She was aware that Gemma was watching her with wide eyes. That she had slipped, shown a side of herself that she wasn’t proud of, a side that she didn’t want to reveal, or even own. But there it was.
“You’ve had a long drive,” Gemma said, taking Victoria by the hand. “I can bathe the girls if you want to get started unpacking?”
Hope could have wept with gratitude. For the second time that day, someone was showing her kindness, someone was offering to help her, and that was more than Evan had done since…well, before conception.
They went into the house, and she decided to take the two small rooms at the end of the hall on the second floor where she and her sisters had stayed as girls, dividing them as they saw fit, Gemma usually alternating between the two, or sometimes all three squeezing into the one room’s double bed. She immediately realized that, if she had planned this better, she would have thought to include a gate to put on the girls’ room so that they couldn’t easily escape in the middle of the night, get lost in a strange house and then, say, fall down the stairs.
Then she remembered that this particular set of bedrooms had a Jack and Jill connecting bathroom. “Thank God,” she breathed, deciding she could close the girls’ room and only give them entry and exit access to the rest of the house through her own room.
Gemma was already loading the girls into the bath. “You sure everything is okay?”
Hope felt shaky and out of sorts. She nodded, wandering into the room the girls would share to set their clothes in the dresser.
“It was a long drive,” she said again.
She started folding each individual piece of clothing and setting them in the drawer, and then stopped herself, because really, what did it matter? Tidy drawers and ironed tiny T-shirts didn’t matter, not on Evening Island, and that was why she was here. So she didn’t have to worry about all those little things that were making her so miserable. Here the children could roam free (well, under supervision) and her sisters could help her out, and she could think clearly without having to play “the quiet game” in order to hear her own thoughts!
The girls came into the room, wrapped in towels, their hair wet, and she turned down the covers, questioning only for a moment if Ellie would have bothered to put fresh linens on the beds, and then decided it was fine. Fine. It was the cottage. Here they could relax.
The girls fell asleep quickly, and she pulled the blinds, letting only a bit of sunlight glow through the cracks near the window frame. Gemma had already left, and Hope crawled into her own bed and shut her eyes, just for a moment. And she thought about the man on the boat.
Her hero.
Chapter Seven
Gemma
The noise would not stop. Even from the third-floor room she had claimed for herself, she could hear the voices, the singing, the crying, the arguing when it was time for a nap or a snack that didn’t quite meet the girls’ approval. She’d been listening to it for over forty-eight hours. But Hope had to deal with it every day.
For not the first time, she didn’t know how her sister did it.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said when she came downstairs, her laptop in hand, after admitting defeat and knowing that she would never get any work done in the house so long as the twins were there. It had been a rainy morning, but the skies were clearing. Her plan was to carve out a spot at the Cottage Coffeehouse. At this rate, it would become her regular table.
Hope was wiping down the kitchen table while the girls scampered away, leaving their half-eaten snack behind.
“It all becomes very routine once you’re in it. You’ll see when you have some of your own someday.” Catching herself, Hope looked alarmed. “Gemma. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. There are even days when I forget about my broken engagement,” Gemma said with a wave of her hand, but that wasn’t true of course, and her sister understood her well enough to know that.
“You’ll find someone else. Someone better,” Hope said.
“Will I?” Gemma saw the sympathy in Hope’s eyes, and she wondered if her sister really believed her encouraging words or if she was just trying to lift Gemma’s spirits. “Maybe I don’t want to find anyone else.”
“Oh, you say that now…” Hope gave a knowing look.
“It’s not easy to find someone.” Gemma had dated a bit in college, but Sean had been her first serious relationship. She’d thought it was true love. Now she didn’t know if such a thing even existed.
For her, at least, she thought, looking at Hope. Hope had found her happy ending, after all.
“I think someone will come along eventually,” Hope said. “If you’re open to it.”
Gemma grabbed a piece of fruit from the overflowing bowl on the counter and studied it. “Do you really think it’s that easy to find more than one person that you could feel something for?” She wanted to believe it, but she was struggling. And the only thing lonelier than feeling like everyone else had found love except her was writing about it in her books.
Hope gave an evasive look and pushed a strand of her hair from her face as she straightened. “I do actually.”
Just then, there was a shattering sound, and she and Hope froze. Gemma knew that she should stick around, offer to help, but then she thought of her deadline. She was down to twenty-two days now. She couldn’t afford to give up even an hour at this point.
“I should get to the coffee shop,” she said, wincing. “Don’t wait on me for dinner. I don’t know how long I’ll be tonight. I need to finish this chapter.” And start the next one, she thought, feeling the panic build again; but for now, just finishing this chapter would be good enough.
“I was hoping we could all have dinner together tonight.” Hope gave her a look of obvious disappointment, and Gemma pushed back the guilt.
“Tomorrow night. I have to work, Hope,” she said, expecting her sister to understand.
But Hope just said, “It’s a convenient excuse, isn’t it? Work?” Catching Gemma’s frown, she waved her away. “Don’t mind me. I know you have your deadline. I’m not upset with you.”
Perhaps not, but it would seem that Hope was upset with someone. Evan?
Nonsense. Hope had the fairy-tale life. Maybe if Gemma focused on her sisters’ love lives instead of her own, she wouldn’t feel like such a fraud every time she sat down to write.
Gemma didn’t have time to think about that just now. She turned, closed the door to the house behind her, and instead of feeling the guilt that she knew she should have for abandoning her sister in the midst of domestic chaos, she instead felt a sense of freedom that she hadn’t even known existed or that she even needed until she had spent four days sharing a house with her sisters.
She was used to being alone. The only unwelcome disruption to her routine was the occasional siren or the barking of her neighbor’s teacup yorkie down the hall who couldn’t have scared off a burglar if she tried.
She walked down the gravel driveway to the road, pinching her mouth when she saw how quickly the grass was growing back. The rain hadn’t helped matters, and now she would either have to take more time away from writing to handle it or see if Hope might help out, and she already knew how that would go. Hope had a yard crew for that type of thing. She would suggest that they do the same.