Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1) (19 page)

“You should know. That information directly relates to your development’s chances at success. Maybe we could get some people up there. There has to be property available for hotel development.”

“Dad.”

“I’m just thinking aloud, Iris. But you should be thinking these things, too! That’s your job.”

There was just no arguing with him. If I tried to explain to him the way that this project made me feel, to know that I was helping my cousins, to know that I was making my grandmother proud… he would never understand that. What was the point?

“You’re right,” I said, my voice flat. “I should present information relating to monetizing the property through sale so they have the whole picture.”

“That’s all I’m saying.” He sounded much happier now that I was agreeing with him. “You want them to have every option presented.”

As if Mimi and Pops would ever sell this place to an off-island developer. They’d had offers over the years. It was a valuable piece of real estate. But they would rather let it sit empty all this time rather than sell it off to someone outside of the family.

And my dad should know that. Because he knew them. He had been married to my mother for twenty years.

“Well,” he said, sighing, “I can’t pretend like I think this is the best use of your time and talents, Iris. But I am pleased to hear that you’re working on something worthwhile.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, wanting nothing more than to get off the phone with him. I couldn’t shake the sense that he wasn’t hearing me, that he had no interest in what I had to say on the topic. Had it always been this way when we talked? It made my stomach hurt.

“I’ll call you next week,” he said. “Answer your phone, Iris.”

“I will.” And then he was gone, no goodbye, no I love you. And never once in the conversation did he ask me how I was doing. All he cared about was
what
I was doing. And how I could do it better.

I set the phone on the counter and rested my head in my hands, feeling suddenly exhausted. The thought of going through the inventory was completely unappealing. Maybe I should just give up and go to David’s now—

“Iris.”

What the hell kind of luck was this?
I wondered, looking up to see my mother standing in the doorway to the dining room. Both of my parents in the space of five minutes.

And from the look on her face, I had a feeling she had heard a good deal of that phone call.

“Hey, Mom,” I said. “What’s up?”

“That was you father?”

“Yup.” I considered lying and telling her that he’d said hi. Right. Really believable. He hadn’t even asked me how Pops was doing.

“We need to discuss this.” She sounded, for one brief moment, just the way I remembered her. The sure-of-herself, no-nonsense, getting-shit-done Jas Holder. The woman who I was sure would rule the world one day. But then she tossed her long wavy hair over her shoulder, and I knew it was just an illusion. She hadn’t been that woman in years.

“What, Mom? What do we need to discuss?”

“What I just heard you saying. About monetizing the restaurant?”

Great. “That was just Dad, Mom. You know how he is—”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, it seemed easier to just let him think about the situation the way he was most comfortable with.”

She frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

So?
I wanted to ask.
What does my relationship with my father have to do with you?

“Iris,” she continued when I didn’t answer, coming into the room and approaching the bar. “Why are you doing all of this work?”

I glared at her. “Why do you think, Mom?”

“I thought it was to help your cousin,” she said, watching my face closely. “Until I heard that conversation.”

A hot flash of anger shot through me. “Are you accusing me of something, Mom?”

“I just want to understand your motivations.”

I stood up, wanting to hit something, wanting to hit her. She wanted to understand me? Well, that was nice. Where was that desire to understand twelve years ago?

“I’m leaving.”

“Iris, I want to talk to you about this. Your family—”

“I know my family, Mother!” I shouted. “I’ve been working my ass off to help them for the last four weeks while you’ve been shut up in that art studio of yours. I don’t need a lecture from you.”

She reached for me. “Sweetheart—”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare.” She was looking at me, wide-eyed, like I’d hurt her, and I was suddenly so angry with her I really could have hit her. I shoved my hands in my pockets so she wouldn’t see how they were shaking. “You have no right to talk to me about family, Mom. You left yours, remember?”

“I did not leave you,” she protested. “I brought you with me.”

“Yes, destroying my family in the process!”

“I tried to do what I thought was right, Iris.”

“Right for you, maybe. Not right for me. You weren’t thinking of me at all when you left.”

She shook her head, looking sad. “I
was
thinking about you. I wanted to show you a different life. A life where you could learn to be happy in your own skin. A life where the pressure to succeed didn’t drag you down, change you.”

