Page 103 of These Summer Storms

Silence from inside the greenhouse. And then, “He gave it nonetheless. And I’m taking it. And you’d be a monster if you didn’t let her do the same.”

“I’m calling security,” Elisabeth said in a tone Alice recognized from a lifetime of speaking her mother’s language. The stone wall of her mother’s resolve. “I want you off my island.”

“You’re not calling anyone.” The man’s reply was so dismissive; it must have destroyed Elisabeth. “You’d never cause that kind of scene.”

“We should get Tony,” Claudia said, softly. Alice didn’t misunderstand. This wasn’t for Storm security or the Treasury Department or the myriad bodyguards who’d arrived with their billionaire bosses that afternoon.

This was a family affair.

“No,” Alice said, turning away from the group to head for the house. Later, she’d tell herself she said it because Tony was in the fog bell house with Greta, and it was too far away. But in the moment, she acted on instinct, already moving upstream through the throngs of white-shirt-black-tie waiters, toward the door to the house.

“Get Jack.”

And then she headed inside, to face another one of the island’s secrets.

Chapter

15

Even though she tookthe shortcut through the caterers’ staging area, by the time Alice arrived, Elisabeth was alone, standing in profile at the center of the greenhouse, still and poised like a John Singer Sargent portrait.Lady Storm.

Alice peered down the long, dark hallway that led into the house to the foyer, everything within made darker by the bright sunlight outside. It was empty. Whoever her mother had been arguing with had disappeared.

Taking the two steps down into the solarium, she scanned the room, empty except for her mother. “Mom?”

Elisabeth Storm was best in large groups of people, preferably those with whom she had to put on a face. While she didn’t think her mother particularly disliked her children, Alice knew better than to imagine that she enjoyed being around people who could see her truth. A quiet sigh was the only indication that she’d heard Alice.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes,” she said, turning her attention to her dress—the purple silkshift that had somehow avoided even a single wrinkle in the windy, eighty-degree seaside humidity. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

How many times had she heard those exact words—I’m fine—over the years? Her mother never acknowledging a single moment of stress, of anger, of wear, in any way.

Perhaps it had taken until now, until the irrefutable knowledge that something worthy of her mother’s concern had happened—something upon somethings upon somethings (the death of her husband, for example)—for Alice to realize that in suppressing every negative emotion, her mother had succeeded in suppressing the good ones, as well.

But there was something else, in that moment, frozen in time and space and the unbearable heat of the solarium (how was her mother not sweating? How was she not evendewy?). A realization that Alice, too, had done her best to hide her emotions, for fear of being seen, of being known, of being rejected.

Not good enough to be a Storm, not good enough to be anything outside of one.

In the past, Alice would never have argued with that clippedI’m fine. She wouldn’t have dared. But they were all in uncharted territory. “I heard you in here,” she said. “There was someone with you.” A pause as she tried to be gentle. “It sounded serious.”

I’m here. If you need me.

That felt like too much to say.

Her mother didn’t look at her. “You shouldn’t be listening at keyholes.”

Tears sprang, unwelcome and angry and sad and a dozen other things, burning Alice’s throat as she searched for the right thing to say.

She settled on, “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

She saw the words strike Elisabeth, making her impossibly stiffer. “What areyousorry for?”

Sorry for your loss. For our loss.(The truth.)

But she wasn’t going to say that. “I’m just—sorry.”

“There’s no need to cry.”

---