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Rose smiled. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had offered her such tremendous kindness. She told herself not to burst into tears.
“I was married, too,” the woman confessed. “It ended terribly.”
“It feels like we’re too young to have all this life experience,” Rose said.
“You’re telling me,” the woman said.
Rose sniffed. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Stella. You?”
“Rose.”
Hilary Salt left the lawyer’s office a few minuteslater and introduced herself. Rose felt the pieces of her heart slowly shifting back into place. She agreed to meet with them for drinks and dinner at Hilary’s place, and not long after that, she moved in with Hilary—into a sprawling mansion that was even bigger than Oren’s place. Hilary had more money than she knew what to do with, but she wasn’t mean-spirited about it. She’d been through the metaphorical wringer of life. And she was eager to talk about it.
As Rose slipped deeper into this marvelous life of kindness, friendship, and good conversation, Hilary and Rose worked diligently around the house, painting walls and redesigning rooms. Hilary told Rose she had an artistic eye. Rose had never really thought about it that way. She realized she’d only ever seen herself as a part of a greater whole rather than an individual.
“You should give it a try,” Hilary suggested.
Hilary sat for Rose’s painting not long after that. Rose worked hard on that first portrait, digging into Hilary’s personality and the specific details about her face that madeHilary Saltwho she was. When Rose was finished, Hilary was smitten and hung the painting in one of her rooms.
“Keep going,” Hilary begged. “You owe it to yourself not to stop.”
Rose moved into her own dinky apartment not long after that. It was the tiniest place she’d ever lived in. It was also the first place she’d ever been able to call her own.
It was a start.
It was a breath of fresh air.
It was time to live.
Chapter Twenty-One
Present Day
Rose invited the Salt Sisters to the Grayson Estate three nights after she returned to Nantucket from Manhattan. She wanted to show them her very own haunted house. And she wanted to tell them how much they’d been on her mind lately—specifically Stella and Hilary, who’d saved her life.
She practiced it in her head.I always thought men were the ones who had to save women. I never knew women could save each other. Not until you two walked into my life.
I didn’t deserve you. I still don’t understand how I got so lucky.
It was a beautiful day in August, just south of seventy-five degrees. Rose set up a few picnic tables across the grounds and hired a private chef to grill sensational barbecue chicken on the grill she brought from home. Because some of the construction workers groaned with hunger during the chef’s prep time, Rose ran out to grabmore ingredients to feed the construction workers, too. She didn’t want anyone to feel left out.
“Guess what?” One of the head construction guys approached with his hat in his hands. He looked cute, his hair slightly greasy on top, his face and arms tan from all the hard work.
“What’s up?” Rose smiled.
“We figured out a way to save the ballroom roof,” he said. “Want to come check it out?”
Rose followed him through the back entrance all the way to the ballroom. Rose hadn’t entered that area of the house in quite a while, and she was amazed at the amount of work they’d finished. It was beginning to look like something out of a storybook. They’d even managed to save the ceiling paintings of the starry night sky.
“You can walk under it safely,” the worker explained. “We secured everything. Look.” He gestured toward pillars they’d built along the edge of the ballroom. The pillars were delicate and beautiful, reminiscent of French castles. Rose took a hesitant step into the ballroom and raised her chin. Beneath her feet was a sparklingly clear marble floor—one they’d apparently discovered under mats Oren or somebody had laid down after they’d abandoned the house.
“It was really in better shape than we thought,” the construction worker explained now.
Rose blinked back tears and imagined tourists here as early as next summer. She imagined their laughter and conversation in this very space—a space where, once upon a time, a young woman named Natalie had laughed and conversed with Oren.
Natalie’s dead,Rose reminded herself now.Don’t get your hopes up.