“Well, look how well that turned out for me,” I sneered, and then it wasn’t just my hands that were shaking. I struggled to push down the emotion that was welling in me, the urge to burst into tears, to ask her how things had gotten so messed up. To ask her how I could fix it.

“Iris, please.” She was reaching for me again, and I pulled away, running to the door so that I wouldn’t be tempted to fall into her arms. “Wait!”

“Why?” I cried. “So you can tell me how much better off you were, here, away from me and Dad?”

“No.” She was shaking her head, walking toward me, and I had to get out of there, get away from her. “I just want you to think, sweetheart. Think about why you’re doing this.” She gestured around the room. “Think about what would really make you happy.”

I didn’t want to listen to her anymore. She couldn’t help me. She couldn’t give me answers. This was the only advice she’d been able to offer since she left. Be happy in your own skin. Do things for your own reasons. What did that even mean? How in the hell was I supposed to know what it felt like to be happy in my own skin?

Before she could say another word, I spun on my heel and ran from the room.

W
hen I was sixteen
, my mom and I fought. A lot. It was understandable. She had, after all, recently left my father with no warning and forced me to move with her to a tiny little island in the middle of nowhere. I had just gotten my driver’s license, had been hoping for a used car for my birthday. Instead, she moved me to Lilac Bay, a place so backward, they didn’t even allow cars.

I was angry. Really, really angry. And all of that anger was directed at her. She was the one who left. My dad hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d been successful, providing for us, setting an example that I would strive to live up to my entire life. She’d been that way, too, once. An example. I loved my dad, admired my dad. But I wanted to
be
my mother. Wanted to wear designer suits and expensive heels and walk around like I owned the world. I wanted to make more money than my husband, wanted to head my own firm, wanted to be the one that made the deals. The one everyone else envied, emulated. My mom was
cool
.

Until one day, she decided she didn’t want to be that person anymore. She put away her suits and her heels and started wearing her flowy skirts. She traded her ever-present laptop for a paintbrush. It was bad enough having to leave my dad. But watching her change overnight made it feel like I had lost both parents. I didn’t know this woman, this new version of my mother who moved back in with her parents and let everyone start calling her Minny again.

I hated living on the island. Hated being so close to the water and the nightmares that came along with it. Hated that I had nowhere to go when I was so angry with my mother I could start punching things. The only good thing I had was Posey. And, eventually, David.

“Make the best of it,” my father had said the last time I talked to him before his business trip overseas, a week before my mom and I left Chicago. He said it in the tone of voice that made it obvious he thought the odds were stacked against me.

But I did try. I tried to make friends at school. Tried to smile at the other girls who went from gaping at me as the new student to glaring at me as the girl who had somehow managed to get David Jenkins. I tried to find the fun in hiking in the woods or riding my bike around the island the way my cousins did. Tried to pretend hanging out in someone’s hay loft or sitting around a campfire in a field were in any way comparable to the parties I had just started getting invited to in Chicago. Tried not to talk about the restaurants or the museums or the shopping that I missed at home.

It didn’t matter. They thought I was a snob anyway. Every one of those kids looked at me and saw an outsider. It didn’t matter that I came from one of the oldest families on the island. I didn’t belong. That much was obvious. Particularly every time the subject of the water came up.

Those kids were constantly on the lake. Half of them had boats already, the Lilac Bay version of getting a car for your sweet sixteen. With a boat, you could get to the other side of the island faster than on foot. Many of the kids lived on the water, or on the little rivers and inlets that dotted the island, leading out to the bay. It was normal for Posey to take a kayak over to the shoreline when she went to visit friends. Anytime someone wanted to do real shopping, or see a movie, or even hit a McDonalds, they would take the ferry or someone’s boat. And then there were the picnics. Nothing more than an excuse to drink a few beers without getting caught, the kids in our class would take a boat over to the other side of the island, the parts that were too difficult to get to by foot with the rocky, cliffy terrain. It seemed like if you wanted to do anything even halfway fun, you had to do it in a boat.

Which didn’t work out so well for me.

It was no wonder they all thought I was a snob. I turned down most of the invitations I got. The few times I went, I sat there, terrified, so stiff and motionless, I couldn’t even talk. I must have looked like the biggest bitch in the world. Eventually, even the few invitations I got trickled into nothingness.

