Her eyes snapped up. “How are you?”

Tilly shrugged lightly. “Things haven’t been the best at St. Joan’s.”

Kate twisted slightly in her chair. “No?”

Tilly shook her head. “And not because of what happened. I mean, with Sister Ruth and…us.” She hesitated. “Sister Mary Monica came and woke me on Boxing Day night. Sister Tessie had woken and left the convent. They’d found her in the garden.” Tilly paused. “It was a hot night and she’d taken off all her nightclothes, didn’t have a clue where she was. She wouldn’t let the sisters dress her and help her back to bed. I was the only one she’d let close. It was…it was horrible.” She sighed tiredly and Kate sensed there was more to the story that Tilly wasn’t sharing. “I’m just so glad the girls weren’t there to see it.”

Kate sat back in the seat and rubbed her thigh. “They were good girls. They would have known how to behave—that it wasn’t funny.”

“I know,” Tilly agreed. “But Sister Tessie would have been horrified.” She held Kate’s gaze. “It’s not safe for her on the island anymore with the beaches and…” she trailed off, her throat bobbing as she swallowed, “…the cliffs. The sisters have decided it’s best to move her to a nursing home on the mainland.”

Kate nodded tersely. “That’s probably a good idea.”

“I think so too.”

She lost herself in Tilly’s soft gaze. “Yeah…” She cared about Sister Tessie, of course she did, but it was hard to focus when Tilly was sitting beside her, so nervous, so unsure.

“I saw your missed calls,” Tilly said. “And your messages. I wanted to call you on Christmas Day” She dropped her gaze, broke eye contact. “I just…I didn’t want to interrupt your family. I wasn’t sure if you did lunch or dinner…”

“You wouldn’t have interrupted.”

Tilly glared at the carpet.

Look at me, Tilly. Please, look at me.

“I ended it with him,” she whispered. Kate’s heartbeat pounded between her ears as Tilly’s eyes met hers. “I didn’t tell him about us but…it’s over. It’s been over since the night you left.”

“Then why haven’t you answered any of my calls?”

Tilly caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t know.”

Headlights from a car stopped in the No Standing bay shone through the window of the terminal and lit Tilly’s hair scarlet.

“I do know that I miss you,” Tilly said breathily. “I’m complicated Kate. We’re complicated together. I know I’m too religious for you and that I have ideas that need to evolve and that’s not going to change overnight. You challenge me to think about things that have been drilled into me all my life. And I want to be challenged. I want that.” Her eyes widened slightly. “I’m hard to love. Maybe even hard to like. I probably need to go back to therapy so I can be…happy.” She reached out and covered the hand that rested on Kate’s thigh. “But I’m willing to work on myself. For us.”