“You should,” he said, but she just shook her head.
She was exactly what her father told her she was. She was a starving artist. She’d spent all her trust on this studio—because as Gemma was so quick to point out, real estate on the island was prime. The house was paid off, and there was enough set aside for the taxes and the utility bills. But it stopped there. And the money she made selling her paintings in town was far from reliable, and she’d certainly never be rich from it, or even financially secure.
Meaning to her father, it had no value.
She shrugged away the comment and motioned toward the back room. “I have a few from winter, if you’re interested.”
He nodded and followed her into the storage room. The room was tight and crowded, with dozens of canvases neatly stacked against the walls. Feeling awkward at how alone they were, she began rifling through her stacks, even though she usually knew where every single painting was kept.
“Here we go,” she said, pulling out one of her favorites: a scene of Main Street during the first snowfall of the year. Most horses went back to the mainland for the winter months, but here she’d managed to capture a horse-drawn carriage on its way back to one of the family-owned inns, whose residents finally had the house to themselves for a few months. Just looking at it gave her peace, and strengthened her resolve too. Gemma couldn’t sell that house. She wouldn’t let her. And her vote had to count for something.
Simon shook her head as he studied it. “Wow,” he finally said.
He gave her a look of approval she rarely saw from anyone else, but then, she supposed, he had always looked at her like that, hadn’t he? Always seen what the others hadn’t? Always liked the fact that she was artistic, free-spirited, that she didn’t want a conventional life.
But he had wanted that conventional life, hadn’t he? And she had never quite fit into that plan.
“You got everything you ever wanted,” he remarked.
“Almost,” she said, meeting his eye. He squinted, ever so subtly, and she wondered for a moment if she’d overstepped. Her cheeks flamed and she used the time to put the painting back in place, even though she was starting to think that maybe she’d take this one back to the cottage with her. Hope was certainly wasting no time in putting her mark on things around there; perhaps it was time for Ellie to do the same. Maybe if she had tried harder to spruce up the place rather than leave so much of it as it was as a hallmark to her Gran, then Gemma would be more eager to hold on to it.
Except that Gemma seemed to want to cash out. She was becoming more like their father every day. What Ellie really needed to do, she thought, was to appeal to Gemma’s sentimental side.
If she could figure out how.
“What’s missing?” Simon asked, and Ellie was so caught off guard that she almost dropped the canvas, and that would have been a disaster. Carefully, and with shaking hands, she set it in place, happy for a moment to have her face turned from him.
“Oh, you know.” She caught his eye, pushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek. “My parents think I should have a conventional job. Find a husband. Settle down.”
“The safe route,” Simon said. A shadow passed over his expression. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Well, that was interesting. She studied him, waiting to see if he would elaborate, and when he didn’t, she said, “But you’re happy? Practicing law? Your own firm. Your…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. His engagement.
She wondered if there was a wedding date. She wondered if it was soon.
“I’m happy being here on the island,” he said, giving her a crooked grin. “I hadn’t realized I missed it so much until I came back. It’s…it’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind, to forget how much you miss something until you see it again.”
He was watching her closely, and Ellie’s stomach was positively rolling by now.
For a moment he leaned in, and her heart sped up as their faces grew closer, and she thought he was going to do it, he was going to kiss her. And she knew that she shouldn’t. He was engaged. Except, a little part of her said, she had him first. She knew him best. Longest. This Erin woman might know the stuffy guy with the law degree, but she knew the real Simon, the one who chucked strawberries into the air and caught them with his mouth, who shed his shirt and dove into the cool lake water, and swam all the way out, as far as he could make it.
He paused, seeming to catch himself and brushed her cheek with his lips.
“It was good seeing you today,” he said, pulling back. He squeezed her shoulder, paused as if there was something more that he wanted to say and thought the better of it, and then let himself out.
Ellie stood in the storage room for several moments after she’d heard the door to the studio open and close. Then she went back into the empty room and stared at the painting that Simon had admired so much, the one with the crimson maple leaves falling at the base of the lanterns that lined Main Street, and she replayed what he’d said over and over, telling herself that she was reading into things, that he was engaged.
But despite knowing this, she couldn’t help but feel hopeful that somehow, everything was about to change, and for the better.
Chapter Fifteen
Hope
Hope had established a routine during her ten days on the island. Every morning she woke at six, a solid hour before the girls did, just like always, only here she woke to the light that filtered through the linen curtain panels, spreading sunshine all over her room. She put on her pink cashmere robe, because it was cool in the mornings, when the windows were still cracked from the night before and the day was still young, and padded down the stairs to the kitchen at the back of the house, where she prepared breakfast for everyone, because if she was already cooking for her children, she may as well see it through, and because, it was what was expected of her. Hope hosted holidays. Hope threw parties. Hope was the silent leader growing up, and that dynamic had extended into adulthood.
Hope was not allowed to fall apart.
Sometimes Ellie beat her to it, brewed a pot of coffee and left for the day before Hope had even gotten a start, but more often than not she stuck around, hovering at the kitchen door as if she wasn’t so sure she was invited in, or what to make of Hope’s hospitality. Hope would hide her smile, pleased to prepare a meal for someone who so clearly appreciated it, just like Ellie had appreciated all those times when Hope was already old enough to drive and responsible for taking Ellie to her much-loathed piano classes, where her posture was forever in question, and where she had been reprimanded more than once for “going rogue” by putting her own spin on a classical piece, and to make up for it, she’d swing Ellie by the ice-cream stand on their way home, their own weekly tradition that only cost her a few of her babysitting dollars and meant so much to Ellie that it was worth it.
Evan certainly didn’t appreciate the meals she made for him. He ate dinners quickly, usually with his eyes on the television screen, and then she was left with a sink full of dishes that made the entire effort seem even more thankless. Often he would call to let her know he was working late, and she didn’t even bother to mention anymore that she was already roasting a chicken and that she’d just peeled the potatoes.