Luanne Rice (33 page)

“I do,”
Lily said, touching her cheek. “And the same is true of you. They saved my life
when I first got here.”

“And you’ve
saved mine,” Marisa said.

“What are
you going to do?” Patrick asked.

“I could go
there,” Lily said. “And Edward wouldn’t necessarily have to know.”

“Or he
could find out,” Patrick said. “And we could help you fight him.”

“He’d find
out about Rose,” Lily whispered, her blood running cold. She knew that if she
returned to Connecticut, she would have to face hard truths about the man she
had left. He was the father of her daughter. She had been afraid of him for so
long, but suddenly she knew that some emotions were bigger than fear.

“Maeve
needs you,” Patrick said.

“You have
to go to her,” Liam said.

“Oh God,”
Lily whispered. She held his hand and looked deeply into his eyes. They were as
grave and sad as she felt. Now that Rose’s heart was mending, she felt hers was
breaking. What if her grandmother was very sick? Lily would stay and take care
of her. There was so much she wanted to make up to Maeve: all the lost years,
the birthdays and holidays she had missed. Maeve had never even met Rose.
As wonderful a grandmother as she had been to Lily, she’d be all
that to Rose.
Edward had deprived them all of each other for too long.

“Liam,” she
said, looking into his eyes. How could she leave him now, just as they had
found each other? “I can’t go away from you.”

“Nanny’s
leading you there,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“What do
you mean?”

He held her
hand, leading her to the computer, showed her MM122’s latest position: swimming
in Long Island Sound, right off the tip of Hubbard’s Point. Lily could barely
take in the information—evidence of another miracle. How could she doubt it?

“She’s
leading you back home,” Liam said.

“Home is
here,” she said.

“Lily,”
Liam said. “I know you’re scared. But look—look at what’s happening. Do you
know how amazing it is that a beluga whale would make her way down the eastern
seaboard, all the way south to Hubbard’s Point?”

“Is it
possible?” Lily
asked,
her throat so tight.

“It’s
happening,” he said. “That is evidence that goes beyond possible—straight to
reality.”

Lily closed
her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw a picture hanging above Liam’s
desk: Tecumseh Neill, the family patriarch, standing with his whaling vessel,
the
Pinnacle.
Beside it, the copy of
a letter he had written to his wife, waiting at home in Cape Hawk:

“I have
been in pursuit of a single whale,” he wrote in fine, elegant script. “She
sings by night, when there’s not a sound to answer her but the wind in the
rigging. When she breached at first light, she was the color of blood—a sight
to strike fear into every heart and yet make every man aboard gaze upon her
with awe and reverence—that such a creature could exist! I will follow her, my
darling, but I made a promise to return home to you, and that I shall do
… .”

“Liam,”
Lily said, turning to look into his eyes. “Would you come to Connecticut with
us? You made that promise to Rose
… .”

“I made it
to you too,” he said.

“Then is
that a yes?” Lily asked. Her heart was beating in her throat.
Her pulse, the rhythm of life.
Blood,
oxygen, and that other vital essence mixing together in her body.
Her Rose, reading on the sun porch.
Liam took her hand.

Behind him,
the windows were wide open. From up here on the hill, you could see forever—or
just about. Way out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Lily could see whales
playing. They breached, shooting straight out of the icy blue water like silver
missiles, landing with exuberant, sky-high splashes. The day was brilliant.

About the Author

LUANNE RICE
is the author of
Summer’s Child, Silver
Bells, Beach Girls, Dance With Me, The Perfect Summer, The Secret Hour, True
Blue, Safe Harbor, Summer Light, Firefly Beach, Dream Country, Follow the Stars
Home—
a Hallmark Hall of Fame feature
—Cloud
Nine, Home Fires, Secrets of Paris, Stone Heart, Angels All Over Town, Crazy in
Love,
which was made into a TNT Network feature movie, and
Blue Moon,
which was made into a CBS
television movie. She lives in New York City and Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Also by
LUANNE
RICE

Silver Bells

Beach Girls

Dance
With
Me

The Perfect Summer

The Secret Hour

True Blue

Safe Harbor

Summer Light

Firefly Beach

Dream Country

Follow the Stars Home

Cloud Nine

Home Fires

Blue Moon

Secrets of Paris

Stone Heart

Crazy in Love

Angels All Over Town

Watch for

LUANNE RICE’S

On sale in
hardcover June 21st

New York Times
bestselling author
Luanne Rice continues the story begun in
Summer’s
Child
in
an unforgettable novel destined to take its place as one of her most beloved
works.

