Pay attention. Don’t just see the world with your eyes—see it with your whole being. Note the exact shade of blue in that little patch of sky. Or the dimensions of the pencil-thin shadows on the green lawn. Be diligent. If you stop paying attention, you’re going to miss something wonderful.
“Noelle, would you mind staying behind?”
She paused in the classroom doorway and took a few steps back inside. Mr. Evans sat on the edge of the desk, his hands clasped together on his thigh. The other students had already filed out, eager to make the most of the remaining hour of sunshine before nightfall. Tonight had been the final art class.
“Mr. Evans?”
“Please. Call me Preston.” His warm smile melted the teacher façade. He’d always been a kind teacher, but he held up a professional wall between himself and the students—no strong emotion shown, no information ever given about a personal life. Now, though, his body language seemed more relaxed, the wall easing down.
“I don’t mean to pry, but…” He inched closer. She hadn’t noticed his height until this minute. Or the deep blue of his eyes. “Well, I overheard you earlier, talking with a student. About your aunt. Joy Valentine?”
“Oh. Yes. Great aunt, actually.”
“I had no idea you were related to her. And so the auction three weeks ago? You discovered those paintings?”
“I did.”
A student bounded into the room, laughing with another student behind him. Followed by another, and another, coming in for their next class.
Preston stared at Noelle, pondering something. “Would you… be interested in grabbing a coffee? We can sit at the college cafe. It’s just… I’d love to hear more about your aunt. And the auction. I wasn’t able to attend. I was a fan of her work from years back. I even met her once.”
Noelle thought about the rest of her evening, only some dirty dishes to deal with and some bills to pay. Coffee with Mr. Evans sounded much more appealing. “Sure. Coffee would be good.”
“Brilliant.” Preston grabbed his textbook and reading glasses from the desk then waved a polite hand for her to exit first.
On the brief walk over, Noelle swatted away any recurring thoughts of this being inappropriate—calling him “Preston,” saying yes to a coffee. The art class is over, anyway. What harm is there in a quick coffee? He’s only interested in Aunt Joy.
Inside the cozy cafe, nestled in the back of the Student Center, Mr. Evans—Preston—found a secluded corner table and pointed to it, his expression a question mark. “This one okay?” She nodded, and he said, “What can I get you?”
“Just a small black coffee, please.”
Uncomfortable being alone in public, Noelle pretended to check her email on her phone while she waited. When Preston returned, he handed her the coffee, and she realized he’d paid.
“Oh, here. Let me get mine.” She reached for her purse.
“It’s already done,” he reassured. “Besides, this was my idea.” When he smiled, fine wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. She tried to guess his age. No more than forty, if that. She uncapped the piping-hot coffee, careful not to spill it.
He poured a bit of cream into his own. “How was the auction? I read about the results the next day. You must have been thrilled.”
“I was shocked,” she admitted. “And yes, thrilled. On a personal level, it was harder than I thought, watching those paintings walk out the door forever. They were a piece of her, I suppose. And after losing her, well, it just felt like losing her all over again.” She smiled. “That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Not one bit. Art is very personal. It’s a little piece of your soul, right there on the canvas. It makes perfect sense that you would feel that way.” His reassurance warmed her up as much as the coffee did. She liked this friendly, easygoing new side of him.
“And finding them the way you did.” He whistled. “I mean, locked up in a hidden room. And you were the first to see them. Amazing.” He lifted his cup to drink, his sapphire eyes staring at her over the rim, disarming her.
“Yes. Like something out of a movie, cracking that door open, seeing stacks and stacks of paintings. I thought I was dreaming.”
She told him about the unfinished one on the easel, abandoned by its owner and waiting for Joy’s return. She told him about the paintings hauled off by Sotheby’s in the middle of the night. “I also donated some of them to local galleries and kept a few for myself.”
“I’ll bet the village has been insane with tourists wanting to gawk at the place where Joy lived and painted.”
“Yes! I’ve caught a few people walking up to the cottage, taking pictures. They’re harmless, but it’s a little weird, living this way. And business at the gallery has boomed.”
“Where are they now? The ones you kept?”
“I’ve loaned them out to a Bath museum for a bit. They’re safer there. Until the renovations are done.”
“Renovations?”
“I don’t want to hog the paintings, keep them hidden away in my cottage. I want the village to have the paintings and enjoy them. So I guess you could say I’m building them a home, a second story in the gallery. With their own state-of-the-art security system.”
“Nice.”
They spent the next half hour talking about Aunt Joy, a little about her life, but mostly about her art. But even as his teacher-wall and her student-wall started to creep down, she couldn’t shake the idea that she was having coffee with her professor. Still, as he deftly switched the topic to a new book he’d been reading, she relaxed. A second cup of coffee warmed her entire body, and the hint of jazz coming through the speakers mellowed the last of her nerves.
