Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1) (4 page)

As if summoned there by my thoughts, the front door banged open loudly, setting Jasper off in another flurry of wheezy barks. “Hey there, little Jaspy man!” a familiar voice cooed. I felt my back stiffen and tried to ignore the worried glance Posey shot me.

And then she was standing there in the doorway to the dining room. Her gaze swept the room briefly before it landed on me. Her smile froze, and I wondered what my face looked like.

“Iris,” she said. Just my name. Was that a tremor in her voice?

I swallowed my mashed potatoes over a newly dry throat and stood. “Hi, Mom.”

Suddenly, she was all movement, sweeping around the table, long skirt and flowing scarves trailing behind her, and pulling me into her arms. I stood there, arms limp on her shoulders, trying to make myself feel
something
.

It was strange—just stepping into my grandmother’s house set off a riot of memories. Once that coffee and chocolate smell, so ubiquitous to the café, hit my nose, I would have known exactly where I was even blindfolded. But here I was, holding my own mother, and I got no such sense memory.

The mother that I remembered, the woman who lived with Dad and me in Chicago until I turned sixteen, possessed only a passing resemblance to this one. That woman had been sleek and beautiful, dressed to the nines no matter the occasion. A constant bundle of energy, always on the phone, her laptop practically glued to her fingers. “She’s in take-over-the-world mode,” my dad would say with a laugh, pulling me away from her workspace in the kitchen. And I would laugh, too. I didn’t mind that she was busy, not really. Because I knew, deep down inside, that she
could
have taken over the world. She was that powerful, that capable. And she was my mother.

I worshipped her.

This woman… Her gauzy sundress, though soft, felt foreign beneath my fingertips. Her hair was no longer contained in a sleek bun. Now it hung long and curly down her back, enveloping my face as I hugged her. Gone was the familiar smell of Chanel, replaced by something woodsy, a little smoky.

Then she was pulling back, looking at me with wet eyes, her gaze flicking quickly across my face, like she was trying to remember every detail.

Her eyes, at least, looked the same. Granted, she had traded bold eyeliner and expertly applied smoky shadow for a smear of sparkly, baby-blue color over her lashes. But her eyes…every bit as searching, as sharp as they had ever been. Looking at her eyes felt like looking at my mother.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you got in,” she said. “I planned on it, but then a client came into the studio, and before I knew it—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, and her wince did not escape me. Maybe my voice was a little sharp. I took a breath, determined to be pleasant. “Really. Posey met me at the dock, and Mimi had food ready when I got here. I have been sufficiently welcomed.”

Her eyes continued to search my face. “Come on, Minny,” my grandmother said, lifting the cover from a plate on the sideboard. “I saved you a plate. The rest of us are moving on to pie.”

Posey groaned as I took my seat. “You do realize I will never fit into a wedding dress at this rate, don’t you Mimi?”

“Hush, girl. You’ll be lovely on your wedding day.” She shot a glance down the table. “I can only hope I’m still of this earth when you finally get around to it.”

I snorted over my glass of wine, earning a kick from Posey under the table. According to our weekly phone chats, the family was getting increasingly impatient at her lack of interest in setting the date.

“Where is Paul, anyhow?” my mother asked, taking her seat. “I assumed he’d be joining us.”

My second snort wasn’t as silent as I had hoped, judging from the glare Posey shot me.

“He’s on call, Aunt Minny. You know he needs to stay close to the hospital when he’s on call.”

I realized belatedly that I was gripping my wine glass so hard that it was shaking. I carefully set it on the table and slipped my hands under my thighs to still them. Even after ten years, it never ceased to bother me when people called my mother Minny. Sure, that was the nickname she’d had since she was a little girl, thanks to Uncle Frank. My grandmother, a Rose herself, had insisted on giving her two daughters flower names—Jasmine and Gardenia. They had, of course, continued the tradition with Posey and me. But Jasmine and Gardenia had been too much of a mouthful for their brother Frank, thus Minny and Deen were born.

I’d been hearing the family call my mom Minny during our visits ever since I was a girl. Back then, I thought it was funny. My dad and I used to tease her about it, actually. When she left the island for college she had decided on Jas instead. A much better fit, I always thought. Minny was childish, flakey. But Jas—that was a name that worked for a high-powered, deal-making woman like my mother.

Since the divorce, since she left her former life behind, she had embraced the name Minny again. I didn’t think there were many people left in the world that called her Jas anymore. And that bugged the hell out of me.

Posey plopped a towering slice of chocolate fudge pie on my plate and an even larger plop of whipped cream on top. I was already stuffed from dinner, but a quick look at my grandmother’s face, and I knew I would finish the entire thing. Not eating Mimi Rose’s food was considered the highest of insults. She didn’t have a lot of patience for the word
full
.

