Page 22 of Memories of the Lost

“Pie?” Liam suggested quietly.

“Too bright. Let’s find a bar.”

Liam settled with Tillie into an agreeably dark booth in a pub that smelled of a hundred years of beer. It boasted English favorites like shepherd’s pie and fish and chips with mushy peas. Not vegetarian-friendly, but he was used to that. These days, there was always something, and on this menu, he found a mushroom risotto. Tillie ordered a pint of ale. Liam asked for water.

“Water?”

“I like it.”

Her face captured him again, the simple oval, her indigo eyes. Her braid fell over her shoulder. Even in the low light, the white streak in her hair was quite visible. Her hands rested on the table, fingers folded together, quiet. He could imagine her as the wolf mother, the cat being, the owl mermaid from her art.

“You could be one of the characters from your paintings,” he said.

“Feral?” She teased. “I’ve heard that before. I didn’t get all the edicts about makeup and wearing certain things, all that. My mom was a total hippie.”

“Seriously?” He spread a hand over his chest, weirdly delighted. “Mine, too.”

“No kidding.” She paused, studying his face. “That actually makes sense.”

He grinned. “Like being a model?”

She had the grace to blush slightly. “Sorry. I mean—” She waved a hand. “We lived on a farm upstate, and my mom grew all of her own vegetables. Made kombucha before it was a thing.”

“We were on the outskirts of the city, but same. No meat, no dairy, counters all covered with trays of sprouts and jars of sunflowers. She kept bees.”

“Your own bees and honey. That’s up there.” She laughed. “I never had sugar until I went to a school Halloween dance in the seventh grade, but we bought ours. We didn’t eat meat at all, but I was always trying to figure out ways to try it.”

He chuckled. “Rebel.”

“I was homeschooled until I was thirteen. You?”

“I never went to a public school. Homeschooled all the way.”

“That’s amazing. Inevermeet anybody with my background.”

The waiter brought their food. “My mother would not have approved of this meal, I can tell you,” she said, “but God that smells good. Are you still vegetarian?”

“I refuse to answer that question,” he replied.

“So yes?” She grinned. “It’s hard to eat meat if you’ve been raised without it.”

“Yeah. I just . . . can’t.”

She sighed and touched her napkin to her lips. “When I traveled in my wild youth, I found it easier to let that go.”

“Where’d you travel?”

“All over. Jon and I. At first, it was college holidays, you know, down to Mexico and Belize, and then after we graduated, we took a year and did the old-school backpacking thing.” She enumerated the stops. “Started in Thailand, as one does.”

“As one does.”

“India, Sri Lanka, Croatia, Turkey, Egypt, Italy,” she said, raising a finger for each place. “Germany, Norway, Iceland, then down to South America, Peru, Argentina.”

“Impressive. Equal time in each?”

“That was the original plan, a month at each stop, but there were places we really liked and places we didn’t care about. By the end, we were really ready to get back to New York and away from each other.”

He laughed. “I did a gap year. Not as extensive as that. I didn’t hear England on the list.”