AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gavin must have said something to Brielle and Pembroke, though—even toPembroke, whom she couldn’t ever remember exchanging a non-group message with—because both sent her messages saying they were there for her if she wanted to talk. Brielle even apologized for being so flippant the weekbefore.
Lilac felt better reading that, but she still didn’t feel like writingback.
Gavin must have said something vaguer to Frankie, too, because she’d gone from cheerful and chatty to silent and awkward about mid-morning. Finally, Sunday afternoon, after Lilac had refused both Frankie’s homemade brunch and her lunch, Frankie took the lounge chair next to her, a glass of iced lemonade in hand. Even in the shade, she wore her sunglasses. The Florida sun was bright like that, the sun-coated parts of Frankie’s yard almost blinding to take in, even from the shade of thepatio.
“Gavin tells me I should ask you to tell me what’s bothering you,” said Frankie. “I… I know you were stressed last week, but if there’s something more to it, you should tellme.”
Lilacshrugged.
“Are you really thinking of going home?” asked Frankie. “It’s your life, and you know your grandparents and parents won’t mind, but… I thought, I don’t know, I thought you were different from the rest ofus.”
That got Lilac stirring. “What do you mean bythat?”
Frankie slid her sunglasses down her nose slightly to peer over at her niece. “You’re as gorgeous as your mother and grandmothers, but you never treated college as a playground like they did. You worked hard, you got yourdegree—”
“And then totally blew the job path I’d created formyself.”
The ice cubes jingled against the glass as Frankie waved her lemonade in the air. “Even so, you stuck with it and put in the work and only changed your mind when something more appealing came along.” She took a sip from her glass. “You could have just coasted through college, then spent the rest of your life traveling, like the rest of theTownsends.”
Lilac didn’t point out the Etsy store Frankie managed or the jobs her daddy and Grandpa Matthew had had back in their youths. She knew that most of their wealth came from investments and inheritance and that she had those to fall back on,too.
“My point is,” said Frankie, readjusting her glasses, “you work hard, kiddo. And I know that no matter where you land, you’ll land on your feet, but I just want you to make sure you really want to give this up. If you leave, I doubt you can come back—not to the same theme parkanyway.”
Lilac cuddled her worn Tildy, not sayinganything.
“You remember when you got that, don’t you?” asked Frankie. “It was your first time visiting me since you could walk—you must have been three or four. Your parents wanted to bring you to Disney,but—”
“I wanted to go to Tildy World,” said Lilac, the vaguest of memories popping into her head. “I liked hercartoons.”
Frankie’s lips tugged into a gentle smile. “Do you know why you liked them? At least, the reason you gave me when Iasked?”
“‘If you dream hard enough, I’ll make your dreams come true,’” said Lilac, quoting Tildy Tapirherself.
Frankie put her glass down on a coaster on the small table between them, her jangly bracelets sliding down just past her wrist as she moved. “And yet you never once counted on Tildy making your dreams come true for you,” said Frankie. “I admire that. You didn’t get that from the Townsends, I assureyou.”
Lilac laughed and tucked her chin behind her plush. Its fur had started piling in patches. “You give me too much credit,” she said. “I never would have gotten the job here if it weren’t for you and yourconnections.”
“Maybe.” Frankie shrugged. “But you don’t know what. You might have applied on yourown.”
And that asshole might have still seen my boobs and given me the job.She sighed. “But I… I felt safe taking risks, striving for my dreams,” she admitted, thinking painfully all of a sudden of Brielle and how she’d teased her about not having much of a job after graduation. She wondered if she’d studied history and philosophy if her daddy would have just called some museum where he’d made a donation and given her a way in there. She wondered if she couldn’t have asked her daddy to do the same for her friend—if she’d ever been cognizant of things outside of herself to think ofit.
It was like a punch to thegut.
She thought of Nolan then, of how hard he worked while going to school, of the way he stepped up to take care of his siblings. How there had been something there when he’d offered her cash for the hotel, a reluctance he was trying to stifle—he probably reallyneededthemoney.
Lilac worked hard for her dreams, but there was no escaping the fact that she had a fairy godmother of sorts in the form of a trust fund and a family withconnections.
It struck her then. She’d been considering turning tail and going home—stuffing it all down and putting it all behind her. She’d suspected women had been harassed by Earl before her and had lamented that none of them had stepped forward to stopit.
Maybe they couldn’t have. Maybe they didn’t have her resources and her fairygodmother.
Butshecould. And even if it meant the end of her time at Tildy World, that was exactly what she was contemplating regardless. Rather than let him get away with it, pave the way for him to assault another woman—she could raise a fuss, cause astink.
“Frankie,” she said, her lips cracking, “I might need alawyer.”
That actually got Aunt Frankie to remove her sunglasses from her faceentirely.
Chapter Sixteen
