by Olivia Miles
“Still, it’s probably not the healthiest choice. I just hate cooking for one.”
Jane gave a wry smile. “I find that whatever I make lasts half the week, and by then, I’m sick of eating it.” She’d gotten into the routine of cooking while she was married to Adam, so much so that she hadn’t even thought of giving herself a break and coming here before. It felt illicit and oddly special. Running into Ivy was an extra perk. She decided to make a point of trying it more often.
Ivy ordered a house salad and sipped her water. “I’m meeting my brother tonight to go through my mom’s house.” She grimaced. “I think I’ll need my strength to keep up. That place needs a lot of work. More than he knows.”
“Then you should have ordered something heavier.”
Ivy looked out the window. “Oh, you know me. I’m always watching my carbs.”
“Do you want some of my milkshake?” Sophie inquired, shifting her straw in Ivy’s direction.
“No thanks, honey. It’s all yours.”
“That’s nice of you to offer, though,” Jane said to her daughter. She glanced at Ivy. “We’re still working on sharing. I knew if she and I split a shake, I’d get one sip, and I’d be warned about how big it was.”
The women laughed. “I don’t remember going through any of that with Henry, but we must have.”
“You two always seemed tight,” Jane commented, thinking the same could probably be said for herself, Grace, and Anna. They’d had their bumps along the way, particularly Anna and Grace, being older and more strong willed, but for the most part, they relied on each other for everything. Even when they didn’t always tell each other everything.
Jane took a long sip of her milkshake. She’d have to tell her mother and Anna about Adam’s plans soon. The way news traveled in Briar Creek, they’d find out from someone else before long.
“Henry and I needed each other growing up.” Ivy folded her straw wrapper into an accordion. “It was just the two of us most of the time.”
Jane gave a sad smile. “How are you holding up?” she asked carefully, glancing at Ivy for a reaction.
“I’m really okay,” Ivy said, and something in her tone made Jane know she meant it. Jane wished she could say the same for how she felt about her father’s death, but she still felt his absence every single day. “It helps to have Henry here.”
“I’ve talked to him a bit,” Jane offered. She glanced over at Ivy, wondering why she was even bringing this up. Why her stomach suddenly felt like it had a dozen butterflies hopping around in it. It was just Henry after all. “He was wrapping up his deadline at the bookstore. I told him he should write about Briar Creek next.”
Ivy just shook her head as a waitress brought over their plates and set them down. “He likes to travel to places he’s never been before. I can’t see him wanting to write about Briar Creek. Though it would be sort of neat, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. It just seemed like a good idea. Briar Creek’s come a long way recently. I doubt it’s much of a tourist destination, though.”
“There’s the ski resort just down the road,” Ivy countered. “And some people like small towns for romantic weekend getaways. Not that I would know.”
Jane slipped her a knowing smile. “Still no luck in the love life department?”
“What love life?” Ivy groaned. She speared a tomato wedge with sudden force. “I haven’t been on a date in… over a year. Oh my God, I didn’t even realize that until now. The last date I went on was with Sam Logan. I remember because we got to talking at the Fourth of July picnic last year and shared a beer at the pub that night.” She paused, then made a face. “That’s not even a date, is it?”
Jane tried not to laugh. “It sounds better than my recent experiences.”
Ivy tipped her head. “One of your dates was nice, right? The nurse?”
The girls locked eyes and started to giggle. “He was very nice,” Jane said when she’d composed herself. “Very, very nice. But…”
“No spark?” Ivy sighed. “I know the feeling. Once you feel the spark, it’s hard not to hold out for it.”
Jane peered at her, suddenly wondering just how much Ivy was holding back. “Anyone in particular?”
Ivy took great care in shuffling the lettuce on her plate. “No… not really. Just…” She looked up at Jane, her eyes pleading. “You know when you have a connection with someone, don’t you? Like, you feel it. You get nervous when they walk in a room, you get excited at the thought of seeing them again, and you miss them even when they’ve only been gone for like five minutes. Everything they say is somehow fascinating, and everyone else just becomes boring in comparison. And when you talk, it just… clicks. It just feels right.”
