different. We’ve been on the same life raft since we were four years old. I could pick up the phone and say help, and she would catch the first available flight.” Just as Ro had done after David died, camping overnight at Heathrow to come standby via LaGuardia. Tilly remembered the cab speeding down the driveway, Rowena flinging open the door while the vehicle was still moving, her only words, Where’s Isaac?
Tilly twirled a lock of Isaac’s hair around her finger. “Besides, she spoils you rotten.”
“So—” Isaac picked a piece of fluff from Bownba, the once-fluffy FAO Schwarz teddy that now resembled a squashed possum. “You like James, then?”
“Clearly not as much as you do.” Should she worry that her eight-year-old still dragged his teddy bear to bed every night? Tilly attempted to squish her feet under the seat in front, but between the bottle of duty-free Bombay Sapphire, her canvas backpack and her floral Doc Martens boots, there was no room.
“Are we going to help him?”
Why was her son suddenly more tenacious than a Jack Russell terrier? Bugger it. She had been enjoying the growing distance between herself and James, herself and Sari, herself and the stings of everyday life. Thanks to Isaac, they rushed back, and all she wanted was a reprieve.
“You need to understand, Isaac—” Oh crap, now he looked crestfallen. “It’s not that I don’t want to help James, but he has that neat I-want-it-this-way thing that screams perfectionist.” Or worse, a Virgo, like Sebastian, and the last thing she needed was another Virgo. Although, technically, she didn’t have a Virgo in her life, not anymore.
“Cripes. Not like you and me, then.”
“Exactly!” Tilly wagged a finger. “Think of the trail of possessions you and I can leave across two continents. A woman as scattered as me could drive a man as uptight as James seriously nuts. You do the math. It ain’t gonna work.” She would be barmy to get involved with someone that persnickety. Which didn’t explain why she had agreed to talk with James in September.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this,” Isaac said with great solemnity. “I hate hiccups. They scare me because I want them to stop, but nothing I do works. I need you to help me. That’s a horrid feeling, isn’t it? That your body won’t do what you want it to do.”
“Sounds like middle age,” Tilly mumbled.
“I bet it’s a whole lot worse if it’s your brain that won’t cooperate.” Isaac paused. “I think we should help James.”
“Nicely expressed, Angel Bug. I’ll consider your opinion, but right now you need sleep.” And I need peace and quiet. Tilly patted fleecy travel blanket into the gaps around Isaac.
“Tell me the story of how you and Daddy met.”
Tilly covered her mouth. At best, this story was happiness and despair tied up with a bow. At worst, it was a form of self-mutilation, a cut that bled with the life she had lost, or rather thrown away.
“Please?” Isaac looked up with huge Haddington eyes, as pale as her father’s had been. Thank God for genetics. Even a hint of them tethered you to the past.
Tilly smoothed down his bushy hair but it bounced free, sticking out every which way. “Our story begins one summer.”
“Just like now, Mommy.”
“Except this summer is a new chapter in the epic story of Isaac and Super Mom.” Tilly struck her Popeye pose and Isaac snickered. Given the turmoil in her gut, however, Tilly felt less as if she were about to write an exciting new chapter in their lives, and more as if she were free-falling without a parachute, waiting for the big splat when Sari destroyed her business, and Sebastian…. Great, now she had Sebastian to worry about as well as James.
Isaac poked her. “Mom? Are you asleep?”
“Miles away. Sorry.” She resumed stroking Isaac’s hair. “It was a beautiful Saturday in June.” Fourteen years ago last week, another notch on the totem pole of survival. Isaac wriggled into her, as if trying to crawl back into her womb. “I had run away from London and escaped to Bramwell Chase for the weekend. Grammy was off with the historical society, and Grandpa was due back from Northampton for lunch. We had the whole afternoon planned: work on the roses, then hike across the estate. I was propping open the gates for him when—” She didn’t want to remember this, not tonight. Tonight she just wanted oblivion.
“When you heard this funny noise because Daddy didn’t know how to drive a stick, and he’d borrowed some old banger.” Isaac over-enunciated the last two words using a perfect English accent. Tilly swaddled him into her.
“This MG lurched up the High Street, gears crashing. Your father said that was the summer he discovered his two great loves: MGBs and me. Of course, that was before you were born and became more precious than anything.” Isaac made a soft noise, like a kitten’s mew. “Daddy bought his MGB after he got home. The 1972 Roadster that will be yours one day.” If it survives being shrouded under a tarpaulin in the garage.
Her heart contracted at the memory of dark ringlets framing David’s face and his chestnut eyes sparked with ambition. She’d wanted to lose herself in those eyes, and she had. Watching David, as he enchanted a lecture hall or entertained a room of friends, could leave her paralyzed with love. And yet however large his audience, however far away Tilly sat or stood, his eyes always found her. She pushed the heel of her hand into her heart, but the pain tightened. How had she navigated three years without him, without his adoration, without his need to share every joy and every disappointment with her?
She took a shallow breath. “The car stopped, and the most gorgeous man I had ever seen stuck his head out of the window and said, ‘Hey there. Can you help me?’ And I thought, I’ll help you with anything you like.”
Isaac’s giggle dissolved into a yawn. “Daddy was on his way to a conference, but he got lost ’cos he didn’t believe in reading maps.”
“Only your father could take off across a foreign country and assume he’d end up where he wanted to be. When he explained he was looking for the Open University, I laughed so hard I couldn’t tell him anything, and Daddy started laughing—”
“And Grandpa turned up. And he liked Daddy straightaway.”
“Absolutely.” How could anyone not? David always had the right words, the right smile, the right inclination of his head. Only Tilly saw the fragile ego that pecked away underneath.
“And Grandpa invited Daddy in to look at maps. And he never made it to the conference ’cos he stayed with you instead.” Isaac’s voice was tinged with sleep. “And when Daddy left he asked you to marry him. And you said yes.”
“I never could say no to your father. Although at the time, I thought he was joking. But when your father saw something he wanted, nothing stood in his way.” Tilly shivered as her thoughts bounced back, briefly, to James.
Isaac was silent for a moment. “That’s not always good, Mom. Is it?”
“No.” She kissed the top of his head. “But it was that day.”
Isaac gave a shadow of a smile and, as if someone had switched him off, conked out. He looked younger in sleep. She could trace the face of the baby with the rosebud mouth suckling at her breast, the toddler with his father’s
