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CHAPTER SEVEN

ELLIOT

C ece opens her front door, a look of understanding on her face and her eyes going soft when she sees me.

“I had a feeling I would see you tonight. There’s my great-granddog,” she croons, plucking Killer out from under my arm and kissing her nose then stepping aside so I can walk past her into her house.

“What made you think I would end up here?” I ask, stepping into her living room.

The darkness lifts just slightly in the brightly colored space.

With its vaulted ceilings, big squashy couches, abstract art, family pictures, and knickknacks from Cece’s travels scattered everywhere, it’s warm and cozy, and the comfort of it calls to me.

Cece puts Killer down on the dog bed she keeps in the corner then links her arm through mine, leading me towards the couch.

When I sit, setting the box on the couch beside me, she drapes a blanket over my lap and then leans down, laying a hand on my cheek, her eyes steady on mine behind her purple-framed glasses.

“Something in the air tonight, darling. The spirits told me you might be paying me a visit.” I laugh despite myself, and Cece smiles in approval.

“Be right back,” she says, sweeping out of the room in a cloud of multicolored fabric and Chanel No.

5, a combination that is completely incongruous and wholly Cece.

Two minutes later, she comes back with a couple of beers and hands one to me, taking the seat next to me on the couch. “Tell me where it hurts, El.”

I take what feels like my first deep breath in hours at her words.

The ones she’s been saying to me for most of my life.

It started when I was around seventeen and I couldn’t figure out why I had days when I felt sad, when my brothers never seemed to.

It wasn’t something I ever really talked about—definitely not to my brothers, and I only got my parents involved later on.

I talked to Cece though. She was the one I came to when I didn’t understand what was going on in my head, and she was always there to listen. Is still always here.

I come here, and I never have to explain why. She always knows. She sits me on the couch and brings us drinks and always says those same words. Tell me where it hurts, El. It gives me permission to unburden my soul. And I do. Only to her. She is my safest place.

I sigh, taking a sip of my beer. “It’s been a day.”

Cece nods. “I can see that. The energy is coming off you in waves. Tell me all about it.”

So, I do. She already knew about the girl from the plane—my whole family does.

So, I tell her about Amelia showing up in my classroom this morning and breakfast and the strange feeling I have that she’s the one who is meant for me.

About being her professor and advisor and how it’s all entirely forbidden and how, even if it wasn’t, I don’t want to make anything harder for her.

I tell her everything except for Amelia’s last name because I’ll always keep her secrets.

When I’m finally done, I blow out a breath and tell her the last thing. The thing that is weighing the most heavily.

“I haven’t given much thought at all to a serious relationship.

Not since Kristin,” I say, referring to my girlfriend in grad school.

The one I thought I would marry. Turns out, you can’t marry someone who doesn’t see you.

And she didn’t. Not the way I needed to be seen.

“She messed me up just enough that I lost the motivation to try again. I was happy, you know? I have my career and my brothers and my parents and you, and I’m living in my favorite city, and it felt like enough. ”

“But not so much anymore?” Cece asks, like she already knows the answer.

I shake my head. “Not anymore. Because I’ve watched Jordan settle down with Jo, and they’re so damn beautiful together, and I’m realizing that I’ve never had that for myself.

My match, you know? And I want it. Six months ago, I met a girl on a plane, and it was like my entire life changed.

Like I recognized her or something. It sounds insane because I didn’t know her then, and I barely know her now, but it feels like I do.

And nothing has felt right since. Not until she walked into my classroom this morning, and it was like my missing piece slotted into place.

I hear myself saying this and I feel crazy but…

” I trail off, tipping my head back and groaning up at the ceiling, irritated with myself.

“But you just know.”

I lift my head up. “How is that even possible? It doesn’t feel like it should be possible.”

Cece shrugs. “I can’t explain it any more than you can, but I know it’s possible because it happened to me with your grandfather.

I saw him from across the room at a dance hall in the West End, and I knew he was mine.

He didn’t even have to say a word. The heart always knows, El.

It’s the lucky people who stop and listen to it.

Some things are just written in the stars, and it’s not for us to ask why or try and logic our way into it or out of it or even through it. It just is.”

I take another sip of my beer, leaning forward and setting the bottle on the coffee table. “I mean, maybe. But it doesn’t matter what the heart wants. It can’t happen.”

Cece pats my leg in the most condescending way imaginable. “Okay.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “What? It can’t.”

She shrugs again, unbothered by my existential crisis.

“That might be true now, but it won’t always be true.

She’s here, El. You didn’t think you would ever find her again, and then you did.

That means something. She needs an advisor and a professor, and right now, that’s what you can be to her.

That’s how you’ll get to know each other and find out if you really fit the way you think you might.

Just because you can’t have everything doesn’t mean you can’t have anything. ”

I sit up when Killer trots over from her bed and hops up onto the couch, settling in my lap. Running my hand over her soft head, I let Cece’s words sink in. “You’re really smart, you know that?”

“Oh, honey, I know.”

I laugh, feeling my weight lift a little more. It’s not always this easy to plow through, but sometimes what I need is exactly this. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Always.” Killer flips over on my lap and Cece reaches over and scratches her stomach while I grab the box I set next to me on the couch. I reach in and take out the postcards, unwinding the ribbon holding them together.

Cece’s eyes sharpen as she looks at the bundle. “What do you have there?”

I hand the top postcard to her and hear her sharp intake of breath when she sees who the card is addressed to. “Where did you find these?”

“In my parents’ attic. I went up there on Christmas to get something for my mom and this box was sitting in a corner. Clara is your mom, right?”

