations: detailed daily schedules right down to the exact outfits and hair bows the girls would wear. She packed accordingly.
She had not been prepared to leave her husband, if that was what she had done. She wasn’t sure, actually.
They’d gone about the rest of yesterday as if the conversation hadn’t happened, and Evan had only brought it up again when he saw her pull their suitcases out of the spare room closet.