Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1) Page 4

  “It’s been too long,” she whispered in my ear, and I felt a stab of guilt. For most of my life, I had seen her multiple times a year, either visits here on the island or on the mainland at my Uncle Frank’s vacation cabin in Traverse City. My mom and I had even lived with her for those few short months after the divorce. But that was the last time I’d set foot on the island. In recent years, our only visits took place at the cabin. And as my grandfather got too sick for travel, those visits had petered out almost completely. I couldn’t even say for sure when the last time was that I had seen her. Christmas two years ago? The Easter before that?

  “I know,” I whispered back, starting to move away. But she didn’t loosen her arms, only held me tighter.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I’m glad I’m here, too, Mimi,” I said. And for the first time since I’d decided to make the trip, I actually was glad to be on the island.

  Dinner at my grandmother’s house was loud, chaotic, and more than a little stressful. Delicious, too, but I was pretty sure the roast chicken and potatoes would have tasted even better if I could have enjoyed them with a little peace and quiet—and, if I’m being honest, if I hadn’t just met Jerry’s chicken a few hours before. As it had been years since I was subjected to a Powell family dinner, I was more than a little rusty with the skill of following no fewer than five conversations at once without getting a headache.

  To my great surprise and relief, no one asked me about my job or the circumstances that had led me back to the island. Sure, they danced around it a little. I caught more than one concerned, searching gaze out of the corner of my eye as I ate. And Aunt Deen subjected us to a ten-minute rant about the perils of big-city living. Apparently, she had recently been down to the state capitol in Lansing for her job as town clerk, and was convinced she had nearly been mugged waiting at an intersection.

  “Right there on the street!” she cried, eyes wide as she looked from one sympathetic face to the next. “In broad daylight!” Then a pointed glance in my direction. “I can tell you, I had never been more glad to see our cozy little island when I got home.”

  I stuffed a spoonful of mashed potatoes in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to respond that a man bumping into her arm could hardly be classified as a near mugging. Besides, I didn’t think anyone at the table would be too sympathetic to my position that the water surrounding this island was a hell of a lot more dangerous than any would-be mugger in Chicago.

  If I thought I was out of the woods, my cousin Andrew, who worked in the accounting department for the city, quickly dashed my hopes. “Did you all see the board at Town Hall this morning?” he asked, his voice way too casual to actually be casual. “Lots of hiring happening for the season, looks like. Plenty of jobs for someone who might need a, uh, fresh start.”

  I nearly choked on my chicken. Was he honestly suggesting I get a job here? Was I supposed to go from developing and selling the hottest hotels, condominiums, and restaurants in Chicago to…what? Selling ice cream to tourists in Town Square? Helping my cousin Edward in one of the fudge shops on Main Street?

  “You’re real subtle, you know, Andrew?” Posey rolled her eyes at her cousin. “Iris doesn’t need to find a job.” She linked her arm through mine. “She’s going to help me at the café.”

  “I am?”

  She faced me, eyes wide. “Didn’t I ask you?”

  “No, Pose. You didn’t.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” Greg asked, smirking at his little sister.

  “Come on, Iris!” she pleaded. “Once school gets out, I’ll be so bored at the café all day. We could totally have fun together. Just like the old days.”

  The old days had consisted of the two of us selling coffee to locals in the dead pre-tourist months. Hardly scintillating work.

  “Remember the dance parties after closing?” she asked. “And all the ‘mistake’ fudge we got to eat?” She made over-exaggerated air quotes around the word mistake, and I snickered—until Mimi cleared her throat loudly.

  “Mistake fudge, eh? It’s a wonder I didn’t lose money on you two.”

  “Well,” Posey said quickly, “I would never do something like that now.”

  Mimi rolled her eyes, clearly disbelieving, but she was smiling when she turned to me. “It actually would help me out, dear. With your grandfather, it’s harder to get down there as much as I would like. To keep an eye on the business things.”

  “What she’s saying,” Posey cut in, “is that I’m terrible at business.”

