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She had already taken a year’s sabbatical to care for her father and Hannah after her mother’s passing, after which she had squeezed every last ounce of knowledge from her studies at college and business school, squirreling away every morselof offered wisdom into the recesses of her mind for future extraction. Why should she even be contemplating allowing it to drain away into a small-town grocery store? New York had many flaws, but she adored its infinite vigour and vitality, and she loved her job, despite the long hours it demanded.
A conversation she’d had with Dot popped unbidden into her mind. During one of the many trips she’d had to make from Manhattan to Connecticut while organising Hannah and Jacob’s wedding – tasting the menus, selecting the décor, ordering the wine, organising the flowers, booking the band – Dot had drawn her into a fragrant hug before holding her at arm’s length so she could scrutinised her face.
‘I hope that once this fiasco of a wedding has finally taken place, it won’t mean your visits down to Stonington Beach will be any less frequent, darling?’ Dot had said. ‘Jack adores having your sharp professional eye run over the store. No other business in Stonington can boast a high-flying New York City executive bestowing regular financial advice upon its eaves and coffers. We love you here, Rosie. Please don’t be a stranger.’
Rosie met her father’s gaze and opened her mouth to utter a placatory few words, but she was ambushed by a second wave of dizziness, and her thoughts were suddenly all over the place. As a matter of habit, she reached up to fiddle with the huge gold hoop earrings Hannah had presented both she and Lauren with that morning. Hannah had mistaken Lauren’s look of abject horror as that of shock at the level of her generosity, and Rosie prayed that her photograph would never, ever appear in any publication covering the Jacob Bennett, Jr. and Hannah Hamilton wedding. She would struggle to live down the fashion shame. She felt and looked like a gawky teenager.
‘Oh, Dad, I really don’t…’
She paused to swallow down on a sudden upswing of irritation at her sister’s continued selfishness, but her father totally misread her emotion.
‘Don’t worry, darling, all this will happen for you one day. You know, you’re so like your mother, worrying about everything and everyone. You’ve pulled off a miracle today, organising this wedding for Hannah and Jacob at such short notice.’ His eyes sought out hers. ‘Once the two of them are safely away on their honeymoon, I want you to promise me that you’ll take some time for yourself. I know you won’t like me saying this, but that crazy job of yours is squeezing all the sparkle from your eyes.’
‘Dad—’
‘No, let me finish. I can see how tired you are, even if your mirror speaks differently to you. You career girls don’t understand what you’re leaving behind in your blinkered pursuit of corporate acceptance. Manhattan demands insane hours and produces crazy people, their dreams skewed by their ever-increasing obsession with stockpiling the dollars. You need to slow down, Rosie, take some time to smell those flowers you and your mother were named after. Get dating, meet your own Jacob who will love and nurture you. Goodness knows you deserve it.’
Rosie didn’t trust herself to respond with any opposing argument as her father rose from his chair and reached out to pull her into his arms, his familiar cologne mingling with the tang of a forbidden cigar.
‘I wish your mum was here to witness how proud I am of you both today. I’ve missed her every single day of the last fourteen years. But I know that her love lingers on in the crevices of our hearts. The passage of time has no favourites, Rosie, it treats us all equally. I knew your mum for thirty years before that cruel disease snatched her from her family, and she would have wanted all this for you too – a happy, contented life, not a slaveto the accumulation of wealth for people who have more than enough to service several lifetimes already.’
Rosie’s heart performed a somersault of distress when she saw the tears in the corners of her father’s eyes, but before she could say anything to defend the life she had chosen, he’d resumed his monologue of gentle advice.
‘Promise me and your mum that it won’t be years before I walk down that aisle again? I did promise her that I would see you both settled before I, well…’ Jack Hamilton cleared his throat and released Rosie so he could drop back down into his seat. ‘Hey, there are some great guys who come into the store. Want me to fix you up with a date?’
‘Dad!’
