25 Years by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2005-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

HER COUSIN, Helen, had what Lily instantly decided was one of the ugliest haircuts she’d ever seen. She disliked her own pettiness, and she disliked Helen for turning her into a person she disliked.

Lily couldn’t stop thinking about Colin and Luke. Luke’s showing her his bedroom, his Harry Potter Lego sets, then perhaps the biggest surprise. These are my dad’s poetry books. He writes poems about the raptors and we sell them to make money for the Aerie. Lily had started reading the poems, when Luke rambled on. I usually sleep with my dad in his room. Come see. Colin’s room. She had sat on the bed, and Colin had come in and sat on the bed, and Luke had bounced on the bed, which had a quilt in a plaid flannel cover.

Colin and I have business on that bed.

She felt the future looming, massive and definite, and hadn’t even gritted her teeth when her mother had said, You were gone long enough. Helen’s been looking forward to seeing you.

Helen had looked her up and down and said, “Cute outfit. Santa Barbara?”

“Yes.” I’m projecting. I’m projecting onto her and Bert and my parents that everyone is assessing how much money I spend on every little thing.

It seemed to Lily that Helen spent more time with Lily’s parents than with her own, who lived in Florida and liked to play bingo, but maybe it was just that Helen’s parents couldn’t stand her, either.

Bert, tall and mustached, with that slight belly hanging over his belt but still managing to look fit, stood with Lily’s father, discussing the cheapest price on tires.

“I’m sorry to hear about your engagement,” Helen said. “Oh, Marie. Can I help with dinner? Too bad it didn’t work out, Lily.”

She wandered from the big front room into the adjoining kitchen, where Marie was taking a loaf of bread out of the oven.

No bread machines for the Morans, reflected Lily. “Don’t be sorry,” she told Helen.

Colin. Colin, Colin, Colin. She had never felt for Drake what she felt now, in this brief time, for Colin. One kiss. And it wasn’t just Colin. She felt bound to him and Luke.

She felt that a winter in the North Woods wouldn’t be so bad.

She could go ice fishing.

“Lily, you could start on the salad,” Marie said, ignoring Helen’s offer of help. “What’s wrong, Lily? Are you all right? Did something happen over there? Did he say something horrible?”

Why not? Why not say it here, while her father and Bert wandered into the kitchen, now discussing Bert’s inexpensive car insurance? “No.” Lily moved closer to her mother. A stain on the floor that turned out to be a knot in the wood leaped up at her. She made herself meet Marie’s gaze and thought how she had inherited her mother’s long thin nose with the beaklike bump at the bridge. “He was very nice. And I like his son. I’m having dinner there tomorrow night.”

Her mother peered under the lid of the pot on the stove—one of her soups, the smell filling the house, gorgeous as morning.

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