LILY
The next morning, I was at the Living History Museum to help with The Savannah Yellow Fever Epidemic: A Day in the Life. Gabe’s texts had arrived late yesterday afternoon—since then, I hadn’t heard a peep from him. I’d spent a restless evening pacing around my apartment and an even more restless night awake, anxiously trying to get back in touch with him. None of my calls went through, and he hadn’t answered any of my texts, nor did I know if he’d received the ones I sent. The not knowing drove me bonkers, and around three in the morning, as I lay staring at my ceiling, it occurred to me that maybe the video call had actually been an accident. His side of the call had been pitch-black, and I hadn’t heard him say anything. All signs pointed to one conclusion, cringe-worthy in its obviousness: his phone had been in his pants the whole time. I’d asked his pocket for forgiveness. Fabulous. One hundred percent Lily right there.
Ivan and I were crammed into the upstairs bathroom together getting ready for the museum to open. I dabbed little smudges of dark-purple eye shadow under his eyes, blending them into the base of green I had already applied. He looked absolutely awful. But not nearly as awful as I felt and looked. All the crying from the day before had made my skin oily and puffy, and my now eyes were bloodshot and dry. My sister had said we were going for exhausted and unwell. And boy, was I nailing it.
The bathroom door creaked open, and my sister’s face appeared in the crack. Today she was dressed as a nurse, complete with a high starched white hat, a baby-blue dress, and an apron that looked like she’d been cutting sides of beef at the grocery store all morning.
“Why are you wearing your battlefield uniform?” I asked as I applied some purple shadow under my own already raccoonlike eyes.
“Because the clean one is covered in an unfortunate mixture of digested turnips and bananas. Whatever. It’ll be fine. If any of the tourists ask, I’ll give the party line. The yellow fever is a terrible disease!” She leaned into the bathroom a bit more. “But before things get crazy, I wanted to bring you a treat.” She slipped me a little parcel wrapped in a flour-sack towel.
I stared at it warily. “Treats” from the second half of the nineteenth century tended to be the sorts of things that made a girl really happy about large-scale industrial white-sugar production. “Please don’t tell me they’re those pine-tar candies. My gums are still burning.”
“Pine sap, and no, they aren’t.” She slid the corner of the cloth aside. Inside was a package of Twizzlers—the peely kind that come apart in little strands. They were one of my favorites, and normally I’d have been ripping those suckers apart with my teeth and wolfing them down, Lady and the Tramp style. But not today. Today I gave her a very tragic-sounding “Thanks” and handed Ivan over to her.
“Remember, team!” Daisy said as we headed down the staircase. “Exhausted and unwell!”
“I knowwww,” I moaned as I followed behind her, clumping along in my painfully tight ankle boots. If I ever had to have bunion surgery, at least I’d know why.
Downstairs, Daisy got Ivan situated in his wooden bassinet and checked on the handful of other volunteers who were helping us with Yellow Fever Day. It was, hands down, our most popular event, and every room was bustling with sickly-looking history buffs dressed to the nines. Or the mid- to late 1800s. As Daisy made her rounds, I headed down to the basement to grab some linen towels for feverish-forehead blotting from the laundry area. I closed the heavy door behind me and then flipped on the light switch that was hidden behind a squirrel-fur whisk broom. The bluish fluorescent light spilled up the staircase from the basement. The lights had been my idea. The basement was really spooky, and the lights helped a lot.
Feeling the heaviness in my heart and the tightness from my bad night’s sleep in my shoulders, I headed down the stairs. There, sitting beside the washer and dryer, underneath a buzzing and flickering rod light, was one of the volunteers. She was an elegant older lady, with her white hair in a beautiful and complicated spray of curls on top of her head. I didn’t know where Daisy found these people, but they were just fabulous. She sat on one of the spare chairs we stored down here, and I saw she was embroidering one of our linen kitchen towels. We had a few volunteers who liked to do that, and then we sold them to help support the museum.
“Hello, dear,” she said with a very welcoming smile. The floral scent of her perfume filled the air. It was unlike anything I’d smelled before. Old-fashioned and delicate. Like roses, but not quite.
“Hello!” I said and grabbed the stack of towels. I saw one of her feet peeking out from underneath her dress. Her boot was like mine, but much, much more weathered and worn. Much more believable. “Gosh, your costume is incredible. Has Daisy seen it?”
She smiled at me again and passed the needle through the fabric. “Not yet.” She’d stretched one of the dish towels in a small vintage embroidery hoop. In the center of the bottom panel, she was embroidering a single red heart. The work was fine and clean, and she was able to do it without even watching what she was doing. Amazing.
