Although Phoebe was one of the younger members of the cast, she had one of the more important roles—a fact thatsurprised nobody in Bethany’s family. Bethany was captivated, watching her youngest daughter move across that stage as if she owned it. She spoke to teenage actors four years older than she was with an authority that Bethany hadn’t felt at thirteen.
Who had taught Phoebe to be like that? From which universe did kids come? Bethany laughed softly.
At intermission, Maddie and Tommy agreed that Phoebe was crushing it. They didn’t seem bored in the slightest by the Shakespearean language and instead told Bethany that they’d readRomeo and Julietlast year in English class and really liked it.
“But I think it’s stupid,” Maddie interjected. “I mean, two teenagers in love? Willing to do anything to be together? Willing to die? There’s so much life after high school.”
Bethany laughed, remembering the teenager she’d encountered a few weeks back, the teenager who’d sobbed and begged her boyfriend to stay with her, to forget his mistress and continue to build. But the Johnnys of the world weren’t worth it.
When the second half began, Bethany felt a strange stirring in her gut—one she chalked up to hunger, to unease. She told herself to remain in the moment with her family. She told herself to hang on to Phoebe’s every word. But as the night wore on, the cramps intensified. She gripped Rod’s hand hard, praying that she could ignore the cramps until they went away on their own.
When it was time, everyone in the audience got to their feet to applaud for Phoebe and the rest of the cast and crew. Only Bethany remained in her chair, clapping and wincing and quietly crying. Eventually, Rod looked down at her, realizing something was very wrong.
“Please,” Bethany whispered when he sat down beside her to cup her hands. “Please, I don’t want to go on bed rest. Please, I just want to slow down.”
That night, after a frantic drive back to the house, Rod helped Bethany to their bedroom, where she changed into a large T-shirt and got under the covers. The cramps had calmed to nearly nothing, and she was breathing normally, yet checking her pulse all the time to make sure she was stable. Rod gently touched her hair, then kissed her forehead. “We’ll go to the hospital whenever you say the word,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Worry echoed from Rod’s eyes. Bethany could feel the worry from her children as well, from where they’d left them in the living room downstairs, demanding if she was all right. She saw the most worry in Maddie, who’d told her from the beginning that it wasn’t safe to have a baby, not now.
“Women do it all the time,” she told Rod now, as though he’d said what was on Maddie’s mind.
“Women do it all the time!” Rod repeated. “And you’re the strongest woman of them all. Your body’s just a little exhausted, that’s all.”
“I have surgery tomorrow,” she told him.
Rod hesitated.
“I’m strong,” she reminded him—and herself. She’d long held the belief that “mind over matter” was the most powerful thing of all. You could convince yourself to do anything, to go the distance. Your mind was always in control, not your mind. You couldn’t give in to it.
15
The morning that Helena planned to host Hilary Salt at her place, Helena was on the patio, surveying a recent painting of magentas and greens and drinking coffee. The waves lapped gently over the white beach, and the sun shifted between clouds, lending a warmth that felt medicinal. Helena had three hours left before Hilary was going to stop by, and she had to decide which of her paintings to show off. She’d decided to curate a selection to avoid overwhelming Hilary. She’d read online that if you showed a potential buyer too many paintings, they began to think that you were too unwanted or too easy to get. Scarcity was key. It was a bit like modern dating, in that way. Not that Helena would know anything about that. But Helena smiled at her own joke.
Five paintings, she decided, setting them out across the patio. She imagined an insane future in which Hilary Salt bought all five of them.
What did it mean to come into money so late in life?
It was then that she noticed something at the edge of the dock. Stepping around her easel, she adjusted her hat to see that, yes, something was set upon the dock itself. Maybe it was abranch that had blown there in the wind. Or maybe it was a bit of debris from the ocean. She decided to take a trash bag out and dispose of it so it wouldn’t pollute the ocean further.
When she reached the dock, however, she was struck dumb with the realization that it was a bouquet. She gaped at the roses and lilies, the trash bag she’d brought with her ruffling in her hand. The flowers were beautiful. There was a card attached, as well—one upon which someone had written the name “Helena.”
The flowers were, impossibly, for her. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had brought her flowers. It must have been Elliott, maybe a random Valentine’s Day, a time when she’d felt so sure that flowers would continue to come into her life that she hadn’t allowed herself to fully appreciate them.
Receiving flowers meant someone had gone out of their way for you. It meant that they’d planned their life around the fact that they wanted to—briefly—make you happy.
Helena raised the bouquet gently, then walked as though in a dream back to the patio and through the back door. In the kitchen, she put the flowers in a vase of water, then, with a shaking hand, opened the envelope. The card itself was decorated with a sailboat. The sight of it made her heart pound. On the inside was written: “Thank you again for saving my life. I think about you more than I’d like to admit. I’d love to take you on a real date sometime—or just a coffee, as friends. You’re a beautiful person, Helena. Inside and out. Yours, Matteo.” He’d also written down his phone number.
The note fluttered from Helena’s fingers to the countertop. Matteo. So she hadn’t done such a good job of kicking him out of her life after all. She’d assumed he was already in the arms of someone else, building a life on the mainland. But instead, he’d gone out of his way to buy her flowers, write a note, and sail them out to the dock—the last place she’d seen him.
That knocked her out for the rest of the morning. Exhausted, wounded by her own inability to love and be loved, Helena spent a few hours on the sofa, watching the world out her window. She knew that she couldn’t call the number he’d listed on the notecard. She knew that bringing him into her life when it was nearly over was unfair to him.
She had to remember that it was the wrong thing to do. She had to remember that hearts were at stake, and that he’d been through so much as it was.
When someone knocked on the front door, it startled her out of her skin.
But it was Hilary Salt, Helena remembered now. She’d come to see the paintings. Helena had to pull herself together.
