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Greta waved her spoon toward him playfully, the way she had back in the old days. “None of your business, you old coot.”
Alana and Julia locked eyes again.Was Greta flirting?
Bernard chuckled and lifted his chin to Alana. His eyes stirred with emotion. “Welcome home, Alana.”
The words felt like being stabbed. Home. This was where she’d always belonged.Why had it taken her so long to realize that?Alana’s throat tightened as she stepped toward him, dropping her face against his chest. She let out a single sob, which fell into his chest, right above his heart.
“Oh gosh. I’m sorry.” Alana stepped back, grabbed a tissue from her pocket, and cleaned herself up.
“You don’t have to apologize to us,” Bernard offered kindly. He palmed the back of his neck as his face grayed with sorrow. “We’re just honored to have you back.”
“Honored?” Alana laughed. “Your daughter returns to you in shame. A failure.”
“I think we’ve all had our share of failures,” Julia offered.
Bernard guffawed. “On the contrary, Alana. I see you returning as a victor. Your sister showed me a very interesting video from a couple of weeks ago. Imagine my surprise when suddenly, my eldest daughter marches through an overly swanky, overly-pretentious art exhibition in the third arrondissement in Paris and throws wine all over a million-dollar painting of her own face!”
Bernard tossed his head back with delight.
“You’re just happy that she’s a woman after your own heart,” Greta said.
“Are you sure about that?” Bernard teased. “This story has Greta written all over it.”
“Mom!” Alana cried. “What is he talking about?”
“Don’t you listen to a single thing that comes out of your father’s mouth,” Greta quipped. “Now, the three of you, make yourselves useful. I need the patio table set. The wine needs to breathe. What else? Oh, goodness me. You haven’t even told me what you think of the lemonade.”
Alana leaped for her glass like a child and dropped her head back, her eyes closing as the chilly tangy liquid drenched her tongue. Just as she’d suspected, the taste was a time-traveling device. She was pulled back to the impossible past before she’d run off with Asher, before Bernard had been sent to prison— and even before Jeremy Farley had crashed his truck that fateful night.
Memory was a series of “prior times” that you could never overcome.
But there was something truly magical about this first night back at The Copperfield House. Bernard was performing for them, pretending to be the version of himself who’d left the island twenty-five years ago. He was flirtatious with Greta and eager to please, speaking bad French in a way that probably reminded Greta of their long-ago life in Paris.
At times, conversation petered out and gave way for the sounds of the island— the whispered secrets of lovers far down the beach, the sweep of the water along the sands, the rush of the wind through the trees, and the creak of the old Victorian home. It was only during these moments that Alana felt the weight of time; they could never get any of it back.
After dinner, Alana and Julia did the dishes while Bernard retreated to his upstairs study and Greta retired to her bedroom, exhausted. When the two departed for the night, they locked eyes for a split second, and the air sizzled around them. They hardly said “goodnight” and instead rushed their separate ways, as though the sight of the other hurt them too much.
“He hasn’t been like that in over a week,” Julia muttered as she filled the sink with soapy suds, checking the temperature with the tips of her fingers.
“I was surprised he came down at all. You’d said he mostly kept to his study.”
Julia’s smile was faint. “He heard us laughing. It brought him back to some other version of himself.”
“I wonder if there’s a way to get that version back full-time,” Alana tried.
Julia shrugged limply. “Can you get the previous version of yourself back?”
Alana was silent. She sensed what Julia meant. While she could still feel that wildly confident and stick-thin model within her, it was only a portion of her soul. These days, she was the washed-up pre-ex-wife of world-renowned Asher Tarkin, a man she’d loved tirelessly as his career had skyrocketed and hers had diminished.
She had to imagine her parents felt the same about themselves. Too much time had passed.
“Have you heard from Ella?” Alana asked, swiping a towel over the shining dish Julia handed her.
“She has an insane work schedule,” Julia replied. “Two part-time jobs. Two teenagers. She doesn’t text often, and when she does, it’s a few words here and there.”
“She knows I’m back, right?”
“I think so.” Julia scrubbed meticulously at the inside of the skillet. “She’s always been so secretive. Even when she stayed with us here in April, she kept her lips shut about her real life.”