One bite told me that it would be worth the hit to my waistline. Across the table, Andrew whimpered as the pie hit his mouth. No one cooked better than my grandmother. Except for maybe…

“How’s Pops?” I asked, more to be polite than anything. I knew Posey’s description back at the café was much more accurate than anything my grandmother would say. Her need to put a positive spin on everything was well established in our family.

“He’s doing well,” Mimi said, but her accompanying wince had me catching my breath. “Complaining about wanting to come home. Be in his own bed.”

“He’ll get there, Mom,” Deen said, reaching over to pat her hand.

“Yeah, Mimi,” Edward added. “He’s stubborn as hell.”

“Don’t swear at the dinner table,” she said automatically, somewhat tempering the scolding with the second slice of pie she slid onto his plate.

“Why does he get seconds?” Posey complained.

“Because he’s a growing boy.”

“He’s thirty,” she muttered, and I hid my laugh behind my napkin.

“Can we go visit him tomorrow?” I asked, and Mimi grinned at me.

“Of course, sweetheart.” A slight frown marred her forehead. “Maybe Monday would be better. After all, tomorrow is the fish fry, of course. Wouldn’t want to be late.”

I could only shake my head. These people were obsessed. But I guess that’s what happened when you lived on a twenty-square-mile island that boasted exactly two restaurants and two bars. Not a lot of opportunity for night life on Lilac Bay.

Mimi stood up to begin clearing the table, and I didn’t like the way she had to lean on the arm of her chair when she rose. “I’ll do that,” I told her, jumping up.

She waved away my offer. “Nonsense. You just got here.”

“Well, you’re certainly not doing it,” Uncle Marcus said, poking his son Greg in the elbow. “Get to it.”

“Why doesn’t Posey have to help?” Greg whined, sounding pretty much exactly the way I remembered him sounding at ten.

“You can
all
help,” Aunt Lindsey said, pointing at her sons. “Twins included.”

“Come on, babe,” Edward said, pulling on his boyfriend’s arm. But Mimi patted Zane’s hand. “No, he can stay and keep me company. Tell me more about this spring’s décor in the dining room.”

Zane shot Edward a smug smile, and Posey laughed beside me. I was smiling in spite of myself. Maybe I had missed the family bickering a little bit.

I
t was pretty
much impossible to fall asleep that night. My grandmother had put me back in the room I’d stayed in after my parents’ divorce. I lay in bed, knowing I should be exhausted from the long day of travel and all of the changes in my current life. But all I could think about was how I felt exactly like that girl of sixteen who had shown up here with her mother all those years ago. Nervous, out of place, missing a life that seemed lost to her. Missing her dad…

I rolled over with a sigh and fished around on the nightstand for my phone. Two new emails had come through since I’d checked last—an offer for a new twenty-four hour gym membership down the street from my old condo and a newsletter from one of my favorite restaurants. I felt a little pang as I scrolled past them. I already missed being surrounded by amazing restaurants and nightlife, not to mention the little things I had taken for granted. I was pretty sure there wasn’t a gym on the island, let alone one that was open all night. Like Posey said, they all got their exercise walking and biking everywhere.

Like a masochist, I reopened the email from my father. I had spent most of the evening trying to think of a response. It would be better, I knew, if he heard about my failings from me, rather than from some asshole eager to spread gossip. But how could I explain it to him, this deviation from the scheduled course of my life, when I didn’t really understand it myself? The last two weeks had been like a whirlwind—a destructive, violent whirlwind that left me feeling confused and wounded. How had it all fallen apart so completely?

I screwed up, Dad. And they fired me for it. I should have known about the second offer and I missed it. The whole thing was my fault.

I typed out a greeting. Deleted it. Tried again. Five times, I drafted the first lines of an email, erasing every one of them. I finally threw the phone down in frustration, telling myself to worry about it the next day and try to get some sleep.

When sleep did come, it was interrupted by dreams of crashing waves and the feeling of falling. Just before dawn, I woke with a start, my heart pounding, memories of David’s stormy eyes vivid from the dream. He had caught me, just the way he had that afternoon. But in my dream, he wasn’t as quick to let go.

You are not going to spend your time here fantasizing about David Jenkins
, I told myself firmly, swinging my legs out from under the covers, giving up on the pretense of rest as dawn’s light was peeking into the room.
It didn’t work out so well for you last time.

If I had hoped for a sluggish day of lying around the house, I had come to the wrong place. When I stumbled downstairs in search of coffee, I found my grandmother already up and at the table, scribbling in her day planner.

“Good morning, Iris,” she said warmly. “Did you sleep well?”

I kissed the side of her head as I passed on my way to the coffee maker. “I did,” I lied. “You?”

“I always sleep well,” she said, back to her scribbling. “A lifetime of that clear lake air. What do you plan to do today?”

