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“Just plunge right in.” Clare poured her a mug of tea. “And there is no awkward between us, Izzy. I’ve known you since you were born.”
“I know. And you knew my mom. You were her closest friend.”
Was that what this was about? Becca?
“I was.”
“And that’s why it’s awkward. Because it isn’t about me. It’s about her.” Izzy started on a different nail. “I need to talk about my mother. About something that happened the night before she died.”
19
Flora
Flora walked Clare’s mother back to the Gat
ehouse. She felt weighed down. She knew she should be thinking about poor Izzy and she was, but right now she couldn’t stop wondering why Jack hadn’t confided in her. This was huge. Knowing, might have helped her understand Izzy a little better. Why had he kept it to himself? What else was he keeping to himself? She’d thought their relationship was honest and open but it seemed that the only person who had been honest and open was her.
What was she going to do? In her previous relationships she might have ignored it and kept up the pretense that everything was fine until the whole thing crumbled, but she couldn’t do that this time. How could she ever hope to be part of a family if she didn’t really know them?
She struggled to focus as Carolyn chatted away.
“Poor Izzy must have had a very tough time.” She paused at the entrance of the Gatehouse to tug out some weeds.
“Yes.” The best she could manage was a monosyllabic answer.
She forced herself to stop thinking about her relationship with Jack, and focus on Izzy’s relationship with him. It seemed that Izzy had somehow taken the fact that she wasn’t his biological daughter and spun that into a scenario where now that her mother was gone, he wouldn’t want her.
To Flora, who had no additional knowledge or information, it made a twisted sort of sense.
But how could Jack not have known Izzy might be feeling that way? She had more questions than answers and felt helpless and frustrated that she couldn’t help Izzy.
Carolyn patted her arm, calm and steady. “Don’t look so worried. She’ll stumble through it, as we all do. Life is like a garden, don’t you think? Sometimes glorious, and sometimes a disaster. It’s messy, but always real. And sometimes all we can do is forge ahead, and if that means flattening a few daisies on the way, then so be it.”
She’d craved real. She’d thought she had real and honest, but it turned out she’d been wrong about that. She was still being shut out. Once again, she was on the outside.
She’d been close to euphoric when Jack had left this morning, but after spending several hours with Izzy she no longer felt that way. She felt like an addict coming down after a high.
She made her excuses to Carolyn and returned to the Lodge, bypassed the kitchen and went straight to her room where she took a shower, scrubbed the last remnants of the lake from her skin and her hair, and looked critically at the clothes she’d packed for the trip.
Try to learn more about Becca, yes. Try to understand her, yes to that, too. But dress like her? Act like her? No way. And that was something else that she could no longer ignore. Jack rarely talked about Becca. He dodged the subject, changed the subject, looked uncomfortable. She’d assumed it was his way of handling grief, that he’d share when he was ready, but what if she’d been wrong about that? What if there was something else he hadn’t told her? Knowing what she now knew, it was hard not to wonder if there were other secrets he hadn’t shared.
This time she didn’t need guidance on what to wear. She grabbed a dress in a cheerful flowery print and pulled it over her head.
Hearing voices in the garden, she looked out of the window and saw Jack. He and Molly had just returned from sailing and he was deep in conversation with Todd, while Molly ran around the garden after Chase.
Flora pondered the best way to handle this. She hated confrontation. All her life she’d been afraid of it, believing that it would ultimately lead to rejection, but she saw now that fearing rejection had stopped her having honest relationships. Ironically that approach had led her to feel more lonely, not less. It had stopped her connecting with people. It had made her reluctant to make herself vulnerable. She’d tiptoed through her life instead of striding confidently forward. Clare’s mother was right that sometimes you needed to trample a few daisies.
She had to decide if this relationship had a future, and the only way to do that was to confront Jack.
She was going to talk to him calmly and honestly about her feelings, but first she was going to make him talk about Izzy. She was the priority.
She walked out onto the lawn, her dress brushing softly against her legs. It fell to midcalf, but was nowhere near as modest as a first glance might have suggested. She saw Jack’s eyes darken as he caught a flash of leg. At another time she might have been flattered by the look he gave her, but this wasn’t that time. Right now she only had one thing on her mind and it wasn’t getting Jack Parker naked. Unless you counted stripping him down to bare thoughts and emotions. That, she intended to do.
He caught her round the waist and pulled her in, allowing himself a quick kiss even though Molly was within range.
“How was your day?”
Flora thought about the overload of emotion. Izzy yelling at her. Izzy crying. Her crazy boat ride. Almost drowning. The revelations. “It was interesting. Can we take a walk, Jack? Somewhere private?”
