CHAPTER NINE
Rhys woke early the next morning to find the world transformed. Snow had fallen overnight, cloaking the landscape in a quiet, glistening mantle. He stood by the kitchen window, sipping his first espresso of the day as the rising sun painted the crest of the hill behind the house in warm apricot hues. The shadowed slope below it glowed more subtly in purple-blue tones, turning the scene into an Impressionist masterwork. It was Saturday, and despite the fact that Will seemed to be enjoying an uncharacteristically late morning, Rhys couldn’t sleep. He was too preoccupied by thoughts of Andie.
He couldn’t shake the memory of the deadly serious expression on her face as she’d stood in the doorway to the den the previous evening. There’s something I need to talk to you about. At first he’d been convinced she was going to call him out for the hungry way he’d stared at her in Will’s bathroom. Surely that was the reason for the bruised, distrustful look in her eyes. But then she’d launched into her confession about the near accident in the crosswalk.
She was within her rights to feel shaken. There was little in his experience that was more frightening than one of Will’s impromptu escape attempts. But what he didn’t understand was the terrible trepidation that darkened her eyes and bowed her posture as she stood there waiting for his response—trembling like a whipped puppy afraid of the next lash.
Taking her in his arms had been natural, automatic, and her distress had been enough to distract him from the thumping of his own heartbeat as he folded her against him. She felt slight, but she was deceptively strong, every muscle coiled in wait. Even when she’d sighed and accepted the relief of his embrace, she held a part of herself firm and unyielding, stretched as taut as a bowstring against the length of his body.
He wondered what it would take for her to relax into softness. Probably more finesse than he would ever be able to muster. She was so skittish, wary. Right now, he just needed her to feel secure in his home. Keeping her there, working her magic on Will, was paramount. So he’d done what his instinct had told him to do right from the start: declare his friendship.
He liked her. He admired her. It was that simple. Now all he had to do was draw a big, fat line underneath their friendship and leave it at that. No more getting carried away by the fizz of elation that eddied through his bloodstream when she smiled. No more dwelling on precisely how it had felt to tug her close, the silkiness of her hair brushing his jaw, her body charged with tension as she wrestled internal forces he could only guess at.
With the world nestled beneath its white blanket, the other residents of the house took longer to wake than usual. Even Will seemed to be lulled by the calm. For once, his waking was not announced by plaintive wails from the monitor but by just a gentle rustling, followed by a sequence of murmurs with a contented, inquisitive cadence. Rhys went to collect him, and they settled in the kitchen, where a train table sat by the French doors. Will’s eyes went wide at the diamond-bright landscape beyond the windows, and he settled to play, casting furtive glances outside as if awed by the drama of the scene.
Andie was the next inhabitant of the house to appear, her booted feet drumming jauntily on the stairs before she emerged in the kitchen wearing jeans and a cherry-red sweater that made her look about seventeen. Her hair was pulled back from her freshly scrubbed face in a ponytail, and her skin and eyes gleamed. He was relieved to see that she looked happy, relaxed—a world away from how she had appeared the previous evening.
“Wow!” She looked out at the sunlight setting individual crystals ablaze across the unblemished expanse of snow. Above the brilliant whiteness, the sky was a serene blue band. “It’s gorgeous,” she declared.
She turned to Rhys with a broad smile that made something within his rib cage shift. Making way for . . . what? Nothing you should even be considering.
“Yeah, but it looks like nobody’s getting in or out until the snowplows arrive,” he pointed out. “Tom’s supposed to be coming later to visit, but we’re snowbound for now.”
“No problem,” she said, sinking to her knees beside Will at the train table. “We can settle in for a while.”
Rhys picked up a dark-green wooden train with a bronze dome, one of Thomas the Tank Engine’s pals. “Care to be Emily?”
“I’d be honored,” she laughed. “But can I have a coffee first?”
Soon they were ensconced in an elaborate game. Will giggled uncontrollably when Emily and Percy crashed and had to be hauled off to Tidmouth Sheds for repairs. Then Sir Topham Hatt was called into action to clear the tracks when an escaped herd of aliens—from a completely different play set, naturally—wandered across the express line to Knapford Station. Rhys and Andie kept the game play going, modeling for Will how the engines interacted with one another. It was actually fun doing this when he had another adult to riff off, Rhys realized. Much less exhausting than when he had to perform all the roles single-handedly, waiting for the long-deferred moment when Will would take up the pretend play himself.