I poured myself a mug of coffee before joining her at the table, ignoring the lake air comment. “I’m not sure, really. Maybe head over to the café, see if Posey needs help…”

I trailed off at the incredulous look on her face. “Don’t be absurd, Iris. You are not going to work your first morning in town.”

“But if Posey—”

She held up a hand. “I won’t hear of it. You’re spending the day with me.”

I grinned. “That definitely sounds better than working.”

I should have realized that spending the day with my grandmother would be a hell of a lot more exhausting than putting in a few hours at the café would have been. Though she wasn’t technically hosting the fish fry this year, she still seemed to think it her duty to oversee nearly every aspect of the preparation, with me by her side. She dragged me up and down the island, to what felt like every store in town, not to mention the harbor to pick up necessities shipped over from the mainland. And everywhere we went, she introduced me to her friends, most of who already seemed to know exactly who I was. It was exhausting, trying to keep track of all the faces and names, and I gave up sometime before lunch.

Then there was the somewhat humiliating fact that my seventy-five-year-old grandmother was in much better shape than I. She practically trotted her way around the island in spite of the hilly terrain. By the time we finally arrived back at the house, I was looking forward to the fish fry nearly as much as the rest of the town, if only for the chance to stand still for a few minutes.

Since I’d made Posey promise not to abandon me during any town nonsense, my cousin picked me up for the fish fry promptly at seven.

“You look beat,” she chirped brightly.

“Thanks, Pose.”

She grinned. “Give me a break. Even exhausted, you’re gorgeous.” Her eyes flicked down my figure, and she sighed loudly. “It’s so not fair. You got the waist
and
the boobs.”

I snorted, pushing her a little. “I so did not get the boobs.”

“Bigger boobs than me.”

I crossed my arms. “Well you got the better ass, so I wouldn’t complain. My ass is flat as a board.”

“Yeah,” she groaned. “Ass and belly. Big winner here.” She flopped her arms out to her sides. “Face it, Iris. You are the tall, thin, gorgeous cousin, and I’m the round one.”

“You’re the ridiculous one,” I laughed, slipping my arm through hers as we started off down the street. And she was. My cousin might not have been as tall as I was, but round was certainly not the word I would have used to describe her. She had some curves, but they were the kind other girls envied. Add to that her gorgeous curls, and Posey had absolutely nothing to complain about in the looks department as far as I was concerned. She had also gotten the classic Powell coloring—creamy fair skin, red hair, and blue eyes—of our mothers and most of our cousins. I was the odd one out with my olive skin and dark hair. That had always bugged me when we were younger.

“We got distracted fulfilling our societal impulse to compare ourselves to unfair female beauty standards,” Posey said. “Why are you so tired? Didn’t you sleep well?”

I decided not to tell her about the crappy sleep or the dreams—I didn’t really want to explain how David had featured so prominently in them. “Mimi dragged me from one side of the island to the other today.”

Posey nodded knowingly. “It’s freakish, isn’t it? How much energy she has. Always makes me feel a little bad when I can’t keep up.”

“Exactly.” I thought back to the myriad of errands we had run in preparation for the night’s activities. “So this is a pretty big deal around here, huh?”

Posey shot me an incredulous look. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“You came to the island every year until you were sixteen. You honestly don’t know the significance of the fish fry?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here this time of year.”

She shook her head, the incredulity on her face growing deeper. “Mimi hosts this event every few years,” she said. “I know she’s told you about it before.”

I looked down at my feet, feeling uncomfortable. It was, of course, entirely possible that Mimi had mentioned it to me at some point without me remembering. I had never been able to make myself care too much about the goings on in town. Not when I lived hundreds of miles away. Not even when I had lived here, if I was honest.

“Sorry, Posey,” I finally mumbled. “Maybe she did? I just don’t remember.”

My cousin sighed before shaking her head a little. When she looked back at me, her face was more neutral. Like she was determined to give me the benefit of the doubt, even if she found my disinterest in island affairs rude.

“The fish fry is the last big town event before the season starts,” she explained. I knew that by “season,” she meant the arrival of the tourists. They would start trickling in over the next few weeks as spring and Memorial Day approached. By the time school got out, the trickle would turn to droves. The ferry schedule would increase from four trips a day to every half hour, bringing day-trippers and vacationers alike. They would come for the charm and the nature and the fudge, filling up the hotels and B&Bs and the restaurants and cafés. The money the islanders took in during the summer months needed to last for most of the year, though the visitors would continue to come in smaller numbers through fall hunting season. Winter months saw some tourism, the hardy types who wanted to ice fish or cross-country ski in the miles of unspoiled forests. But it was summer when the real money was made.

“So this isn’t a tourist thing?” I asked.

Posey shook her head. “A few of the summer home owners are here by now—like Mae—but mostly, this is for the year-rounders. One last chance to spend time together before we all get so busy and crowded.”

