Page 102 of These Summer Storms

What would it be like to say yes to that?

The quartet popped out of the woods at the eastern edge of the house,where a flagstone patio had been commandeered by the caterers. The stretch was overrun with people—waiters and chefs and a half dozen others from the events team at Storm Inc.—in a portrait of organized chaos.

No one paid the women any notice as they stepped onto the white seashell path that ran past the house toward the great lawn, around the glass-enclosed sunroom that had been added to the house sometime before Franklin and Elisabeth bought it. No one ever used the room—the old glass paneling made it blazing hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter, and so it became what many of those ancient sunrooms became—a modified greenhouse, watered weekly by Lorraine and left empty the rest of the time.

Because of that, the raised voices that came from within were an unexpected surprise. The quartet froze, nearly toppling a young waiter with a tray full of scallops as they exchanged wide-eyed looks.

“He asked me to be here, specifically,” a man was saying, loud enough to be heard through the glass. “And so, I am here.”

Without speaking, everyone took a step closer to the greenhouse, and Alice turned to peer through the enormous monstera in the window, grateful for a stranger’s gossip, less serious than her own.

No luck.

“I don’t care if Franklin came back from the dead to fly you in himself. I want you gone.”

Alice’s brows shot up. That wasn’t a stranger. It was her mother, in the greenhouse, where Alice wasn’t sure she’d ever been.

“Who’s she with?” Gabi whispered, obviously having had the same revelation.

Alice shook her head and shifted to find a better view. “I don’t know.” Through the collection of bromeliads, she could see a sliver of her mother’s silk shift (purple lake), and the legs of a man in a glen check suit (moss gray).

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” the man said in a voice Alice couldn’t place. “He wanted me here.”

“Exactly. To punish me.”

“I don’t think that was the case. He loved you, Lizzie.” A pause. “And he loved her.”

Alice’s eyes were wide. She’d never heard anyone but Franklin called her motherLizzie. And even then, not for decades.

“You can’t kick me out. He left me a letter.”

Alice sucked in a breath. Another letter from her father. Another person he’d thought of before he thought of her. Tears stung at the back of her throat. This stranger in the greenhouse had been more important than his own daughter.

“Of course he did. Anything to make sure he stirred up trouble before going directly to hell.”

Alice stiffened.

Gabi took her hand. “Ohshit.”

“I’m here for him,” the man said.

“He doesn’t have a say anymore,” Elisabeth argued.

“She does, though.”

Gabi and Alice shared a look. “Who’sshe?” Gabi mouthed.

Alice shook her head. It could be anyone. But before she could think, her mother spoke, the words so cool that Alice was vaguely surprised that the contents of the entire greenhouse didn’t immediately frost. “This isn’t his island anymore; it’smine.”

“I’m not here to take any of it from you,” came the reply, and Alice could hear the thread of frustration in the words. Whoever this man was, he’d had enough. “It’s not a zero-sum game, Elisabeth.”

What did that mean?

“Good,” her mother said, the words harder by the second. “Because I am through letting him decide my future. All these years later, and he’s still punishing me for one night. For one mistake, which I never would have made if he’d been around.”

“For all that night was a mistake, this isn’t,” the man said, and Alice stiffened, watching him move closer to Elisabeth through the wall of houseplants. “And I promise you, when we spoke, it didn’t feel like punishment. It felt like he was giving her a gift. And me, too. A gift you have to understand.”

“It wasn’t his to give!” The wobble in her mother’s voice set Alice on edge. She stiffened and looked to Claudia, who was listening just as intently, her lips pressed tightly together.