by Becca Barnes
“So there’s no hope for the deal?” asked Kat.
“I honestly don’t know.” Nor did I particularly care anymore. I’d be on my father’s shit list either way. And I realized that I no longer cared about that either.
My entire life, I’d let down my dad every step of the way, even as I constantly strived to perform, to be the best, doing everything in my power to impress him and gain his approval.
And in one week with Ellie, I’d never been further off my game...yet she’d grown to love me anyway.
Well, had loved me. Before I’d screwed it up.
“Can I call you a taxi?” I asked Kat.
“No. I drove.” She stared down at her feet. “I’m sorry, too. This isn’t me. I don’t know what Ellie told you about me, but I’m not...I’m not some evil person. I just want out.”
“Out?”
“Of being a prisoner to that store.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” I said as I walked her over to where she’d parked, “why? The store seems to be incredibly successful. That’s rare for a small business.”
“Yeah. But that’s entirely because of Ellie. Not me. And everyone knows it. Just being there is a constant reminder of...look, never mind.”
I studied her a moment.
“I know it’s none of my business,” I said, “but one of the reasons I like Ellie so much is that she’s easy to talk to. Maybe you should try it.”
“It’s a little late for that,” said Kat, getting into her car. “You saw her Instagram feed. She’s probably already posted the announcement about leaving. Once she does, I don’t have a business anymore.”
She was probably right. And it was a shame. S’Paw Box was special. Thanks to Ellie, yes, but it had a lot of history in this town. It would be a shame to see it go.
I thought about going to pick up Lulu, see if I could beg Ellie to listen to me. But the thought of seeing more pain etched across her face gave me pause.
She told me not to follow her. I had to respect that.
Now I needed to find a way to respect myself as well.
Thirty-Two
Ellie
If blissing was a verb, then there had to be an opposite.
It was this.
The first rays of dawn’s sunlight glowed on my windowsill. There were no more tears left.
None.
I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. The tears had started out angry, then sad, and finally ended up somewhere between dejected and hopeless before petering out entirely.
It would have hurt no matter who had shown up at Mac’s door in the nude.
But Kat?
Well, shit. Apparently, there was a tiny bit of moisture left to squeeze out of my eyeballs.
I swiped at the tears with the back of my hand.
Enough.
It wasn’t worth it.
He wasn’t worth it.
But the thing was, I wouldn’t have turned into this devastated, molten mess of a human being if that were remotely true. He’d been the most “worth it” thing in my life in a long, long time.
It would appear, though, that I wasn’t worth much to him in return. I caught a glance of myself in the mirror across the hallway and shuddered.
When had the girl in the reflection gotten so scared?
I didn’t recognize this person who let fear run her life.
Enough.
I snatched my phone off the pillow where I’d hurled it on my way in. I’d kept it out of my reach because I knew exactly what I had to do.
And I dreaded it.
But it was time.
I opened the Instagram app, pushed a few buttons, and hit “share.”
Thirty-Three
Mac
At least there was one woman alive who didn’t think I was the devil incarnate.
Well, one dog.
Lulu greeted me like I was the end-all-be-all of humanity when I went to pick her up.
I had received a three word message from Ellie at six in the morning: Lulu at store.
When I picked my precious pup up, I couldn’t help but notice that she’d been carefully groomed—sporting a full manicure, wearing a brand new hair bow, and smelling like a freshly dried lavender sachet.
Lulu was curled up in Gretchen’s lap. I thanked the girl profusely, doubled what I’d originally offered to pay her to watch the dogs.
“I would have done it for free for this sweetie.” Gretchen scratched Lulu under the chin.
“Thanks for giving her a bath, too,” I said.
“You don’t have me to thank for that one. Ellie did it,” she said with a hint of surprise.
I should have known Ellie would take the high road. And it hurt all the worse.
And whatever Ellie thought of me now, she clearly hadn’t shared it with the teenage girl.
So I guess there were two females who didn’t think I was scum.
On my way out, I paused at the spa’s door, finger hovering over the buzzer. I ached to see her, to try once again to explain myself. But I couldn’t bring himself to push the button.
I could still feel the angry press of her fingernail into my chest from last night. Could still hear the sharp bite of that single word she’d hurled at me as she fled.
No.
I lowered my hand.
There were things I needed to do before I could ever hope to be worthy of pressing that buzzer.
Thirty-Four
Ellie
There was no knock, no warning. Just a tornado of orange and platinum blonde that whirled headlong into my side as I sprayed the suds off of my sulky canine client .