  “I would never say that,” Mimi argued. But her eyes made it clear Posey was more or less on the money.

  I supposed it wouldn’t be too bad. Work at the café wouldn’t be hard. And I would get to spend more time with Posey. Plus, sitting around alone all day thinking about what I would have been doing in Chicago was probably not the healthiest thing for me. And, of course, it was basically impossible to deny my grandmother when she actually asked for something—it happened so rarely. She was much more likely to give a favor than ask for one.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  Posey beamed at me. “This is going to be so fun!” she squealed.

  I wasn’t exactly sure about fun but I was fairly confident it wouldn’t be too terrible. It was selling coffee and sandwiches for God’s sake. What was the worst that could happen? And it wasn’t like it needed to be long term. I could help for a few weeks, assuage some of my guilt at being the absent grandchild, and move along.

  “Zane,” my Uncle Marcus called from the other end of the table. “What’s this I hear about the Big Hotel raising prices again?”

  There was a chorus of disbelief around the table as everyone turned to Zane, the dining room manager of the hotel in question. “Again?” Aunt Lindsey asked. “Do they want to price the tourists out before the season even starts?”

  I sighed a little in relief. Now that the topic of the season had been raised, I knew I was safe from further discussion about my career. There was nothing islanders loved to do more than worry about the season.

  As my family went on and on about the upcoming season and our plates steadily emptied, it became harder and harder not to let my gaze flicker over to the lone vacant seat kitty-corner from me. I was annoyed with myself for caring. It’s not like she had told me she would be here when I arrived, although Posey had said she was coming. Knowing my mother, she could have been preoccupied with any number of things. This was the woman, after all, who had once sent the nanny to my ballet recital in her place because she was in the middle of closing a big deal.

  And I didn’t blame her for that. I would have done the same thing. A deal is a deal.

  Of course, these days, I doubted her absence had anything to do with something as important as a multi-million-dollar deal.

  As if summoned there by my thoughts, the front door banged open loudly, setting Jasper off in another flurry of wheezy barks. “Hey there, little Jaspy man!” a familiar voice cooed. I felt my back stiffen and tried to ignore the worried glance Posey shot me.

  And then she was standing there in the doorway to the dining room. Her gaze swept the room briefly before it landed on me. Her smile froze, and I wondered what my face looked like.

  “Iris,” she said. Just my name. Was that a tremor in her voice?

  I swallowed my mashed potatoes over a newly dry throat and stood. “Hi, Mom.”

  Suddenly, she was all movement, sweeping around the table, long skirt and flowing scarves trailing behind her, and pulling me into her arms. I stood there, arms limp on her shoulders, trying to make myself feel something.

  It was strange—just stepping into my grandmother’s house set off a riot of memories. Once that coffee and chocolate smell, so ubiquitous to the café, hit my nose, I would have known exactly where I was even blindfolded. But here I was, holding my own mother, and I got no such sense memory.

  The mother that I remembered, the woman who lived with Dad and me in Chicago until I tur
ned sixteen, possessed only a passing resemblance to this one. That woman had been sleek and beautiful, dressed to the nines no matter the occasion. A constant bundle of energy, always on the phone, her laptop practically glued to her fingers. “She’s in take-over-the-world mode,” my dad would say with a laugh, pulling me away from her workspace in the kitchen. And I would laugh, too. I didn’t mind that she was busy, not really. Because I knew, deep down inside, that she could have taken over the world. She was that powerful, that capable. And she was my mother.

  I worshipped her.

  This woman… Her gauzy sundress, though soft, felt foreign beneath my fingertips. Her hair was no longer contained in a sleek bun. Now it hung long and curly down her back, enveloping my face as I hugged her. Gone was the familiar smell of Chanel, replaced by something woodsy, a little smoky.

  Then she was pulling back, looking at me with wet eyes, her gaze flicking quickly across my face, like she was trying to remember every detail.

