Persuaded (13 page)

Hanna
laughed as they descended the stairs, feeling her discomfort evaporate. Did Eli
have any clue as to the power he wielded with his disarming smile? Probably.
Beautiful boys like Eli, the ones who had won the genetic lottery, usually did.

“Would
it be okay if we stopped in a couple of the shops after lunch?” Hanna asked as
they closed the front door behind themselves.

“Sure.
This pretty boy has no problem with shopping either.”

☼

“I’ve
heard this place is really good,” Eli said, pulling open the door of a
restaurant called
Olives
and waiting for Hanna to go inside.

“It
smells amazing,” Hanna answered, breathing in the rich scents of butter and
cream.

Each
table was covered with clean white paper, and dotted with a centerpiece that
consisted of olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and salt/pepper grinders. Eli and
Hanna were seated by a hostess and moments later a server appeared with two
glasses of ice water. They looked over the menus, placed their respective
orders, and dug into a loaf of rosemary
Focaccia bread, fresh from the oven.

“So, last night I realized that I don’t know
what you do for a living,” Eli said to Hanna.

“I’m a kindergarten teacher.”

Eli took that in. “I guess that fits. What do
you do when you’re not at work?”

“I like to draw. When I don’t have the energy
for that, I read. What about you?” she tacked on, dunking a chunk of bread in a
puddle of olive oil.

“My job is my hobby,” Eli replied as their
salads were brought to the table. “I’ve done some writing in the past, but it’s
never really come to anything.”

“What kind of writing?”

Eli paused, long enough to spear some salad
into his mouth, chew, and then swallow. “Short stories, mostly.”

Hanna waited for more information, but he
didn’t offer any. “Do you think you’ll publish?”

He shrugged. “Probably not. Querying publishers
and agents is a tedious process, and then there’s the slush pile.”

She took a sip of her water. “Tell me about one
of your stories? Your favorite one.”

Eli gave her a dazzling smile. “It starts out
with a damsel in distress over a broken kite. I haven’t decided how it ends
yet.”

Hanna felt her face reddening, so she focused
on her salad. As if in answer to a prayer, the food arrived a moment later.

After
lunch, the pair wandered up and down the streets of Old Lyme. If Hanna had
known what she was missing by going dutifully to Uppercross when she’d first
arrived, she would have made it a point to visit much sooner. The downtown
shops had a distinct mom-and-pop feel to them, an antique sort of charm that
hooked her right off. She itched to browse the boutiques that sold custom
pieces of clothing and hand-made jewelry, but decided those would be better in
feminine company. The many souvenir shops were completely overwhelming,
carrying everything from T-shirts to shot glasses to snow globes that all read
Old
Lyme.
Hanna was particularly drawn to a miniature Lymelight, which stood
about ten inches tall and sprouted from a realistic foundation of rocks, just
like the original. Deciding that it would make a nice desk decoration at
school, Hanna purchased it, and she and Eli went next door to the retro shop.

Eli
had to practically drag Hanna out of the used book store, only managing the
task by drawing her attention to the aroma of rich chocolate wafting in from
the candy store a few doors down. After buying a dozen salted caramels covered
with all varieties of chocolate, the pair decided to head back. Hanna found
herself intrigued by the elegance of the architecture in Old Lyme: curling
wrought iron gates, crumbling brick exteriors, turrets and spires—all flooding
the whole downtown area with New England charm. Eli snapped photos of
everything, and Hanna admired the shots. It was by far the best day of the
summer for Hanna, at least so far.

FIFTEEN

KISS
and DAGGER

Though becoming
attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of
giving her relief.

—Jane Austen,
Persuasion

It was
nearly three o’clock when Hanna finally returned home. She felt the
particularly draining fatigue that accompanies a day spent in the sun. The
absence of chaos in the house told her that Mary and Walt were probably
napping, and that CJ was likely outdoors with his father. Taking advantage of a
rare opportunity to rest, Hanna slipped quietly into her room, traded her skirt
for some sweat pants, pulled on her hoodie, and flopped onto the bed.

I’ll
just close my eyes for a minute
, she pledged.

When
she woke, it was to the sound of shrieking children. The clock on her
nightstand told her that the intended power nap had turned into a
two-and-a-half-hour siesta. She sat up, rubbing her eyes with the shaky hands
of someone woken abruptly from deep sleep. After a bathroom break she took a
second to fix her messy braid. Across the hall in the bonus room, the boys were
building towers with Mega Blocks while Charles watched
Sports Center
.

“Where’s
Mary?” Hanna asked.

“Hey,
Banana,” CJ greeted his aunt in a bored voice.

“‘Nana!”
Walter repeated.

Hanna
stooped and lifted him into her arms. Her brother-in-law hadn’t so much as
looked up when she came in the room. One of Mary’s biggest complaints about her
husband was that he tuned her out whenever the TV was on. Hanna tried again.

“Charles.”

“Oh,
hey, Hanna. How was lunch with Eli?”

“Great.”
She smiled. How many times had she suggested that Mary get her husband’s
attention before talking to him? “Is Mary sleeping?”

“Do
you even have to ask?”

Hanna
had no response, so she just shrugged. “I promised her I’d make dinner tonight,
so I need to run to the store. Do you need anything?”

“The
boys and I went and picked up groceries earlier. You should have everything you
need downstairs.”

“Okay,
thanks. It shouldn’t take long, maybe half an hour.”

Charles
nodded, his eyes back on the screen before she’d finished her sentence. Not for
the first time, Hanna thought she understood the invention of the dinner bell.
Setting Walter back down, she turned and headed downstairs. She had barely
alighted from the last step when an invisible wall halted her progress.

