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Tilly’s chest heaved. Her skin tingled and she was left to ask herself if she was turning something, someone special, away. She wanted Landon to be right about them. But his declarations, his comparison of them to mussels, all that enthusiasm. She didn’t trust it. Truthfully she was thrilled at what he’d said. And when she said she’d stow the sentiment away in one of her boxes, she had been lying. The truth was she would lock the words into her heart, where they were closer, to be felt and recalled with every beat, every breath. It would be enough for her to have had that moment with Landon, along with her land, for the rest of her life.
She’d wanted to drop into his arms, to invite him into her home for good. She should trust that he had her interests at heart after what he did to block his father from purchasing her land. Landon had made sure that Tilly didn’t lose anything that was hers. That should be enough. But she couldn’t be sure. What if this was just a test and one wave from his father, a promise to give him a fortune tomorrow, would be enough to put Landon’s feet back in the direction of New York City? Then what would she do?
Nothing came with a guarantee, but she didn’t have to purposely put herself in harm’s way. Still, he had been charming, just as he promised he could be. She smiled at how she’d managed to keep from responding to his mussel metaphor by calling him her ‘little bivalve—her mussel shell,’ glad she kept the joke to herself, afraid to encourage him. She didn’t doubt he felt all the things he said he did, but she knew feelings, strong ones like that were often fleeting. He certainly had the means to change the course of his life in an instant and she did not want to be part of his next transformation that came courtesy of a strong wind going the other direction. Though she adored her fairy tales, she was well aware real life didn’t spring from the book pages, whole, to be lived out with happy endings. Her parents’ deaths proved that.
So she carried on, harvesting bags of giant floaters, spectacle cases, muckets, squawfoots, plain pocketbooks, and more. All this work while knowing that she should be going to town to order a window and hire someone to fix the roof. She couldn’t trust Landon, but he was right about her getting behind in maintenance for winter.
She felt along her mussel beds, the crisp fall water telling her she would soon have to abandon deep diving and just harvest along the beds closest to the shore, then wait until spring to start again.
When the men were nosing around the cove, she noticed some beds moving, knowing that the mussels could sense change in their environment, but checking the beds they were stable and she was reassured that they weren’t in the process of relocating.
The last bed she checked were the heelsplitters making sure they were intact, not migrating where she could accidentally step on them either right then or next spring. Knowing she wouldn’t have too many more days to dive, she spent six hours, working, filling bag after bag, the number resulting in enough to fulfill orders she’d recently gotten and those that might come in over the winter. By the time she exited the water, her teeth were chattering, her skin chapped red with cold. She picked up an armload of wood. When her cottage came into view she stopped short. Men were scattered over her rooftop. One stood waving over his head. “Hey there, Til.”
She scanned the men. Alfred Toulhouse, Michael Burns, Jay Murphy and Landon.
“Alfred. What are you all doing?”
“Helping out a friend, of course.”
She was stunned, disbelieving that roof fairies just appeared to do work a homeowner had been neglecting. Yet here they were.
She cleared her throat. “Michael, Jay... Thank you all.”
Landon scaled down the ladder in seconds and ran toward Tilly. He took her bundle of wood. “Thank you. I...” She shook her head, unable to find the words to express her gratitude.
“I’ve got a fire going inside, see?”
She noted the smoke curling out of the chimney into the blue fall sky. Her teeth chattered again and she began to shake. He led her into the cottage and untied her dive bag from her waist, his fingers bumbling on the knot before releasing its hold. He grabbed her close, arms tight and heating every bit of her they touched. “Here, you need this.” He slipped a quilt from the back of a chair near the door and wrapped her in it.
It was then she really looked around, realizing that something was completely different. The cottage was light again. No. Brighter than it’d ever been. The home no longer fought to gather sunshine toward the mother-of-pearl tiles and reflect back into the dark space. The lanterns she’d been lighting even during the day were unlit. Her eyes went to her bookcases. Above some of them, and between others, there were windows, perfectly placed, emitting golden sunglow.
