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“Did you go to college?” Anna asked.
Jack shrugged. “I took online classes. I’m just a semester away from graduating with a degree. But I don’t really need it. I work with my grandpa as a fisherman. We take tourists out on the water when they come to the island.”
“That sounds dreamy,” Anna said. “Maybe I could write a travel article about your grandpa’s company next.”
Jack laughed appreciatively. “My family will be forever indebted to you.”
Despite Anna’s hesitance, she found that she genuinely enjoyed the beach party. Jack introduced her to more of his friends, young men and women who’d been raised on the island and now either worked in tourism or online. They were friendly and bright, and they asked Anna questions about her travel writing as though she was far more advanced than she was. None of them knew anything about Dean, which Anna was grateful for. Normally, back at The Copperfield House, it was like she had “feel bad for me” written on her forehead.
Here, she was just a normal twenty-three-year-old woman, just as she’d been a month ago.
Around nine that night, Anna drove Scarlet, James, Danny, and Ivy back to The Copperfield House. Anna had had just the one beer, many, many hours ago, but Scarlet was bubbly due to the alcohol and telling eight stories at once. Her joy was contagious.
Anna parked the car outside the house, and the Copperfield kids stumbled out and up onto the front porch. Anna was last, locking the door behind her and waving to her cousins as they barreled up the staircase. Internally, she missed her sister and her brother a great deal and wished they could have been there during this time— but she was grateful for these newfound friendships with other family members.
Anna headed to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. When she entered, she was surprised to see Greta at the kitchen table, facing another man who Anna recognized as Eloise’s high school ex-boyfriend. The man was clearly stricken. All the color had drained from his cheeks.What was going on?
“Hi.” Anna frowned and hurried to the sink to pour herself a glass of water, knowing she had to get out of there quickly.
“Did you have a good time?” Grandma Greta’s voice was strained.
“Yes.” Anna smiled, first at Greta, then at the stranger. “Well. Good night,” she said, then hurried out of the kitchen and up the staircase. She knew she wasn’t wanted there. Not then.
ChapterSixteen
It was after midnight, but Eloise was no closer to sleep than she’d been hours before. In fact, she remained fully clothed, pacing the hotel room endlessly with her hands latched behind her back. Over and over again, that face came to her mind— so handsome, his eyes focused on her as he’d said her name for the first time in over fifty years. “Eloise. Eloise. Is it really you?”
Eloise first met Herb when she was thirteen years old. At the time, Greta had been eighteen years old, the golden daughter of the family, and Eloise had had scabbed knees, a propensity for getting in trouble, and a whole lot of passion for sixties rock. Back then, she’d been really, really into The Beatles (back when all of them had still been alive and they’d still been releasing albums), and she’d spent a lot of her time in her bedroom, spinning their records and dancing along. Her father had thought The Beatles were “silly hippies” and that Eloise was wasting her time listening to them rather than putting her brain somewhere more useful, like her homework.
Only Herb had understood The Beatles the way Eloise had. Together, at the school lunch table, they’d hunched over their lunch pails and discussed the intricacies of each album, unpacking lyrics and trying their best to comprehend the weight of a world-changing band, who seemed, with each release, to alter music forever.
“It’s like they’re Mozart, Bach, and Chopin all rolled into one,” Herb had said once, his tuna sandwich poised near his mouth.
“This is exactly what I think,” Eloise had affirmed. “Paul and John are poets sent from the heavens above, and George is just so talented.”
“And handsome,” Herb had said. “Admit it. You’re in love with George.”
Eloise had rolled her eyes back into her head, unwilling to admit the truth. And in fact, Herb had just begun to learn how to play the guitar, a fact that thrilled Eloise. Her crush for him had grown so demanding that, oftentimes, Eloise spent all Saturday in her room, listening to Beatles records and writing in her diary about how in love with Herb she truly was.
But Eloise hadn’t had a clue how Herb felt about her, not until they were both fifteen— two years after their Beatles’ love had brought them together. When Eloise was fifteen, Greta left for Paris and left a Greta-sized hole in her father and mother’s hearts. Lucky for Eloise, this meant that they weren’t very focused on Eloise’s comings and goings. Oftentimes, she left their family home for hours without saying where she was off to, and when she returned, nobody was ever the wiser.
Herb’s parents were much kinder than Eloise’s parents. His mother often baked cookies for Herb and Eloise, took them to movies, and drove them out to the beach. She sat at a distance from them with a book, allowing them the beauty of a kind of privacy, and didn’t even glance up when they had their first kiss (or so Eloise thought).
When Herb first told Eloise his feelings for her, Eloise hadn’t known how to react. Her love for him seemed just as powerful as any Beatles’ love songs, and yet, she wasn’t sure how to return his love with words and actions.Was she supposed to hold his hand now? Were they supposed to tell people they were going steady?
But because Herb was also her best friend and the nearest person to her heart, Eloise found herself expressing her insecurities, only to have him verbalize his own.
“Let’s just make it up as we go along,” Herb suggested.
“What if we get it wrong?” Eloise asked.
“I don’t think we will.” Herb had slipped his fingers through hers and tugged her into him, then kissed her there along the rocks as the ocean lapped up along the sands. Overhead, sunshine unfurled itself from the thick clouds, and Eloise thought, at this moment, that everything would be perfect for the rest of her life.
She’d obviously been very wrong.
Oh, but to see Herb again had taken her deep into the past, far before the days when she’d met Liam and even before she’d had to live with Aunt Maude. After she’d first left the island, she’d dreamed of Herb endlessly and yearned to reach out to him, but her father, her mother, and Aunt Maude had forbidden it, so much so that Eloise was terrified to call. Her parents had already been on the fence about loving her at all— she didn’t want to push it.
In her mind, if she paid attention to the rules and showed her parents how good she could be, they would eventually allow her to return. She’d been wrong.
