Amelia GREAT LOVE

I WANTED TO STAY IN our bubble. I wanted to carry on flying to Palm Beach, Parker coming to New York, long dinners and walks in the rain and movie marathons and sending books back and forth in the mail with notes in the margins. I wanted the surprise flowers at work and the writing of real love letters. I didn’t want any of that to be over. Which is why, as I spritzed my neck with perfume in my childhood bedroom, I said, “Hey Siri, text Parker Thaysden, ‘Not tonight.’ ”

She replied, “Texting Parker Thaysden: ‘At twilight.’ ”

I sighed, picked up the phone, and typed the message myself.

Maybe it was all so perfect because it wasn’t real. Our parents didn’t know; a lot of our close friends didn’t even know. So we didn’t have to field the questions about marriage, which I didn’t want, and babies, which I couldn’t have. We could stay in our little cocoon of love and not face anything real. The real part was when it got sucky. I liked this—the lovely in-between, where I didn’t have to worry.

I reached up and touched one of the hot rollers in my hair and, feeling that it had cooled, removed the metal clip, holding the curl in my palm. There was a knock at the bathroom door, and I called, “Come in!” just as my phone vibrated on the counter with You sure? You know we have to get it over with sometime…

But I couldn’t type back because my hands were full of curlers, and I couldn’t voice text because Aunt Tilley had walked in and was wedging herself right beside me on the small window seat, her legs dangling down between the vanity and the toilet, and her full pink polka-dot skirt with the crinoline underneath filling up pretty much every ounce of the bathroom.

“You look beautiful for the ball tonight,” she said.

I studied her face, which was hard because focusing on anything but the vivid red blush on her cheeks took some skill. Was she still here? Was she somewhere else? I never could quite decide. I wondered if this was all an act, a willful undertaking so that she didn’t have to remember. What it was she didn’t want to remember, I couldn’t be sure. But something. Either way, I played along, even when it drove my mother mad. I always played along. Why not? If she didn’t know, she couldn’t help it. And if she did? Well, if she did, it was fun to be lost in her world sometimes. A lot of days it beat the hell out of this one.

“Not as beautiful as you, Aunt Tilley. You will be the belle of the ball.”

She smiled contentedly and fanned herself with one of the vintage hand-painted fans she was never without. I wondered if she possibly felt warm in here, inside with the air turned way down.

“It’s the things you don’t do that you’ll regret, darling.”

I eyed her. “What do you mean, Aunt Tilley?” This was the only hard part. Was she here in my world now, or were we still two genteel ladies discussing a fictitious ball?

She took my hand. “Amelia, I wish more than anything that I hadn’t let Robert run away. I wish I hadn’t sent him off to war without telling the truth. I sent him away with nothing, no wife or child to come home to.” She paused, tears in her eyes and said, “I sent him away to die, Amelia. I see it now as clear as the diamond he tried to give me the night before he left.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t send him off to die, Tilley. It couldn’t be helped.” Robert had not been off at war. He had been killed in a horrible, freak farming accident with a cotton baler. But I couldn’t explain that to Tilley now. She couldn’t hear me, wherever she was.

She shook her head and looked me in the eye. “Amelia, you’re not hearing me.” I put the last curler back in the container, looked straight at her, and pursed my lips, so she would know I was listening. “It is the things we don’t do that keep us up at night, that ruin our lives, that descend us straight into madness.”

“The things we don’t do,” I repeated.

She was right. So was Parker.

I glanced out the window to see Parker standing at the end of our dock, hands in his pockets. I felt warm at seeing him, but also at having a family that had friends like the Thaysdens. For my entire life, their house, their dock, the contents of their pantry… It had all been as much mine as theirs. I knew Parker felt the same. Growing up, I took it for granted.

And now, life as I had always known it was going to change. Mom thought it would take at least a few more months to get Tilley settled and the back house spruced for her and Daddy to live in. It was bittersweet. I was losing my home, but my parents were gaining their lives back.

Once word had gotten around that Dogwood was for sale, the realtor had received two offers that very day, both cash, both over the presumed asking price. She’d tried to convince them to sell right then, but Mom just wasn’t ready. Dogwood was one of the most valuable properties in Cape Carolina. Mom and Dad said the sale was contingent on the owner keeping the home intact, not tearing it down and developing the land. While, theoretically, that might work, in reality there was really nothing they could do to control the next owner’s whims once it sold. So we all just prayed it went to someone we knew and trusted.

I patted what I thought might be Tilley’s knee underneath her massive crinoline. “You’re right, Tilley.” In moments like these, I worried more than ever about what moving to a new environment might do to her.

“Of course I am,” she said, looking offended. “You should never doubt that.”

I smiled at her. “There is a boy out there on that dock that I need to talk to.”

“Little Parker Thaysden,” she said. “He is a doll, isn’t he?”

