ChapterFifteen
“Hi, stranger.”
Elsa stood in the glittering light of downtown Oak Bluffs with a picnic blanket draped over her arm and a picnic basket swinging along her thigh. It was five-forty-five in the early evening, mid-July already, and she hadn’t managed to catch hide nor hair of Bruce Holland in five days.
“I decided to surprise you,” Elsa answered, lifting her lips to kiss him gently. His arms wrapped around her and tugged her against him.
“What a beautiful surprise,” Bruce whispered.
They separated. Elsa glanced back toward the glass door of the Sheridan Law Offices, behind which Mallory probably still sat, hunkered over a desk as her fingers whirred across the keys. The new secretary at the Katama Lodge, Tanya, was incredible: organized, punctual, with killer baking skills. Despite all that, Elsa would have traded Tanya for Mallory in a heartbeat. She missed her girl.
“How’s she doing in there?”
“She’s a Godsend,” Bruce told her. “I can’t even tell you how beneficial she’s been for us. Amanda’s taken on a few cases of her own, and Mallory’s picked up the extra slack in the office. Plus, she spends all her free time reading Amanda’s legal textbooks and trying to get her head around the system. She has more mental strength than I did at that age, that’s for sure.”
Elsa was wordless as they walked along, headed for Bruce’s pickup. In the front seat, she felt herself sigh, adjusting the picnic basket on her thighs.
“Did I say the wrong thing?” Bruce asked finally, breaking the silence.
“No. Not at all.” Elsa tried to articulate her stirring emotions. “It’s just. Well. The woman you just described to me doesn’t sound like my daughter at all.”
Bruce’s thick eyebrow lifted toward his hairline. “What are you talking about?”
“This woman with so much drive and intellect,” Elsa continued. “It doesn’t sound like Mallory. Mallory never knew what she wanted. She never had a goal. She looked so relieved when she got pregnant because it meant that she had a purpose.”
Bruce bowed his head, listening intently.
“When you describe that young woman in your office, I feel so happy for her. So happy. But I also feel shame because I don’t think I ever really believed she could do something like that. I worry that my own feelings about what she could do made her unable to push herself for so long.”
Bruce wrapped a warm hand over hers. “I’m sure she doesn’t think that.”
“There’s no way to know, is there? Parents mess us up in a million little ways. My mother’s treatment of Carmella after Colton’s death nearly destroyed her. Then, when Dad married Karen, the cracks got deeper and more jagged.”
“You’re not your evil stepmother, Karen,” Bruce told her. “Maybe you’ve made a mistake here and there. Who hasn’t? But you’re a loving mother. You pulled Mallory out of that horrible apartment and set her up with a life at the Remington House. Without you, she never would have had the strength to leave Lucas. Without you, she might never have discovered her interest in law.”
Elsa nodded, swiping tears from her cheeks. Bruce started the engine and drove them wordlessly westward toward the waterline in Chilmark. The drive took a good twenty-five minutes, during which Elsa stewed in her own sorrows, remembering every time she’s told Alexie to “go after her dreams in the city” and every time she just told Mallory, in small ways, that “this life was enough.” Maybe it was her own selfish desire to keep her daughter close.
Bruce parked the truck in the lot nearest their favorite beach, the Lucy Vincent. The beach itself was shrouded in burnt-orange rocks and still intimate, despite the touristic chaos of the rest of the island. Elsa fluttered her picnic blanket out across the sands and sat cross-legged, her heart pounding as she gazed out across the waves. This was a beautiful thing about Bruce: she could be with him, wordless and thoughtful, and feel totally at ease.
Bruce sat behind her, stretching his legs out on either side of her slender frame so that she could lean against him. His broad arms wrapped around her, and she inhaled his familiar scent, her heart pounding with gratefulness and urgency.Don’t let this moment pass.She hated it, but the truth was this: she’d lost the love of her life. It had been a tragedy. She wasn’t sure she could lose anyone else.
“Can I show you something?” Bruce asked softly.
Elsa nodded. “Okay.”
Bruce dug through his briefcase and removed a folded-up piece of thick paper. Elsa turned to meet his eye, curious.
“Elsa,” Bruce began. “I know I’ve been overwhelmed with work this week. But you haven’t been far from my mind, not for a second. After my wife died several years ago, I never imagined that I could find room in my heart for another woman. I thought, well, that was it. There goes my life.”
Elsa’s throat tightened. “I felt the same.”
Bruce unfurled the folded paper to reveal blueprints for what looked like a house. He splayed his hands over the blueprints, his eyes alight.
“Just let me explain,” he said softly.
Elsa couldn’t speak. Her tongue was frozen.
“I want to move forward with you,” he continued. “I want to build the next phase of my life with you. Together with an architecture friend from college, I drew up these preliminary plans. The house is on the smaller side, perfect for a couple, with two smaller bedrooms for the occasional guest. Grandchildren. That kind of thing.” Bruce’s smile widened.