Chapter Twenty-Two

For being Kate’s last day on Lords, most of Saturday was spent off Lords.

The night before, her mum had dropped her car off at Mornington Pier so that she could drive it across on the ferry the next day and pack her belongings to leave that night. It had worked out well. Tilly had arranged to meet a young graduate student in Hastings on Saturday morning to purchase a secondhand car advertised on Gumtree, so with her own car at Mornington, Kate was able to drive Tilly over to the suburbs on the other side of the peninsula.

They’d caught the island shuttle down to Lords Pier, taken the nine a.m. passenger ferry to Mornington, driven over to Hastings in Kate’s car, and satisfied with an inspection, Tilly had made her purchase of the 2011 Hyundai i30.

“Let’s celebrate,” Kate had said when she’d closed the driver’s door for Tilly. She’d leaned through the open window of the new car and, without thinking, pressed a kiss to Tilly’s cheek. “We can have lunch by the water. I know a great little place about five minutes away if you want to follow me?”

“I’d rather just get back,” Tilly had said flatly.

At first, she’d thought Tilly’s reluctance had been due to embarrassment. The student and her father had still been hovering by the garage, watching, when Kate had kissed her.

But it wasn’t about that—it was what Sister Tessie had said to Tilly that morning before they’d left.

Now, Kate stood in the doorway of Tilly’s bedroom, watching as Tilly zipped up the emerald dress she was wearing to the Christmas play at St. Vincent’s. In the reflection of the dresser mirror, their gazes met. “You look beautiful,” Kate said, watching as Tilly closed the back of her studded earrings.

Tilly smiled. “Thank you.” As she hunted in her bureau, she caught sight of the front of her dress. Clicking her tongue, she swatted at her sternum. “I pulled Lily’s costume out of the plastic and now I have glitter all over me,” she said, waving absentmindedly across the room to where the angel costume hung from her dresser, the hem sparkling in the afternoon sun. “I had to reglue some of the glitter, too, so hopefully it will dry. I mean, it’s only five thirty now and the play isn’t until seven thirty,” she rambled, “so hopefully it’ll be fine.”

Rolling off the doorjamb, Kate took the balled thigh highs from Tilly’s hands. “Sit. Let me.”

As Tilly sat on the edge of the bed, Kate sank to her knees before her. Outside the open window, cicadas screamed into the hot, late afternoon. Carefully, Kate rolled the stocking so it wouldn’t ladder. “Last week at the beach I said that I wanted us to keep talking about our future, what we want…” She lifted Tilly’s arched foot and slipped it into the cocoon of nylon. “We haven’t really talked about what happens after I leave tonight.”