Page 5 of Willow in the Wind

Taylor took a big, slippery bite of fish. “Cat got your tongue?”

James laughed. “Why the big interest all of a sudden?”

“Because Mom dates people.” Taylor shrugged. “I figured you dated, too.”

“What kind of people does your mother date?”

Taylor raised a single eyebrow.

“I don’t care,” James explained with a wave of his hand. “Your mother and I split up twelve years ago. It was another lifetime.”

“I always assumed it was because of me,” Taylor said, then gave him a delicious smile. “The divorce, I mean.”

James knew she was toying with him. Basically, all of her friends’ parents were also divorced. It was almost expected. Staying together was no longer the norm. Some of her friends’ parents had even married other friends’ parents to create enormous patchwork families.

It was a very close-knit community of wealthy families in the Upper West Side. James had once been a part of that until the divorce, when he’d moved to Greenwich Village and then, eventually, back to London. The job had been irresistible. Good money. Music reviewing. Free concerts. Interviews with his favorite musicians. By then, Taylor had been fifteen and didn’t need him or even want him around very much. Nancy had said, “You’d be a fool not to take it.” And England had opened its arms to him.

Life was the strangest thing he’d ever known.

“Come on. There had to be someone,” Taylor said. “Some London lady!”

“Well, even if there had been someone, it’s pretty clear she’s gone.” James gestured around their little house on the beach. “Unless she’s hiding here somewhere. Is she in the closet? The bathroom?”

Taylor giggled. “You just wanted to be an old man, hiding away in the Florida Keys. And then I came down here and ruined it.”

“I’m forty-two,” James reminded her for the millionth time. “If that’s old, I’ll eat my hat.”

“Nobody says that anymore,” Taylor said.

“Isay it,” James shot back.

“Okay. But were you ever in love at all after the divorce? Twelve years is a long time to have nobody,” Taylor pointed out.

James’s neck was hot. He wasn’t sure how to tackle these big life questions. He wasn’t sure how to appease her.

So he decided to tell the truth. “I haven’t been in love in the past twelve years, no.”

Taylor’s shoulders drooped. “That’s crazy sad, Dad.”

She looked at him with so much pity. James thought it might kill him.

“I just think you deserve someone to share your life with,” Taylor said, sounding far more adult than she should have. She sounded a lot like James’s friend Stephan back in London, who’d said,Normal people spend their lives with partners.

But what did it mean to be normal? James had never pretended to know.

He’d never wanted to live a normal life.

Chapter Three

Autumn 2021

The Sutton Book Club ran out of chairs for today’s book discussion ofRebeccaby Daphne du Maurier. Cross-legged on the floor, Stella had her paperback on her thigh, and she bent low, her chin on her fist, as Esme explained to everyone how important this book had been to her as a teenager. Twenty-one people were in attendance—mostly women, but a couple of men, too, including Larry Gardner, one of the operators of the Sutton Book Club.

“I’ve read it probably twenty-five times,” Esme said with a soft laugh. “I’m so grateful you agreed to read it for this month’s book club. I always find something new when I read it.”

Esme’s eyes connected with Stella’s for a brief second. Stella smiled.

Esme was Stella’s Aunt Esme, sort of. Once upon a time, Esme had married Stella’s Uncle Victor, her father’s older brother, and they’d had four children: Rebecca (whose name, it turned out, came from this book), Bethany, Valerie, and Joel. Joel had died young from an aggressive form of cancer, andafter that, the Sutton family had come apart at the seams. Uncle Victor had cheated on Esme and left the island for Providence, Rhode Island. Stella’s cousins had stayed until high school graduation, then left as well. Esme had been on her own for quite a while till she met Larry Gardner and fell in love again.

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