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She did wonder if West went out of his way to be a little different with her, but Abby had told her that it was who these siblings were, but the world just saw them differently.
“I can. I do. I was so intimidated by Max when I met him,” she said. “Quinn was too. But he was great. I mean it was this world I never knew. Living in this quiet town on the water. I almost couldn’t sleep at night because it was only nature around me.”
“I thought you were from the area,” he said.
Shit. Too late she let that slip.
“No,” she said. “Not originally. We moved around a lot.”
“I know how that is,” he said, laughing.
She let out a breath. “Yeah. Anyway, Max is like a big kid. I was stunned. Here I was expecting this uptight rich doctor from the big city and he’s on the floor hiding behind the couch with Davy as they blast Quinn and me with Nerf bullets.”
He grinned. “We had a lot of wars like that in our house growing up.”
“I bet, with all those boys.”
“I’ll never forget one day my mother came home and there must have been over a hundred of those darts all over the living room. We’d had an all out war. Furniture was moved around, maybe a chair overturned. It was the best day ever, but all my mom saw when she came home was a mess. West and I felt like shit and we picked it all up and then made our siblings each tackle other rooms in the house to clean. The bathroom, the kitchen, their rooms. Within hours the whole house was clean and she didn’t have to do anything.”
“That is the sweetest thing ever,” she said. “Whose idea was that?”
“Mine,” he said proudly.
“What a good son you are,” she said.
“We all tried to be. Or, well, the older ones. The younger ones just had a different life than us.”
She nodded her head. Nothing she could say to that.
The rest of the flight was taken in silence. She was listening to music and he was on his laptop as best as he could be.
When the plane landed, they got their luggage, found his rental SUV and she gave him directions to Quinn’s.
“I guess it’s a good thing there is no snow here. It’s touch and go this time of year, but it’s nice out.”
“That’s why I got an SUV,” he said. “Just in case it does snow.”
They drove to Quinn’s and when she pointed out the hidden driveway, he pulled in and down toward the house on the lake. She felt this calmness come over that she did each time she returned.
“I’ve never felt like I had much of a home,” she said. “But I do here. It came later in life, but I’m glad I got to experience it.”
“I can understand that too. We moved so much and the houses were small. We never had a lot of money to decorate or anything. The things or touches you put on a place. My condo now is the first I can say I feel as if it’s the place for me. But West’s house in the Hamptons takes the cake. I’d love something like that, but it’s not realistic to live daily with where we work.”
“Your brother makes it work, but it’s still a lot of time commuting back and forth,” she said.
“Even by air it is time. He tried to go a few times a month before Abby, but now is there more. She’s not a huge fan of Manhattan.”
They parked and he got their bags out of the back, her going to the front door, and before she could open it, Lara was standing there. “Lily, you’re home!”
“I am,” she said, going into Lara’s arms.
“Lily?” he asked. “I’ve never heard you called that.”
“Her name is Lily. I’m Lara. She wanted to sound more professional when she moved so she told us all we had to call her Lilian, but I said no way. She’s always going to be Lily to me and I’m not changing it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Lara is a chatterbox and has no problem telling you like it is. But as I’ve told my family, I get it. It’s hard for them to call me anything different.”
“I like it,” he said. “I think it almost suits you more than Lilian.”
