It was a really great day of tutoring for Bella, but not so much for the interaction between Caspian and myself. When I was done with tutoring, I let Caspian know I was leaving, and all I got was a nod of his head. He was acting so strangely toward me, and I couldn’t help but think that everything I had hoped for was quickly going down the drain. After Monday’s awesome time together, he became incredibly distant, first letting me go the day before after only an hour, and then barely speaking to me the next. I was confused, not understanding his immediate change in feelings toward me. I tried to run through my actions toward him, making sure I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I couldn’t come up with anything. My heart hurt thinking about it, knowing how things like this ended, and it wasn’t good.

When I left his house, I decided that going home and sulking around the house was probably not the best idea, so I headed over to Aggie’s to grab a late lunch. I had made Bella a sandwich earlier since Caspian didn’t seem interested in having lunch with the two of us. I was so upset about the way he was acting toward me that I wasn’t hungry. When I got to Aggie’s, it was pretty busy, and I stood in line, oblivious to what was going on around me. I ordered my lunch and walked over to the side to fix my coffee. As I made my way to a booth in the back, I was stopped by a familiar voice.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Betty said with a smile.

“Mrs. Hart.” I smiled.

“Please, call me Betty,” she said, shaking her head. “Sit down. Have lunch with me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, laughing at her strong personality. “How is your day?”

“It’s good, dealing with the nosey townspeople as usual.” She laughed. “Are you done with tutoring for the day?”

“Yeah, Bella did really great.” I smiled. “I am constantly blown away with how smart Bella is. She just gets everything I throw at her. If she doesn’t understand something, she gets super serious and forces herself to figure it out, even when she isn’t in tutoring. It’s really something.”

“She gets that from her mother, stubborn and determined,” she said, smiling. “Don’t you usually eat lunch with them?”

“I do, but Caspian seemed, um, a bit distracted today,” I replied, looking down at my sandwich.

“How are things with Caspian?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Come on now, I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.” She laughed. “I know my son better than anyone, and I know when he has a thing for a woman. He definitely has a thing for you. You guys really got along great at the beach, and the way he talked about you and to you, well, it reminded me of Caspian before life took a toll on him. It’s written all over his face how he feels about you, even when he is being stubborn and overthinking everything.”

I could feel the heat in my cheeks, and I knew that I was blushing hard in front of Betty. She was a very perceptive woman, and she was right on the money about Caspian having a thing for me. It was hard not to talk to her about it. She was one of the only people I knew in Blue Hill, and on top of that, she knew Caspian better than I did. She was the perfect person to help me understand what exactly was going on with him, but I wasn’t sure if I should tell her what had been going on. What if Caspian found out I was talking to his mother? He would probably be furious, and I didn’t blame him for that at all. Still, sitting there, feeling my chest swelling and my heart aching, I had to talk to someone.

“Okay, look, there is something going on, but please don’t repeat any of this to Caspian. If he knew I was talking to his mother about personal stuff, he would definitely fire me and even worse, probably never speak to me again.”

“My lips are sealed,” she replied.

“Something did, or has, happened between Caspian and me,” I said shyly. “It wasn’t planned or even expected, but it was like we were drawn to each other. Everything seemed perfect, comfortable, and oddly right. There wasn’t that normal anxiety or fear, and we just kind of melded together naturally. It was the first time in my life that something happened like that so organically, and it was instantly like we had known each other our entire lives. He seemed like it was something he wanted, something that made him smile in a way I hadn’t seen, and it flowed over to Bella, too, who I love to death. She stole my heart in the first thirty seconds.”

“And then Caspian stole your heart after,” she said kindly.

“Yeah,” I said, looking down. “He did. Watching him sing Frozen songs, pinky promises, eskimo kisses with Bella, and the tone of voice that he talked to me stole my heart right out from under me. I wasn’t expecting it, and I didn’t see it coming, but I was really happy when it happened.”

