Now or Never

by Victoria Denault

  She walks up and into the trailer but doesn’t close the door behind her and then I see someone else—Cat. She’s frowning but holding a brown paper bag. “Winnie, my ex lifelong friend, ordered lunch for the crew and included a lobster roll and lobster bisque for you.”

  “Which you wouldn’t have made if you knew it was for me,” I say and she nods.

  As soon as Cat is fully in the trailer Winnie takes a subtle step back toward the door. I get off the bed and grab the necklace out of the night table. “Well, how about you give me the soup and sandwich and I give you this.”

  I hold out my hand and let the pearls dangle. Cat stares at it, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Behind her Winnie slips out of the trailer. Cat doesn’t notice as she puts the paper bag down on the kitchen counter and reaches out for the necklace. “You bought me a new pearl necklace?”

  “No. I found your grandmother’s,” I reply, and she looks absolutely baffled. “It wasn’t fenced. It was given to someone. I just had to track that person down, and luckily they still had it and were willing to give it back.”

  “It can’t be the same…” She lifts it up to examine it in the light streaming in through the windows. She fiddles with the clasp. “Holy shit! It has her initials engraved on it. It’s actually hers!”

  Her face lights up and tears swim in her eyes as she looks at me. “I can’t believe you found it!”

  “I meant it when I told you I would change things if I could,” I say and shrug. “So I found a way to change things.”

  The next thing I know she’s hugging me. “Thank you.”

  “Cat, I have the flu. You might want to stay away,” I warn.

  “I got a flu shot,” Cat explains and squeezes me harder. “I’m not a dummy like you.”

  I laugh as Winnie appears in the doorway again, sees the hug and smiles. “Everything okay in here? Is he getting his soup and roll or do I need to share mine?”

  “He gets whatever he wants,” Cat declares and lets go of me to turn to Winnie and hug her. “You were right about him.”

  My heart swells and I feel a wave of relief.

  We all eat lunch together on the porch, and by the time it’s over, I’m feeling wiped out again. God, this sucks. I have no choice but to go back to the trailer and sleep. When I wake up again the sun is setting and the trailer is almost dark. I feel better, but I know I’m not one hundred percent. I’m, like, fifty, tops.

  I hear Winnie talking and then Kidd’s voice. Neither sound angry, although I can’t make out what they’re saying. I start to sit up just as an engine roars to life. Winnie opens the door and steps inside. She walks right over to the bed and flops down on it face first. “I’m so exhausted,” she mumbles into the pillow.

  I rub her back. “How’d it go? Was Kidd a jerk at all because if he was…”

  “No,” she murmurs and slowly rolls over. She looks exactly the way she says she feels—exhausted. She has flecks of paint in her hair and on her cheeks. “He was…decent. He worked pretty hard actually, and guess what? It’s all done.”

  “All of it?”

  She nods and her eyes start to droop as she yawns. “Well, except putting everything back like the dishes and artwork and crap. I wanted you to approve things first. You are the boss.”

  “I like when you call me the boss,” I say.

  “Don’t get used to it.” She yawns again. “This is a partnership.”

  “It is, huh? Like a girlfriend-boyfriend partnership.”

  Her eyes open again. “No like a brother-sister partnership.”

  “I don’t know what you and Jude—”

  “Oh gross!” she bellows dramatically and reaches out and swats me. “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “Sorry, but you started it.” I kiss her cheek, still too scared to kiss her on the mouth and give her this death flu. “I feel like I should go over there and take a look. What time does Jude get here tomorrow?”

  “I think around noon.” Her voice is growing fainter and her words are slurred with fatigue. Poor beautiful girl. “I can’t remember. Right now I can’t remember my own name.”

  “Winona Skye,” I tell her softly and kiss her cheek again, but I swear she’s asleep before my lips leave her skin.

  I watch her for a little while and have plans of getting up and checking on the cottage and then making her dinner, but I’m still so sick all I manage to do is drift off beside her.

