Page 2 of Saltwater Secrets
Marc caught her eye.
“But things with Thaddeus haven’t felt exactly easy lately,” Hilary said tentatively. “I think she’s trying to keep it from me. But I heard them fighting a few weeks ago.”
“I heard them fighting about a month ago,” Marc said conspiratorially.
“I think she wanted to hide it from us because of the wedding?” Hilary suggested. “I mean, it looked like they were really happy at the ceremony itself. And they certainly danced all night.”
“But everyone gets swept up at weddings,” Marc pointed out.
It was true, Hilary knew. Her heart pounded with grief at the thought of her daughter’s potential future breakup. Nobody wanted their children to go through hardships. She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve really liked Thaddeus over the years. I know he hasa difficult past.” She was referring to the fact that previously, Thaddeus had done some unscrupulous things to pay the bills for his overly large and underprivileged family. He’d even sold a few drugs, which was nothing he was proud of and everything he’d tried to overcome.
Still, as Aria’s mother, it wasn’t easy for Hilary to forget this fact.
“Thaddeus sure has changed,” Marc said then, sniffing.
“For the better, in many ways,” Hilary agreed. “Despite all this fighting. Not that I could make out what the fights were about.”
“I was surprised when he started taking online university classes,” Marc said. “And pleased! I never wanted his background to get in the way of what he wanted to do, whatever that ended up being.” He didn’t mention that Thaddeus had changed his major several times since then and felt wayward.
“And he’s always there for Aria,” Hilary recounted.
“I just wonder if they rushed into moving in together,” Marc said. “Not that I think people should wait as long as we did to announce their love for one another.”
“We aren’t the model,” Hilary agreed, reaching for her new husband’s hand.
“But, you know, Aria’s still only twenty-three years old!” Marc said. “I sort of want her to spread her wings and fly a little bit. I want her to know that her first serious relationship doesn’t have to be her only relationship.”
Hilary pondered this. “It’s sort of what people on Nantucket do, right? They fall in love, and they stay in love. It’s what she knows.”
“Do you think we should tell her that it doesn’t have to be this way? That if she’s unhappy, she can leave?” Marc suggested quietly.
“I don’t think it’s up to us to say that,” Hilary said. “She’s twenty-three, like you said. She has to make her own mistakes.”
“I thought all the hard years were in the past,” Marc joked. “I thought it ended with the teenage years.”
“I don’t think it’s ever really over.” Hilary thought of her own mother and father, of the guidance she’d sought in them and still so often needed. “Thank goodness, actually.”
Marc laughed. “She’ll always need us.”
“She’ll always have us when she needs us,” Hilary said, her heart feeling squeezed. She popped up and kissed Marc on the lips, feeling the French sunshine on the back of her neck and the salt in her hair. Suddenly overheated, she leaped from the edge of the boat and into the turquoise water, allowing herself to drift deeper into the surf than ever before, so deep that she felt a tremendous pressure in her ears. Before she emerged, Marc joined her in the water, and they kissed several feet below the surface, their hearts pounding.
Hilary was forty-five years old and probably too old for a baby, she knew. But it didn’t mean she didn’t sometimes fantasize about starting a new era with Marc, doing all the messy baby and toddler stuff with him by her side. It sometimes made her heart ache to remember that he hadn’t been there for so many of her soft and beautiful moments with baby Aria. But it was a miracle that he was here with her now, and they’d come together after so many years apart.
She didn’t want to take it for granted.
Chapter Two
It had been Hilary’s idea to set up the office in the Historic District of Nantucket, something that solidified Aria and Hilary as an official and professional mother-daughter interior design team, especially after Aria had moved out of the house and become, in her own eyes, “an adult.”
Now, Aria, overheated and weeping in the bathroom of said office, was grateful for her mother’s wisdom. She appreciated that she had a place to go outside of the little house she shared with Thaddeus—a place to cry until she couldn’t cry any longer. Rationally, she knew that couples fought, but emotionally, it felt to her like the end of the world. Why weren’t she and Thaddeus getting along? Hadn’t their story led them to a happily ever after? Hadn’t they gotten everything they wanted when they’d come together in love?
Aria knew that she’d watched too many romantic films, that she’d been brought up on Sandra Bullock’s and Reese Witherspoon’s hour-and-a-half plots that ended up in perfect love. But was it too much to think that Aria herself was supposed to have that kind of love?
Suddenly, the telephone in the office rang. Aria bolted out of the bathroom, scrubbing her face with a tissue and clearing herthroat to keep the tears from her voice. Her mother had only just returned from her honeymoon, and it was up to Aria to answer the phone and return any emails they received until Hilary got back on her feet. That would be soon, probably, although Hilary sometimes gave off the air of never wanting to return to work at all. She’d said, “The French have thirty-plus days of vacation. Why don’t we?”
“Good afternoon,” Aria answered the phone brightly, fixing a smile on her face. “This is Aria Coleman of Coleman Interiors speaking. How may I help you?”
Aria stood in front of her desk with her free hand spread out in front of her and her heart in her throat. As she waited for whoever was on the line to speak, her mind filled with Thaddeus’s words from last night, words that had terrified Aria.Are you happy, Aria? Because I’m starting to think maybe I’m not.How dare he say that? Oh, but she couldn’t think of that now, at the office, speaking to a client. She had to focus.