Crowded. I shook my head. Even with the arrival of the tourists, the island could only comfortably hold around twenty-thousand people. If that was crowded, I wondered how she would describe the streets of a real city.

We were nearing Town Square now, and as the scene came into view, I did a double take. There really did seem to be a lot of people here. Like, pretty much everyone who lived on the island full time. Tables surrounded the center of the square, each filled with a different item of food or drink. A bonfire was burning in the middle, people milling around, drinks in hand, laughing and talking. Someone had set up speakers and soft bluegrass music filled the air. Strings of lanterns stretched from lamppost to lamppost, adding to the cheery glow of the fire. It looked…well, it looked really nice, actually.

“Wow,” I murmured, causing Posey to turn to me with a grin.

“It’s great, isn’t it?”

I nodded, eyes darting around the space. I didn’t remember anything like this when I lived here. But then again, I didn’t get out too much back then.

Posey slipped her arm through mine. “Come on. Cora Hanson has mulled wine over there. It’s pretty fantastic. Let’s go get some.”

Apparently, Posey wasn’t the only one excited about Cora’s mulled wine. By the time we reached the table, the line had stretched down to the edge of the square. “Do you mind waiting?” she asked. “It’s worth it, promise.”

As my attention had just been captured by Jerry walking his new chicken around in what appeared to be a flannel-lined picnic basket, I figured alcohol was going to be a necessity to get through the evening. “I’m fine waiting.”

Posey barely seemed to hear me. She was standing up on her tiptoes, looking around the square.

“Paul?” I asked, and she blushed a little, slumping down. “That obvious?”

“It’s cute,” I told her. “If a little nauseating.”

“Hey!” But she was laughing. “I never thought I would be one of those so-cute-we’re-gross couples.”

“You’re definitely more cute than gross.” I scrunched up my face. “Then again, I haven’t seen the two of you since New Year’s. Maybe you’ve gone up a few notches on the gross factor.”

“It does seem to increase the closer we get to setting a date.”

I straightened up, trying to gain a few inches of height, and looked at her with my best impression of our grandmother’s imperious stare. “Are you saying you might set a date in the near future? Before I’m cold in my grave?”

Posey snorted, pushing me. “That is scary. You sound just like her.”

We were both giggling when the woman in front of us turned around. She was tall, blonde, and built like one of those beach volleyball champions, and one look at her face had my laughter dying pretty quickly. Margo Carr. Damn it.

“Posey Conley, what’s this about setting a date? I was beginning to think you were making up the entire engagement story.” Her eyes flicked over to mine, widening a bit. “Iris Holder? Is that you?”

It was all I could do not to groan aloud. A quick glance at my cousin’s face told me that the feeling was mutual. Which didn’t surprise me at all. Margo Carr’s bitchiness was of the caliber that challenged even Posey’s see-the-good-in-everyone attitude.

“Hello, Margo,” I said, figuring I may as well be polite. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“It’s shocking to see
you
,” she said, eyes flicking from my shoes—a more sensible wedge heel tonight—to the top of my head. “I figured you wouldn’t be gracing us with your presence again.”

“I’ve come to visit with family for a while.” It was much more difficult than I would have thought to talk with my teeth clenched.

“Well,” she said, her eyes doing that flick to my shoes again. “Isn’t that a nice surprise.”

It couldn’t have been more obvious that she considered it far from nice. Margo had hated me from the first moment I stepped foot inside the Island School. Posey insisted that it was jealousy—Margo hated that I had lived in a big city while she had been stuck here her whole life. I wasn’t sure about that. After all, she hadn’t left when she turned eighteen.

“We’re very happy to have her,” Posey said, taking a minuscule step closer to me.

Margo’s eyebrows lifted, disbelief clear on her face. “I’m sure you are.”

“So, Margo,” I said, raising my chin slightly. I had spent months being afraid of this girl, but there was no way I was going to let her make me feel like shit now. I wasn’t that person anymore. “What have you been up to since high school?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m the manager at the Blossom Inn,” she said, every word laced with defensiveness.

“How nice for you.” I was careful to use the exact same inflection that she had on the word
nice
. Her eyes flashed.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s wonderful to have roots somewhere, don’t you think? Oh.” She stopped, her expression all faux-embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Iris. I forgot about your family troubles.”

Okay,
now
I wanted to slap her. It was her favorite method of torture back in school. Some little slip about my parents’ divorce, or about the fact that I wasn’t from the island like the rest of our classmates, and then the pretend apology.

“My family is doing quite well, thanks.”

She took a deep breath, clearly readying to throw another jab my way, but we were interrupted by the arrival of a woman I had never seen before. “Margo,” she said, leaning in and kissing her cheek before turning to us. “And Posey! How are you?” The unknown woman turned her attention to me before either could respond. “And you must be Iris Holder.”