It was wrong to chuckle at the misfortune of others, but Emily had heard these stories enough times to find them funny.
“Husband number two, Conroy Harper, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, flying his kite on the beach when a Porta-John blew off the bluffs at Hawkeye Point. Landed right on him. He never saw it coming.” She shook her head.
“A shitty way to die,” Lilly murmured into her coffee cup.
“And the third?” Chloe asked, as if not certain any of this was true.
“Ah, that was my Bert. He never could resist a dare, but even he should have known better than to eat a taco from Cinco de Mayo on ocho de Mayo. His sombrero is still on the wall down at the Adobe Tavern, but I’m pretty sure they don’t serve tacos anymore.”
“Please tell me you are making this up,” Chloe said, waffle in hand.
“Hand on the Bible. It’s all true.”
Emily nodded, and Chloe set the waffle down.
“Maybe you should get a very large life insurance policy on the next husband,” Lilly suggested, slurping her coffee loudly. “You know, before he makes an ash of himself.”
“Very funny, but don’t think I haven’t thought of it. It’s an unpredictable way to score more rental properties, but I do seem to be good at burying men. Plus, I haven’t had a husband in a while. At my age, pickings are getting a little slim. I’ve got my eye on a few gents, though. Just waiting for their wives to move along.” She flicked her hands over the table as if shooing away a fly. The sisters giggled while Chloe looked at them as if they were quite, quite inappropriate.
Emily knew Gigi had loved each of her husbands for their own unique attributes, but the Callaghan pragmatism wouldn’t let her dwell on losing them or feel sorry for herself. Irish, you know. Self-pity was about the biggest sin you could commit. It was a lesson Emily had clung to during the roughest days of her marriage and the even rougher days of her divorce. Feeling sorry for oneself didn’t get the bills paid. It didn’t feed your kids, and it didn’t improve your situation. Action and movement was the only thing that did that, and so, like any good Callaghan, Emily had just kept moving forward. Maybe without much direction or without much strategy, but still . . . forward.
That’s sort of what she was doing now, too. Taking it one day at a time. Once she was finished with renovating Gigi’s cottage on the island, and once Jewel had sold the disaster house back in Texas, Emily would have some decisions to make. Assuming they got their asking price on that money pit, Emily could pay off her current debts and hopefully have some left over to buy another flip. If not, well, she’d have to find a regular job. Maybe go back to being a secretary at the construction company. That’s where she’d met Jewel in the first place. But she’d figure that out later. She could only handle one catastrophe at a time, and her catastrophe du jour was Gigi’s cottage.
“Oh goodness, look at the time,” Gigi said, glancing down at a thirty-year-old Timex wristwatch. “Chloe, we should hurry up and get dressed if we want to go watch the parade. We can’t go in our pajamas. You do want to see the parade, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Chloe answered, hopping up from her seat, the dismay of dead husbands disappearing. Emily smiled, thinking that just yesterday Chloe might have scoffed at the idea of a parade, but it appeared she was already starting to sink into the charming atmosphere of Trillium Bay.
“Mom, you’re coming to the parade, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely. That’s why I’m already dressed for the day, so you guys had better hurry up and change.”
“So catch me up on everything,” Lilly said to Emily after Gigi and Chloe had left.
“Catch you up? Let’s see.” Emily started counting off with her fingers. “I’m still living with Jewel, we’re still flipping houses, I spend all my extra time driving Chloe around to all her after-school activities, I’m not dating anyone, and . . . yeah, that’s it. You’re all caught up.”
“Oh, there must be more going on than that?”
Emily shook her head. “No, not really.” She wished she could confide in Lilly about all the sleepless nights she’d spent worrying about finances and bankruptcy and the disaster house in San Antonio, but this wasn’t the time. Lilly might not be able to keep it a secret. It was bad enough depending on Gigi to keep her lips buttoned up. “So catch me up on you. What’s new with you?”
Lilly shrugged and stood up, moving toward the coffeepot. “Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Nothing much ever changes on this island. Did you know Reed is here?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Mm. Did Brooke tell you she’s thinking about running for mayor?”
Watching her, Emily got the distinct impression her sister was trying to divert the topic of conversation off of herself. Normally Lilly was full of stories about her latest adventures, and even if they were not particularly adventuresome, the way she described everything made it sound fun. Now she seemed a little evasive. There must be a guy.
“Yes, she told me about running for mayor. Why does Gigi think you’re hiding a man?”
“Because this island is full of nosy old busybodies with nothing better to do than to speculate about who’s doing it with who.”
“Yeah, so . . . who are you doing it with?”
Lilly’s eyes skirted to the doorway that Gigi and Chloe had just exited through. “No one. There’s no guy.”
“Liar. She’s gone now. You can tell me. You know I can keep a secret.”
Lilly plucked a nonexistent piece of lint from the front of her shirt, stalling for time, no doubt, and avoiding eye contact. Although Emily’s relationship with Brooke was often cautious and a little complicated, Emily’s connection to Lilly had always been comfortable and easy, but something was different. Something had changed. Maybe Lilly had learned to keep some secrets after all.
“Look, there might be a guy,” she whispered. “But he’s not from around here, and it’s all really new, so I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much. You know how things go around here. I don’t want Dad catching wind of it until I’ve had a chance to tell him myself. You know how he is.”
Emily gave a little snort. “Yes, I know how he is, but if Gigi and Dmitri are already suspicious, you can be pretty certain that a whole bunch of other people are, too. You don’t think Dad already knows?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it. Dad definitely doesn’t know yet.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because he’s still speaking to me.”
“Mom,” Chloe shouted out from the top of the stairs. “I can’t find any of my underwear. Please tell me you packed my underwear!”
Emily very much wanted to continue this conversation with her sister, but it would have to wait. She couldn’t have Chloe going to the parade commando.