I winked at her. “A real, live, true one. You know what? I think I might bring him to the ball.” And then I raised my eyebrows and whispered, “As my date.”

She winked back at me. “I think that would be marvelous.”

Bare feet in the grass, the long hem of my white linen maxi dress swishing along my ankles, I made my way to the dock, where Parker was standing, almost completely still, his hands in his pockets. He appeared to be staring at his boat, which, mysteriously, was at our dock, not his.

“Admiring your great love?”

He turned around, startled. When he saw me, he pulled me close. “Now I am.”

I knew it was risky, but I couldn’t help it. I kissed his soft, full lips, and I didn’t want to stop.

“They’re going to see,” he said, resting his forehead on mine.

I shrugged. “Let them all see. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

“About getting married?” he joked.

I rolled my eyes. “Nooooo. About telling them tonight.”

His eyes sparkled, and he reached his hand out to me. “Then let’s get to it.”

Maybe we should have planned what we were going to say or how we were going to say it, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because before we had even said the blessing, Olivia started. “Anything you two want to tell us?”

I could feel my mom kick her under the table.

I cut my eyes at Mom. “What do you know?”

Olivia shrugged. “Oh, nothing. We don’t know a thing. Just wasn’t sure if there was any news you wanted to share, in particular?”

Parker and I shared a glance.

He reached over, took my hand, squeezed, and said, “Well, it appears that you already know, but Amelia and I are dating.”

Mom let out a scream so high-pitched and long and loud that I thought perhaps my eardrums had burst.

Olivia gave her a look. “So it’s true! Is it new?”

I bit my lip guiltily. “Well, six weeks.” It wasn’t that long, but it was a long time to talk to my mother every single day and not breathe a word to her.

Now Mom gasped. “So all those times you said you weren’t seeing anyone special…”

I broke out in a grin that I absolutely could not suppress. “I lied. He is the most special.”

“Well, Robby is the most special,” Aunt Tilley interjected.

“But Robby is my brother, so, while he is special, he is not a man I will ever be in love with,” I replied.

“Right,” she said. “Of course. Your brother. Sometimes I forget.”

“So this must be serious, huh?” Mom asked.

She clearly wanted to ask when we were getting married. She simply could not accept it as true when I told her I wasn’t getting married again.

“Any important future plans?” Olivia asked, a little more boldly. “Anything I should get a diamond out of the safe for?”

Neither of us said anything.

“What about a baby?” Tilley trilled.

That was when I jumped in. “No, no, Aunt Tilley. I can’t have a baby. Remember?”

Evidently, the ball was over, because she said, just as clear and lucid as anyone else around the table, “Oh, but couldn’t you try IVF again? Don’t you have a couple more embryos?”

Perfect freaking time for her to come back to reality. I’m sure I looked horrified because Parker and I had never really discussed this. To be honest, I didn’t think we had to. We’d tried. We’d failed. We’d moved on. But when I looked into his face I could have sworn that I saw something almost hopeful in it.

I did a double take. “Wait. Do you want to try to have the other babies?”

The three sets of eyes around the table drilled into us, and I was suddenly thankful that our dads, Robby, and Mason hadn’t gotten out of poker night. I did wish, though, that Trina hadn’t had horrible morning sickness—for her sake, obviously, but also because she was always waiting with an upbeat smile during these emotional scenes.

He shrugged. “Well, I mean…” He sighed. “I don’t think this is the time or place for us to have this conversation, but it might be nice to try for a baby.”

Breathless, I felt like he had punched me in my very empty gut. “So you mean to tell me that we have been discussing our future ad nauseam, and you never felt the need to tell me that you wanted children?”

He turned to the table and said, “Excuse us.”

Then he took my hand and walked us out onto the porch. “Look, Lia, not necessarily. I want you more than I want children.”

I shook my head. “Has any of this been real?”

“Amelia, don’t do this. Yes, I kept it from you. I just didn’t want to hurt you because I love you so much. And I would rather have you than a baby.”

“Is that what this was all along? Some attempt to get me to be your surrogate again?” I knew I was spiraling, but I couldn’t stop.

He ran his hands down the length of my arms, a gesture I would have recognized as affectionate if I weren’t so angry. “Amelia, of course not. You know me better than that. I love you. I want to be with you. Let’s just forget the baby thing and go back inside.”

I knew before I said what I said next that I shouldn’t. I knew I couldn’t take it back. But it flew out of my mouth anyway. “Are you still pining away for Greer, too? Am I just a side distraction?”

“Stop,” he said firmly. “Don’t bring her into this.”

“ ‘Don’t bring her into this,’ ” I repeated. “Her. Her. It’s always going to be her.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” he said, turning on his heels.

As I watched him walk away, I knew that he was right. Even still, I didn’t run after him. She would always be there. But, if I was honest with myself, she would always be with us for a reason that not even Parker knew.