Eventually the adult knees began to suffer from being pressed into the polished hardwood of the kitchen floor, so Rhys and Andie took a break to fix some pancakes. Will devoured his as he sat in his high chair, pulled up to the edge of the banquette table, while Andie and Rhys chatted about favorite breakfast foods of their childhoods. Andie confessed a secret passion for Froot Loops, while Rhys tried to explain the virtues of the rather-more-exotic Welsh delicacy laverbread, a seaweed concoction spread on hot buttered toast or mixed with porridge oats and fried into savory cakes. When he offered to ransack the pantry for a tin he thought he’d brought back from his last trip to Wales, she demurred rather quickly, declaring herself already stuffed to the brim.
Mrs. Hodge made an appearance by midmorning, her hair arranged in curlers above a tweed skirt and high-necked blouse. She was meeting one of her expat friends and going into Boston to see a show, so she was especially eager to hear the roar of the snowplows.
“Well, I don’t know about anyone else,” Andie declared, after her third coffee, “but my day won’t be complete until I’ve made some tracks in that snow.”
“I can do you one better,” Rhys told her. “I think I can find our sled in the garage. How about we take it out for a spin?”
The red plastic sled was pretty basic but would work well enough on the slope beside the driveway, he figured. He and Andie bustled about, locating gloves, scarves, hats, and boots, while Mrs. Hodge zipped Will into his snowsuit, promising hot chocolate upon their return.
Once outside, Rhys felt like they were enclosed in an idyllic snow globe. The hill behind the house blocked the wind, and the sky stretched overhead in a pristine blue dome. Andie’s red puffer jacket and Will’s blue snowsuit were bright splashes against a field of white. Will stomped around gleefully, poking holes in the clean snow and lifting it up to his mouth to enjoy the cold sensation on his tongue.
Rhys chose a launching place and took a test run to make sure the route was safe. Then he snuggled Will between his legs, and they sailed down the hill, Will squealing in delight, apparently not bothered by the fine spray of snow crystals that flew up and stung their flushed cheeks.
“Mind if I take him down?” Andie asked, as Rhys dragged the sled and its remaining occupant back to the top of the hill. She fixed him with a look that contained a flicker of the uncertainty that had undone her the prior evening.
“Be my guest.” He handed her the rope and helped her settle Will securely in place before waving them on. A lump formed in his throat as the sled took a small turn at the bottom and tipped them out into the snow. They both turned to look up at him, bright-eyed and laughing, their faces side by side, and suddenly there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world to fill his lungs.
Rhys, you’re a goner. He sucked in a sharp, painful breath, his boots crunching crystalline drifts of white powder as he trudged down the hill to help Andie to her feet. He was still overwhelmed with relief that she’d decided to stay. He felt both depleted and elated, as if he’d just run a marathon and was floating on endorphins. How was it that after only a week, her presence had become essential to him? To Will, too. He reached out, his gloved hand enfolding hers as he helped her up. Huffing out a breath of laughter, she straightened, steadying herself against him for a moment before she turned, seized the sled’s rope, and—issuing a playful challenge—bolted for the top of the hill, with Will chortling and exclaiming in her wake. Rhys didn’t know which of the two of them would suffer more when her time with them came to an end.
Jess made good on her threat to drag Andie out shopping for Oscar-party gowns, calling later in the week to lure her away from Rhys’s for an afternoon prowling the aisles at a Nordstrom Rack outlet in the suburbs, not far from Concord. Ever since Jess had moved back up from Rhode Island and Andie had registered at Boston University for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, the two sisters had begun the tradition of meeting up regularly to indulge their passion for bargain hunting.
It was the afternoon of the first meeting between Will and Rhys and Karina, and Will’s usual OT session was canceled in honor of the occasion. Andie had felt a small quake of trepidation on Rhys’s behalf, picking up on the latter’s tension as the morning wore on, but Rhys had shooed her out of the house to visit with her sister. She hoped the reunion between Will and Karina would go well, and the stress would transmute into harmony, for all their sakes.