“Every time I embroider something, it ends up like I’ve got the wrong side out.”
She chuckled a little and then paused with her needle halfway through the fabric. Even her needle was an antique—smaller than the needles I used and slightly rusted at the tip. “What a beautiful locket you have there.”
Automatically, my hand went to it and clasped it tight. I had folded the paper with his name on it into a tiny square and placed it inside. As I touched it, a roiling sorrow made me feel sick to my stomach. “Thank you,” I said, clearing my throat. “It means a lot to me. I’m Lily, by the way.” I reached out my hand for hers.
“Lucinda Abrahams,” she said and shook my hand. Her fingers were ice-cold and her touch so very delicate.
An unexpected chill made me shudder. Compared to the attic, it was downright glacial down here. I rubbed my arms with my hands and felt a shiver run up my back.
Lucinda continued to embroider the towel without looking. “Do you know, when I was a young woman like you, I had a locket very much like that one.” She studied it, blinking slowly and pensively. “A man I loved very much gave it to me.”
I swallowed hard and looked down at the gold oval with its enameled lily. Even though it made me ache to look at it, it hurt even more to think of not having it close to my heart. “Someone I love gave this to me as well.”
She studied me, her eyes searching my face. It was as if she could read my anxiety—as if she knew exactly what I was feeling and why. I supposed it was written all over me, but as she studied me, I felt that she understood. That loss, that confusion, that wanting to do the right thing but not knowing how. Lovesickness like I had never known before. “If I had it all to do again, I never would have let him go.” She passed the needle through the towel once again, tightening the embroidery floss with gentle tugs. “I regret that every day.”
Her words had an almost physical effect on me, and I felt fountain of heartbreak come up through my stomach. I had been so, so happy with him. And now everything hurt so very much.
“You may feel a little better in time, dear girl.” She tugged gently on the floss once more. “Though I never have. True love is the only thing that matters.”
Feeling perilously close to the dam of tears breaking again, I managed to nod. I clutched the pile of towels to my chest as my chin began to tremble. I turned away and headed up the steps, pushing down a sob. At the top of the steps, in the shadowy darkness of the stairway, I collected myself. All I needed to do was get through a few hours here, and then I could go home and obsessively check my phone some more. The fluorescent lights flickered a few times, and I took a deep breath. I put my hand on the doorknob and then stepped back out into the museum, which was now slowly filling with visitors.
In the front room, I found Daisy pensively tending to Ivan in his nightshirt. Ivan, of course, was having a wonderful time, but Daisy was playing the concerned nursemaid to a T. And yet Ivan’s cuteness outdid even the force that was living history, and my sister’s “worry” cracked into a smile.
I leaned into the room, where she sat alone for the moment. I whispered, “That lady doing the embroidery downstairs? She’s fantastic. So believable! And so . . .” I blinked a few times, still reeling from the intensity of what she’d made me feel. “So wise.”
Daisy turned to face me. She wrinkled up her eyebrows and glanced down, as if she were looking into the basement. “Who?”
Glancing downward too, I said, “That lady. With the beautiful dress. Older, very pretty? Thin? She told me her name is Lucinda.”
Daisy sat up taller in her chair. “There is nobody named Lucinda here today, Lily.”
Ummm. What? “Oh, come on. Yes there is. I just saw her.”
But my sister seemed certain that she was right. She glanced slowly side to side. “No, there is not.”
A ripple of goose bumps prickled through me. My scalp tingled, and my fingertips went cold. “You’re sure?”
My sister nodded slowly and deliberately. “Positive.”
I tossed the basket of towels onto the fainting couch and ran down into the basement again, skidding down the last few steps, hooking my arm over the bare wood post at the bottom of the steps and twirling into the laundry room. She was gone. The chair where she’d been sitting was empty. There was no dish towel, there was no thread. There was no perfume in the air. And the basement felt about fifteen degrees warmer.
Oh. My. God.
She’d said her name was Lucinda. Lucinda. I’d heard that name before. Recently. Very recently. And then I remembered—it was when Gabe had given me my locket. Popping it open, I double-checked the engraving. To L from G. To Lucinda from George. This had been her locket. I knew it, as surely as if she’d told me herself. Even though she wasn’t sitting there anymore, her presence lingered, and so did her words. True love is the only thing that matters.
