Page 22 of Artful Deceit
“Hi,” Maria said, answering it a moment later. “How are you?”
Lily opened her mouth to say she was fine, but the words got stuck in her throat. “I don’t know,” she said limply. “Do you have time for a chat?”
Smiling warmly, she stepped aside to let Lily in.
“Is Glynis here?” Lily asked, following her through to the kitchen.
“No. She’s out for lunch with a couple of friends. Can I get you a drink?”
Lily accepted a glass of water, and they moved out to sit on the patio. The neatly manicured lawn and bright flowerbeds should have been calming, but Lily’s thoughts continuedto race.
“Jessica’s leaving,” she told Maria after a few minutes of companionable silence.
Maria set her glass on the table. “The girl who works for you?”
“Yes.” Lily chewed on the corner of her thumbnail. “When she started working for me, it was only supposed to be a temporary thing, so I don’t know why it feels like a surprise… but this week she told me she’s going to spend the winter on the mainland. She’s leaving in September.”
Maria nodded. “She’s doing you a favour. You won’t need an employee over the winter, and it saves you the uncomfortable conversation of telling her that.”
“I’d have kept her on,” Lily said.
“You’ll barely make any money. If you’re paying staff over the winter, you’d be running at a loss.”
“So I’d run at a loss for a few months.”
Maria smiled sympathetically. “There’d also be nothing for her to do. She’d be bored stiff. It’s good that she’s going to the mainland for a while.”
Lily shook her head as a surge of irritation hit her.
“Youcould plan on having a holiday in the winter,” Maria went on. “That’s what I used to do. Just close completely for a couple of months and get away for a while.”
Lily’s mind went to a conversation she’d had with Flynn about spending time in London with him. Her chest tightened at the thought. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said through gritted teeth.
Maria shifted in her seat. “It’s up to you, of course. But expect things to be much quieter here.”
“I wish we’d stayed here,” Lily said, the words taking her by surprise.
Maria’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“I wish Uncle Derek hadn’t dragged me off to Italy after my parents died. If he wanted to be with you, he should have stayed here.”
The sorrow in Maria’s eyes should have been enough for Lily to leave the conversation alone, but the anger simmering in her veins wouldn’t settle.
“Why did we leave?” she asked, desperate to know if Maria knew more than she’d been letting on.
“I guess Derek thought it was for the best.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lily snapped. “He wanted to be with you… and I understand he thought a change of scene would be good for me… but why not stay here? This is the perfect place to raise a child. Why did he feel the need to take me to a country where I couldn’t speak the language?”
“He had the job offer…”
“Which he presumably applied for,” Lily put in. “That didn’t just come out of nowhere, did it?”
“No, but he’d always been someone who liked to move around…”
“Really?” Lily asked, her tone softening.
Maria nodded. “That’s how I met him, remember?”
