Once Upon an Island

“Declan Fox is a good person,” I say out loud. My voice sounds as stunned as I feel.

It’s after four now, and the wind leaking through the window feels even chillier since I’m not under the bed covers. Or maybe it’s the fact that I abused and ranted at a perfectly decent human being. That’s enough to make me feel chilled.

I suppose, since I’m in Britain, there’s only one thing for this self-disillusionment and cold embarrassment.

I’ll make myself a cup of tea.

I tiptoe down the creaky stairs and quietly push open the swinging door to the kitchen. When I do, Arya looks up from the kitchen table.

She blinks at me owlishly.

There’s a pot of tea, a plate of cheese scones and her journal full of birding sketches on the table.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks.

I shake my head. “You either?”

She gets up and pulls out a tea cup from the cupboard. “Come on then.”

I drop into the old wooden chair and it groans under my weight. I’m not that heavy, it’s just a really old chair.

After she’s poured me a cup of tea, I blurt out, “It’s awful. Declan loves me.”

That goes over about as well as I expect. But I tell her about how I was wrong about Declan and also about Michael.

“I knew he was a rat,” she says.

And then I tell Arya that Declan heard us at the brunch and her and Kate at the airport and that’s why Percy hasn’t returned her calls.

Finally, when I’m done, I say, “I’m sorry. I wanted to help you get Percy back. I wanted to help Kate reunite with her family. I wanted to like Michael. I wanted to loathe Declan. It seems that the only thing I’ve managed to do is make a mess of everything.”

I shrug helplessly and take a mournful sip of the bitter, over-steeped black tea.

Arya lets out a high, giddy laugh.

“What?” I ask. I have no idea what’s funny about any of this mess.

“I chased a man across the world.” She covers her mouth and stifles another laugh.

“Are you alright?”

She snorts and shakes her head. Her eyes sparkle. “Me. The logical, science-based, cool-headed one. The one with the database of fatal flaws and exes, the one who knows that no man is perfect. I chased one of them across the Atlantic.” She snorts again and holds back another laugh.

“Well, I mean, I did kind of convince you to come. All that “it’s fate” talk.”

Her shoulders shake. “He thought I was after his castle. His money. His status.” She snorts again.

“More like his birds,” I say, gesturing at her sketches.

“I became a fool for him. I’ve never been a fool.”

I have to agree with her. “I was getting concerned. You were wandering around the rocky coastline like one of those creepy gothic widows in their night robes wailing into the wind. It wasn’t a good look on you.”

She smacks her forehead with the palm of her hand.

“At least you didn’t get locked in his attic,” I say helpfully.

“That’s the plot of Jane Eyre,” Arya says. She pulls her hand down and I’m glad to see that she’s looking happier.

“Will you try and contact him?” I ask.

“Will you contact Declan?” she asks in return.

There’s a heavy stone-like feeling in my chest when she says his name. I rub my finger over a tea stain on the wood table and avoid her eyes. This is the question I’ve been asking myself. The stone lodges into place when I answer her.

“No. He said everything he needed to. We don’t need to rehash things.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Are you sure? I mean, his only fatal flaw is that he meddles, which some might say is an effort to protect his friends.” She looks down at her tea cup, “Well, I mean there are the other flaws of icy demeanor and staring at you too much.”

“He doesn’t stare too much,” I quickly defend him.

Arya grins. “He does. He always stares at you. It’s a flaw.”

“It’s only a flaw if it’s unwelcome.”

Arya snorts.

I squirm when I realize I just admitted that his staring was welcome.

But then I shake my head and come back to the point. “I don’t love him. I only just realized he’s not actually awful. I don’t want to lead him on. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Arya shrugs.

“I’ll send an email,” I say. “I’ll tell him I’m sorry for misjudging him. That should give enough closure.”

“Mhmm.” Arya reaches forward and picks up her art pencil from the table and flips to a blank page in her journal.

“Whatcha doing?” I ask.

She writes out a sentence at the top of the page and underlines it. Then scribbles beneath it. When she’s done she flips the journal to me.

“You asked if I was going to contact Percy.”

I nod and look down at the journal. It says “Fatal flaw.” Beneath that it says, “Doesn’t trust me. Breaks my heart.”

“Is that worse than clipping your toenails at the table?” I ask.

Arya picks up the journal and smacks me with it. I laugh. Then, I ask, “Will you be alright?”

She sets down the journal and takes a moment to think it over.

Finally she says, “I think Percy was the first man I ever crashed into love with. It takes a bit to recover from that. But I’ll be okay. I’ve got you, don’t I? And my boobies.”

I chuckle. “Those boobies. They don’t know how lucky they are.”

“No, I was talking about these beauties.” She points at the chest area of her bulky sweater. You can see absolutely nothing beneath the thick wool. Unlike Kate and me, Arya is pretty small in the boob area.

“My mom always said a matchmaker will be able to find me a real gem of man with breasts like mine.” She holds her hands in front of her chest. “She always says, “Arya, they’re perfect, like two ripe kumquats. Any man will want to squeeze them at night.””

I can’t help it, I snort. “You have to be kidding.”

She gives me a smile and bats her eyelashes.

“Your mom is sick,” I say.

“My mom wants grandchildren.”

There’s not much to say to that. Arya’s mom is notorious for wanting to lasso her with a matchmaker and reel in a groom.

“It’ll all work out,” I say, even though I’m not sure it will.

Arya shrugs, then looks down at her watch. “Harriet will be up soon.”

It’s after five and Harriet’s an early riser.

A phone chimes and Arya pulls her cell from her pocket.

“It’s Kate,” she says with a smile. Then she gasps.

“What?” I try to see the screen of her phone.

“She’s in England,” Arya says.

Whoa. Kate hasn’t been back to England since she left on her ill-fated affair with the jet-skier.

“Is she coming to see us? Or her family?”

Arya shakes her head and when she looks up at me my stomach drops. This isn’t good.

“She’s getting married.”

“What?” I scoot back my chair and stand. I look around the kitchen like somehow I’ll see Kate in a wedding dress next to the fridge.

“Where? To who?” And just in case Arya missed it the first time, I say, “What?”

Arya looks at me, her eyes wide. “Kate’s eloping with Michael.”

Michael?

Holy. Freaking. No.