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Carmella placed her hand on her lower stomach. “It didn’t take long.”
“Carmella!” Elsa rushed forward and wrapped her arms around her sister. Together, they held one another as tears rained down their cheeks.
Aria remembered that recently, Elsa hadn’t known how to take the news of the seaside cottage and their mother’s affair. It seemed Carmella and Elsa found a way through that storm, thankfully.
“I feel like I came to this island at a very interesting time,” Bethany said contemplatively.
“You did,” Carmella assured her. “But what brought you here? And will you be staying long?”
“I left my husband,” Bethany said, her voice resolute. “Aria and I are going to put the cottage back together again. And after that? I don’t know what I’ll do. But I’m sort of excited about that.”
“As you should be,” Carmella breathed.
“You’re very brave,” Elsa said. “Starting over is one of the hardest things in the world. But it’s often worth it if you’re willing to make the leap.”
Everyone was silent for a moment, soaking in Elsa’s words.
“You know, Aria,” Carmella began, her voice quiet. “I don’t have any need for that cottage. But I’d like to keep it in the family.” Her eyes turned from Cole back to Aria and then to Cole again.
Cole and Aria looked at one another, and in this moment of silence, Aria felt as though she could see many, many years into their future— years of love and hardship and babies and jobs, years of frigid winters and gorgeous summers and long afternoons of sailing.
Cole placed his hand on Aria’s lower back and tugged her closer to him, laughing. “I don’t think we can turn an offer like that down, Aria. Do you?”
ChapterTwenty-One
This time, Aria returned to Savannah by car.
She sat in her mother’s passenger seat with a pair of sunglasses on, her blond hair whipping in the wind as she and her mother discussed architecture, art, poetry, and anything else that came to their minds. Bethany was well versed in just about everything, it seemed like, and now that she’d spent so many years with all this information inside of her, it spilled out all at once.
“Where have you been keeping all of this?” Aria asked outside of a gas station in Virginia, her eyes alight.
Bethany shrugged as she filled the car with gas. She was tanner than Aria had seen her in years, and her hair was tinged with blonde and gray. “Never underestimate any woman, Aria. We’ve all done what we can to survive this long.”
It was late July. Bethany had spent the last three weeks in Martha’s Vineyard, overseeing the work at the sea cottage as the contractors had put it back together again. And already, it was nearly complete, nearly ready for Aria and Cole’s big move. Cole had already talked about bringing his sailboat to the dock outside the house, one they’d had rebuilt to ensure its stability. Aria could just picture herself and Cole there in the future, waking up in one another’s arms, prepared to sail out right from their dock.
During July, Bethany had gotten very cozy with Elsa, Carmella, Janine, and Nancy. Although Elsa and Carmella no longer lived in the Remington House, they were always just a phone call away and often swept through during evenings to say hello and have a glass of wine or lemonade on the back porch. In this way, Bethany had begun to heal from her past trauma. She’d begun to speak about how Kenny had actually treated her all this time, and Carmella, Elsa, Nancy, and Janine had helped her to understand just how not normal it had been. It turned out that Janine, too, had been married to a very manipulative man who’d cheated on her with her best friend. “Year after year, it just seemed more normal,” Janine had explained of Jack’s behavior. “I was pretty sure that was how all husbands treated their wives.” It was even more miraculous to learn that Janine and her best friend, Maxine, were friendly now that the ex-husband had died. “Life is the strangest thing I’ve ever known,” Bethany joked of this.
With Bethany frequently off with the Remington family, Cole and Aria had been left to enjoy as many evenings as they could. Their eight months of tiptoeing around their feelings for one another had made them fiery with passion, and they found themselves saying all the things they’d never said, unwilling to leave a single thing out. Cole confessed that he’d fallen for her the minute he’d seen her on that sailboat in the Caribbean, and Aria said, “I knew you felt something, too!” And they laughed about this, then kissed some more, as though they were teenagers who’d just discovered the concept of love.
Aria had announced that she wanted to finish her degree, hoping to take online classes, and she was prepared to contact her advisor about the situation. To this, Bethany had said, “No. We’re going. They want to see you and know that you’re serious this time. They want to be sure that you’re worth it.”
Aria had a hunch that Bethany’s insistence on going to Savannah in the first place had almost everything to do with seeing Professor Judah Heskew again.
Because everything had been so busy since Bethany’s arrival, Aria hadn’t gotten up the nerve to contact Judah about her discovery that, all this time, he’d been her father. Now that they were on the road, only hours away from Savannah, a city that both she and her mother adored, the expectation for the reunion ahead filled Aria with a mix of awe and fear.
“You know,” Aria began thoughtfully, “some of the other students said that I was Judah’s favorite and that I had no talent but was treated well anyway.”
To this, Bethany turned to glare at Aria, her hands still at ten-and-two. “That’s ridiculous.”
Aria didn’t go on to say that that had been part of the reason she’d dropped out of college in the first place, that she hadn’t liked feeling like her skills weren’t worthy.
“I mean, you don’t know, “Aria pointed out. “I never showed you any of my blueprints.”
Bethany’s lips twisted as she returned her gaze to the road. “Judah sent some of them over.”
Aria’s heart banged away in her chest. “You’re kidding. When?”
“This week,” Bethany said.