Jane was nodding, but her cheeks were starting to burn. She knew all right. She experienced every single one of those emotions and then some every time Henry came near. Ivy’s own brother! If her friend had any idea… Well, she just wouldn’t. Besides, she’d probably be the first one to tell Jane that Henry wasn’t the man for her. And he wasn’t, Jane knew that, even if her heart didn’t. Henry was warm and funny, and he had that way of holding her eyes until she was forced to look away, even though she didn’t want to. It was easy with Henry. He seemed to get her in a way that few others did. It felt natural. It felt comfortable. It felt—
Wrong. It was all very, very, very wrong. She needed a reliable man. And what was reliable about a man who traveled for a living and never wanted to marry again? “I’m not sure I can trust my own judgment,” Jane admitted. After all, she’d thought Adam was her mate for life, and he’d been sleeping with another woman. What a fool she’d been.
“I know Adam hurt you, and I know he was your husband, but I don’t think he was the right guy for you.”
Jane snorted. “You don’t need to tell me.” She glanced at Sophie, who was happily coloring on a paper placemat and sipping her shake, oblivious to the conversation. “I know it’s for the best, deep down. It’s not about the breakup, really. It’s more about… being disillusioned. I can’t help but feel like my entire life was snatched out from under me sometimes.”
“If you had to describe your ideal mate, what would he be like?” Ivy grinned.
Jane couldn’t match her enthusiasm. “I just want someone I can count on, without question.”
“But what other traits?” Ivy pressed.
Jane felt her heart begin to race with sudden frustration. She just wanted a guy who loved her, and who she loved back. She wanted someone to laugh with, someone to come home to, someone who was there on the good days and the bad, and someone whose mere presence was a source of comfort, not concern. She wanted someone to make her feel special, someone to make her feel cherished, not taken for granted.
She wanted the impossible. Maybe Grace and Anna and a few others had found their happy ending, but she’d had hers once before, and it didn’t meet the same fate. Somewhere along the line, it all fell apart instead.
“What about you?” Jane asked, deflecting the attention. “Describe your ideal man.”
Ivy’s expression turned dreamy. “Oh, I suppose he’d be tall, with dark hair and deep-set eyes. He’d be smart, a doctor probably. Or, you know, maybe a lawyer,” she added quickly. “And he’d have a killer smile and a special way to make me laugh. He’d be serious, but not uptight. And he’d be family oriented.”
Tall, dark, and handsome… and a doctor. Sounded like she was describing Mark Hastings’s brother, Brett.
Jane was just about to point this out when Ivy’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen. “Henry,” she explained, pressing it to her ear.
Oh, there was that pulse-racing, stomach-knotting, quiver-down-the-spine feeling again. Jane tucked her hair behind her ears and sat up a little straighter, just in case he was about to drop in.
Nonsense. So what if he did? She might enjoy his company for a few minutes; there was hardly any harm in that.
Ivy muttered a few
one-syllable words into the phone and set it back on the table. “I should head out,” she said, flagging the waitress. “It’s time to face the old homestead.”
“Hopefully it sells quickly,” Jane said, hating the disappointment she felt. She told herself it couldn’t be because Henry wasn’t joining them, but rather that a nice, warm chat with a good friend was coming to an end.
“Jeez, I hope so.” Ivy zippered her coat and set a ten-dollar bill on the table. “See you later.”
Jane waved goodbye and turned to Sophie. “Finish your dinner, honey. Then we’ll go home.”
She sank back into her seat and finished the rest of her shake. As much as she loved sharing a dinner with her daughter, it wasn’t quite the same as adult conversation. It would be nice to have someone to talk to, to share the events of the day. She scrolled through her phone, seeing if one of her sisters had reached out recently, and frowned at the missed call on her display. Her attorney.