‘Look, Rosie, I’m sorry I can’t come over to the UK for Bernice’s funeral with you. I would have loved to have seen the beautiful Cotswolds for just one last time.’
Once again, tears misted her father’s eyes and a shard of panic shot through Rosie’s chest. Was he hiding a health issue? Was there a secret he was protecting her from, another evil incursion by an incurable disease poised to steal away her only parent?
‘Dad, please tell me—’
‘It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m just tired. Long hours in the store, you know.’
Rosie couldn’t prevent a rueful smile from stretching her lips at her father’s response. Having spent the previous ten minutes berating her against the vices of corporate Manhattan and her solitary lifestyle, he clearly failed to see the irony of the excuse he’d just given her for his tiredness.
‘Your mum adored Bernice, you know,’ Jack slipped his hand into Rosie’s, its paper-thin skin stretched and liberally fleckedwith age spots. ‘But she wished her sister had found a partner to spend her life with. Don’t end your days like Bernice, Rosie.’
‘Are you sure there’s no way you can close the store for the week whilst you go to the UK? Maybe a short break from the routine will do you good?’
‘It’s not the store, Rosie.’ The look on her father’s face caused Rosie’s heart to contract and a giant fist squeezed the air from her lungs. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I could manage the trip. It’s a long flight, and what with the jet lag and… well. I know how much Bernice meant to you, darling. I’m sure she would understand why we can’t attend the funeral, what with the store and Hannah on honeymoon and your work commitments. The UK is more than an arduous car ride away.’
With huge effort, Rosie forced herself to refocus her attention on the present. She glanced down into her lap where her slender fingers were entwined with her father’s arthritic ones. Her heart ballooned with love for him and the support he had given to her and Hannah. She knew he had struggled at times with the gargantuan task of raising two young girls – Rosie was eighteen, but Hannah had only just turned eight – whilst coping with his own grief. Her unconditional love for him had been one of the reasons she had so swiftly slotted her toes into her mother’s shoes to care for Hannah – to help to alleviate his suffering in any way she could.
And now Hannah was to become a married woman. Rosie adored her sister. Throughout her childhood she had braided her hair, mopped her brow when she was sick, played hostess to her school friends, baked cookies, dressed her up in home-stitched Halloween costumes. She had protected her from every adolescent disaster she could, even forgiven Hannah for “borrowing” her favourite cocktail dress – which she had cut up for a fancy dress outfit.
She truly hoped Hannah had found her soul mate. Jacob was a great guy – girls would ditch their grannies for a husband like him. When she had met Jacob, Rosie and Lauren had dragged out their personalised wish lists of essential criteria for potential dates and performed a meticulous comparison with Jacob’s plethora of assets: he’d scored favourably with both of them. He offered Hannah a life she could only have dreamed of when she’d crawled home destitute from her extravagant exploits in the party capitals of Europe. Having expended every couch-surfing opportunity from the Atlantic to the Adriatic and squeezed every last ounce of enjoyment from her itinerant lifestyle, she’d been forced to return home to Connecticut.
Rosie would do anything to make life easier for Hannah. She had endured more than her fair share of pain in her life and didn’t deserve to suffer further. And anyway, after her father, her little sister was all she had left of her family. But was she proud of what she had produced? Had she, and her father, over-protected her? Had they been complicit in preventing her from learning how to stand on her own two feet, how to deal with the grenades that life threw in her path?
‘Come on, Dad. I think you’d better go down to the garden to reassure Jacob and the rest of the congregation that Hannah hasn’t run off with the best man and I’ll join Lauren in the search for the missing bride.’
When she witnessed the look of horror that galloped across her father’s tired features, she instantly regretted her flippancy. After all, Hannah was a saint in her father’s eyes, not the flighty little madam Rosie had been covering for over the last ten years.
‘Only joking, Dad.’ She rose from the chair and placed her hand on his shoulder whilst she stooped to drop a kiss on his cheek. ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.’
But still the butterflies played an active game of tennis in her stomach.