  23

  Winnie

  I wake up achy with a grumbling stomach because I slept right through dinner last night. And now something in this house smells absolutely delicious. I sniff and my eyes flutter open. Holden is sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, waving half a breakfast burrito in front of my face. It’s filled with gooey melted sharp cheddar and crispy bacon and fluffy eggs. I reach for it.

  Holden laughs. “You’re like a zombie on Walking Dead trying to catch a live one.”

  “Hrpmf.” I think I’m trying to agree but who knows. “Need food.”

  He lets me poach it from his grip and I take a big, glorious bite. He watches me in amusement. I swallow. “Did you make this?”

  “I did,” he says proudly. “And now I could sleep for a week.”

  “Still not better?”

  “I’m about seventy-five percent,” he explains. “No fever, still tired and a little achy but only bit of a cough left.”

  “Well, I’m not letting you overdo it today,” I tell him.

  “I won’t have to, thanks to you busting your sweet little ass yesterday,” he says with a smile.

  I eat the burrito—both halves—in bed as he brings me a coffee. “I could get used to this.”

  “I hope you do,” he replies and smiles. “Then maybe you’ll stick around.”

  I pause mid-bite. “What?”

  “We just haven’t really talked about how long you’re staying,” Holden says and his voice sounds a little tense. I think he’s worried I won’t stay.

  “There’s nowhere else I have to be,” I reply between bites of burrito.

  He looks at me, expressionless, for a long moment and then he smiles, but it seems guarded. My phone beeps from the bedside table, and I lean over and read the message that flashes across the screen. “Jude’s plane landed! I have to shower.”

  I scramble off the bed.

  “I’ll head inside and make sure everything looks great,” Holden says and I can see he’s nervous. He doesn’t want to disappoint Jude, but I know he won’t. Even without Kidd and me jumping in yesterday, the place was together enough that Jude wouldn’t regret his decision to hire Holden.

  I rush through my shower and head into the cottage in my towel, because most of my clothes are still in there. I pause and admire the place as Holden walks around trying to put back all the knickknacks and paintings that we had to take down. “It looks amazing in here.”

  I head upstairs and change into a pair of jeans and a Henley, throw on some mascara and lip gloss and run my fingers through my damp hair. I remember what I was like when I first started dating Ty. I would stress over my hair and makeup and clothes, but that was never the case with Holden. He has seen me at my worst and loved me anyway.

  I bounce down the stairs feeling confident and content, two things that I haven’t felt in a very long time.

  Twenty minutes later, Jude’s rental is pulling to a stop in front of the house. I jump out of the rocking chair and rush out the door. Zoey is closest, so I hug her first and as I hug Jude, Zoey opens the back door to get Declan out of his car seat.

  Jude holds me in the hug for a very long moment and when he pulls back he opens his mouth to say something, but I hold up my hand to silence him. I smile. “Don’t start with your Dr. Phil psycho therapy before I get to hug my nephew.”

  I turn, bend and extend my arms to Declan. “Deck!”

  “Auntie Winnie!” Declan squeals and runs toward me on his chubby almost three-year-old legs. I scoop him up and swing him around as he giggles.

&nb
sp; Dropping him onto my hip, I look up and see Holden in the doorway of the cottage. He’s smiling. I glance at Zoey and Jude. “Come on. You guys aren’t going to believe how great this place looks.”

  They follow me up the stairs. Jude and Holden do that bro-hug, hand-clasp thing that guys do, and then Zoey hugs him. “I haven’t seen you in what feels like a century,” Holden says.

  “I know,” Zoey says with a friendly smile. “But it’s great to see you back here.”

  “It’s great to be back,” Holden replies.

  “Show me your work,” Jude urges. “Let’s see if I have to run you out of town.”

  Holden laughs. “Come on.”

  We spend the next forty minutes going through the first floor because Holden is giving every possible detail about every single change. You’d think it might be boring, but the way he talks about his work is so animated and passionate, it’s keeping Jude and Zoey intrigued and impressed.