Nearly two hours after they’d first sat down, Noelle realized the time, nearly nine o’clock, and how dark her drive home would be. When she finally waved good-bye after he’d walked her to her car, it dawned on her that tonight might have been a date. Starting the engine, she replayed in her mind their non-Joy-related topics of conversation. San Francisco (he had lived there for two years), college (he had attended Oxford), and music (neither of them liked the latest Travis album). She had done some sharing, too, ended up telling him much more than she’d ever intended to tell her professor. Her parents’ divorce, her first job in college, the last novel she’d read.
But Preston had made it easy. He nodded in all the right places, nudging the conversation along. An unexpected breath of fresh air. Air she wanted to breathe again.
On the way home, she called Jill for some girl talk but received her voicemail. And she certainly couldn’t call Adam. Especially with the way things stood at the moment. After painting the storm the night of the auction, Noelle had crawled into bed and done a harsh reality check. Adam was taken. Engaged. And until those facts changed, she had lost the right to hope for something more.
Now, three weeks since Valentine’s, she hadn’t seen him once. He traveled to the village the week after the auction to oversee the first day of renovations at the school, but she’d gone to London to visit Jill. Adam had texted Noelle a few pictures of the exciting event, and she responded with a simple “Congratulations” a few hours later, out of courtesy.
The following week, Adam had found out about Noelle’s gallery renovations secondhand from Mrs. Pickering. He’d left Noelle a voicemail, teasing her that she was cheating on him with another architect. She’d used someone from Bath, knowing Adam had his hands too full to consider the job. And knowing that Adam renovating her gallery would only put him in closer proximity to her on a daily basis. That was the last thing she needed.
When she stopped responding so quickly to his texts and calls, Adam started to get the message. Especially when she stopped responding altogether.
Last week, he’d quit trying. For the best, she convinced herself. She was tired of pretending, of spending time with Adam, of accepting his mild flirtations and flirting with him a little, too, when it was all in vain. No room to hope for more. Valentine’s Day had snapped her awake. Friendship wasn’t enough anymore.
Noelle was shocked that the combination of incessant hammering, noisy drilling, thick dust, and ugly plastic sheets inside the gallery hadn’t deterred the tourists. Not in the slightest.
Since Joy’s auction, people came in droves from all over, asking to see the paintings. Frank only had three to show at the moment, the ones he’d originally chosen for the gallery. As for the rest, Noelle directed the tourists to the museum in Bath. Most went away disappointed but still determined to make the short pilgrimage. Noelle couldn’t wait until the upper story was completed—next week, the contractor promised—so Joy’s paintings could be properly hung and admired in their new home.
“I’ll finish these tomorrow,” she told Frank, handing him the stack of bills.
Frank tried to speak, but some banging from upstairs jolted him. He clutched his chest. “My nerves can’t take much more of this.”
“I’m sorry. Only a few more days.” She found her purse and headed for the front door, eager to leave the noise behind. She had put in full workdays at the gallery, had even completed a handful of paintings in the back room whenever the workers upstairs took their breaks. Frank had talked her into displaying two of them yesterday in the window, convincing Noelle that if tourists couldn’t have many of Joy’s paintings at the moment, at least seeing her niece’s might pacify them.
She walked into the pristine afternoon and took a deep breath of cool air. Sweet, clean springtime air. Dust-free. She reached for her cell phone and found a voicemail from Preston. After their coffee chat last week, they had exchanged numbers, and Noelle had toyed with being the first to call him to touch base. But four days ago, before she could gather the courage, his name popped up on her caller ID.
He had called her twice more after that. The calls were easy and chatty, but he still hadn’t asked her officially for a date. Until last night. At the tail end of their phone call, he said he wanted to take her out. London seemed the most obvious choice, with so much to do and see, so she offered to drive there next week. He’d said he would think of something “memorable” they could do.
Hearing his voicemail now, her adrenaline surged. “Hey, so, this is Preston. I tried to text you a picture of something, but it didn’t go through.”
She snickered, remembering their talk during coffee when he admitted to being completely “tech-illiterate.” He didn’t participate in Facebook or Twitter and admitted that his students often mocked him for not being able to text. For being so “old school.” But she found it charming, and she was rather “old school” herself. She rarely spent any time online except to check her email. She didn’t see the point of it.
“So,” his voicemail continued, “I guess I’ll just have to tell you this way, by phone message. How about the London Eye for our date?”
Noelle loved the idea. Something she’d never done but always wanted to do, glide far above London in that famous, enormous Ferris wheel. What a way to see the city!
“So, anyway, just an idea. Let me know how you like it.”
She was about to click the “call back” button when Lizzie, beaming with her newlywed glow, approached her and reached out for a warm hug. “Just the person I wanted to see!”
“You’re back!” Noelle slipped her phone into her pocket. “How was Scotland?” Lizzie and Joe had taken an entire month for a honeymoon and had returned last week.
“Beyond words. Breathtaking. We stayed mostly in the Highlands. I’ve never been to any place more beautiful. You should go there someday. On your own honeymoon.” Before Noelle could respond, Lizzie produced a thick, pocket-sized book from her bag. On the cover, a picture of Joe and Lizzie kissing. “My grandmother surprised us with this—wedding pictures!”