Read on for
a special advance preview of
Summer
of Roses
.

Summer of Roses

On Sale June 21st
M
y wedding was like a dream. It was
almost everything a wedding should be, and when I think of it, even now, I see
it unfolding like the kind of beautiful story that always has a happy ending.

I got
married in my grandmother’s garden, by the sea. A brilliant early July morning
at Hubbard’s Point, the daylilies were in bloom. That’s what I remember, almost
as much as the roses: orange, cream, lemon, golden daylilies on tall green
stalks, tossed by the summer breeze, trumpeting exultation up to the wild blue
sky. But the roses were my grandmother’s specialty, her pride and joy, and that
year, for my wedding, they were all blooming.

Scarlet
Dublin Bay roses climbed the trellis beside the front door of the weathered
shingle cottage, while Garnets-and-Golds and pale pink New Dawns meandered up
the stone chimney. The beds by the iron bench bloomed with red, yellow, peach,
and pink classic English varieties, while those along the stone wall, by the
old wishing well and the steps up to the road, were low shrubs of white and
cream roses. A six-foot hedge of Rosa Rugosa—white and pink beach roses—lined
the sea wall, along with deep blue delphinium and hydrangeas.

It was a
perfect setting for a perfect wedding—something that most people, including me,
never imagined would happen. I guess I thought I wasn’t the marrying kind.
Let’s just say that I was a little on the guarded side. I had lost my parents
very young. As a child I had been in love with our family. I know how dramatic
that sounds, but it’s true. We were so happy, and my parents had loved each
other with wild, reckless, ends-of-the-earth abandon. I had watched them
together, and taken it in, and decided that nothing less would ever do for me.
When they were killed in a ferry accident, on a trip to Ireland, although I
wasn’t there, but home in Connecticut with my grandmother, I think I died with
them.

So my
wedding—and everything that had led up to it—the miracle of meeting Edward
Hunter, and falling so madly in love with him, and being swept off my feet in a
way I’d never expected or believed could happen—was a resurrection of sorts. A
rising from the dead, of a little girl who went down to the bottom of the Irish
Sea with her parents, thirty-four years earlier.

Edward. He
was every love song in the world. He was a hero—not just because I loved him,
but because he really, truly was one. He had sacrificed so much for his family,
and he had literally saved his mother’s life. You can imagine how
completely—uber-motherless child that I was—that fact endeared him to me. How
couldn’t
I adore him?

He was just
over five-eight, but since I’m just under five-two, he seemed so tall to me; I
had to stand on tiptoes to kiss him. A rugby player at Harvard, he was
broad-shouldered and muscular. His red Saab bore three stickers: Harvard
University, Columbia Business School, and a bumper sticker that said
Rugby Players Eat Their Dead.
The joke
was, Edward was so gentle,
I
couldn’t even imagine him
playing such a rough sport.

When I go
back to our wedding day, I see his red car parked in the road up at the top of
the stone steps, behind the rose-and-ivy-covered wishing well. I can see the
graceful arch curving over the well—with
Sea
Garden
—the name of my grandmother’s cottage, forged in wrought iron back
when my great-grandfather was still alive—the black letters rusting away in the
salt air even back then, nine years ago. I remember the moment so well:
standing there in my grandmother’s yard, knowing that soon I would drive away
with Edward in that red car—that I would be his wife, and we would be off on
our honeymoon.

Can I say
now, for certain, that I looked at that iron arch and saw the corroding letters
as a reminder that even that which is most beautiful, intended to endure
forever, can be corrupted or destroyed? No, I can’t. But I do remember that the
sight of it gave me my first cold feeling of the day.

My
grandmother and Clara Littlefield—her next-door neighbor and best friend from
childhood—had gone all-out to make my wedding a dream come true. The
yellow-and-white-striped tent stood in the side yard between their houses, on
the very point of Hubbard’s Point, jutting proudly into Long Island Sound.
Tables with long golden-cream tablecloths were scattered
around,
all decorated with flowers from the garden. A string quartet from Hartt School
of Music, in Hartford, played Vivaldi. My friends were in their summer
best—bright sundresses, straw hats,
blue
blazers.