“So, what has changed?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “Two days ago, we had burgers on the porch, we laughed, talked, played with Bella, and when she fell asleep on the couch, we sat out on the deck relaxing to the sound of the ocean. I left that evening, and it was perfect. By the time I got back the next day, though, he was distant. He went for a walk while I was tutoring Bella, and when he got home, he let me go for the day after only an hour. He said it was a treat for Bella for doing so well, but his demeanor toward me had changed. Then today, he didn’t eat lunch with us, and he barely spoke to me at all when I left. It is seriously like some kind of switch went off inside of him as quickly as it had initially been turned on. So here I am, moping around, sitting in a café with his mom, talking about my love life, or lack thereof.”

“Lacey, do you know what happened to Bella’s mother?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen all the pictures in the house, but no one ever talks about her. Bella hasn’t said a word, and when I’ve asked Caspian about it, he has told me he didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to give him his privacy and not push him to tell me something that he obviously was not ready to tell me. Whatever it is, it seems like it really bothers him, and part of me wonders if whatever happened there is the reason he is pushing me away like he is.”

“Personally, I think that you deserve to know,” she said. “However, at the same time, it is not my place to share that information with you. Caspian needs to be the one to tell you what happened to Isabella.”

“Isabella is her name? Is that where Bella came from?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “They named Bella after her mother. It wasn’t something I had seen happen before, but now, I am really glad that they made the decision to do so. Look, there is a lot of history that Caspian holds very close to his heart. He is a man that has witnessed tragedy. He has felt the pain of losing the love of his life and mother of his daughter in one way or another, and he has had to adjust to changes that most people wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to handle. And at the end of all of that, comes you, this beautiful, kind woman that is open and ready to be there for him. It’s hard for him to see that. Patience is the name of the game in this situation. I promise you that if you give him time, he will start to come around. If he has been seeing you like this, his head will be swimming with all kinds of questions that only he can answer for himself. I wish that I could tell you more to help, but this is something you and him will have to discuss further. Just know that whatever he felt for you last week didn’t just disappear. It’s still there. He just has to understand what it is that he is feeling and let himself off the hook.”

Listening to Betty made everything a bit confusing because I was missing a very vital part of the story: what happened to Bella’s mother. It made everything seem so cryptic, but I still felt a little bit better than when I arrived. Knowing that he still felt the same way toward me that he did a few days ago gave me hope that I could be there for him and eventually get us back to that loving and fun man I knew was still in there.

Betty gave me a huge hug before I left, and I jumped in my car and headed back to the house. I grabbed a quilt out of the cabinet and went out onto the beach where the peace and calm of the ocean would help me think. If Betty thought I should keep trying, then I trusted her judgment. She knew Caspian better than anyone else did. I wanted to find out what happened to Isabella, where she was, and why he was suffering so strongly about that part of his life. I didn’t want to know just to know or to figure out a way to work around it. I wanted to know so that I could help him heal from whatever break was in his heart.

It was obvious that he cared about me. I was going to let myself have that one, but whatever was standing in his way of keeping me close was really hard to understand. I had become determined to figure out why he wouldn’t talk to be about Bella’s mom. The truth was, I didn’t know Caspian that well. I had only just met him a couple weeks before, but I wanted to know him well enough that he could learn to confide in me, lean on me, and come to me with anything in the world. It would be a challenge, and the simpler thing to do would be to just let it fizzle out and focus on Bella, but simple was not always what was best. My grandfather taught me that at a young age. Sometimes, you have to fight for what you want, especially when you know that the other person wants it too, even if they have other things standing in the way.

I didn’t fight so hard to have a life, to move out here away from the city to find myself, just to throw away the only thing I’ve ever felt so strongly about. My grandparents would be disappointed if I didn’t continue to follow my dreams, and those dreams now included Caspian. I didn’t know if in the end we would work or not—who could know that?—but I did know there was enough between us that I wanted the chance to find that out. I didn’t want to be pushed to the side and forced to let go of something that made life really beautiful, and that was love.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sitting right there on the beach, thinking of ways to get Caspian to open up to me. The sea air was almost healing me in a way, giving me the strength to push past my anxiety and go after what I wanted. Going with the flow only worked when you got what you were looking for. This was going to call for a bit more energy.