“There they are!” Jess announced in satisfaction, pointing her cart in the direction of a tall rack of evening dresses topped with a sale sign. “This may take a while.”
Andie laughed, her spirits soaring. She still felt slightly giddy, as she had ever since her encounter with Rhys in the den, when she’d confessed to the incident in the crosswalk. From that moment, it felt like her life had been jolted from its customary track and was unfolding as if in a parallel universe.
The snowy day spent with Rhys and Will had been another revelation. The ease of Rhys’s acceptance and the joy she’d felt riding down the hill on the sled with Will felt altogether different from anything she’d ever known before. Halfway through the afternoon, Tom had arrived to hang out, and the way the afternoon segued from sledding to pizza to—later in the evening—a bottle of wine opened in front of the fireplace had been the purest pleasure. This was what it felt like to be included as a matter of course, to participate in the quotidian happenings and rhythms of a household as a legitimate member. Not as some reprehensible shadow, ashamed to tread too heavily or to make one’s presence felt.
The experience sat on her shoulders like an ornate cloak, its sumptuous folds and ostentatious gilding a tremendous luxury, but still an awkward fit. Her smiles, jokes, and interjections had come as if from some deeply buried muscle memory, her conversational maneuvers still stiff and heavy but gradually loosening as she stretched and moved beneath the mantle of their regard.
It was Rhys’s pledge of friendship that had made all the difference, she knew, putting some kind of platform back under her feet, rescuing her from the free fall she’d started the moment they’d shared that fond glance above Will’s head in the bathroom. Tom’s presence helped still further, diluting the hothouse intimacy she felt with Rhys. Her chest still knotted when she thought about how it had felt to stand wrapped in his arms that night in the den, her entire body galvanized with electricity. It had been too good, too much. As if she were standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and someone had snatched away the safety rail.
“I’m going to grab a selection, and we’ll see how things shake out,” Jess declared, intruding on Andie’s thoughts. She looked like an elegant, freckled praying mantis, with her long, angular limbs and that acquisitive gleam in her eye. “But we’re not leaving until we’ve bought something.”
“Jess, I don’t need an evening dress,” Andie protested, but her heart wasn’t really in it. She felt a rare thrill of pleasure at the idea of actually buying one of the beautiful garments, after all those years of simply looking.
“Of course you do.” Jess set her straight. “For next year’s Oscar party, which you’re not missing.”
“It’s almost a year away.” She felt her resistance fading.
“You won’t find better prices than these. Unless you’re too fancy for last season’s style, now that you’re staying in that mansion and all.”
“You’re impossible.” Andie flashed a long-suffering look at her sister but had to smother a secret smile as she sifted through the rack, her fingers drawn to the rich colors and silky fabrics. They headed for the attendant, bearing a heap of garments that far exceeded the dressing-room limit.
“We’ll wait for rooms side by side,” Jess told the woman.
Once ensconced in a changing-room stall, Andie peeled her jeans down to her ankles and smoothed the dresses over the top, hobbling out into the aisle to show Jess each selection. They each had their merits, but none quite lived up to the elusive vision that swam in the back of her mind. Her sister, of course, looked effortlessly chic in the avant-garde styles she preferred, particularly one bronze silk asymmetric creation that combined a daring neckline with intricate, cascading pleats that grazed the floor.
“I have large dry-cleaning bills in my future,” Jess laughed. “Now, what about you?” She fixed Andie with her sherry-colored stare and reached into her changing room to fish out a dove-gray lace gown with a lavender grosgrain-ribbon belt. The silvery overlay was intricate and gossamer fine, and a swirl of gray tulle began where the fitted lace ended at midthigh. “I found this for you to try.”
Andie stood in the stall with the delicate garment in her hands. This one might warrant actually taking the jeans completely off. She gave in to a shiver of anticipation as she kicked her feet free and wriggled into the dress, feeling the satisfying slither of the zip as she reached to fasten it, and the gown encased her like a second skin. A dizzyingly gorgeous second skin that made her original skin glow the color of fresh cream. Wow. Just wow.
She pulled her hair from its elastic and shook it over her shoulders before stepping out to show Jess, who slapped her hand over her mouth in a display of awe.
