“It’s a beautiful property,” Hope said. And it was. It had potential. It just needed a little help. And she was here to offer that.
Hope still marveled at that. Her, hired to help another woman beautify her home!
“I thought my grandkids would want to visit,” she explained when Hope stepped through the front door, still reveling in the odd sense of freedom she felt not to be maneuvering the awkward stroller or having to bribe the twins to behave while she had a few precious moments of adult conversation. The girls were with Ellie, who had kindly taken them to the studio for a few hours to give them a painting lesson. Hope didn’t even want to think how that would go, and she hoped that Ellie had locked up all of her best work beforehand. “But they all want to go to Florida instead.”
Darcy tossed up her hands with a sigh and shook her head as she led Hope through the house.
“I have quite a bit of experience with historic renovations,” Hope explained as she inspected a bathroom, which was dark and dated. She was certain that the plumbing would all be needed to be brought up to code. “My own house is more than a hundred years old. We spent over a year renovating it.” It was so exciting then, to plan the details, to prepare for their future, to feel like she and Evan were a real team. They were building their dream house, the foundation of their life together.
The life she had walked away from.
Heaviness settled over her chest. It was a feeling she couldn’t quite identify, but one she’d experienced daily since coming here—one she was probably too busy to notice back at home. Yearning, she supposed, for that feeling of hope she’d once had, when everything still felt possible, not set in stone, or planned out for her.
Darcy led her up the stairs, which were covered in an unfortunate black runner that made the house feel so much darker than it needed to be. Yes, Hope preferred a light and airy style, but here on the island, that was almost a requirement.
“We could exchange this for something in the blue family?” she ventured, motioning to the carpet. “Navy if you want to keep things practical?”
“I don’t have much reason for practicality around here these days,” Darcy snorted. She stopped at the landing and opened the door to a sun-filled bedroom that faced the front lawn. The tree branches skimmed the window, and Hope looked out, imaging how beautiful the view must be in the fall. “This was my son Mitchell’s room,” Darcy explained.
It was done up in greens and browns, dated but tidy. Hope vaguely remembered Mitchell from her early summers here on the island. He must be in his mid-forties by now.
It didn’t seem possible. Not any more possible than the fact that the last time she’d been to the island, she’d been twenty-two years old and now she was thirty-four. So much had changed. But looking around, she saw just how much remained the same.
Including her.
“You have two children, correct?” Darcy asked.
Hope smiled, as she always did when she pictured her girls. “Twins. They just turned four.”
“Girls, right?” Darcy asked, and Hope nodded. “Good. They stick around a little longer, though not by much.”
Hope frowned, considering her own family. When was the last time she had visited her childhood home? Christmas three years ago, she calculated, at the insistence of her parents, who had tried to reinforce their stifling traditions onto her family until she and Evan had argued about it. The following year, much to her mother’s disappointment, she had put her foot down, said they’d be staying at home for the holidays. “But this is your home!” her father had barked down the phone line, and it had taken every muster of strength Hope possessed to say that she was referring to her house, the one she owned and lived in with Evan and her children.
The one that was not much different than her parents’ house in the end, even if that was her own doing.
And maybe, her undoing, too.
“When they’re gone, they’re gone,” Darcy said, pursing her lips.
Hope blinked, feeling affronted by that realization. Right now, every day felt long and tiring, but the years were passing quickly, and Evan had a point when he said that next year they’d already be preparing for kindergarten. This was the time she could never get back, that she would long for someday, only ten years from now, maybe less, when the girls preferred friends to her company, when they didn’t want to hold hands or snuggle on the sofa with a book. When they would roll their eyes at what she said, not giggle when she quickly turned a bad situation upside down.
In that moment, standing in the room of this little boy who was now, no doubt, a grown man with children of his own, she felt a horrible, overwhelming sense of fear. Even though she had only seen her children an hour ago, and even though she had been downright giddy to speed-walk away from Ellie’s art studio after Rose had upturned a cup of water and Victoria had started to paint on her own skin, she now longed to run straight back there, to gather the girls in her arms, to feel their soft skin and smell their strawberry-scented hair, and not even care if they got paint all over her white linen dress pants. She was never away from them, only when they were at school for a few hours each week, and soon, she would be away from them more and more, against her will, until they were gone. Gone forever. Like the boy in this room.
Her eyes prickled and she blinked quickly to make sure that no tears fell.
“Where are your children now?” she asked, hoping to buy time until she had composed herself, even though she wanted nothing more than to finish this meeting and leave. To go back to her life. To do what she was supposed to be doing. Taking care of her children. How could she have ever questioned it?
“Oh, all over. Mitchell is in California. My youngest is in Atlanta. My daughter is close. Chicago. You’re there now, right?”
Hope nodded. “I live there.”
And right now, she should go back there. Take the girls and leave.
But Darcy was still talking. “My children call this house the money pit.”
“I would say that it could be worth a fortune,” Hope said. “The land alone must be worth something?”
Darcy led her into another bedroom in shades of apricot and yellow. The daughter’s room, no doubt, with a row of dolls on the double bed. Hope walked to the rear window, where the backyard led onto a large grass lot that extended all the way to the lake. A pool interrupted its path, and Hope could picture some colorful floats bobbing in the water. Some striped umbrellas over the iron tables that were perched at the end.
There wasn’t beach access like they had at Sunset Cottage, but the view stretched as far as the eye could see. It would be stiff competition if this house went on the market, too.
As if reading her thoughts, Darcy said, “It will kill me to leave this island.”
“Then why go?” Hope asked. “You’ve been a long-standing member of the community.”
Darcy just clucked her tongue. “My husband has been gone for ten years now. My kids have their own lives. All that’s left for me here are memories. I’ll go to Chicago to be close to my daughter.”
Darcy shook her head, her expression pensive as she looked around the room. “It all goes by so fast.”
Hope’s mouth was dry as she finished the tour and promised to call in a few days with some initial ideas. She waited until she was at the end of the long, neatly manicured boulevard before quickening her pace, moving as fast as her heels would allow on the dirt roads.