Page 20 of Waves of Time
“Were you okay earlier?” Aria asked as she and Hilary walked down the street toward the pizza place, the cool evening air streaming through their hair.
“What do you mean?” Hilary gave her an inquisitive look.
“When you saw that mold or whatever,” Aria said. “You looked really upset.”
“Mold would have changed the entire operation,” Hilary said. “I once dealt with a house filled with mold and pledged never to do that again. I still have nightmares about it.”
Aria thought she sensed the slightest edge of a lie in Hilary’s voice, but she wasn’t sure enough to press the issue.Why would her mother lie about that, anyway?
“I’m glad you’re going to see Frank again,” Aria said.
“It’ll be a great job,” Hilary said. “I can’t turn something like that down.”
Aria stopped walking smack-dab in the center of the sidewalk, which forced two couples to walk around her, grumbling.
“What?” Hilary demanded with a frown.
“Mom. Come on,” Aria said. “Frank is into you, and you’re into him.”
Hilary’s cheeks flashed red again.
“When was the last time you went on a date?” Aria asked.
Hilary sighed and continued to walk, which forced Aria along. “Okay. Frank is clearly very handsome. I mean, he is my type.”
Aria’s smile widened. She felt as though her mother was twenty years younger, gossiping to Aria about her crush.
“But I’m not going to get my hopes up,” Hilary assured her.
“Nobody’s asking you to,” Aria said. “Just see where the story takes you. Maybe he’ll surprise you?”
Hilary arched a single eyebrow, then asked, “What about you? Are you seeing someone on the island?”
Aria’s mind flashed with images of Thaddeus, of the way he’d looked at her only two nights ago outside her car when her heart had screamed for him to kiss her.
“Naw,” Aria said.
Hilary gave her a look that meant she didn’t believe her.
At the pizza place, Marc was already seated at a corner table with a craft beer. When they entered, he stood and hugged Aria first, then Hilary, and said, “I can’t believe it! What luck I have, seeing my girls twice in the same month?”
Aria ordered a glass of iced tea, and Hilary opted for a chardonnay, as Marc said, conspiratorially, that he’d ordered them some breadsticks.
“I knew you’d say no,” he said, raising both hands in defense. “But they’re seriously the best in the city, and I don’t want you to miss them.”
Hilary laughed boisterously in a way that made Aria think about the love she and Marc had once shared.What had happened between them? Why had their love faded?
As a child, Aria had analyzed the other families in Nantucket, most with mothers and fathers and plenty of children. Even her cousins, Darcy, Rachelle, Marcy, Sheila, and Vince, had grown up with two parents, as Aunt Sam and Uncle David hadn’t gotten divorced until very recently. This had left Aria with a tremendous feeling of loss.
But over the years, she’d grown accustomed to it. Sort of.
It was just painfully obvious how perfect her parents were together, at least in her eyes, when they all sat together like this, pretending to be a real family. Of course, she would never tell her mother that. She didn’t want to break her heart.
ChapterEight
Two days after Hilary and Aria returned to their real lives in Nantucket, Hilary arranged to go to Frank Wilmington’s mansion, located near The Jessabelle House, to see what she could do for him, professionally speaking. The fact that she spent an hour on her makeup and another hour picking out something to wear indicated this was, perhaps, slightly different than other interior design meetings— but she tried not to think about that. More than that, she tried not to remember that she hadn’t kissed anyone in eight long years.Did she even remember how?
Before Hilary headed out, she ran into Aria in the kitchen. Aria was in her restaurant apron, with her hair pulled into a tight bun. Her smile was mischievous.