Cece nods, her eyes moving back and forth over the words. “So much love here,” she murmurs, setting the postcard down and taking another one off the stack, and then another one, running her fingers over the words as she reads.

“Do you know who Henry was?” I ask quietly.

Cece shakes her head slowly, her attention still fixed on the postcard.

When she finally looks up, her eyes are soft, like she’s lost in a memory.

“I’ve never heard that name,” she says slowly.

“My mother…” Cece trails off, shaking her head.

“My mother was a good mom, but she wasn’t a happy one.

She never had any sparkle. Growing up, I always thought it was because of my dad.

He wasn’t a great guy. He drank. A lot. And he was angry.

So, so angry. Their families were friends, and I think their marriage was probably expected.

Did I ever tell you we lived next door in your brownstone? ”

I shake my head. I knew Cece’s parents owned both brownstones, but I never gave much thought to who lived where when Cece was growing up. In my mind, she’s always been right here, in her house filled with bright, bold colors, crystals, and the slightest touch of mystery and intrigue.

Cece sighs, leaning back. “That house didn’t feel happy.

The house itself, I mean. Even as a kid, I could recognize it.

But later on, years after my father died and I was married and living here with your grandfather, my mother’s house felt different.

Lighter and happier in a way it never was when I was growing up.

It’s one of the reasons we wanted to give it to you boys.

We wanted a happy home for you and by then, it felt like next door could be that.

I never really understood the vibe change because there wasn’t any love between my parents when they were living there, and then it was just my mom.

There was nothing like this.” She waves a hand at the postcards.

“What’s written here? This is real love. Can’t you feel it?”

I nod because it’s the same thought I had sitting in the attic on Christmas Day, and the one I have every time I pick a card at random and read it again.

“What do you know about your mom’s past? Anything that might give us a clue about this Henry?”

Cece smiles at me. “You always did like a mystery. All that curiosity in you. I don’t know much, unfortunately.

Not because I don’t want to, but because my mom wasn’t the type to talk about her past. I think she was focused on getting through every day and didn’t have the time or inclination to look back.

I know she was born here in Boston, but she spent her childhood in England. ”

We both look down at the postcards spread between us, at the London postmarks, and I feel a little click in my brain.

“When did they come back to America?”

Cece furrows her brow in thought. “I don’t know the exact year.

I know my mother came back to Boston right before World War I, but her parents and her sisters stayed in England for a few more years.

I’m not sure why she came back first and why they stayed.

She lived with relatives in the city for a while, and she met my father here. ”

I study the postcards, the pieces of the mystery rearranging themselves in my head, trying to fit together.

“She could have met this Henry in England and fallen in love with him, and then she had to leave him behind for some reason when she came to America. If the dates on these postcards are anything to go by, I don’t think she ever went back. Maybe she never saw him again.”

I get a sharp tug in my stomach at that thought, like I’m the one who is never going to see the love of his life again. Like I can feel what she must have felt.

“The dates certainly line up,” Cece says thoughtfully. “And more than that, it feels right.”

“What feels right?”

Cece looks at me and her eyes are both serious and sparkly.

“That whoever this Henry is was my mom’s great love.

I don’t think she wasn’t happy because of my dad.

At least not directly. Look at these postcards.

Read the words. Whoever Henry is loved my mother with his whole heart.

She wasn’t happy because she knew what real love felt like and had to live her whole life without it. ”

“They never found each other,” I say slowly, my mind immediately turning to Amelia and the six months I spent wondering if I would ever see her again. Suddenly the drive to solve this mystery, to find Henry, is so strong my fingers practically twitch with the need to type on a keyboard.

“They never did.” Cece speaks with certainty then takes the last sip of her beer and strokes a hand over Killer’s fur. “My father died when I was a teenager, and then it was just my mom, my older sister, and me. She never remarried, and she died a few years after Cooper was born.”

“I want to find him.” Now it’s my turn to speak with certainty.

“They might never have found each other again during life, but I can find him for her now. I have to find him. I think…” I cut myself off, realizing what I’m about to say, knowing I’ll literally never hear the end of it from Cece.

“I think maybe I was meant to find these postcards. I mean, they were just sitting right there in the attic for who even knows how long, right next to all the Christmas decorations, but no one ever bothered to open the box.”

Cece grins widely. “Elliot Wyles, the king of logic and an orderly existence, using a phrase like meant to be ? I think this is the proudest day of my life.”

“Shut it,” I mumble.

Cece runs a hand over her wild curls, still grinning at me. “Never, honey. I think you were meant to find them too. That it’s you who can unravel this bit of family lore and give my mother back her great love.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind me digging into your family history?”

Cece takes my hand, squeezing. “Not at all. I think I’d quite like to know what happened. I didn’t really know my mother all that well. Maybe I can meet her now. Learn who she really was. How do you think you’ll do it?”

I think about the app I downloaded this morning, which, of course, gets me thinking about Amelia again, because she’s never far from my mind, it turns out. “I have a few ideas. It may take some time, but I think I can do it.”

“I know you can. No one handles things as well as you do. But just remember it’s okay to ask for help. To open yourself up to the people who love you.”

I pick my beer back up, mostly to avoid answering Cece because asking for help isn’t something I excel at. I’m more of a handle all the things and take care of all the people guy.

“I know,” I finally say, for lack of anything better.

Cece laughs. “I know you won’t,” she says with certainty. “At least not at first. But you will. Big things are coming for you, El. I can’t wait to watch it all unfold.”

I don’t know if Cece is right or not, but I can’t deny that her words settle me, and as I sink deeper into her couch, the comforting familiarity of her house surrounding me, I feel the rest of the darkness melt away and light start to trickle back in.