  Her eyes, at least, looked the same. Granted, she had traded bold eyeliner and expertly applied smoky shadow for a smear of sparkly, baby-blue color over her lashes. But her eyes…every bit as searching, as sharp as they had ever been. Looking at her eyes felt like looking at my mother.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you got in,” she said. “I planned on it, but then a client came into the studio, and before I knew it—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, and her wince did not escape me. Maybe my voice was a little sharp. I took a breath, determined to be pleasant. “Really. Posey met me at the dock, and Mimi had food ready when I got here. I have been sufficiently welcomed.”

  Her eyes continued to search my face. “Come on, Minny,” my grandmother said, lifting the cover from a plate on the sideboard. “I saved you a plate. The rest of us are moving on to pie.”

  Posey groaned as I took my seat. “You do realize I will never fit into a wedding dress at this rate, don’t you Mimi?”

  “Hush, girl. You’ll be lovely on your wedding day.” She shot a glance down the table. “I can only hope I’m still of this earth when you finally get around to it.”

  I snorted over my glass of wine, earning a kick from Posey under the table. According to our weekly phone chats, the family was getting increasingly impatient at her lack of interest in setting the date.

  “Where is Paul, anyhow?” my mother asked, taking her seat. “I assumed he’d be joining us.”

  My second snort wasn’t as silent as I had hoped, judging from the glare Posey shot me.

  “He’s on call, Aunt Minny. You know he needs to stay close to the hospital when he’s on call.”

  I realized belatedly that I was gripping my wine glass so hard that it was shaking. I carefully set it on the table and slipped my hands under my thighs to still them. Even after ten years, it never ceased to bother me when people called my mother Minny. Sure, that was the nickname she’d had since she was a little girl, thanks to Uncle Frank. My grandmother, a Rose herself, had insisted on giving her two daughters flower names—Jasmine and Gardenia. They had, of course, continued the tradition with Posey and me. But Jasmine and Gardenia had been too much of a mouthful for their brother Frank, thus Minny and Deen were born.

  I’d been hearing the family call my mom Minny during our visits ever since I was a girl. Back then, I thought it was funny. My dad and I used to tease her about it, actually. When she left the island for college she had decided on Jas instead. A much better fit, I always thought. Minny was childish, flakey. But Jas—that was a name that worked for a high-powered, deal-making woman like my mother.

  Since the divorce, since she left her former life behind, she had embraced the name Minny again. I didn’t think there were many people left in the world that called her Jas anymore. And that bugged the hell out of me.

  Posey plopped a towering slice of chocolate fudge pie on my plate and an even larger plop of whipped cream on top. I was already stuffed from dinner, but a quick look at my grandmother’s face, and I knew I would finish the entire thing. Not eating Mimi Rose’s food was considered the highest of insults. She didn’t have a lot of patience for the word full.

  One bite told me that it would be worth the hit to my waistline. Across the table, Andrew whimpered as the pie hit his mouth. No one cooked better than my grandmother. Except for maybe…

  “How’s Pops?” I asked, more to be polite than anything. I knew Posey’s description back at the café was much more accurate than anything my grandmother would say. Her need to put a positive spin on everything was well established in our family.

  “He’s doing well,” Mimi said, but her accompanying wince had me catching my breath. “Complaining about wanting to come home. Be in his own bed.”

  “He’ll get there, Mom,” Deen said, reaching over to pat her hand.

  “Yeah, Mimi,” Edward added. “He’s stubborn as hell.”

  “Don’t swear at the dinner table,” she said automatically, somewhat tempering the scolding with the second slice of pie she slid onto his plate.

  “Why does he get seconds?” Posey complained.

  “Because he’s a growing boy.”

  “He’s thirty,” she muttered, and I hid my laugh behind my napkin.

  “Can we go visit him tomorrow?” I asked, and Mimi grinned at me.

  “Of course, sweetheart.” A slight frown marred her forehead. “Maybe Monday would be better. After all, tomorrow is the fish fry, of course. Wouldn’t want to be late.”