Lizzie opened the album, and Noelle forced herself to act excited about it. Wedding pictures weren’t something she enjoyed, especially pictures of a wedding she’d already attended in person, but this was important to Lizzie, so she tried to be a good sport.
“A few duds, but most of them came out well.” Lizzie turned the pages. “You know, I’m experiencing a whole different wedding, looking at these. See that—I didn’t even remember Mr. Ackerman being there! I guess all I could concentrate on that day was Joe. Oh. Look at this one!” Lizzie held the album higher, catching the sun’s morning rays, then moved it toward Noelle. A candid shot of Noelle glancing down at her plate, smiling at something Adam had said, while he stared right at her, his expression thoughtful, pensive. “Smitten, I’d say. That is a man in love.”
Flustered, Noelle pushed back the album toward Lizzie. “We’re just friends, I keep telling everyone. He has a fiancée.”
“Well, where was she that day? From the look on his face, I’d say he only has eyes for you.” Lizzie reached into the pocket of the page and slipped out the picture. She handed it to Noelle. “Keep it.”
“Oh, no. I—”
“Really. Keep it.” She squeezed Noelle’s elbow as she closed the album. “Gotta go. I’ll show you the Scotland pictures when they’re ready.”
“Okay,” Noelle replied faintly.
Alone at the cottage, she looked at the picture again without the pressure of someone else’s watchful eyes. She took in every detail—the way Adam poised his glass, about to drink it; the way his eyes focused on her with intensity. One millisecond of time, captured. Always hard to tell with pictures, whether the image contained a true representation or just an accident, a flash of a moment on its way to being something else. Maybe Adam’s stare hadn’t settled on her. Perhaps he’d started to look over at another person and the camera had caught the in-between.
She noticed the steady warmth in Adam’s eyes… What if Lizzie was right? “Ridiculous,” she mumbled. She tucked the photo inside a drawer and decided to get busy with some chores.
Two hours later, she sat at the table on the back porch, safe from the rain under the awning. The clouds had rolled in, and what had started as a bright sunny day turned into a gloomy, foggy one. Typical English unpredictability. Still, even a day like this one held its charms, and Noelle chose to have her tea on the porch while snuggled up inside a flannel blanket.
Sparked by Lizzie’s photo album, Noelle had brought one of her own outside to keep her company. In the process of dusting the living room earlier, she’d rediscovered an album sitting on the bottom level of the coffee table. She had placed it there ages ago, after sifting through one of Joy’s many boxes. But she couldn’t recall ever looking through it, until now.
It contained mostly pictures of the old days. Some black-and-white, some color. Most were taken at Gram’s estate. Gram and Joy as little girls, then later, Gram and Joy with their spouses. As Noelle turned the pages, the pictures sparked a renewed interest in the W symbol. Maybe this book held some sort of clue to the past.
But by the time she finished her cup of tea, she’d reached the end of the book, and nothing in particular had leaped out at her except a picture of Gram and Joy posing with a woman Noelle had never seen before. They weren’t at Gram’s estate but at some sort of cottage, possibly the same cottage in Cornwall Noelle had visited a couple of times as a little girl. Noelle slid the picture from its sleeve and turned it over to find Joy’s handwriting, verifying Noelle’s memory. Rachel, Joy, Helen. Cornwall Summer Cottage, 1963. The year before her mother was born.
Startled by footsteps, Noelle looked up to see Mac approaching. She closed the photo album. “Hi there. Would you like some tea?”
“No thank ye, lass.” He wore his cap and a wind jacket and clutched his toolbox. “Just repaired that hole in the shed.”
“In the nick of time,” she noted as the rain pelted down harder.
“Aye.”
“Well, at least come in out of the rain.”
He obeyed and stepped under the awning, removing his cap and setting down his toolbox. “How did the auction go?” he asked as Mr. Darcy darted out of the rain and circled his feet.
“That’s right; I haven’t seen you since then. Things have been so busy.” Noelle had spent less and less time at the cottage these days. “It went even better than expected.”
“I heard about the money. ’Tis staggering.”
“I still can’t believe it. And honestly…” She shifted her empty mug in its saucer. “I’m uncomfortable with it. I mean, what does a person do with all that money? I’ve thought of charities, of course. The school here, some worthy causes. I think Joy would’ve approved of that.”
“Aye.”
“This sort of thing happens to other people. Not to me. I mean, it’s like winning the lottery. And I’ve heard nothing but horrid stories of people who win huge amounts of money getting depressed or being hounded by poor relatives. They’re miserable. In many cases, they regret the money entirely. I don’t want this—the money—to end up changing me. Who I am.”
Mac put his cap on and held the back of the chair. “You won’t let it. See this money as the blessing that it is. From your aunt. No guilt, no worries. She would want you to enjoy it, do good things with it. I have no doubt you will.”
As he always did, Mac left her with more comfort than doubt, more peace than anxiety. “Thank you, Mac. You always know what to say.”
He shrugged and headed back into the rain with his toolbox.