Stunned and still covered in goose bumps, I sat down on the chair where Lucinda had sat and clutched my locket in my palm. From the inside, I took out the paper with Gabe’s name on it. I hadn’t dropped it in the trash, and I hadn’t put it back in the jar either. Instead, I’d kept it as close to my heart as it could be.
I unfolded the page and stared at his name. That one simple word that meant so very much. The name of the man I loved. The name of the man I wanted to be with forever.
But I had been too scared to really open my heart to him at all.
And there was that word again. Scared. It was the bad penny that was always in my pocket. I’d done everything I could to stop myself from feeling scared—my career, my relationships, everything had been structured so that fear never got too close for comfort. But I was tired of my little golden cage. I didn’t just want to stop playing it scared. I wanted to stop playing it safe too. I wanted to take the risks I’d never, ever been brave enough to take before. I didn’t want to sit there, in my safe little world, wondering if he would text me or call me, scrambling for my phone and praying it might be him. I didn’t want to lie awake wondering about pocket dials and calculating time differences. I wanted to be beside him—with him, in every way. I wanted to break free of what I knew and into the magic of what might be. I wanted to toss that bad penny into a fountain, make a wish, and never look back.
I saw now that my fear of flying had been the perfect metaphor for what was really happening. I had so been terrified of how or even if I could live in his great big world that I hadn’t let myself believe it would ever work at all. Fear had stopped me from really opening my heart, which I had wanted so badly to do. But somewhere in the recesses of all my attempts at overcoming my fear of flying, I remembered that someone had said to me, In order to turn fear into excitement, all you have to do is breathe.
Clutching Gabe’s name in my hands, I did. I took a breath so deep that it made my pleats and bodice darts groan.
And lo and behold, it began to happen. The fear started to fall away. And there in its place was excitement at the possibilities of what could be in store for me and for us together . . . if only I would give myself a fighting chance experience them.
If only I would let go of the fear.
By holding myself back, I had hurt the one person I had fallen harder for and loved more than I ever thought possible. But what if I stopped being scared of what might be? What if I reached out and burst my bubble, at last?
I imagined it around me, like a soapy snow globe. Gabe stood on the other side of it, smiling in the sunshine. He felt so close and yet still so very far away. And so I reached out toward him and all that he represented, and as my fingertip touched the surface of my bubble, it exploded with a champagne-cork pop.
Without the fear around me, the world began to open up and possibilities seemed to come at me from every direction, whizzing toward me like fireflies. All the no bloomed into yes. I saw us together, instead of him and me somehow kept apart. One way or another, we could make it work. I was sure of it. But I knew I had to take the first step.
Scratch that. The first flight.
Never in my life had I actually wanted to get on an airplane. Now I really, really, really did. With my whole heart. He was the love of my life, and there was no way I was going to play it safe anymore. Not literally or figuratively. I wouldn’t sit and wait, hoping and praying and pining that he would come to me. Nope.
I would do just the opposite. Yes, I would get on an airplane for him. Yes, I would face down my fears. Yes, I would look him in the eye and ask him for another chance. In person. Half a world from where I stood. And if I did get another chance with him, I wouldn’t push him away. Never again. This time, I would wrap him up in my arms and never let go.
I gave his name a big smooch and bounded up the steps with my petticoats rustling. It was time to say goodbye to no, hello to yes . . . and hello to Scotland too!
It cost a fortune, it would take forty-eight hours, and I looked like I was about to get booked into an 1870s women’s penal colony in the photograph, but my new passport was officially in the works. The show was on the road! With my heart singing and Madonna blasting, I zoomed through town. I had lots to do and my mind was spinning like a disco ball, but I felt calm and steady—I was armed with a new shell of courage, and I didn’t let my worry run away with me. Mr. Markowitz would be able to tell me where Gabe was staying. Google would help me get there. I needed to buy a plane ticket. I needed to buy as many external batteries as I could find so that I could play Bejeweled for the entire flight. I needed to see if it was still OK for me to bring my knitting needles on the plane. I needed to know if I could bring snacks. I needed to do so much, but it would all be so very, very worth it. Because I was going to be with back with him. With Gabe. My Gabe. My love. With my fingers crossed all the time in hopes that he’d give me another chance.
On the way to the museum, I had avoided going down Abercorn because I just couldn’t stand the idea of passing the Willows with that pain in my heart. But now I barreled down the street with my engine roaring.
As I approached the house, though, I saw that in the front yard stood Robert E. Lee. No, wait. Wait. The pretend Lee. Jerry Whateverhisnamewas. The real estate agent. My heart sank, and I screeched to a halt. He was replacing the FOR SALE sign with one that said BUYER INTERESTED in big, bold, ominous red letters.
