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It was regrettable that she’d told Brenda and “the girls” that she’d never thought of Liam as her one true love.What did that even mean, anyway?Back when she’d met Liam, he’d been the most handsome and dashing man in her community college, and the fact that he’d chosen her to flirt with out of the other girls in the class had nearly brought her to her knees. She’d married him because she loved him, and that was that. She hoped he’d felt her love till the very end.
It was strange to mourn Liam this far away from his farm and so many years after his death. She supposed that, with the burning of his farm, Liam had died a second death.
At the table next to Eloise sat a married couple. When the gentleman stood up to use the bathroom, the woman locked eyes with Eloise and smiled. “Hello,” she said. “Are you enjoying your dinner?”
Eloise was surprised to be spoken to. “I am! And you?”
“It’s delicious,” the woman said. “This is our second time in this restaurant. I can’t get enough of it.”
Eloise smiled and began to turn her attention back to her plate of pasta when the woman spoke a final time.
“You know, I think you’re really brave for eating alone at a restaurant like this.”
Eloise’s ears pricked up. She turned her eyes back to the woman, feeling like the biggest clown in the world.Did everyone think of her as pitiable?
“Really!” The woman said it quickly, as though she sensed Eloise was embarrassed. “I’ve never done it, but I think when I get back home to Connecticut, I’m going to try.”
Eloise took a deep breath and decided to let the woman’s words flow through her. She raised her wine glass and said, “You really should. I do some of my best thinking when out by myself.”
That night, Eloise slept in the Nantucket hotel room better than she’d slept in years. When she woke, it was eight in the morning, and light flooded through the crack in the drapes. There was a sense of expectation in everything, as though Nantucket had been awaiting her return all these years.
Eloise showered, dressed, and went downstairs for coffee and eggs from the dining room. Afterward, without pausing to think about what it meant and how frightened she should have been about it, she headed outside, walked the half-mile downtown, and entered the Nantucket Records Office, where a woman at the front counter greeted her warmly and asked her how she could help.
“Hi!” Eloise’s voice was overly bright. “I’m curious about adoption paperwork from the seventies. Do you have those records here?”
The woman gave Eloise a curious smile, then raised a single finger and placed the phone on the desk to her ear. “Hi, Jeremy. I have a woman up here who needs to speak with you.”
A few moments later, a handsome man in his forties appeared at the top of a staircase that led to a basement beneath the record’s office. He introduced himself as Jeremy Farley and said he’d been working in the record office for decades. Eloise liked him immediately and thought that perhaps in his teenage years, he’d been the class president or the football captain. There was just something you had to love about him.
Downstairs, Jeremy led Eloise to his desk, where— surprise, surprise, there sat a photograph of Jeremy and a woman who could only be Alana Copperfield. Eloise stared at the gorgeous woman in the picture, with her head flung back so that she could smile up at Jeremy, and realized that nearly every person in the Copperfield Family had found their happily ever after. Nearly everyone except for Anna.
“How can I help you today?” Jeremy asked with a smile.
Eloise’s breathing was irregular.Where was that confidence she’d had earlier?
“I was hoping to see some adoption paperwork from the seventies,” Eloise said. “It would have been 1973.”
Jeremy palmed the back of his neck as worry marred his face.
“Uh oh,” Eloise tried to joke. “That doesn’t look like a good sign.”
“Unfortunately, all Nantucket adoptions from that time were closed – and much of that paperwork was lost. We have nothing to indicate who adopted who.” He scrunched up his face and added, “I’ve had a few people coming here for this exact reason over the years. It always breaks my heart to tell them that.”
Eloise sighed. “I see.”
“The rules changed over the years for just this reason,” Jeremy added.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Eloise said. “Thank you for your help.”
Eloise left the record’s office after that and wandered through downtown Nantucket, which had, just that morning, exploded with what seemed to be hundreds of daffodils. Far down the road was the team of planters, and they wheeled large wheelbarrows filled with daffodils and soil.
Eloise stood on a street corner, closed her eyes, and inhaled the intoxicating smell of hundreds of daffodils as her head spun with wonder. There was no record of what had happened— nothing to prove she’d lived through that fateful day.
Maybe that was okay. Maybe Eloise had never been meant to know.
Eloise wandered through the streets and eventually found herself in front of a cute coffee shop, where she purchased a cappuccino and something called a “Daffodil Lemon-Ginger Muffin,” which was specially made for the Daffodil Festival. She sat in the splendor of the sun outside the coffee shop and ate the muffin slowly, engaging with its unique flavors.
Perhaps this was how she could live out the rest of her days—alone yet relishing the beauty of her surroundings. Perhaps that was all she could hope for.
