One Week Later
September, 1932
Wellesley
"I don't want to do this." Lily came to a dead stop. "I really don't want to do this."
Dylan turned around. "We've been over this," he said. "You agreed to come."
"I don't think I fully understood what I was agreeing to."
He sighed. "Water Lily, please. I need you to do this for me."
She rubbed a crack in the sidewalk with the tip of her shoe. "This isn't going to go well. You know that, right? It can't go well." As she bent her head forward, her curls slipped out of the silver barrette she had forced them into. They covered her face like a fiery curtain. "I just have a bad feeling," she said, shaking her head.
"I'm not exactly excited about it," Dylan said. "But it's something I have to do if I want…" He jammed his hands in his pockets. "I don't want us to be like our family. I don't want to tell our kids their grandparents are dead because they won't understand why they don't speak to us."
"Dad's family really is dead. I checked."
Dylan couldn't help but smile. "Of course you did."
Eva was waiting at the door when they arrived. Her jet black hair gleamed in the streetlight. Her dress, a dark pink imitation of a popular gown, could have been painted on. Dylan could barely return her greeting. Fortunately, Lily, her confidence refreshed by three cigarettes in three blocks and a quick nip from the small flask of Southern Comfort she kept hidden in her bag, did enough talking for the both of them.
"Eva!" she cried, throwing her arms around her.
Eva froze. This was not what she had expected at all. She gave Lily a quick pat on the shoulder. "Just don't try to hug anyone else."
The small apartment was flooded with light. The silver candlesticks on the table in the hall gleamed. The spider that used the Rembrandt that hung on the living room wall for its web had been cleared out. The furniture, seventeenth century German antiques, was as foreboding as it was beautiful. Compared to the house she had grown up in, the apartment was not only cramped, but almost insufferably dingy. Yet she had done the best she could with what she had, as always.
"Is that an original?" Lily asked, indicating the Rembrandt.
Eva nodded. "We had more…" Her cheeks suddenly felt hot. "Before."
Lily offered her a small smile. "I like it."
Dylan breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Lily had never condemned Eva as a foot soldier of the bourgeois, but she had also never been surrounded by the last remaining trappings of her former wealth.
"It's my favorite," Eva said.
A dark figure appeared in the doorway that led to the kitchen. "Are you talking about paintings again?" Cal's tone was both affectionate and condescending. "Artists never amount to a thing," he said. "Not in this life."
Dylan shot Lily a glance. She pressed her lips firmly together. You will be quiet. You will not ruin this for him. "Most artists don't," she said. "We don't live in a world that lets people rise the way they should."
Cal turned to her, surprised by the sound of her voice. There was a familiar confidence, a slightly aristocratic ring to her words that felt strangely familiar. A pair of deep blue eyes met his gaze. He had seen eyes like that before, hadn't he? But it was the hair that really caught his attention. The only person he had ever seen with hair like that was—Rose. The name echoed in his ears. He couldn't remember the last time he had said it aloud.
Lily took a step forward. She held out her hand. "I'm Water Lily," she said, forcing herself to smile. So, this was the man her mother had almost married, the man who might have been her father. Until that moment, a part of her hadn't believed he was real.
Eva held her breath as Cal looked from Lily's hand to her face. Would he take it? Or would he be offended? His empire had been reduced to little more than a few gold nuggets, and yet there were times when he still behaved as though he were royalty.
She has a flower name. Why wouldn't she? Slowly, Cal extended his hand. Lily shook it quickly. Her hands were small, delicate; the ring she wore on her middle finger seemed to engulf it.
"And this is Dylan," Eva said, motioning for him to come forward. "Father, you remember me mentioning him."
Dylan looked Cal straight in the eye. "Hello," he said, breaking into a grin.
Cal just stared at him. He was familiar, too. But why?
Cal soon found himself seated opposite Lily. He busied himself with his food, ignoring the urge to look at her. Lily, however, didn't impose any such restrictions upon herself. She studied his features in between spoonfuls of soup. He was thinner than she had expected, his face more gaunt. The image she had carried in her mind had been that of a devilishly handsome beast with black eyes that gave no indication of the evil within. In her mind, he was the ultimate aristocrat, the ultimate imperialist, capitalist pig wringing wealth from the bodies of anyone unfortunate enough to get under his feet. But the reality of him was nothing like her vision. The man across the table stared into his soup as though he were afraid to look at her.
