Free Mating for Life by Marissa Stapley Page B

said.
    Liane laughed. Then she turned to Ilsa, a serious expression on her face. Here it comes, she’s going to announce it. But Liane didn’t say anything about the ring. Instead, she said, “Fiona’s really not coming? What the heck happened?” And Ilsa, to her own surprise, blushed and said, “We’ll have to talkabout it later,” inclining her head toward Ani and Xavier to show that it wasn’t appropriate conversation to have in front of them.
    Liane raised an eyebrow. “O-kay,” she said.
    â€œI’m going to go put a suit on, say hi to Mom, and get a snack for the kids. I’ll be right back.”
    Ilsa kicked off her shoes and walked up the pathway. She had her weekend bag, and one for both the kids. She also had two canvas bags of wine and food—food for Ani and Xavier, mostly: fruit, cereal, pasta. Otherwise, she had only Syrah, champagne, a baguette, and cheese. She realized she had packed the same way she did every year, assuming Fiona would have the food all organized, that they would stop on the way up and Fiona would shop for everyone the way she always did. Even as she had passed the farmers’ market it hadn’t occurred to Ilsa to stop to do anything other than have a little nap at the side of the road. She felt foolish for a moment, but she brushed the feeling away. They’d figure it out. And won’t you be surprised, Fiona, to learn that we all don’t need you as much as you think we do?
    Funny, though. Ilsa had never realized she needed Fiona at all until that day, until the bear.
    At the door, Ilsa ignored Liane’s foot bucket—“Come on, it’s fresh!” Liane shouted from the dock—and walked inside barefoot, tracking dirt and sand first on the tile in the mudroom and then on the pine floorboards in the living room and kitchen. After putting the food away, she took her weekend bag upstairs and dumped it on the bed in her room.
    Ilsa’s room was at the side of the cottage, facing the trees and the creek, with a gabled window and a bed built into the wall that was far too small for her but made her feel good to sleep in, like she was still a child and thus devoid of all responsibility. When they came up to the cottage, Ani slept in the small bed, Xavier slept in a large playpen, and sheslept on an air mattress beside them. Michael had only been to the cottage a few times—he had his own family vacation property, on a small compound in Nantucket. Ilsa hated it there, mostly because of its perfection, and the distractions of televisions and telephones and screens of every description in every room. And also the way most of the people in his family seemed to avoid the water. The way they changed for dinner. The way when she dove off the boathouse his sister remarked at her bravery.
    â€œI’d be brave if those waters were shark-infested,” she had retorted once. But no one had laughed. “There ar e sharks around sometimes,” one of the sisters-in-law murmered. “At least that’s what I’ve heard.” That had been the weekend Ilsa had overheard one of Michael’s sisters say to a sister-in-law, “Do you think she’s after his money?” And the sister-in-law had wearily replied, “Oh, probably. But she won’t get any of it.” Most of Michael’s brothers were lawyers, and it was true that Ilsa had signed a prenuptial agreement. I am not after his money, she had wanted to say, wishing she had walked into the kitchen and caught those two by embarrassed surprise. I married him . . .well, I married him because he’s staid . And that was an enormous mistake. And I am the one paying for that, not him. She didn’t, though. She just asked Michael if they could go home a day early and he said, “Why, are you sick?” and she said she was, and they left.
    Now she turned in a small circle around her room. There were canvases leaning