Suddenly, she couldn’t get home fast enough, and for once, not just because of her agoraphobia. She had no idea how she would do it, but she would not allow these sleek millennial mommas to make her site obsolete.
CHAPTER 2
Olivia York
The anniversary gift was due to be delivered by ten, and Spencer, Olivia’s husband, had promised to be home from his run in time for its arrival. He often miscalculated the length of his runs, adding on miles and subsequently time. It was doubtful that he would be at her side for the big reveal. Standing alone with the deliverymen was not how Olivia had pictured this moment.
On hearing the sound of wheels on gravel, she texted Spencer, They’re here. If he were home, where he should have been, that text would have included at least three exclamation points. Her lack of punctuation matched her mood. Olivia was disappointed. All of the romance she’d felt when first hearing of his imminent surprise was replaced with annoyance. The doorbell rang. She brushed off the gloom and answered it with a genuine smile.
“Right this way,” she directed the two men, with a mixture of nervousness and excitement, as they carried a large crate through the front door. It had been just six weeks since Olivia and Spencer had moved to Hudson Valley with their beautiful baby, Lily, but it already felt like home. She loved everything about the house right down to the lovely name of the street, Evergreen Lane, where she had resolved to bring up her family. Actually, “resolved to” made it seem as if Olivia was not fully embracing this move. That was not the case. Though it had not been her idea, Olivia York took on this transition in her true, hopeful fashion, as she did most everything that came her way.
A born and bred city girl, she had no idea how to live in the country. Even calling it the country as opposed to a suburb of Manhattan was apparently incorrect and made her husband laugh every time she said it.
It had been Spencer’s plan all along to move out of Manhattan: grass for the kids to play on, fresh air, the promise of a golden retriever or a standard poodle or some combination of the two. It was the way he’d grown up, and the offices for York Cosmetics, his family’s multilevel-marketing company, were based nearby. Olivia knew that even a reverse commute couldn’t beat the hop, skip, and jump it would now take for Spencer to get to work. As a freelance graphic artist, Olivia could work from anywhere. She felt selfish insisting they stay in the city forever, though it had always been her preference.
Olivia thought she’d have a few good urban years while Lily was still tiny before Spencer broached the topic of moving. But the first time she walked into the glass house that jutted out from the mountainous banks of the Hudson, perched at the perfect angle to see for miles in each direction, she wanted nothing more. By the time they saw the master bedroom, its windows set to capture every hue of the ever-changing foliage, the choppy currents, the passing ships, she was sold. Spencer was no fool. He knew his art history–loving wife would not be able to resist living within a Hudson Valley landscape any more than Monet at Giverny. When they returned to the city after seeing it for the first time, she stopped at the magazine stand and grabbed the latest issues of Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, and Country Living.
Olivia directed the men to hang what they confirmed was a painting over the living room fireplace. She suspected it was a piece from some up-and-coming artist she’d admired the last time she’d dragged Spencer through the galleries of Chelsea. She hadn’t imagined that he was even listening to her, let alone noting her favorites for an anniversary gift. Spencer did have a way of doing things that took her by surprise. It was one of the reasons she had fallen for him in the first place. Since she was a real planner, being with a free spirit like Spencer had taken her out of her comfort zone, and she liked it.
When the deliverymen removed the painting from the crate, revealing the canvas in all its glory, Olivia was . . . speechless. Spencer had had their wedding portrait reimagined as a modern version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, with the two