She raised an eyebrow. “We left off with you saying that you’d be back next summer. And ten summers later, here you are. And here I am.”
“And it was a surprise to see you, Ellie. A good surprise,” he said.
She nodded sadly. She understood, even if she didn’t really want to. “This island has a way of making you forget about the rest of the world.”
“You knew I was engaged, Ellie. I never kept that from you.”
True. He hadn’t. She sighed, and this time she set her paintbrush down for good. “You didn’t seem happily engaged,” she said, looking him square in the eye. There. She’d said it.
He didn’t argue with her. Instead he ran a hand over his face, looked at her with tired eyes. “I came to say that I was sorry for not giving you a heads-up that she would be at the party. She took the afternoon ferry in, she surprised me, and I told her I had this party, and well…”
And it had taken him until Wednesday to offer an apology. Not that she’d been waiting around for one. The apology she wanted was never coming. The apology for not returning all those years ago. And for breaking her heart.
“You’re engaged, so it made sense that she came. That’s what couples do. They spend time together. They go to parties together.” Not that she would know. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since Simon. Hadn’t wanted to, really. Then she only wanted to focus on her painting, to throw herself into her art, and then, she was busy taking care of Gran.
But now, all of that felt different. She’d had a taste of love, even if it was unrequited. And now, now she couldn’t bear the thought of never finding it again.
“I should have tried to reach you first,” he finished.
She nodded. “Yes. You should have.”
“She liked you,” he said, raising his eyebrows, and to that Ellie gave a snort.
“And you? Do you still like me, Simon? All these weeks, all that time we spent together. That day…” She pulled in a breath when she thought of how close he’d come to kissing her, right here in this studio. Or maybe, she had almost kissed him. “I guess I misread things.”
Simon thrust his hands in his pockets and nodded slowly. For a moment, she thought she’d overstepped, that he was agreeing with her. She’d been a fool. She’d tried to steal another woman’s fiancé right out from under her. But then Simon looked at her, and she knew. She wasn’t crazy.
“You were right when you said that I didn’t seem happy. I….I wasn’t. Erin and I got engaged and then everything seemed to change, overnight. She didn’t want to spend the whole summer on the island, and I didn’t want to keep rushing back and forth to Philly. We were arguing. A lot. And then there you were.”
She gulped, and willed herself not to cry, because as much as she wanted to hear this, as much as she hoped that he cared, she also knew that it didn’t matter. He’d made his choice. And she wasn’t it.
“You know I always cared about you, El.”
She turned from him, facing her painting, but all she saw was a blur of lines and colors. “Please.”
He set a hand on her shoulder and then, perhaps thinking the better of it, pulled it back. “What we had was special. This island will always remind me of that time. But I don’t live here anymore. And I can’t take this place with me.”
She nodded. Swallowed the lump that was rising in her throat.
“Please don’t hate me for moving on. Or for caring about you. Because I’ll always care about you, Ellie. And I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.”
She turned now, giving him a watery smile. “You didn’t give me the wrong impression. I think I…saw what I wanted to see.”
“Professional habit?” he grinned, but there was a sadness in his eyes that touched her.
“Could be worse things in life, right?”
They stood in silence, and then, without a word, Simon stepped forward and set his hand back on her shoulder again. “I’m proud of you, El. You did what you always wanted to do. You didn’t care what anyone said. You didn’t succumb to the pressure to do what others expected of you.”
She frowned at him, wondering if there was more to what he was saying than just his own opinions of her life choices. He wasn’t happy. She could see that. But she also knew that he had made his choice.
And she had made hers, hadn’t she? She’d chosen to stay here, on Evening Island. To run this studio. To stay inside that huge, empty house all winter long. It was supposed to be everything she’d wanted.
She watched him go, until he was just a small dot out the window, until he was just a boy she used to know, back when they both had big dreams and big plans.
He’d followed his path. And she’d taken hers. And she didn’t regret it.
But she needed something more to keep her here. And Simon wasn’t it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hope
After last week’s “fish situation,” which Gemma did get a good laugh from, she offered to listen out for the girls during their nap, and in exchange Hope decided to pick up a fresh strawberry pie from Island Bakery on the way back to the house. It would be a reward for Gemma working so hard to finish her book, and an excuse for the sisters to sit outside and enjoy a fine, warm evening, hopefully with less drama than the weekend had brought them.
First, she had to get through her meeting (because that’s what it was, surely) with John without letting the nerves get to her too much.
Only they weren’t nerves, she realized, as she stopped outside the Lakeside Inn. What she was feeling was excitement. It was something she hadn’t felt in a very long time, and damn did it feel good.
She walked up the brick paved path to the front porch, where John was waiting, tapping at something on his phone from one of the rocking chairs. He looked up when she said hello and immediately put his phone in his pocket.
“You can finish your email or text,” she said as he stood.
“Later,” he said, giving her a grin.
She sighed happily and turned to take in her surroundings. It had been a long time since she’d been to this inn and her memory didn’t do it justice. Like many others, it was painted white, with crisp black shutters, and a wide porch lined with rocking chairs. The lawns were carefully maintained, the grass green and lush and the flowers so well taken care of that she didn’t see a weed or wilting petal in sight. The inn faced the town, with its back against the lake, but standing here, from a distance, she could see the white dotted store fronts and flags and lampposts that made the island what it was. More than just a piece of land. It was a community, for those lucky enough to be a part of it.
“Should we go in?” John asked, and Hope nodded. She was eager to see what the Altmans had done to the place, and when she pushed through the door into the lobby, she realized that nothing had been done.
That the inn, much like Gran’s house, and Darcy Ritter’s house, was frozen in time. It was like walking into a memory. A place where everything had stayed the same in a moving world.
In some ways, that was what she loved about it.
She caught her reflection in a mirror near the umbrella stand, John at her side.