  “Everything is beyond perfect,” Jude says happily. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  Holden grins and it’s filled with pride. “I’m really happy you think so.”

  Declan squirms on my hip. “Potty!”

  Zoey and Jude both jump but Zoey reaches him first. “I got you, little man. Let’s do this!”

  She lifts him off my hip and rushes to the bathroom, kicking the door closed with her foot. “We just started potty training,” Jude explains. “No accidents so far, but we live in constant fear. Constant.”

  Holden laughs. I pat my brother’s shoulder. He looks around the renovated first floor again. “Dad would have fucking loved this.”

  I nod and my eyes water, but I don’t cry. “He would have. I can see him sitting at the new peninsula in the kitchen, checking the hockey scores in the paper and ranting about some stupid penalty you took the night before.”

  Jude laughs, but it’s heavy, choked. “You have to picture that? Him pissed at me.”

  “They’re some of my favorite memories of him,” I say back and laugh as Jude gives me a little push.

  Jude looks up at Holden. “We need a family minute.”

  Holden nods and starts toward the porch.

  “We don’t,” I argue before Holden can leave. He freezes, his gaze bouncing between me and Jude, wondering who he should listen to. I turn back to Jude. “You guys are staying for the weekend. We can have some annoying brother-sister moment later. Just enjoy it.”

  Jude sighs but lets me win.

  Zoey opens the bathroom door and Declan comes running out. “I peepeed in the bowl so I get a weeward.”

  “A weeward?” I repeat.

  “He has trouble with Rs,” Zoey explains with a laugh. “But if you think about it, ‘weeward’ kinda works perfectly.”

  “How about as a weeward we go to the beach,” Jude says to his son. “There might be surfers.”

  Declan claps his hands.

  “He loves surfers. We watch them on the beach in San Francisco every weekend,” Zoey tells us. “I can’t get him to watch two seconds of a hockey game. Even when I tell him Daddy is on the ice.”

  “So we raise a surfer not a hockey player,” Jude says with a shrug. “As Dad would say, ‘As long as they’re happy, we’re happy.’”

  As we all head to the beach, minus Holden because I make him take a nap so he his flu doesn’t get worse, I’m struck by how much like Dad Jude is. I never realized it before. Yes, he and Dixie look the most like him, physically, but I never really stopped to notice the other ways they were like him. Jude, right now, with Declan, is Dad reincarnated. And it doesn’t make me cry. It fills me with joy.

  So much joy, I’m almost drunk on it and I reach over and hug my brother while we watch Declan play chicken with waves as they roll up toward him. Jude hugs me back and lets out a shocked laugh. “What the hell is that for?”

  “For being a good dad,” I reply. “And a decent brother. But trust me, you won’t hear that again so enjoy it.”

  “You’re a good sister too,” Jude replies, and I act like I’m flabbergasted, gasping loudly and smacking my chest with my hand. “Even if you run away from home and hook up with my employees.”

  I push my hair back from my face as the wind picks up. “I hooked up with my teenage nemesis. That’s even worse.”

  “Yeah, it would be if he was still old Holden,” Jude says. “But he clearly isn’t.”

  “You knew that.”

  “Nah, I didn’t. I took a bit of a risk when I hired him.” Jude shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “But if you fell in love with him, then I know he’s a good guy, just like I thought. You’ve always been an incredible judge of character.”

  I smile proudly at that. Jude and I aren’t usually the type to have moments like this, and I suddenly find myself hoping that changes. This should be the first of many. He leaves my side and begins chasing Declan around the beach. Zoey comes over and gives me a side hug. “You’re good?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  “So is Jude. But he worries about you,” Zoey says as the wind twist and twirls her auburn hair off her shoulders.

  “I don’t worry about him because he has you,” I say as Declan claps when a surfer glides across the water on a white tipped wave. “And he doesn’t have to worry about me because I have Holden now.”

  “I need to hear more about this,” Zoey says, smiling. “He used to scare the shit out of me and I didn’t scare easy. But the guy I met today, he is definitely different.”

