Page 46 of Saltwater Secrets
Aria’s chest heaved, but she didn’t want him to know how this affected her. “It must be strange to be out of the country for so long,” she said.
“And away from you,” Thaddeus said.
Aria squeezed her eyes shut. “Thaddeus…”
“I know. I know,” Thaddeus sputtered. “I know I left. I know I wanted this.”
Aria considered the men she’d recently learned about: Philip Wagner, William France, Jefferson Everett. Thaddeus wasn’t like them, not really. He wasn’t super wealthy. He wasn’t manipulative, like Jefferson and Philip. But her reaction to him had been all wrong. For a while, she’d put Thaddeus’s needs above her own. She’d done everything for him.
She didn’t want to be that kind of woman anymore.
And she wondered, if she hadn’t met Dorothy and fallen into these stories, would she have learned this lesson? Or would she have taken Thaddeus back in a heartbeat, eager to rebuild their life together? She wasn’t sure.
“Listen,” Aria said, her fist on the counter. “It was hard for me when you left. But I know it’s the right thing. For both of us.”
Thaddeus was quiet, hearing her out. Aria felt a rush of images of their years together, the gorgeous story of how they’d met and fallen in love, the haze of emotion she still felt when she remembered their hundreds of evenings together.
But being twenty-three meant discovering yourself. It was what she was doing in New York City. It was what Thaddeus was doing in London.
She was happy for him. She would always remember him.
“I don’t want to be a stranger to you,” Thaddeus said, his voice breaking.
Aria told him, “We’ll never be strangers, Thad. Never. We lived an entire life together.”
But in the back of her mind, she thought,We are already strangers.
For a minute, Thaddeus told Aria about his life in London, about the pubs and the art and the friends he’d made. He told her there was an opportunity to extend his internship and keep working there through winter. Aria urged him to take it. “Nantucket will always be there, when you need it. But it sounds like this is your true calling,” she told him. “Go after it.”
It was soon clear that they didn’t have much else to say to one another. In the span of their conversation, Logan had sent Aria two memes and a few funny text messages that made her smile. She wondered if Thaddeus was dating someone as well and decided she didn’t care. More than that, she hoped he was happy despite this moment of weakness.
When they hung up, they didn’t say they loved one another. It was better this way.
Chapter Twenty-One
The last room of the brownstone that Aria needed to tend to was the upstairs bedroom, the one that Renée had claimed during her brief but fiery stay. Wearing a paint-splattered tank top and baggy pants, Aria bent to touch the wooden floorboards, which she’d decided to fix up and shine herself. The floorboards were from another time, another era of Manhattan construction, and she’d decided they were too historical to toss. They brought personality to the old place—a bedroom that would soon feature the sleeping forms of one or two wealthy Manhattan individuals, whoever would lease the place from Renée when the design was over.
It was a pity that the beautiful brownstone had been empty all this time. It deserved fresh stories. It was time for another era.
Aria worked all morning and into the late afternoon, sanding the floor and listening to podcasts about everything from celebrity gossip to true crime on cruise ships. She felt completely in tune with herself, her designer instincts, and the brownstone. Outside, clouds brewed over the massive buildings, storm clouds billowing. Rain splattered against the glass.
Logan sent her a little cartoon he’d drawn featuring himself, Aria, and a massive storm over Manhattan. It looked like he’d drawn it quickly, but it was still wonderful.
LOGAN: I hope you’re undercover! We’ve got a storm coming in fast!
Aria laughed and rolled onto her back.
ARIA: Here she blows!
But when she shifted, the floorboards beneath her cracked and shifted more than they should have. Aria froze. Something was amiss.
Outside, thunder rumbled through the sky, adding drama to it all.
She got off the floor and put her foot on the floorboards in question. They wiggled wildly, proof that they weren’t fully attached to their neighbors. Previously, these floorboards had been under the bed and out of sight, which was probably why Renée hadn’t noticed them. Aria’s spine tingled. She got to her knees, took a breath, and pried the first floorboard out. The edges stuck and were dusty, but in the end, the board finally gave way. Beneath it, she could see half of a stack of yellowed books. The other floorboard came up even faster, and she stacked it on the other, breathing heavily. On the other side of the books was an old shoebox.
She had the sensation that she’d just uncovered treasure.
Tentatively, Aria pulled the books and the shoebox out onto the flooring she hadn’t gotten to yet. She opened the first book and realized it was a journal, filled with ornate handwriting that spoke of decades of perfecting a penmanship style. Inside the front cover of each book was the name: Dorothy Wagner overthe top the relevant year. The earliest was from 1998, and they ended in 2001.