  I could only shake my head. These people were obsessed. But I guess that’s what happened when you lived on a twenty-square-mile island that boasted exactly two restaurants and two bars. Not a lot of opportunity for night life on Lilac Bay.

  Mimi stood up to begin clearing the table, and I didn’t like the way she had to lean on the arm of her chair when she rose. “I’ll do that,” I told her, jumping up.

  She waved away my offer. “Nonsense. You just got here.”

  “Well, you’re certainly not doing it,” Uncle Marcus said, poking his son Greg in the elbow. “Get to it.”

  “Why doesn’t Posey have to help?” Greg whined, sounding pretty much exactly the way I remembered him sounding at ten.

  “You can all help,” Aunt Lindsey said, pointing at her sons. “Twins included.”

  “Come on, babe,” Edward said, pulling on his boyfriend’s arm. But Mimi patted Zane’s hand. “No, he can stay and keep me company. Tell me more about this spring’s décor in the dining room.”

  Zane shot Edward a smug smile, and Posey laughed beside me. I was smiling in spite of myself. Maybe I had missed the family bickering a little bit.

  Chapter 4

  It was pretty much impossible to fall asleep that night. My grandmother had put me back in the room I’d stayed in after my parents’ divorce. I lay in bed, knowing I should be exhausted from the long day of travel and all of the changes in my current life. But all I could think about was how I felt exactly like that girl of sixteen who had shown up here with her mother all those years ago. Nervous, out of place, missing a life that seemed lost to her. Missing her dad…

  I rolled over with a sigh and fished around on the nightstand for my phone. Two new emails had come through since I’d checked last—an offer for a new twenty-four hour gym membership down the street from my old condo and a newsletter from one of my favorite restaurants. I felt a little pang as I scrolled past them. I already missed being surrounded by amazing restaurants and nightlife, not to mention the little things I had taken for granted. I was pretty sure there wasn’t a gym on the island, let alone one that was open all night. Like Posey said, they all got their exercise walking and biking everywhere.

  Like a masochist, I reopened the email from my father. I had spent most of the evening trying to think of a response. It would be better, I knew, if he heard about my failings from me, rather than from some asshole eager to spread gossip. But how could I explain it to him, this deviation from the scheduled course of my life, when I didn’t rea
lly understand it myself? The last two weeks had been like a whirlwind—a destructive, violent whirlwind that left me feeling confused and wounded. How had it all fallen apart so completely?

  I screwed up, Dad. And they fired me for it. I should have known about the second offer and I missed it. The whole thing was my fault.

  I typed out a greeting. Deleted it. Tried again. Five times, I drafted the first lines of an email, erasing every one of them. I finally threw the phone down in frustration, telling myself to worry about it the next day and try to get some sleep.

  When sleep did come, it was interrupted by dreams of crashing waves and the feeling of falling. Just before dawn, I woke with a start, my heart pounding, memories of David’s stormy eyes vivid from the dream. He had caught me, just the way he had that afternoon. But in my dream, he wasn’t as quick to let go.

  You are not going to spend your time here fantasizing about David Jenkins, I told myself firmly, swinging my legs out from under the covers, giving up on the pretense of rest as dawn’s light was peeking into the room. It didn’t work out so well for you last time.

  If I had hoped for a sluggish day of lying around the house, I had come to the wrong place. When I stumbled downstairs in search of coffee, I found my grandmother already up and at the table, scribbling in her day planner.

  “Good morning, Iris,” she said warmly. “Did you sleep well?”

  I kissed the side of her head as I passed on my way to the coffee maker. “I did,” I lied. “You?”

  “I always sleep well,” she said, back to her scribbling. “A lifetime of that clear lake air. What do you plan to do today?”

  I poured myself a mug of coffee before joining her at the table, ignoring the lake air comment. “I’m not sure, really. Maybe head over to the café, see if Posey needs help…”

  I trailed off at the incredulous look on her face. “Don’t be absurd, Iris. You are not going to work your first morning in town.”