He knocked, looking to his left into a sun room that sat at the front of the house. It had mosaic tiled floors and wicker furniture in it with gaily printed cushions inviting you to sit. He was not in the mood to notice the furniture was not new and rather battered. He was not in the mood because no one answered. The house looked deserted.
Then he heard, “Are you looking for Lily?”
A neighbour had come out to walk her dog and Nate turned to the old lady. “Yes, is she here?”
“Nope, moved, moved back home I heard. Just up and left, gone back to America. Surprised me, she seemed a solid sort of girl. But there you go. You never know people.”
She kept walking her little dog and Nate watched her move down the small street Lily’s house was on. He watched her hit the wider pavement that edged the larger road that was the turn off to Lily’s street. He watched her as she disappeared down the steep hill toward the pier.
Then he got in his car and drove back to London.
* * * * *
Three days after Lily left, Nate moved into his new apartment, the same day he disconnected his old phone. His secretary took a leave of absence due to an unexpected extended illness.
His temporary secretary had never heard of Lily Jacobs. When she took the calls from the woman, she lost most of the messages under a pile of ones marked urgent (nearly all calls to Nate McAllister seemed to be urgent and the secretary simply couldn’t cope). She lost a lot of messages in the two weeks Nate put up with her, none of them nearly as urgent as the ones from Lily.
The ones Nate’s temp didn’t lose, Jeff stole.
Danielle was awash with delight at the strange abrupt exit of Lily. So much so, weeks later, she made her last, desperate attempt at capturing his heart by seducing his body. He’d been so revolted and he’d told her, in more words than he would normally use, exactly what he thought of her. Unbeknownst to him, five minutes after he pulled his Maserati out from in front of his parent’s house after this somewhat dramatic scene, Lily had walked up the stoop for the last time with her beloved Fazire. It was
very
unfortunate timing as, at that moment Lily was
the
last
person on earth Danielle Roberts wanted to see. And anyway, Danielle and her brother had prepared well for this moment.
Victor and Laura were, at first, confused then worried then they both became angry at Lily’s unexplained departure. Surprisingly, for the first time in Nate’s life, he saw Laura’s anger turn to rage and it didn’t blow itself out in a matter of minutes. She seemed to nurse it for days, weeks, even, if Lily’s name ever came up in conversation (usually by Jeff), years.
Jeff was also quite happy and very smug about Lily’s departure. He knew something; Nate understood this by the way Jeff acted. At first he was cagey and jumpy as if he expected whatever he did to backfire which happened often with Jeff. But when it didn’t the smugness was complete and it, too, lasted for years.
Nate knew that Jeff told Lily about his past life, how his relationship started with Jeff’s father and she ran. She had told him that nothing Jeff could say would change how she felt about him but she had lied.
Nate was well acquainted with people who lied. This didn’t surprise him one bit. A glorious, twenty-two year old virgin from Indiana who probably lived in a palatial home that looked like a plantation (at least, this is where Nate saw her in his mind whenever he thought about her, which was a great deal for the first few months but later, as a well-honed defence mechanism, not at all, or at least, not during daylight hours) and had been cosseted and sheltered all her life, confronted with what Nate was…
She was probably still showering to wash away the filth of him.
* * * * *
The day Lily Jacobs found out her parents died was the day the Nate McAllister that she’d breathed new life into died.
He found new women, none of them a single thing like Lily. His father became Chairman of the Board while Nate took over as CEO. He bought an enormous penthouse apartment and commissioned an even bigger bed.
And he slept in it, in the rare times he slept at home, alone (or, at least, most of the time).
Laura & Lily
Eight years later, Nate is thirty-six, Lily is thirty and it’s early in the month of May…
Laura Roberts was walking through Hyde Park.
She liked to walk, did it often, it kept her legs shapely (that’s what Victor told her at least). It kept her fit. It kept her young.
Hyde Park was her favourite place to walk with the Serpentine running through, all the trees, the different monuments and statues here and there, Diana’s Memorial, Speaker’s Corner, the people riding horses and there were so many dogs being walked and babies in prams. There was always something to see and it was never the same.
That sunny, beautiful, warm day, for instance, Laura saw a man who looked like he was wearing black kohl all around his dark eyes; he had hair nearly as black as Nathaniel’s but without the blue sheen, darkly tanned skin, a protruding belly and a pointed, black goatee.
He looked almost, Laura thought fancifully, like a genie but in regular people’s clothes.
She watched as he stopped and planted his feet wide apart and crossed his arms, his face mock-fierce with annoyance, just like Yul Brenner in
The King and I
. This made him look
exactly
like a genie.
With curiosity to discover what was annoying him, Laura turned her gaze to where the genie-man was scowling.
And then her entire frame froze.
Lily.
Laura couldn’t believe her eyes and blinked twice to see if it cleared her vision or if perhaps the woman she saw was someone else that looked like Lily but was not and Laura’s mind was simply playing terrible, horrible tricks on her.
But it
was
Lily. She looked nearly the same, except thinner. She was wearing a pair of very faded Levi’s and an even more faded t-shirt that said “Chicago Cubs” on it. She was running toward the genie-man and smiling that same, strange, quirky but beautiful Lily smile.
Except different.
Laura regarded more closely the woman who had broken her Nathaniel’s heart.
Lily looked pale, slightly drawn and even tired.
The Lily Light she thought she knew so well was gone.