She looked at Landon who beamed brighter than the sun itself. “I hope you like it.”
She didn’t know what she felt or thought. She turned slowly moving toward the bedroom. The large hole was now full of pristine glass divided into sections that framed the oaks and pine trees outside like individual pieces of art. She covered her mouth, feeling as though she was home again, not realizing the shadows had caused her to feel apart from her home, that she’d been feeling dark until she felt this lightness again.
“I don’t know, Landon. I didn’t ask you to do this. I just... No. I don’t like it.” The words shocked her ears. Did she really mean that?
“But that night when I got stuck here in the storm you mentioned Ignatius’s idea about needing more windows. I think I placed them exactly where you said you’d like them to be.”
“Yes. they’re right, exactly right. But no. I didn’t ask for this. For you to do any of this. Why would you just come into my house and put in windows?”
“Because—”
She held up her hand, not wanting to let another moment go by without her making her boundaries clear. “You can’t do all this... helping. I can’t keep getting further indebted to you. You’re trapping me into having to give you my land, the cove.”
He tilted his head. “Tilly. You do know that anyone can enter your cove from the riverside. I’m trying to protect you, not hurt you. I swear.”
She grimaced. She hadn’t really known anyone could legally enter her water unbidden until Landon’s father had sailed in—the memory of him bouldering into the cove in the giant sailboat, claiming it as his shook her all over again. It had never been an issue before and once he knew it wasn’t his to take, he’d left. “People may be able to enter my cove, but they can’t just pillage and maraud and take my mussels. They just can’t. They’re mine. My family’s.”
He appeared sympathetic. “There are some laws that pertain to the Des Moines River that I’m trying to sort out. And I’m trying to find the survey results they did a while back, pertaining to your land, all the river-shore land and waters along the Des Moines.”
She rubbed her arms. “I’ve been digging through paperwork here trying to find something more than just my family’s storytelling and lore, too.”
“Good, good.”
“And you’ve staved them off anyway. Your father’s gone, right?” Tilly said.
“I think, anyway. Haven’t spoken to him since the day I brought the tablecloth.”
Her heart sunk, thinking of how she’d lived every day with her parents, adoring them and couldn’t imagine if they were alive, choosing to be apart. “I know how important making your father proud is for you.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m seeing things so differently now that... Well. Because of you.” He seemed to be pushing words out of his mouth before he decided to keep them to himself. She knew that he wasn’t accustomed to talking about feelings, about anything that didn’t have a direct connection to money, acquisitions, or trades. That he was making all these gestures, attempting to express himself had softened her, brought a smile that lingered instead of it snapping away. She began to tear up, taken with his kindness.
Shivering again, hunger practically dizzied her—or was that Landon’s proximity? “I need to change and eat.” This stark need reminded her to keep her guard up. She was flattered, touched, and attracted to Landon, but his lifetime of living one way with one set of goals couldn’t just be swapped for another set. That was as true as her hunger and her chattering teeth.
He pulled a basket from outside the front door. “Albert’s wife took care of all of that.”
So in the bedroom, with new illumination, she felt brightened yet exposed—the same way Landon made her feel. She would have to make curtains for the new windows for times when she needed to feel less revealed. She dressed in warm clothing, accepting that autumn was on her doorstep, and sat by the fire while Landon readied a meal on the embroidered tablecloth. She protested once saying it wasn’t a special meal. But Landon ignored her, setting everything up, because of course it was special.
Like one of her mussels, with a shell that was hard to open, her heart was giving, slightly gaping more, little by little, and that day she felt a release, a welcoming that invited conflicting feelings. The two ate together, Landon chattering about this and that, Tilly so exhausted that she didn’t even respond with words, just nods and smiles thrown in. And for those moments, she wanted his narration in her cottage and wanted him telling her that somehow their worlds were supposed to collide. She let his words slip over her, like he’d draped the Kashmir shawl, and like the tablecloth covered the table, he swathed her in precious love.