“If Monica Bellucci and Rachel Weisz had a love child, she could only hope to look like that.” Her appraisal swept lower. “Minus the plaid socks. You have to buy this.”
“No.” Andie demurred from long habit. “It’s so expensive.”
Fifteen minutes later, Andie was being steered toward the nearest Starbucks, a garment bag knocking against her hip.
“You could sell jockstraps in a nunnery,” she complained as she snagged a table.
“You deny yourself things, Andie,” Jess commented, with a look that spoke of more than evening gowns. “It’s high time you gave up your sackcloth and ashes.”
“What can I get you to drink?” Andie pointedly ignored her sister’s confrontational glare but allowed her words to resonate.
“Let me get it,” Jess insisted. “After all, I’m the one who forced you to buy a Badgley Mischka.”
Andie relaxed back into her seat, pushing back the urge to peel open a corner of the garment bag and pay homage to the glory of the silver-gray gown. There was something to be said for the adrenaline rush of a purchase made purely for pleasure.
“Do you realize this is the farthest west I’ve been since last year’s maple-sugaring party?” Jess mused as she placed their cups down on the table. These days, she was far more likely to go to New York for work than to travel more than five miles west of Boston.
“You’ll be getting a nosebleed next, we’re so far out in the sticks.” Andie smiled, rippling the surface of her coffee with the plastic stirrer.
“I talked to Susan the other day.” Jess’s voice dipped low. Jess always referred to their mother as “Susan,” usually in a brittle, ironic tone. Never “Mom.” The more familiar appellation was a courtesy that Andie continued to bestow, more out of wishful thinking than anything else.
“Oh God, it’s almost maple-syrup time, isn’t it?”
“Yup. She’s determined to rope us in again.”
Every winter, their mother tapped the maple trees that grew on her fifty-four acres and threw open her doors for a maple-sugaring party and pancake breakfast to celebrate the first batch of syrup for the season. Andie and Jess generally shared the role of sugar-shack assistant, waitress, and all-purpose lackey at the community event, where Susan drummed up customers for her farm stand. Louisa and Rose were always honored guests, too busy tending to their spirited broods to offer much help.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” Jess pointed out. “You don’t owe her anything.”
Andie opened her mouth to speak but then snapped it shut, the glow rubbing off her mood. That was where Jess had it wrong. Andie couldn’t escape the notion that, in fact, she did owe her mother. That if she couldn’t restore her son to her, the least she could do was to show up each year and perform her public penance in her mother’s virtual morality play. With the Tilly family’s Christmases and Thanksgivings having been abandoned seventeen years ago, Susan’s pancake breakfast was her one big celebration of the year, the one ritual Andie was still a part of. Her role was a necessary foil to her mother’s star turn as martyr and plucky survivor. She couldn’t deny her mother the satisfaction. Besides, there was always the chance—a slim one, admittedly—that she and Susan would finally find their way to reconciliation.
“No, I’ll go,” Andie said with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
Andie was secretly proud of her mother for the entrepreneurial spirit and fierce drive that had made the farm a local attraction and a pillar of the Camden economy. After she had emerged from her husband’s long shadow, Susan had demonstrated that there wasn’t much she couldn’t overcome. If only she weren’t so determined to deny Andie’s ability to do the same. In her mind, her youngest daughter was perpetually hapless, tainted by tragedy.
“Andie,” Jess said gently, “there’s something else I wanted to tell you.”
Time slowed down as Andie looked at her sister across the wobbly café table and finally took in the significance of two things that had pinged at the edge of her consciousness since Jess had sat down. Rather than evoking the dark-roasted richness of her sister’s favorite coffee brew, the steam rising from Jess’s cup gave off the fragrant, grassy scent of green tea. And, instead of waving her free hand around to punctuate her speech, Jess had draped it over her stomach in a protective, cherishing pose that women have adopted since time immemorial.
Andie knew, in that moment, exactly what it was her sister was about to say.
“I’m pregnant,” Jess confirmed, and Andie tried to hold on to her senses as the room spun and the bottom fell out of her world.
There was something her lungs were supposed to be doing. Oh, yes. Breathing. The chatter of the crowd and the intrusive whine of the steam nozzle on the espresso machine filled in the silence for a beat, giving Andie a chance to gather herself.
