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Impressionist paintings always made her want to leap into the canvas and live inside it. She loved the quiet sceneries, everyday scenes capturing fleeting moments, revived by the right use of color and light. Crafters on Etsy loved her work, even if art galleries didn’t. So, while she couldn’t say she was a renowned artist, she did what she loved and managed to pay the bills. An Etsy painter by night and a cake decorator by day. She was too introverted to deal with fame, anyway.
“At Eddie Melton’s gallery,” Finn half-mumbled, still perusing the brochure.
She knew what memories that name evoked for them both. Eddie was an acquaintance, and when she had returned to Riviera View after a short, failed artistic career following her graduation in Chicago, he had offered for her to exhibit a few paintings in the art gallery that he had opened with his boyfriend.
“It’s nothing major,” she repeated, just as she had back then when Finn had persuaded her to attend the opening. That evening had been part of the time she was still trying to repress for her own sake.
“Eddie’s gallery is what my dreams are made of,” he expelled, taking them back to before her father’s intrusion, and even farther back—fourteen years back. And, as if he realized it, he immediately added, “I’m happy for you, Ja—Anne. And proud of you.” He then placed the brochure back on the stack, gave her a tight-lipped smile, and exited the bakery in a few long steps.
All the noise, bustle, and warmth swelled in through the door that he opened, along with a group of shoppers who came in before it closed behind him.
She wished she had never allowed herself to fall for him. She wished she could stop loving him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After collecting the donations from the shops that participated in the food project, Anne went to her last stop, The Mean Bean Café, to meet Amy Locke, the owner, at the café’s kitchen, where they distributed the pastries, produce, groceries, and other unsold products into neatly and elegantly packed boxes. From there, Anne called Libby, Connie Latimer’s daughter, to ensure there were no changes to the address list that Social Services had provided.
Their conversation was polite but stilted, as usual. Libby was one of the nicest people Anne knew and Hope’s best friend. Growing up in the same town, same class, then the same bakery where their parents were still working together, Anne always wished she could shake off feeling like a usurper. At fourteen, it had been strange seeing Libby every day in school, knowing her parents now owned what used to be Libby’s mother’s bakery. Maybe someday, through Hope, they could get closer. She sincerely wished it.
She left the boxes by the front doors of the houses and apartments that Social Services indicated, knowing the residents expected to find them there.
Taking the longer route home, she drove along the beach promenade, which gave the town its name. She drove slowly, so slowly that if Aaron or one of his officers from the local police station had driven behind her, they’d ask her to speed up. She had taken this road thousands of times in her lifetime and could probably do it with a blindfold on.
Passing by the families’ beach, as locals referred to the one with the lifeguard tower, she remembered going there in the summers with her mother and aunt, with Avery and Noah, Avery’s younger brother.
Avery had played with them only until she had found someone else to play with, leaving Anne and Noah alone to finish their sandcastle. As an only child to older parents who had problems conceiving until she had been born, Anne hadn’t attended pre-school. Though four years older than her, Avery, and later Noah, had been her main playmates. But, if Anne or Noah had won at something, Avery would become sour, angry, and taunting.
“Who told you that you were adopted?” her mother had gasped when a tearful Anne had asked if she looked different—tall and pale—because she wasn’t really theirs. “Look at this. You look just like your grandma Ada—she was very tall and fair.” Linda had pointed at an old picture. “I never met her because she died when your dad was small, but you look just like her. She and your grandfather escaped Europe right before the war. Oh, honey, we wanted you so very much; it just took time until God made you perfect and put you in my belly. You’re not adopted,” her mother had said.
“You should talk to your sister,” Bert had told his wife when he’d heard about it.
“They’re just kids, and Avery is like a sister to her. Siblings can be like that sometimes, but I’ll talk to Darian.”
By the time she was six, Anne had been as tall as ten-year-old Avery. She used to think that this unwanted victory was what had made Avery ignore her when she had started first grade and had sat alone on the swings during recess, inexperienced and fearful of approaching the other girls. Avery, who had stood with a bunch of her friends not far from her, hadn’t even gazed in her direction. At least their four-year difference meant she had been spared from attending middle and high school at the same time as Avery.
Despite their parents’ ingrained beliefs, efforts, and expectations, they weren’t even close to being close as adults. After facing two miscarriages before Max, Avery must have mellowed out. Or so Anne had thought. The family had wrapped her in cotton wool and kept it a secret at her demand. Anne had just reached Cincinnati then, deciding to make it her home, giving her parents her non-existent art career as an excuse for her leaving. Though the situation had been unbearable for her, given that the father of that baby had been the love of her life, and though she had never received the same kindness from Avery, she had called to console her and sent her flowers.
Anne opened the car window to let the night breeze in. The part of the promenade that she passed now looked like a teenagers’ after-party. They flocked to Surfer’s Point, cars beeping, music blasting through open windows, the illuminated beach showing more people were down on the sand.
As a teenager, she hadn’t been part of the crowd that partied there. Now she didn’t envy Aaron and his officers, whom she saw checking cars to make sure everyone behaved. She just wanted to get home, get off her aching feet, take a long shower, paint, and think about the email she had received.
Her mother’s difficulties conceiving, and Avery’s miscarriages, had prompted her to test in a fertility clinic, where she had been assured it wasn’t hereditary. Being single at thirty-seven, she had asked them to check her fit for a natural cycle IUI sperm donor process, just in case. They had emailed the results earlier that day. She was found fit.
She preferred it the natural way but didn’t see herself having children or growing old with any of the men whom she had dated since her return, or the one she had lived with on and off in Cincinnati.
“I always wanted siblings,” she had said in the interview at the clinic. “And my parents are dying for grandkids.”
They’d advised her to hurry if she wanted more than one child. “You always want more for your child than you had.”
This was why she understood Finn, why she couldn’t blame him for deciding as he had all those years ago—he was an only child who didn’t know his father. Besides, she hadn’t given him much choice. “There’s no waywe can be together, not with my cousin having your child,” she had told him back then, pushing him to seal their fate, though he begged her not to.
Finn again. She couldn’t escape this. Somehow, it was all related. Him. Her. Children. Tough decisions. Related. Family connections.
Finn.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Is this one of those horns? A clarinet?” A head taller than her, he picked up the black case from the floor and carried it for her as he walked her to the library door.