It bothered David. He never would have said it out loud, but I knew it did. He was young and social, and he wanted to hang out with his friends. Dating me meant spending a lot of time on our own. A lot of the time, that was good. What sixteen-year-old couple didn’t want privacy? But I knew, deep down, that there were plenty of nights when he would have rather been out with friends.

The last day that we were together was one of those days. He was supposed to go fishing with some of the guys from the football team. Other girls would be there, too, to giggle and gossip and do whatever else it is girls in this town did while their boyfriends were fishing. He’d invited me to go, and I made up an excuse. Of course. It would be better to stay home, where I knew I would be dry and safe. Even if it hurt like a stomachache to know that David would be out there having fun, without me.

I fought with my mom that day. We fought most days, to be honest, so this wasn’t anything new. But something about that fight felt worse. Maybe it was my fault, because I was upset about David. Maybe I missed my dad. For whatever reason, when she came into the kitchen, her cheeks pink with excitement, and told me that she had found an apartment for us, I snapped.

“I don’t want to move again!” I yelled. “I just got everything unpacked.”

“Sweetheart, you didn’t expect us to stay here forever,” she argued.

“Oh, yeah,” I yelled back with that level of sarcasm only attainable by sixteen-year-olds. “Why would I think that you would want to stay with family? I should have guessed that you’d want to move out—it’s what you do best.”

She closed her eyes, and I got the sense that I exhausted her. She probably wished I had never come with her in the first place. I didn’t belong on this island. I was nothing but trouble here. She’d already left my dad, now she was leaving Lilac Ridge, the only place I could imagine feeling even a little bit like home. How long until she decided she’d had enough of me, too?

“I hate you,” I hissed, eyes filling with tears. “I hate you for doing this to me.”

Then I’d run out of the house, sobbing.

I’d found David at his dad’s dock, just getting ready to leave for the fishing trip. I’d managed to stop crying by then, but he took one look at my face and knew something was wrong. “Your mom?” he asked, pulling me into a hug.

“It was the worst,” I whispered into his chest, choking on another sob.

“It’s okay, Iris,” he murmured, rubbing my back. “It’s going to get better. You guys just have to get used to this new situation.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” I cried, pulling away. “Why’d she have to bring us here?”

His face went tight, and I saw several of the kids on the boat turn toward us. Great.

“I think you need a break,” David said. He was trying to be nice, but I could see the way his jaw was clenched. He didn’t like me talking about the island, especially not in front of his friends, who already thought I was a snob. “Why don’t you come with us?”

I almost agreed. Anything to avoid going back to Lilac Ridge and my mother. Anything to stay with David, who would try to cheer me up and make me laugh. But then I looked out at the boat and flinched. There was no way I could handle being on the water right now.

David didn’t need to hear my answer. He saw me flinch. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it looked like to him. I didn’t want to hang out with his friends. I was just as snobby as they kept telling him I was. “Fine,” he said, releasing me and taking a step back. “I’m going, though.”

“David, wait—”

“No, Iris. I’m getting tired of this. They’re trying with you. Because I asked them to. Why can’t you see that?”

“This is them trying?” I asked, not bothering to lower my voice. Several of the girls were already glaring at me. Yeah. They were really trying.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he muttered, turning away.

“Hey, wait a second.” I grabbed for his arm, and he spun to face me, clearly angry.

“You don’t want to hang out with my friends,” he said, his voice low. “You put down the island constantly. You couldn’t make it more obvious that you hate it here. How is that supposed to make me feel?”

“I don’t hate it when I’m with
you
,” I cried.

David sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the anger was replaced with sadness. “You’re making this relationship thing really hard, Iris.”

I gasped, his words sending a fresh wave of pain through me.

“I’m sorry—”

But he didn’t wait to hear my apologies. “They’re waiting for me,” he said and turned back to the dock. I watched, feeling helpless and sick, as his friends welcomed him loudly, teasing him, ready to go out and start their day. I watched as he jumped in the boat, as he pulled it away from the dock, as Margo glared at me from her seat in the back. I watched as the boat pulled out into the bay, as it got smaller and smaller. David never turned back once.

So that was it. My burgeoning romance, the one good thing I had going for me on this island, gone. I tried to imagine what life here would be like without him. I would still have Posey. My cousins. But school… I didn’t want to think about school. And in just a few months, it would be winter. The ferry would shut down. I’d be stuck out here, hundreds of feet of deep, churning water separating me from the mainland. And no David to keep me from going crazy.