Jess. Pregnant. Of course, it made perfect sense. That was what people did when they grew up, right? They settled down and had kids. Women like Jess didn’t settle for the boyfriends that were Andie’s usual fodder—pretty, commitment-phobic boys with stupid facial hair and an air of perpetual irony. They married kind, serious men like Ben. Men with commitment enough to launch a new generation into this world and stick around for the duration. Men like Rhys, in fact. Although he was so far beyond the usual run of guys that he might as well be from a different species.
“Oh my God!” Andie shrieked, holding on to her wits long enough to give Jess the excited reaction she deserved.
Jess and her devoted, funny husband would be the very best of parents, and Andie was truly happy for them. Or, at least, she would be, as soon as she managed to smother the almost-debilitating fear that this would alter her bond with Jess. Throughout their adult lives, Louisa and Rose had been the ones who hunkered down in Camden and popped out Susan’s grandchildren, while Jess and Andie pursued their careers in the wider world and served as each other’s staunchest supporters. Would Susan now try to sink her claws into Jess? Andie couldn’t let that happen.
“You’re on notice that you’re my go-to babysitter,” her sister said firmly. “And you’re already the baby’s favorite aunt.”
Andie felt an irrepressible rush of warmth. It was so like Jess to effortlessly intuit Andie’s fears and dispatch them without a moment’s hesitation. She took a deep breath, infusing her tone with every ounce of the warmth she felt toward the sister who’d picked up the pieces after Susan had done her worst. “I’m so, so happy for you, Jess.”
Jess gave a little hiccup, her surfeit of emotion spilling over. “I sometimes wonder whether I have it in me to get it right. Raising kids, I mean. You know . . . after the example they set for us?”
Andie had no doubts. She could never do it, but Jess . . . well, Jess was strong. There was something vibrant and untouchable in her nature that had always enabled her to hold herself above the rank bitterness of the Tilly household.
“Look at Louisa and Rose,” Andie said. “If they can manage it, you certainly can.”
“Yeah, they’re doing fine, apparently. But they got out sooner than we did.”
“You’re fine, Jess. More than fine, actually. You’re perfect.” Andie meant it. After all, out of the four Tilly sisters, it was only Andie herself who had really gotten away too late. “Does anyone else know?”
“Are you kidding?” Jess laughed. “I literally just peed on the stick this morning. You’re the only one we’ve told. We’re going to wait until the end of the first trimester to tell Susan. Or maybe until the baby turns eighteen.”
Andie chuckled grimly. “Well, if she’s still in the dark, at least she won’t try to co-opt you at the pancake breakfast. Promise you’ll stick with me?”
“Of course I’ll stick with you. Always. And hey, you should invite Rhys. Will would love the petting zoo. Susan posted on the farm’s Facebook page that they got some alpacas and a couple of miniature horses. Blond ones. They’re so cute they’d make your eyes bleed.”
“Maybe,” Andie equivocated. The very idea of bringing Rhys within spitting distance of Susan was likely to give her hives.
“Okay, I have to pee,” Jess grumbled. “It begins! But I’m not going to be one of those high-maintenance pregnant women. I promise.”
“All right, go!” Andie laughed. She sat motionless at the table as Jess swished into the restroom, letting this new reality settle over her, delicately feeling out her reaction as if she were probing her mouth for a new tooth. After the initial shock subsided, she was surprised to discover that what she felt—far more acutely than the fear that had always surged at the idea of Jess having children—was a gentle buzz of excitement. The optimism that had lifted her over the past few days reasserted itself, and warmth bloomed in her chest.
When Jess returned to the table, they chatted about ultrasounds, maternity clothes, and outlandish contenders for baby names. Persephone emerged as the day’s top pick for a girl; Silas, for a boy. Andie had never had the chance to experience this with Louisa or Rose.
As she and Jess hugged and finally went their separate ways, Andie’s eyes pricked with tears. She found Ernie and had to sit for several minutes before she was able to fit the key into the ignition. Her eyes brimmed and overflowed as she was gripped by a blend of happiness and grief so confusing that she lost track of what she was even crying about. She shook her head and started Ernie with a businesslike flick of the wrist, wondering at the power of those warm tears that seemed intent on carving inroads in the glacial lump in her chest that had been her touchstone for so long.