  I nod. “I was thinking we could have a barbecue tonight and maybe invite his sister and her son. I have to tutor him this afternoon, so they’ll already be here.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Zoey replies.

  Everything is perfect for the rest of the day. Zoey, Jude and Declan take a nap after lunch. Holden rests most of the day, but I can see him getting stronger every time I check on him. This flu is definitely on its way out.

  After their nap, Jude takes Declan on a nature walk through the woods while Zoey and I do a grocery run for barbecue supplies. At the store, Zoey asks me if I want red or white wine with dinner and it makes me realize it’s been days since I had a drink. That’s normal. Before my dad died I didn’t drink a lot—definitely not a bottle a night. I’m back to normal…but yet I’m different.

  When Bradie and Duke show up, I invite them for dinner and Bradie accepts. She hangs out in the cottage with Holden and everyone else while I tutor Duke in the trailer. When he’s done with his homework and aced the fractions flash cards I’ve been doing with him, I decide to let the cat out of the bag.

  “You know who is inside my cottage right now?” I ask him.

  “Holden,” he replies innocently.

  “Holden and my brother, Jude.”

  Duke looks stunned. “What? Really? Jude Braddock?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can I meet him? Please?” He is bouncing in his seat and it makes me laugh.

  “Of course,” I say and stand up so he can slide out of the bench behind the table to stand too. “In fact, you and your mom are going to stay and have dinner with him, and us.”

  “This is the best day of my life!” Duke proclaims and then he hugs me, so hard and fierce that he almost knocks me backward.

  “Come on.” I open the trailer door and he jumps out and scrambles up the steps to the cottage as fast as his legs will take him.

  Jude is thrilled to meet Duke. “Come help me with the grill,” Jude suggests, and Duke nods vigorously.

  I head out on the back deck to set the table and grin to myself as I listen to their conversation. “So you played hockey in Maine too?”

  “With your uncle, yes, but only in the summers,” Jude explains. “I played in Canada the rest of the year.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever skate here again? Like practice or whatever, when you aren’t in San Francisco?” Duke says and his voice dips with disappointment. “It only costs five dollars to go to the free skates on Sunday afternoons. I bet the
y even let you skate for free.”

  “I think I’d love to do that. Or maybe even your uncle Holden will let me come to help coach one of your practices,” Jude replies easily and pats his shoulder with one hand while he flips a chicken breast with tongs with his other hand.

  “You’d want to do that? For real?”

  “Of course. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “My team is going to be so psyched!”

  “Duke, go wash your hands before dinner,” Bradie calls from the doorway.

  Duke bites his bottom lip, like he’s trying to keep himself from arguing and looks up at Jude. Jude smiles. “I’ll be here when you get back, buddy.”

  Duke darts back into the cottage, and Jude gives me a giant grin. “That kid is great for my ego.”

  “Don’t make me regret this,” I warn but smile at him.

  “You know, I could hire you to run my fan club, since you’re so good at finding people who see me for the true athletic superstar that I am,” Jude says, his grin even deeper.

  “Yeah, I can do that,” I reply casually. “But every kid I bring to you from now on will be painted up in full clown makeup. Sound good?”

  Jude’s grin slips and his eyes widen fearfully. “That’s not funny. You know as well as I do clowns are terrifying. And child-size clowns?”

  Jude actually shivers. I laugh. “You are going to hate the Halloween costume I bought Declan.”

  I walk away, leaving him horrified, as Duke comes bouncing back onto the deck and runs to Jude’s side again.

  An hour later, we’re all sitting around the dining room table, full from our meal, laughing and having a great time until Jude takes Declan to the bathroom after he shouts “Potty!” Because when he emerges, he says something that turns everything on its ass.

  “I’m glad to see you finally stopped putting my Stanley Cup ring over the toilet.”

  “What?” I ask, confused at what he’s talking about. Last I saw it, that ring was there.

  “The ring isn’t in the bathroom,” Jude pauses. His face starts to fill with worry. “It’s in the bedroom, right? On his night table?”