“No,” I said. “Oh no.” Even though I’d never really let myself believe it would belong to Gabe and me, the idea of someone else purchasing the Willows made my heart ache. In just a few days, we had experienced so much in that house. It had all started there for us, and it felt so awful to think of someone else living there so quickly after he’d left.
I rolled down my window, and General Lee leaned on the long plank in a way that was sort of weirdly reminiscent of a musket.
“Who is it?” I asked, stating the obvious and ducking down to admire the fish-scale scallop decorations and the stunning clematis in bright pink and white.
“The guy’s around here somewhere. Waiting for the inspector.” He looked slowly side to side as if he were considering something way more expansive than a suburban yard. Like, say, Shiloh or Manassas.
I gripped the steering wheel hard and took a deep breath. “Thanks,” I said and began to take my foot off the brake.
And that was when I saw it. Sitting on the front porch, on the beautiful old porch swing, was a backpack. With a bright-orange patch sewn onto it.
Gabe. Gabe was here.
The goose bumps I’d gotten in the museum basement were nothing compared to these. I threw my van in park, flung open my door, and ran up the front walkway with my petticoats gathered in my hands like a cancan dancer. I thundered up the front steps and ran to the front door. But before I got there, it swung open. And there he was.
With his arms open wide.
Oh that hug, my God, that hug. His arms around me, his laughter, his warmth. I clung to him, and he staggered back, pulling me down on top of him on the shiny staircase. I showered him with kisses as a new wave of tears fell down my cheeks. Happiness tears now, though. Pure, unfiltered happiness. He took my cheeks in his hands and kissed me—a fairy-tale kiss from my very own prince that went on and on and on.
Finally, we both pulled away for a breath. Even though it was heaven to be in his arms, I had a lot I needed him to know, and I launched into a full-scale babble. “I was coming to see you. I got my passport renewed. It’ll be ready the day after tomorrow. I was on my way to go home and buy a ticket. But now here you are.” I gasped for a breath and pressed my finger into his chest. “Here you are. I can’t believe it.”
He drew his head back from mine, searching my face. “Really? You were going to come to me?”
I nodded, feeling my cheeks flush and still panting from the thrill of running up the steps and into his arms. “I don’t want you tethered to me here. There is so much I want to see out there in the world, and I can’t think of anybody I’d rather do it with than you.”
He swept my hair aside and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”
My heart sank, and I made a kind of strangled croak. I’d already preworried my way into the second in-flight movie and whether or not I’d do better in an aisle or a window seat. “Please just let me try.”
Gabe answered first with that cocky, delicious smile of his. “Oh, I’ll let you try all right,” he said. “But I mean I don’t like the sound of you buying your own ticket. I want to be the one to buy your tickets. And I want to buy you something else too.”
And then, very slowly, he glanced around the foyer . . . and raised his eyebrow at me.
Finally, it registered what was happening. Robert E. Lee and the sign outside, and Gabe here too? He wasn’t just back to visit. He was planning to stay. And he was planning to buy the Willows. For me. For us.
“But what about your job?” I asked, with the tears running down my cheeks now. “What about your life?”
He slid his hands down my body. He gripped my thighs, and I felt his strength through all my pleats and petticoats. “We will figure it out. You want to fly and you will. But I want to have my feet on the ground. I want a home, and I want it to be with you. In this house. Just like you said.”
I let myself fall against him, holding him as tight as I possibly could. “Are we really going to live here?”
“Hell yes, we are.” His deep voice made his chest rumble against my ear. “But I got you one more thing. I just need you to stand up for a second.”
“Nope,” I said, my voice a little muffled because my cheek was mashed against his rock-solid chest. “I’m staying here forever.”
“You’re going to want to stand up for this one,” he said with a smile in his voice.
I squeezed him extra tight before I let him go and slid off him, straightening my dress as I stood.
He came up to sitting on the stairs, but he didn’t stand. Instead, he reached into his pocket, got down on one knee, and looked up into my eyes. He didn’t say anything at first. He just held my stare. Then he popped the ring box open. And I gasped. It was absolutely beautiful. But not nearly as beautiful as him.
“Will you?” he asked as he slid the ring on my finger.
My life had always had lots of love in it. But not until that moment did I have any idea at all what true love felt like. Because of him I did, and always would. I sank down onto my knees in front of him, wrapped my arms around him, and whispered, “I will, I will, I will,” as we lay in the middle of that grand old foyer, in that grand old house, in our grand new life.