If for Any Reason (Nantucket Love Story #1) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,110
myself, and look where that had gotten her. She was trying to do better.
Was that why she’d asked Marisol to go to the library and look up information on her mother’s accident? Or had she done that because she was scared of what she might find?
She’d been putting it off for weeks, but there it was, gnawing at the back of her mind. Every time she saw her grandmother, she almost asked the million questions running through her mind—but something always stopped her.
Maybe some things were better left in the past. Some secrets better buried.
Still. The obituary. The holes in her grandmother’s story. The confirmation from Shae Daniels that the accident had, in fact, happened on Cliff Road. All of it raised more questions than Emily knew how to process.
And despite her best efforts, she couldn’t shake any of it.
What if Marisol returned with information Emily was better off not knowing? What if her mother had been involved in something unseemly and her grandmother was trying to protect Emily’s memory of her?
But no. Not Isabelle. She’d grown up so quickly out of necessity, because of Emily. She wasn’t the type to put herself or her daughter in danger.
Emily didn’t like thinking about it, so until this point, she hadn’t. She’d done a great job putting it all out of her mind. Why were these things nagging her now?
“Penny for your thoughts?” Hollis must’ve come in through the scene shop. She’d been too lost in her thoughts to hear him. He sat down next to her. He’d become a permanent fixture around the theatre over the last several weeks. It had been nice having him there with her. Whenever he was around, she felt invincible, as if all the things he believed about her might actually be true.
And like maybe she wasn’t a complete failure after all.
She held a paintbrush loaded with brown paint, which she’d been applying to the canvas they’d stretched over chicken wire to create the giant tree. They’d use something called Good Stuff to create texture, and she’d paint it various shades of brown to give the trunk dimension.
“You look pensive,” Hollis said. “It’s making me nervous.”
Emily smiled. She hadn’t told Hollis anything about the mysteries surrounding her mother’s death. She hadn’t told anyone because if she said it all aloud, that made it true, and while she was curious, she wasn’t sure her heart could handle another break.
What if what she uncovered left her wounded again?
“Do you think it’s better to know the truth even if it’ll hurt?”
Hollis’s face dropped. “What do you mean?”
She hesitated at first but decided to tell him the whole story, even without the prompting of their silly childhood game. She started with Gladys’s comment that her mother and grandparents had a rocky relationship. She covered Cliff Road, Shae Daniels, and her grandmother’s lie.
“What do you think the truth is?” Hollis asked when she finished unloading all the thoughts she’d bottled up.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just keep wondering why Grandma would lie. Why say Mom’s accident was in ’Sconset if it was on Cliff Road? Who lived on Cliff Road? Where was my mother going that night and why did she take me with her? Why not come back and get me in the morning?”
“Emily, are you sure you want to go digging around?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not. That’s why I asked if it was better to know the truth even if it hurt.”
Hollis reached over and took her hand. “I’m not sure how to answer that, but I know that I’d do just about anything to keep you from getting hurt.”
Emily’s heart fluttered. Like an actual butterfly, only a big one, something genetically altered. She’d been immune to these kinds of girlie proclivities for so many years—was this what it was like to fall in love?
The thought startled her. Love? And not the kind you felt for your friends and family, but romantic, head-over-heels love?
She looked up at him and saw the concern that laced his brow.
These weeks spent with Hollis had been the best weeks of her life, but having someone else to think about, to consider—was she ready for that?
“I think I want to know the truth,” she said. “I want to know what happened the night my mother died.”
It would be like picking at a loose thread, not knowing when everything would unravel—but she was ready. She needed to know.
Hollis held her gaze for several seconds before asking, “Then how can I help?”