Life, Laura saw, and felt an atypical satisfaction at seeing, had not treated Lily Jacobs very well.
Laura decided immediately to put Lily out of her mind. She would, of course, tell Victor about this but she’d never breathe a word to Nathaniel. Her son had never let onto how shattered he was at Lily’s unexplained departure but Laura, as any mother would, knew.
Lily Jacobs was truly the only person in the world that Laura Roberts hated. Laura knew all about Nathaniel’s past, Victor had told her. That Lily would bring such life and light to him, make him actually
laugh
(a lot), make him so
happy
and then tear it away without an explanation or even a good-bye…
Well, she was simply not worth Laura’s regard and she definitely wasn’t worth Laura’s kindness.
Laura started walking again in hopes she’d get away before Lily saw her. She couldn’t abide speaking to her
not
, she imagined, that Lily would ever approach her if she had a single decent bone in her body.
Then she heard the still familiar voice call, “Tash! Stop dawdling, baby doll.”
Laura’s head came up and then she froze again.
Running toward Lily and the strange genie-man was a little girl.
Nathaniel’s little girl.
Laura knew it immediately. It was stamped all over the child.
The same blue-black hair, the same (even at that distance, Laura could tell, she
was
Nathaniel’s mother after all) darker than dark eyes, the same bone structure, the same long-legged, long-waisted body, except feminine and in child-like form. Indeed, there was no mistaking it, no denying it; the child was Nathaniel McAllister’s child.
Laura watched in stunned, frozen silence as the little girl ran toward Lily and threw her arms around her mother. Lily bent to kiss the top of her head and was talking to her, smiling down on her. This smile was not tired and drawn. It lit up her face, just like the old Lily.
Laura couldn’t believe it. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to scream, to run forward and snatch the child from her mother’s arms.
Then Lily straightened from the girl, turning to lead them in the opposite direction and then Lily saw her.
Her pale face, if it could be credited, drained of colour. Her mouth dropped open and she, too, froze.
Moments later, Laura watched, her astonishment deepening, as Lily’s stupor cleared and her face melted into a look of such abandoned happiness, such love that it turned Laura’s stomach.
And Laura looked at Lily with every shred of hatred she had for the woman, turned on her heel and ran.
* * * * *
“My God, Fazire, my God. Did you
see
the way she looked at me?”
Fazire was levitating. He did this in agitation now, she knew, not just when he was practising or when he wanted to make a point.
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t have, Lily kept talking.
“She saw Tash. She knows. I told you I should have gone to them ages ago. Now it’s too late. Now…”
She stopped talking and started pacing, or more to the point started pacing more frantically.
Lily had been wanting to go to the Roberts’s home for years. Natasha was their grandchild they would want to know she existed. Even if it would be painful after Nate’s death (this, she decided in her fevered imaginings, happened on his motorcycle or in his Maserati, but she didn’t know, never
wanted
to know).
Something always got in the way. The store, the house, Tash getting sick, Lily having a migraine (they came far more frequently now, stress, the doctor told her), not enough money for the train tickets (there was never enough money), the phones got cut off, laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, the car needing fixed (the car always needed fixed).
She should have written but how do you say
that
in a letter? It was something you had to do in person.
And Lily was so sick at first, the pregnancy had not gone well and by the time she and Fazire decided to cast their lot in Clevedon, she was practically bedridden. By the end of the pregnancy, she was forcefully bedridden. Then the birth had not been good. It took her a year to recuperate. By that time the debts had mounted, the bills were all overdue and she’d nearly asked her last wish of Fazire. But Maxine had saved the day. Maxine and Grammy Sarah’s beautiful limestone house with its Italian marble window sills and its ten acres.
While Lily was ill, she had time to think. She started wondering why Laura and Victor didn’t contact
her
. Why they let it be Danielle who told her that Nate had died. Why, when Lily knew that they knew she also lost her parents at the same time, had they not come to her knowing the enormity of her loss? Even not knowing about Tash, Lily was absolutely certain that they knew she loved Nate and she’d need to grieve with them when her vital, handsome dream man was swept away. She didn’t understand and thought, maybe, she had misjudged them. In her darkest moments (of which there were many), she realised they
had
raised Jeffrey and Danielle, perhaps they
were
just like their two children by blood.
Then time just flew, as time does, and it became too late.
This was the first time Lily had been to London in eight years.
Eight years
. They had a dingy hotel room in a not-so-good part of town. It was all they could afford.
It didn’t matter; they only had to sleep in it. The rest of the time Lily was supposed to be showing them all her favourite places in London and that included where she and Nate had taken their walk in Hyde Park.
Lily’s daughter knew all about her father.
Every detail Lily could remember, and that was most of them, were told to Tash in the grandest stories Lily had ever created. And as the years slid by, Lily even made up details just to keep Nate alive in some way for their darling daughter.
“I have to go to her,” Lily fretted.
Fazire looked down his nose at her and crossed his arms.
He
, personally, did not think much of these Roberts people. Every time they looked at his Lily-child, they did it with hate which was
precisely
why he consistently tried to talk her out of telling them about Tash and would distract her when she got down to the business of writing or phoning them.
If they knew about Tash, he couldn’t imagine what they’d do.
And obviously today’s events stated he had, as usual, been
absolutely
correct.
“I do not think that is wise,” he declared.
“I
have
to, Tash is her grandchild!” Lily cried.
“What are you talking about?”