Hanna
kept a running tally of the worst moments of her life, all of which had to do
with Derick: the day she’d found his note at the dock all those years ago, the
day she’d knocked heads with him on the beach, the night she had a front-row
seat to his and Ella’s first kiss . . .

But
the sight that met her as she rounded the corner into the family room topped
them all. It was as if all those moments had been written in dull pencil, and
were now being scrawled over with angry black marker.

Derick
and Ella were lying pressed together on the couch and kissing passionately. An
incredulous squeak escaped Hanna before she could stop it, and Ella tore her lips
from Derick’s with a sickening squelch.

“Sorry,
Hanna!” On looking up and finding an audience, Ella laughed indelicately into
her hand. Derick appeared to be a little more contrite, at least having the
decency to fix his eyes on his shoes as he sat up and planted his feet on the
floor.

Hanna
was fully aware that her continued presence in the room was making it miserable
for at least two of them, but she couldn’t move. Not until she’d spoken the
words rolling around in her head.

“There
are children in this house, you know,” she informed the couple in a quivering
voice. It was all she could do to keep from yelling. “You might want to keep
that in mind.”

And
with that she let herself out the sliding door, relieved to feel the marine air
on her scalding cheeks.

Whether
it was an excess of negative energy building within her or just the desire to
put as much space between herself and Uppercross as possible, she couldn’t say,
but she took off running and did not stop until a stitch in her side crippled
her. She hadn’t really paid attention to where she was going as she sprinted
off, and she found herself at the breakwater. Walking out to the Lymelight
probably wasn’t the best idea—the current was strong this far offshore and the
tide could be unpredictable—but logic wasn’t winning any arguments with Hanna
at the moment. Climbing onto the column of stone, she picked her way down the
rocky outcropping.

☼

“Can
you say ‘awkward’?” Ella giggled after Hanna left.

Awkward
didn’t even begin to cover it. Scalding shame? Searing guilt? Even those seemed
weak compared to the acrid discomfort Derick was experiencing. Standing, he
told Ella that he would return in a minute and let himself out the back door.
He didn’t know where Hanna had gone or why he needed to find her; he just knew
it was necessary.

Deciding
to head toward the breakwater, Derick forced himself to take a closer look at
his behavior over the past few weeks. He didn’t like what he saw, especially
seen through someone else’s eyes.

Sophie
had never approved of Ella, and she’d made it clear. His sister had warned him
about the age difference and Ella’s lack of regard for personal boundaries, but
Derick had allowed himself to discount her advice on the grounds that no one
else was bothered with it. He had shoved his sister’s complaints into a file
marked
disapproving older sibling
and moved on. Adam’s opinions usually
went along with his wife’s as a general rule, so his vote didn’t really count.
Benny glowered at everyone, so there was no knowing one way or the other what
he thought.

Charles,
the only person with an authentic right to disapprove, seemed nothing but
delighted with his sister’s conquest.

That
left Hanna.

Her
complaints could hardly be objective given the situation, but something in the
way she’d looked at him, something in her voice when she’d scolded him, made
Derick feel small. Like he’d disappointed her. Like she expected more of him,
and he’d fallen short.

Kicking
a soda can in his path, Derick shoved his hands in his pockets. He should have
picked it up, but taking his anger out on the environment felt better.

SIXTEEN

THE
LYMELIGHT

Captain
Wentworth was all attention, looking and listening with his whole soul.

—Jane Austen,
Persuasion

At the
end of the breakwater Hanna kicked off her flip-flops, pressing her back into
the brick exterior of the lighthouse and sliding down to its base. It seemed
like ages that she sat there, watching the sun’s imperceptible progress toward
the water’s edge, with nothing but the gathering tide to keep her company. At
the moment Hanna didn’t think she would care if the sea rose up and swallowed
her whole.

She
couldn’t rid her mind of the image of Derick and Ella on the sofa. The way they
hadn’t seemed to notice, let alone care, whether anyone else was in the room.
What rotten luck, to have imposed at such a moment, and with no ability to
control her reaction. A smarter spinster of twenty-eight watching her ex
falling in love with a younger girl would have turned and fled the room. But
Hanna didn’t move. She hadn’t been able to—she’d been torn between a morbid
compulsion to keep watching and the urge to throw something at their heads. In
the end, she couldn’t leave until she’d delivered the scolding they so desperately
deserved.

Now
she sat looking out at the horizon, hazy with approaching dusk. The thing that
bothered her the most, more than the impropriety of their actions, was seeing
Derick behave in such a way. It broke her heart. When they were together they’d
had careful rules about PDA that prevented any such situation. What hurt the
most was that even though Derick had come back into her life, it seemed that
the man she had fallen in love with didn’t exist anymore. Like losing him all
over again—if you could lose something you didn’t really have.

Tears,
or perhaps the stiff wind, stung Hanna’s eyes. Or maybe it was the realization
that the closure she’d never gotten had just been thrown in her face, slapped
into her unwilling hands with deafening finality.

Rolling
her sweats up to mid calf, Hanna pulled her hoodie tight around her face to
conceal the tears. From whom, she didn’t know. This thought—the reality of her
utter aloneness, not just at this moment but in general—washed over her.
Yielding to her pain, Hanna pulled her knees to her chest, let her head droop
forward, and cried.

Several
moments later, when her sobs had quieted and nothing but the sea spraying off
the breakwater could be heard, an all too-familiar voice broke the stillness.

“Isn’t
it a little dangerous to be out here by yourself?”

She
didn’t need to look to see who it was, and she wouldn’t give him the
satisfaction of seeing her tears either. “And your point is?”