Love According To Lily by Julianne MacLean Page A

cheek. “He’s still so hot. Is there nothing we can do?”
    Neither Jenson nor Lily answered the question— for there was no answer. At least not anything Annabelle would want to hear.
    Lily suddenly felt like she was intruding. “I should leave you,” she said, but Annabelle stopped her.
    “No, don’t go. Stay and tell me what happened and how he fell ill. I haven’t seen him for weeks, you see, as he was in London, and I never go to London.” She stroked his cheek. “He looks so thin.”
    Jenson backed away and retired into the dressing room, leaving them alone to talk. Annabelle sat in the chair by the bed, while Lily sat on the upholstered bench at the foot of it, facing her. She explained how Whitby had looked when he’d arrived, how he’d been fatigued and not his usual self, and how he’d been drinking more than he ever had before.
    That seemed to garner a rueful look from Annabelle. Perhaps she was thinking of Whitby’s father—her adoptive father—who everyone knew had drank a great deal before he died.
    James had told Lily years ago that the man had wanted to numb his pain. Lily had been too young to understand it at the time, but she’d held onto it, like she held onto everything that concerned Whitby. Every memory. Every experience. Now that she was older, she understood it better. She understood that some people preferred to travel through life forgetting certain things.
    “It was good of you to stay with him last night,” Annabelle said, interrupting Lily’s thoughts. “He always said you were a wonderful girl.”
    “He did?” Lily asked.
    “Yes. Years ago when he and James were still in school, Whitby would come home and tell me about the games you invented, and then he would play them with me. I admit, I was frightfully jealous that he would talk about you so much. I always thought you were smarter and more interesting than I was, and for a long time I didn’t
want
to meet you.”
    Lily felt her brow furrow with bewilderment. “I can’t believe you thought that.”
    Annabelle smiled at her. “I was just a child, missing my brother when he went away, and jealous of his stolen attentions. Then he grew older and stopped coming home with stories of your creative childhood games. He started his own games, I suppose. Games neither of us would likely invent.”
    Lily understood what Annabelle was hinting at—games that involved women and whiskey. And of course, Lily and Whitby had grown apart when she’d matured past childhood. The games had stopped then.
    She was surprised however, that Whitby had spoken of her so often to Annabelle, that he had continued to keep her in his thoughts after he’d left their house each time.
    Whitby stirred, and Annabelle leaned close. “I’m here, Whitby,” she said. “It’s Annabelle.”
    He opened his eyes, took one look at her, and said, “Thank God.” He lay there for a moment with his eyes closed, then he opened them again. “I’m so sorry, Annabelle. I should have listened to you.”
    Neither Whitby nor Annabelle looked Lily’s way, so she remained where she was, sitting quietly and watching.
    “You didn’t know this was going to happen,” Annabelle said.
    “No, you’re right. I always thought I was going to live forever, and that I had all the time in the world. I was wrong.”
    “We don’t know that for sure. You may very well recover completely as soon as the fever breaks.”
    “Perhaps,” he replied. “Even so, it does not excuse my failure to protect you and the estate, and to prevent a great injustice.”
    “You’ll get well, Whitby. You must.”
    Lily found herself again listening to a conversation she did not feel a part of, as if she were hearing secrets, while she was invisible to the people telling them. But she had always been invisible to Whitby, hadn’t she? Well, perhaps not always, as she had learned just now.
    She made a move to stand and leave them alone, but her movement attracted Whitby’s attention, and