After the tour Dilys had shoved them out, saying she needed to make lunch and that Jared should show Alix his old neighborhood.
They’d walked for over an hour and, just as in the restaurant, Jared knew everyone. Alix had been introduced to all the people they encountered by her first name, and she’d been invited on boating trips, to come by for scallops, and to visit gardens.
Two older couples asked Jared to look at something that wasn’t working in their houses and he promised that he would. No one even came close to treating him as though he were anything but the grown-up version of a boy who used to live down the road.
They were back now, and again Dilys had sent them outside. Jared took his time in responding to her question. “After my father died I was angry, furious,” he said, “and I had a lot of energy pent up inside me. I wanted to beat the world at its own game. To do that I had to leave the island, first to study and get my degree, then to go to work.”
“Did you work hard in school and get rid of the energy that way? Wait. Sorry. I’m not supposed to ask that.”
He ignored the last part. “Actually, I didn’t really. School was rather easy for me.”
Alix groaned. “I have just decided that I hate you.”
“Come on, school couldn’t be too difficult for you. You’re Victoria’s daughter.”
“It’s been more my father’s perseverance that I inherited that got me through than my mother’s … What should I call it?”
“Charisma?” Jared asked. “Charm? Joie de vivre?”
“All of that. Her job is so easy for her. She goes away for a month every year and—” She looked at him. “But I guess you know that better than I do. Anyway, she goes away and plots her novels, then returns home and writes them. She has a daily quota of pages and she never falters from her original plot. I change my mind fifty times before I decide what I want to do.”
“Do you change your mind or do you look at what you’ve drawn, see what’s wrong with it, then fix it?”
“That’s exactly what I do!” she said, smiling.
“To be able to see the flaws in your own work is a gift.”
“I guess it is. I’d never thought of it that way. I know that Eric thought every design he made was perfect.”
“The fiancé, Eric?”
“Don’t elevate him. He was merely a boyfriend. Now an ex.” For a moment they looked at each other and Alix wanted to ask him if all his girlfriends were exes, but he looked away and the moment was lost.
“What are you working on now?” he asked.
She thought of her little chapel, but it was insignificant compared to the magnificent structures he’d designed. “Nothing important. I need to study for the coming tests and plan my final project.”
“Are you going to build it?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
She laughed. “That trick was done by someone else.”
“It could bear repeating, couldn’t it?”
“I don’t think so. I—” She broke off because Dilys called them in to lunch.
Minutes later they were sitting at the table in the beautiful house eating fried fish and coleslaw and homemade pickled beach plums. Dilys and Jared were on one side, Alix across from them.
“Alix makes great hush puppies,” Jared said.
“Did your mother teach you how?” Dilys asked.
“My mother—” Alix began, then saw the laughter in Dilys’s eyes. “I can see that you know her well. By the time I was six I could dial every restaurant in our area that delivered.”
“Victoria may have faults, but it’s a party wherever she is,” Dilys said. “What we loved was that your mother could get Addy to leave the house.”
“I didn’t know she was a recluse,” Alix said. “I remember tea parties and lots of guests.”
“Oh, yes, Addy invited people to her home, but she didn’t go out very often.”