And indeed he was, though not for any reason she would have guessed. He hadn't thought of Rose in years, and the last thing he wanted was to start.
Eva's mother, Deidre, sat at the head of the table. Her dark blonde hair was held back with pearl-topped pins. She wore a pale blue dress that had been the height of fashion in 1928. A large diamond ring glittered on her left hand, the only piece of jewelry she had been able to save.
"Mother, do you remember the course I took on economic theory?" Eva asked. "Lily is the one who helped me through it."
Deidre looked at her. "I thought you were studying literature."
"I am. I took that for fun."
Deidre turned to Lily. "What are you studying?"
"Economics."
"Isn't that a rather weighty subject for a young girl?"
"Not at all," Lily said. "I think it's one of the most fascinating things in the world. And God knows we need economists now," she added.
Deidre's eyes dimmed. "Yes," she said. "Indeed we do."
Eva shot Dylan a look. Help, she pleaded silently.
He cleared his throat. "Eva's a very talented seamstress," he said. "I would have never known she made her clothes herself if she hadn't told me."
Deidre smiled. "She's always been talented. I don't know where she gets it. I can't sew a stitch."
"Neither can I," Lily chirped. "My mother tried to show me how once, but…" She shrugged. "I'm just not very good with my hands. I can draw a little, but that's about it."
Eva looked surprised. "You draw, too? I thought Dylan was the artist."
"Oh, he is. I doodle sometimes, but I've never worked at it the way he does," Lily said. "He's just like our father, always sketching something."
Cal raised his head. "Your father draws?"
Lily nodded. "Always has. Only now he gets paid for it."
"What does your father do, exactly?" Deidre asked, turning her gray eyes on Dylan.
"Well, right now he draws and paints set pieces for films. He did that for a while in the twenties before he and my mother went to Morocco to collect art."
"For themselves?"
"Oh, no. The Metropolitan Museum sent them. They were gone for two years. They…uh…just got back a few weeks ago. They're at home now."
"And where is that?"
"Santa Monica. In Los Angeles," he explained. "They have a house on the beach."
"Is that where the two of you grew up?"
Dylan and Lily exchanged glances. "We traveled a lot," he said. "Our father found the house in Santa Monica about six years ago…when our mother was recovering from an illness and couldn't wander anymore."
"Seems like an odd place to take an invalid."
"They have a kind of intense love of warm water," he said with a soft laugh. "And it's one of their favorite places. They lived there right after they got married."
"Why warm water?" Cal asked. A strange knot formed in his stomach. If he hadn't known any better, he would have sworn they were sitting across from him, only this time Rose had Jack's eyes and Jack had Rose's eyes.
"That's not my story to tell," Dylan said slowly, holding Cal's gaze.
"Why don't you tell a story?” Eva suggested. She turned to her mother. "Dylan and Lily have been just about everywhere."
"I wouldn't say everywhere," Dylan said. "But we did do a lot of traveling."
"It's practically all we did as children," Lily said. "We've been to almost every state. We've lived in a few of them." She held up a hand. "We lived in Paris." She put down a finger. "Venice." Another finger went down. "Dublin."
"That's enough, Lily," Dylan said. "I'm sure they understand. We went a lot of places."
"How did your family have the means to do this?" Deidre asked.
The knot in Cal's stomach worsened.
"We never had a fixed home, you could say," Dylan said. "Our parents just made money wherever we went. They would save up a little, and we'd go on." He hoped that would be enough explanation, but Deidre's curiosity had been roused for the first time in months. It would not settle down again easily.
"You have an unusual name," she said, turning her attention to Lily. "I've never heard it before. How did your parents decide upon it?"
Lily glanced at Dylan. He gave a resigned shrug. "They named me after a painting," she said. "Monet's Water Lilies."
Cal's glass shattered in his hand.