I saw their shadows through the stained glass of the front door.
Josh and Annabelle.
I hadn’t expected them both; Annabelle had written On my way, not On our way, but as I came down the stairs to open the door, I knew it was right the three of us should do this together.
Say good-bye.
To Rose, of course, but also to those initials engraved beneath her dining room table, entwined around each other for far too long.
“Tallulah,” Annabelle said when I opened the door, “we’re so sorry about Rose,” and I half stepped, half fell into her arms.
Then Josh’s arms circled around both of us, and as strange as it undoubtedly was, it didn’t feel strange at all.
“Is it too early to say, ‘Just like old times’?” he asked.
“Josh,” Annabelle said, breaking away from his embrace. “I cannot believe you would say that right now—I’m really sorry, Tallulah, he’s an idiot.”
But I was laughing, probably more than a little hysterical at seeing them, at Josh saying the one thing that hovered in the air between us, at Rose dying, at Duncan dying, of moving all the way to an island to get away from my own reflection, at all the things that had happened to us since we spread our towels out under the same summer sky.
“I’m sorry,” I said, biting my lip. “I don’t know why I’m laughing, it’s not funny.”
Annabelle looked at me with her cat-green eyes.
“Well, maybe it’s a little bit funny.” She smiled. “You know, in an absopletely inappropriate way.”
I smiled back at her and thought there was still no other person in the world who understood me like Annabelle Andrews did.
We went inside to sit and drink tea at Rose’s dining table—Josh and Annabelle, I was pleased to see, holding hands across it.
We spoke for a long time about Rose, her cakes and her dresses, her Sunday roasts—“Legendary,” Josh sighed—and how much, despite her unconventionality, or maybe because of it, we had all loved her.
“The best,” said Josh, and in the silence that followed I thought about what my mother would want me to say, right at that moment.
Rip the Band-Aid off, Lulu.
“I’m sorry, Annabelle,” I said, and the words I had practiced so many times came out naturally, as if it was the first time I had ever uttered them, maybe because I was finally saying them to the person they were meant for. “I am truly sorry for what I did to you on your wedding day. I have spent every day since hating myself for it, and I would do anything to take it back.”
“So would I,” Annabelle answered steadily, “but you’re not the only one who should apologize. I did the exact same thing, and I could say that we were just kids and that it didn’t matter as much, but it did.” She met my eyes and held them. “I know it did, Tallulah.”
I began to cry, her words releasing me, finally, from the girl by the river.
Josh stood up and put his hands on the back of his chair, rocking it back and forth.
“Well, obviously the person here who should really be doing the apologizing is me,” he began, “I’m a . . .” He stopped rocking, searching for the words.
“Dickhead?” offered Annabelle, as Josh plowed on.
“I’m a, well, I’m what you might call a crack slipper,” he said finally, while I stared at him, incredulous. “There’re some people,” he continued, “who sort of go through life always looking for a place to park their bike and when they find it, they feel, well, amazed, really, that someone has let them park it, you see.”
“Josh,” Annabelle interrupted, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
But I did, the ghost of Duncan McAllister hovering in Rose’s kitchen.
“It’s all right, Josh,” I said. “More tea, vicar?”
Later, when they had gone home to the River House, I lay in bed and thought about the three of us. “The bemusement triangle,” Annabelle had said when the tea had been replaced by wine and the tears—mostly Josh’s, still going on about his push-bike—by laughter.
People, I thought, would be bemused by us.
“How could she?” they would say of Annabelle, staying married to Josh; of me, the Juniper Bay Wedding Shagger; and of the three of us, somehow muddling through that night as the sky grew lighter to emerge as friends.
But some people, people who had a big first love, would understand—and I’d had two.
They had both been my first loves, and that night I let them go, finally realizing that your first love, no matter how big it may have been, wasn’t necessarily your true one.
A week after Josh and Annabelle’s visit, another silhouette appeared behind the stained glass of my front door, one that Barney and I nearly fell over each other on the way down the stairs trying to get to first.
I flung open the door to Will Barton, a bunch of island daisies in his hands.
“I told you I’d just turn up on your doorstep one day.” He smiled, adding, “At least I’m not dripping wet.”
Tell him, I said to myself, tell him now, Lulu.
A voice, not my own, but one belonging to some strange, high-pitched woman came out. “I wouldn’t mind if you were,” I squeaked, then immediately felt foolish.
Oh no, I thought, did that sound cheesy? What if he’s just here to offer a shoulder to cry on? Should you even be thinking about stuff like that at a time like this? What is wrong with you, Tallulah?
But Will was laughing, reaching down to pat Barney’s bullethead, and simultaneously leaning in to kiss my mouth, his hand tucked beneath my chin.
We kissed for a long time, long enough for Barney to chomp all the way through the daisies, long enough for the whole street to whisper to each other that it looked like the de Longland girl had a new boyfriend, and long enough for me to know that I had traveled all the way to an island to find myself home.
I smiled at Will.
“You’re very forward, Mr. Barton,” I said, “for a business partner.”
“Is that how you see me,” Will murmured, his mouth close to my ear, “as your water sports director?”
I heard it, the quiver of doubt in his voice, and who could blame him? I had spent most of our time together on Willow ducking and weaving his every move.
“Something like that,” I said, taking his hand and, leading him up to my room, diving in.
Later that afternoon, I lay with my head tucked under his arm, and he turned his head to smile at me.
“Thank goodness for that, Tallulah de Longland,” he said. “I was sick of treading water.”
“You have no idea,” I told him.