Page 36 of April Flowers

Noah felt a renewed sense of loss. But all he could do right now was head inside and sit with Avery—a young woman who’d dared break through the boundaries of Noah’s life and make a mess of things. All he could do was demand answers.

Meanwhile, he knew that Margot was sitting up with Lillian just a few miles away, probably at another television, maybe watching the snowfall, thinking about Noah.

Would they ever meet again?

But when he entered the house and found Avery on the sofa, she was half asleep. A dating show played too loud on the television, and Avery had eaten all her grilled cheese and some of his. Noah stifled a sob and turned off the television. Whatever conversation they might have had, it would have to wait.

“Patience” was something Noah had preached to the parents of the youths he worked with. You need to offer them patience and respect, he’d said.

He needed to practice what he preached.

But now he understood how difficult it really was for those parents. Love made everything messy. Love made him pull a blanket over his niece and creep down the hall to make sure she didn’t wake up.

Love made him think they could get through this. At least we had to try.

Chapter Fourteen

It was Margot’s first night at home with Lillian and her first official night as caretaker. Due to Lillian's stubbornness and Margot’s fatigue after a particularly frightening day, things didn’t go very well. At one point, when Lillian was in her bedroom, changing into a nightgown, she burst into tears, and Margot hurried in to ask what was wrong. But Lillian was still wearing only a bra and her pants, and she shrieked at Margot to get out of her room.

“Your father will be home any minute!” her mother cried.

Margot felt it like a smack. But she took a breath and steeled herself. “Do you need help, Mom?”

She didn’t want her mother to feel embarrassed. This was the natural course of things: a daughter coming home to help her mother during her time of need. After all, hadn’t Lillian raised Margot—long after Lillian had wanted to raise children any longer? Lillian had prided herself on this, telling Margot frequently through her adolescence: I was done mothering, and then you came along to teach me a lesson. This had never sat right with Margot, but she’d never protested.

Margot backed up to the doorway and turned around. “I’ll be right here if you need anything,” she said coaxingly to her mother.

Lillian took several shuddering breaths. She muttered under her breath, too, but Margot couldn’t understand what she said. Margot heard the swishy sounds of clothes being changed. Finally, she heard the creak of the mattress springs. When she turned around, she found that Lillian had tucked herself in, pulling the sheets all the way to her chin as though she were a child.

Margot felt a rush of tenderness. It took all her willpower not to cry.

“Can I get you anything, Mom?”

Her mother blinked several times. She was fixated on the painting on the far side of the room—one Margot’s father’s aunt had painted and gifted them for their wedding. In the painting was a bright red cardinal on a branch laden with snow.

A split second later, Margot realized that her mother was asleep. It was as though the painting had calmed her.

Margot closed the door to a crack and tiptoed downstairs. Her legs were shaking. She went through the cabinets and finally discovered a very old bottle of wine—something forgotten ten years ago at least—and poured herself a glass. Standing up at the kitchen counter, drinking, she watched the snow swirling outside and wondered if Sam had called Noah already and told him about Avery. That poor teenager! She’d lost her mother. She’d lost everything. But what was she doing in Margot’s mother’s boathouse?

What had Noah told her about Margot?

Margot reminded herself that she hadn’t come to Nantucket for Noah-related reasons. She’d left Noah deeply entrenched in the past. She’d moved on—to Boston and the flower shop. She’dresolved that romance wasn’t anything she wanted to build into her life.

For the first time in a while, Margot tried to unpack why she’d turned her back on romance. She drank more wine. Suddenly, a vision of her parents in this very kitchen came to mind—Lillian digging into her father, demanding he do something or reminding him that he hadn’t done something he’d said he’d do. “You know, I could have married Charlie Oleander?” Lillian had been fond of saying. “He would have mowed the lawn by now. He would have picked up the meat for dinner.” Margot’s father had mostly taken this in stride. Sometimes, he’d said, “The door’s right there, Lillian. Leave whenever you want to.”

That kind of talk had stuck with Margot. It had made her feel like she never wanted to be in a position like that—where someone showed you the door and said leave me if you want to, I don’t care.

Her relationship with Noah hadn’t been like that. At least, that wasn’t how she remembered it. She remembered sunset walks on the beach. She remembered kisses beneath a velvet and star-studded sky. She remembered whispered promises and talk of children and his assurance that he would take her away from Lillian, from all the pain of her life. “I love my mother,” she’d always told him, her voice filled with reticence.

“She loves you, too,” Noah had affirmed. “She just doesn’t know how to show it.”

A few years ago, Margot encountered the term “narcissistic parent” and read all about the dynamic that forms between the child and parent as a result. It had rung every bell. But she’d also thought,What good does knowing this do for me?All it did was remind Margot of how messed up her childhood had been. All it did was remind Margot of how broken she was.

She wondered what her father might have done about Lillian’s diagnosis. Would he have taken her to her doctor’s appointments? Would he have sat with her and watched The Cooking Channel? Would he have reminded her of everything she’d forgotten?

Margot suddenly remembered Vic Rondell—the forty-something man who’d supposedly met her mother playing cards downtown and had taken her shopping today. Even more than that, he was going to pick her up tomorrow to play cards. Around five, he’d said.

Margot googled Vic Rondell and learned from various social media and business profiles that he was a jack-of-all-trades, so to speak. He owned a few businesses, had had a brief stint selling real estate, and had spent most of his childhood and adulthood on the West Coast, but he was originally from the East Coast. He hadn’t been raised in Nantucket, which made sense since neither she nor Sam had ever heard of him. But it was clear he wanted to make his mark on the island.

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