One by one, Emily picked the petals off the daisy’s head. She loves me, she loves me not.
“You were raised in a privileged country,” Nina continued, her elbows resting on her knees, her blond hair falling in front of her eyes. “You’re educated, and you’ve been given economic opportunity. You have the power and the freedom to choose how you live and, more importantly, how you feel about how you live. You’re not a victim. You’re in control. You just don’t know it yet.”
Emily wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I do,” she lied. “I know I can do what I want. It’s just … I wish my parents could be just a little bit proud of me.”
Nina sighed. “Well, that would be nice, but you know what I’ve learned? If you wait around for other people to approve your decisions, you’ll be waiting a long time. Approve them yourself. Be proud of yourself.”
Emily reached out and picked another daisy. Each petal came away with a tiny snick and fell to the ground.
Nina nudged her with her shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”
Emily snorted. “Yeah, right. Because running away is so ballsy.”
“You didn’t run. If anything, you took the first step toward understanding your own power.”
“But when everything fell apart, I just bailed. I didn’t even tell my parents I was leaving.”
Nina stopped. “You didn’t?”
“Nope.”
Nina made a face as if to say, Oops.
“See? Bailed. And now it feels like I can’t ever go back.”
“Well, okay, maybe that wasn’t the smartest move,” Nina said, chuckling. “But ask yourself this: would you want to go back? Were you happy?”
Emily shook her head slowly, thinking how much easier and nicer her life would be if someone like Nina had adopted her instead of Juliet. If she were Nina’s daughter, she would’ve been encouraged and supported, loved and accepted. Arguments would’ve been quickly resolved with calm and respectful communication instead of slammed doors and simmering rage. Agree to disagree, Juliet always said, her back turned.
“Everything’s going to be alright,” Nina said, her arm around Emily’s shoulders. “So what if your dream didn’t quite work out as planned? Just go get a new one.”
Emily sniffed. “A new dream?”
“Sure.”
“But what if it sucks just as much as the last one did?”
Nina shrugged. “Look around you.”
Emily looked. Querencia seemed to stretch on forever. In front of her, the shrubs and flower beds rolled and tumbled down toward the ocean like a waterfall, and behind, a labyrinth of trees stretched back as far as she could see. The air was alive with bees and dragonflies, and golden rays of sunlight hit the walls of both houses so that they appeared to be lit from inside, like lanterns. Emily breathed in and felt the same light fill her rib cage.
“Do you think it sucks?”
Grinning, Emily shook her head. “No.”
“Me neither.”
* * *
Later that evening, after dinner, they carried the movie projector out onto the lawn and tied a bedsheet up between the trees. They all curled up together on a pile of cushions—Emily on one side, Nina on the other, and Aurelia nestled in the middle—and watched an old comedy, The Money Pit, about a couple who buy a huge dilapidated mansion only for it to fall apart around them. They ate popcorn and laughed till their bellies hurt as Tom Hanks and Shelley Long suffered mishap after mishap. Doors fell off their hinges, Tom got stuck in a hole in the floor, Shelley got attacked by a raccoon, and the bathtub fell through the ceiling.
Afterward, as Emily climbed the stairs to bed, she thought how right Nina was. She was exactly where she needed to be. She’d made a good choice—a great choice—and she would own it, just as she would own every other choice she made from now on.
She washed her face and brushed her teeth, then climbed under the covers and put her phone on charge. Scott hadn’t replied to the text she’d sent earlier—at least, not before she’d lost her signal again. But that was probably no bad thing. An odd feeling had crept into her gut immediately after her chat with Nina. The text, innocuous as it had felt at the time, now seemed almost like a betrayal. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to contact Scott behind Nina’s back.
In fact, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to use her phone at all. What was the point? Look how her conversation with her parents had turned out. Plus, she’d told them too much about her job at Querencia. She wasn’t sure exactly what she could and couldn’t say, having signed Scott’s confidentiality agreement without reading it properly, but the bottom line was that Scott and Nina didn’t want her openly discussing details of their life and home with people they didn’t know.
Making a decision, she got out of bed and disconnected the phone from its charger. Then she threw it onto the top shelf of the wardrobe and covered it with a pile of clothes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SCOTT
IN THE backseat of the car, Scott stared through the windshield at the grubby rear of a bus. The journey back from the care home had been reasonably smooth until now, his driver expertly navigating the side streets to avoid the clogged A roads, but not even the GPS could help them once they reached Hammersmith.
“What’s the holdup?” Scott asked. Both his side views were blocked by filthy, rumbling trucks.
His driver tapped on a screen mounted on the dashboard. “Looks like a problem with the Tube. Service suspensions on the Piccadilly, District, and Circle lines.”
Scott checked the time. He was running slightly early for his next appointment, so the delay wasn’t a problem, but his hangover seemed to be getting worse by the second, and he was still feeling claustrophobic after his visit with his mother. He hadn’t spoken his brother’s name aloud in many, many years, and it had left a bitter taste in his mouth.
He swallowed thickly and fidgeted in his seat. He could have done without being trapped in a scorching, belching gridlock.
Just then, his phone pinged with a message. The sender’s name sent an odd mix of delight and dread tripping through his body.
Hey, it’s me. Just on my way back from the market and thought I’d say hi! Sorry I haven’t been in touch to let you know how everything’s going but you know what it’s like—not one bar of service! Also, I’m sure Nina’s been filling you in. Anyway, everything’s great here! The weather’s been amazing. Il fait du soleil! We’ve had a few dramas (I’m guessing you’ve heard about the fire?) but on the whole we’re cruising. TBH I’m feeling a bit low today (parent problems—with all the fuss they’re making, anyone would think I’d run off to join ISIS) but maybe it’s just the isolation finally getting to me. I’m sure it won’t last long! Anyway, I don’t really know why I’m writing this or what I’m trying to say but I just wanted to check in and say hi. You have a beautiful home and I’m so honored to be spending time with your family. Can’t wait for you to join us and check out the progress on the guesthouse. Yay!
The bus in front inched forward and stopped. Scott’s driver turned up the air-conditioning and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
In the back, Scott reread Emily’s words, then reclined in his seat, deep in thought. He quickly checked her social-media pages, but there was no recent activity.
He tapped his fingers on the center console.
So, Emily was feeling down. She was struggling. It was a good sign that she had chosen to contact him—but was it just a single bad day? Nina had told him everything was fine, that she and Emily were getting on famously. But what if Nina was lying?
He pulled up Emily’s number and stared at it for several seconds before sliding the phone back into his pocket. Then he took it back out again. As the traffic finally began to move, he dashed off two emails, one to Verity and one to Nina, putting plans in place before he could change his mind.
He would fly out the following weekend. He’d already left it too long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EMILY
“HE’S COMING,” Nina had said one morning, all eyes and teeth. “Next weekend.” And just like that, life at Querencia went from zero to sixty.