With a shaking hand, she dialed the number, willing herself to stay calm.
It answered on the first ring. “Ah, Jane. I’m glad you called.”
“Rob? Is everything okay?” She took a calming breath, but her heart was pounding out of her chest.
She ran through a list of potential scenarios, reasons for his call. Maybe she’d forgotten to pay his last bill. But no… she was sure she had. Maybe there was another bill, another set of fees. Her gut tightened. Like she could afford to shell out another dime right now.
“Would you be available to stop by my office tomorrow morning?”
Jane felt the blood drain from her face. “What’s going on?”
There was a slight pause at the other end of the line. “It’s probably best for us to discuss this in person.”
Uh-uh. No way. She’d never sleep tonight.
She pushed her plate away. There was no way she could eat now.
“Rob, what is it?”
Her breath came in spurts as she clutched the phone tighter, waiting for the blow. What now? What more could Adam possibly take from her?
“It’s about Sophie,” her lawyer said gently. “Adam’s relocating out of state, and he’s petitioned for Sophie to go with him.”
CHAPTER
9
The knot in Henry’s gut grew tighter with each minute that ticked by on the car dashboard. He shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable, but it was no use, and Ivy’s car wasn’t the problem. The radio blared a way too upbeat tune and he reached over and flicked it off.
“Sorry,” he said, giving his sister a guilty glance. “I just didn’t feel up for it right now.”
“We’re almost there.” Ivy’s lips thinned, and Henry knew she was dreading this just as much as he was. They rarely talked about their mother. Even when she was alive, they communicated in silence through meaningful glances that spoke words too painful to voice. The few times they’d had to address a situation, like her failed stint in rehab, the string of arrests, or the numerous times she was passed out on a couch, they did so efficiently, without emotion. Henry knew that deep inside, Ivy ran the gauntlet of emotions like he did, but there was no use in letting it out. It didn’t change a damn thing. It was better to try to forget about it for a while.
He heaved a sigh. “The sooner we get started, the sooner it’s over, right?”
“A necessary evil,” Ivy agreed, her eyes still fixed to the road. It was growing dark, and the old country roads weren’t well lit.
Henry clenched his teeth, his shoulders growing tense as Ivy slowed and then pulled the car onto the gravel driveway. It was a Pavlovian response—the tires bumped and the first wave of nausea hit, his chest heavy with dread and a sense of foreboding. If he closed his eyes he could almost hear the bottles crashing, see his mother thrashing about, screaming about something.
He and Ivy had learned to live around their mother, careful not to set her off, sometimes trying to calm her down, to bring her over to the couch and offer up her favorite game show, or sometimes to sit in her wrath, to hear it but not see it. “Don’t look her in the eye.” He could remember saying that to Ivy when they must have only been four or five. She’d nodded her head, her eyes large and understanding. Don’t look her in the eye, ’cause when you do—
His back began to cramp. He’d get in and out and he’d never look back. The sooner they got to work, the sooner it would be over.
The house looked smaller than he’d remembered it, barely visible in the shadows of the moonlight cutting through the tree branches. It was a dark night, the sky murky with dense clouds, and an owl hooted in the distance. God, he hated this place. He preferred the bustle of the city, the chaos of the traffic, the way you could just melt in, anonymously, but somehow never be alone. Out here, he was painfully aware of just alone he and Ivy were in the world.
Slowly, he let himself out of the car and followed Ivy up the path to the front door, careful not to trip on the flat stones that had settled unevenly over time. As Ivy fished out the key and fumbled to find the lock, he peered into the distance. There was Adam’s old house, lit up and cheerful in the near distance. He turned his back to it, his heart pounding, resisting the part of himself that wanted to run down that hill, push open the door, breathe in the warm air, sit down at the dinner table, and laugh and talk the way families did this time of night. His jaw tensed. That was never his home, much as he’d wished it could be. This was his reality.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched against the brisk wind. There would be no running away from his problems tonight. He was going to face them, head on, and then hopefully forget them forever.