That afternoon, I went back to Lilac Ridge and called my dad. I told him it wasn’t working, that I couldn’t stand it. I begged him to get me out of there. I would go anywhere, to Europe with him, to boarding school. Just not Lilac Bay.

The next day, I was on the ferry heading back to the mainland, to the car service my dad had hired to come get me. I didn’t see David again for twelve years.

It was hard not to think of all of that now as I once again ran to David to save me from a fight with my mother.

I found him in his apartment, packing a basket. “Hey,” he said, surprised but smiling at my sudden appearance. “I thought I was picking you up?”

“I got done early.” I took a step toward him and pretty much threw myself into his arms.

“You okay?” he asked, squeezing me tight.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Just missed you.”

“I like the sound of that.” His voice was light, happy. He was glad I was there, not at all suspicious of my excuse for coming early, and I was relieved. I didn’t want to talk about my mom or my conversation with my dad. I didn’t want to think about it, or think about my career and what I should be doing. Or what I would do next. I just wanted to spend an afternoon with David.
It’s what I should have done last time
, I thought to myself sadly. I should have gone with him and his friends. How might things have turned out then?

“Well, if we have a little extra time,” he murmured, his hands sliding lower on my back.

I laughed, surprised to hear the sound come from my throat after the last hour. “No way, mister,” I told him, pulling back. “You said you wanted to show me something.”

“Fine.” He sighed dramatically. “I was about to leave to come get you, anyhow.” He grabbed a folded blanket from the back of a recliner and handed it to me before picking up the basket.

“Whatcha got in there?” I asked, trying to peek.

“Sandwiches, lemonade, and cookies.”

“So this is a real grownup date, huh?”

He pushed my arm lightly as we made our way outside. “Hush up.”

If David could sense I was preoccupied, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he told me about his day tending bar at Cora’s. Apparently, several of the Libbies had shown up and spent a full hour dropping things in front of the bar for him to pick up.

“Poor thing.” I gave him a squeeze. “Want me to beat them up for picking on you?”

He affected a long-suffering sigh. “That’s okay. I can manage.”

We were nearing the marina, so I could guess what was about to happen. “You okay if we take the boat?” he asked lightly.

No!
I wanted to shout.
I’m tired of facing my fears. Can’t we just stay on dry land for once?
But I didn’t say any of that. “Sure,” I said, hoping my voice sounded casual. David dropped a kiss to the top of my head, and I felt a little better.

Once David had the boat out of the harbor, he headed in the direction of the mainland, away from Blackbeard’s Cove. “Are we going into town?” I asked.

“Nope. Other side of the island.” When I shot him a questioning look, he merely smiled. “You’ll see.”

But when we pulled up to an old dock ten minutes later, I still didn’t see at all. We were on the far western part of the island, the area I knew it was hard to reach from town. It was rocky over here, the terrain hard to traverse on foot. “Come on, don’t forget the blanket,” he said, expertly tying the boat up.

“Asking questions is pointless, I assume.”

“You assume correctly.” David helped me from the boat and didn’t drop my hand. He led the way from the dock into the woods. The trail was overgrown, and it was dark out of the sun. “Is this safe?” I asked, my voice a little shaky.

“Of course it is. Besides, you’re with me.”

“And I can push you out in front of me for the bears to eat first?”

He laughed. “There are no bears on the island, Iris. Not many big mammals at all. We get some deer coming across the ice bridge in the winter and a coyote or two, but we’re a small animal kind of place.”

“Well, that’s encouraging,” I mumbled as he led me deeper into the woods. I realized that we were walking up an incline, one that was getting progressively steeper. We walked for about five minutes, my breathing getting more and more labored the higher up we got. David, of course, seemed completely unaffected. I guess that’s what happens when you spend your entire life walking around this rock without a car.

Just when I was about to start to complain, the pine trees began to thin out a little bit. Suddenly, the trees cut off entirely, and we were standing at the top of a grassy ridge, high above the water. The view was incredible, a rocky cliff wall tumbling down into the water, the entire bay stretched out before us, the mainland glinting in the distance. Just up ahead, before the forest started up again, there was a riot of color. Purple.