Page 31 of Love Conquers All

Hilary led Graham out onto an ornate veranda overlooking the Siasconset bluffs. The light was orange and made everything blurry and soft, like an old photograph. Sylvie was already at the table with a glass of white wine, wearing a sage-green dressmade of silk. When she got up, Graham couldn’t help but take in the full breadth of her body, long and lean, maybe from years of yoga and long hikes.

“Hi,” Graham said, feeling foolish.

“Hey there.” Sylvie reached out to touch his arm.

Electricity zipped from his bicep to his hand.

“It’s good to see you,” Graham said, stumbling over his words. “I mean, both of you.”

Hilary sat across from them and poured Graham a glass of wine. This left Graham to sit next to Sylvie, his heart pounding.

“Sylvie was just telling me about her days of being a pink-haired punk on Nantucket Island,” Hilary said with a curious smile.

Sylvie doubled over with laughter. “I don’t think I mentioned that Graham dyed my hair pink. We used only ‘natural’ ingredients, so I’m sure it looked like garbage.”

“It looked great,” Graham insisted, remembering how proud he’d been when they’d first dyed Sylvie’s hair together, watching it dry into its coloring in the sunshine at the beach.

“I’m so curious about your early days of protesting together,” Hilary said, shaking her head. “It must have been invigorating to take on the world like that.”

Sylvie and Graham hesitated and gave one another side-eyed glances. Graham didn’t know what to say.

Hilary waved her hand as though to push away the awkwardness. “Oh, but you’ve both done so much since then. It’s rare to know what you want to do as a teenager and keep doing it. My mother and my daughter were like that, but I struggled.”

“Hilary was telling me about her work in the film industry,” Sylvie said, her voice quieter. “Costuming! It sounds incredible.”

“But Sylvie has been giving me incredible ideas to make the costuming world more environmentally friendly,” Hilary said. “You wouldn’t believe the waste involved in the film industry.”

Actually, Graham could believe that because he’d spent four years in his twenties handcuffing himself to various film equipment and trying to stop major motion pictures from ever being made. Hollywood called him a killjoy. That was before he’d ever teamed up with Hilary to save that national park in California.

Did Hilary know about his anti-Hollywood past? Graham guessed she did. She had power and money and could get the dirt on anyone she worked with. He guessed she’d either decided what he’d done hadn’t mattered or she respected it.

Hilary got up to check on dinner, leaving Sylvie and Graham at the table by themselves. Sylvie seemed unable to look Graham in the eye, so Graham kept his sights on the horizon, watching oranges shift to pinks and reds.

“You and Hilary seem to be getting along?”

“Yeah. Um. We ran into each other yesterday,” Sylvie said. “She invited me out with a few of her friends, if you can believe it. I needed an excuse not to go back to the inn or my father’s house, and it sounded nice to sit around with some strangers and talk.”

Graham caught himself speculating what Sylvie had told Hilary about Graham. He wondered if Sylvie had told Hilary about how she’d run away from him. He questioned if she’d told Hilary how she broke his heart.

“She invited me to stay with her,” Sylvie said under her breath, gesturing toward the massive house at their backs. “So I said I’d stay tonight and tomorrow just to get my bearings before I take on Dad’s place and the inn.”

Graham was speechless. “Wow.”

“I know. It’s crazy.” Sylvie traced her fingers across the wood of the outdoor table. “I just haven’t had anyone to talk to in a long time, I guess. It’s been nice to let myself relax aroundHilary and her friends. It’s been nice to open up or try to.” She shrugged.

Graham felt as though it was easier to breathe, knowing that Sylvie was finding solid ground again. He realized that all these years, a part of him had worried about her, hoping she was all right.

“Do you have close friends, Graham?” Sylvie asked, narrowing her eyes.

Before Graham could answer, Hilary came outside with a report on dinner and news from her fiancé. “He’ll be home soon,” she said. “And he’s looking so forward to meeting you both!”

Graham’s throat closed. He told himself not to think of this as a double date. But he had to fight every instinct in his heart not to reach under the table and touch Sylvie’s hand.

He wondered if she was thinking about it, too.

Chapter Fourteen

Sylvie was surprised at how easy it felt to sit at the dinner table with Graham, Hilary, and Hilary’s fiancé, Max, the part-time cinematographer and handiworker Hilary had met on the job last summer. They were from all walks of life and all earning brackets and with all sorts of backstories, but they found ways to celebrate each other’s wins and feel empathy for one another’s losses. Most extraordinarily, Sylvie realized that Max and Hilary had known James Bruckson in ways Sylvie never had. They knew him in another era—long after the darkness she’d experienced. They’d known him as an older man and described him as “wise, centered, and focused.”

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