The lock finally clicked, and his stomach heaved when Ivy pushed open the door. Even over the sound of the rustling leaves, he could hear her sigh. “Here we are.” She flicked on a light and the hallway sprung to life around them.
“It’s freezing in here,” Henry pointed out. He looked to the ceiling for any sign of damage. “We’re lucky we came when we did. If we’d held off much longer, a pipe could have burst.”
Ivy’s forehead creased. “I know I should have stopped by and turned on the heat, but I…” She shook her head, and Henry let it drop. She hadn’t wanted to come back. Who would?
The hallway itself was sparse and bare. To the left was the living room, where he and Ivy used to sit on the floor around the wood-carved coffee table, playing cards. He always let Ivy win.
“This room’s going to take the most work,” Ivy was saying from the back of the house.
Turning, Henry marched to the kitchen and then halted in the doorway. The yellowing floral wallpaper was singed above the range, and the countertops were damaged beyond repair with dark stains. The window near the sink was cracked, and the molding around it was warped and peeling, indicating a leak and potential wood rot. The rubber soles of his shoes stuck to the peeling linoleum.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy said despairingly. She blinked several times. “I should have come sooner, I just…”
Henry swallowed hard. “Don’t apologize—it’s not your fault.”
They made their way up the dimly lit stairs, poking their heads into rooms instead of entering, and then came back down a few minutes later. Henry paused at the door to the basement and then yanked it open. He flicked the switch; nothing happened, but it didn’t matter. They knew these stairs by heart; the creaking of the boards was cemented into their memory from all the times they had hidden down there to get away. Ivy stayed close behind him, the light from the main hall guiding their way.
They reached the cold concrete floor and Henry reached up to pull on a cord. A single lightbulb lit the room. Damp settled over them, and he covered his mouth with his hand. Had it always been this dark and wet down here? It had seemed like their haven at one point, a refuge from the stress unfolding up above. They used to run free down here. He could still picture Ivy in her hand-me-down roller skates, laughing as she wound her way around the room. He crossed over to the back of the room, nearly tripping over somet
hing. An empty vodka bottle rolled to the wall. Several more were collected in the corner.
“Sometimes she couldn’t be bothered to throw them away,” Ivy said quietly.
Henry rubbed the space between his eyebrows. His mother couldn’t be bothered to do anything most days. Couldn’t get out of bed. Couldn’t go to the store for groceries, much less fix a meal. Their dad was gone before they were even born. Their grandmother had lived with them for the first six years of their life, but when she died, everything had fallen apart.
Henry shuddered to think what might have become of him and his sister had his grandmother not lived as long as she had.
“Sometimes it amazes me we even managed to get to school every day.” Or that his mother managed to hold down a job, albeit never for longer than a few weeks at a time. She shuffled around, cleaning houses or waitressing in neighboring towns. The secretary jobs rarely lasted more than a few days, especially when she got too friendly with the boss. He shook his head. He’d blocked so much out, refusing to go back there and think about that time in his life. It was so much easier to run, to keep running, to keep putting distance between him and this place.
Henry had liked school. It had opened a whole new world to him, a life beyond these four walls. He kept to himself mostly, playing with Ivy at recess or spending his free time in the library, until he’d met Adam. Adam was a year behind, but that didn’t matter. The Browns lived next door, just down the hill, and they both liked fast cars and baseball. For a first grader, that was enough, but after the first time Henry went to Adam’s house, he clung to his new friend like a life raft, and Adam happily went along with it. Suddenly Henry had a warm, safe place to go every day, and a loving, smiling mother to feed him an after-school snack on the walk home each afternoon. He could still remember Mrs. Brown checking his backpack each morning to see if there was a lunch, often adding an apple or a few slices of cheese or a carton of chocolate milk. “We have extra,” she’d say with a casual smile. If Ivy had already gone ahead, wanting to meet up with some of the girls, he’d give her half of his share at the playground.