“What are you playing at now?” Kat shoved her phone into my face.
“Good morning to you, too.” I brushed the phone aside and gathered the quivering Great Dane into a warmed towel, rubbing him behind the ears until he practically switched species and purred like a two-hundred pound cat.
“I’m being serious, Ellie. What are you trying to do here?” She tapped the screen, enlarging the image.
The image that announced an upcoming “Buy One, Get One” sale.
I managed a half-hearted grin.
“Are you disappointed?” I asked.
“I’m...confused.”
“It’s what it says. We’re going to have a big sale. The post has already gotten seven thousand likes. I wouldn’t doubt if we break last year’s Memorial Day numbers.”
“But why? What are you trying to accomplish? What happened to forcing my hand?”
I noted that Kat avoided the more incendiary term “blackmail” this time.
“I changed my mind.” In truth, it hadn’t been my mind that had changed. It had been my heart.
Did I still want to own S’Paw Box? Yes. Obviously. But not at the cost of my integrity. Not at the cost of losing who I was. Not at the cost of doing it in fear, like a cornered, scared shark.
And that shark who had tried to blackmail her stepmother? That wasn’t me. I refused to allow myself to turn into that. There was more to life than money. Owning S’Paw Box had never been about the money anyway. It had been about preserving a legacy. I wouldn’t be doing a very good job of preserving my father’s legacy if I turned into something he would have despised.
“So you don’t want to buy the store after all?” asked Kat, and she sounded...disappointed. “I still don’t get it. Are you in cahoots with James to drive down the price?”
“Who’s James?”
“Mr. MacCarthy or Max or...whatever it is you call him.”
“Mac?” I blinked. “So he’s sleeping with you and he didn’t even bother to tell you the name he goes by?”
Even smarmier than I thought.
“He’s not sleeping with me, Ellie.” Kat rolled her eyes. “He was as shocked as you were last night. I sort of ambushed him as a last resort. I admit it was a dumb idea. And I certainly had no clue you two were a thing. I never would have...ugh. You can’t think that low of me.”
Right now, I h
ad no idea what to think.
“So...you would still consider selling me S’Paw Box?” I was so confused.
“Do you still want it?”
“Of...of course,” I stuttered out. Was this really happening? “But I didn’t want to do it the wrong way. Not under coercion. I want you to sell me the store because you you think I’d be a good owner.”
“You’re already a good owner, Ellie.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, come on. We both know you keep the place running. There’s not a single task that I can do two percent as well as you.”
“You’ve never really tried, Kat.”
“That’s not true.” She scuffed the toe of her shoe against the tile.
“When? When have you ever—?”
“When your dad was still alive.”
It was like Kat had dropped a gong in the middle of the room. We both went silent. But the emotions reverberated. The subject of my father had been completely taboo between us since his death.
Neither of us ever spoke of him.
Until now.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I tried and couldn’t recall a single time that Kat had helped out in the shop when Dad was still alive..
“When we first got married. I, umm, I dropped out of massage therapy school to be with him. I don’t know if I ever told you that. If he ever told you that.”
“No.”
“It’s okay. I’d only been doing it for a semester. I probably would have been terrible at it anyway. And when we got married, it made sense for me to spend my time in the store.”
“But I don’t remember you ever--“
“While you were in school, Ellie.”
“Oh.”
“I was terrible at it. Counting inventory and keeping track of which product went where and how much each one was supposed to cost.” She let out a sad chuckle. “He kept trying to find stuff for me to do. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when I switched the price tag on a two dollar chew toy and a two-hundred dollar pet bed.”
“That was you?” I had remembered my father’s fuming frustration that day. He’d never divulged to me that the culprit had been Kat, though.
“He never told you?” Kat seemed just as shocked. “I always thought he told you everything.”
There was a splinter of bitterness in her voice.
Part of me wanted to tell her where she could shove that splinter. He was my dad. Of course he had shared things with me.
But I knew the same splinter was lodged in my own heart. And I wondered what it would take to pry it out.
“Nope,” I said. “Apparently, there was a lot he didn’t tell me.”
I sat down on the bench next to the sink. Kat sat next to me, both of us staring straight ahead.
“I loved him,” said Kat quietly after a minute.
“Huh?”
“I know what everybody said. What everybody still says. That I was on the hunt for a sugar daddy when I married your father. But it wasn’t true. I fell hard for him that summer. He was...I don’t know. He was mature, especially compared to the frat guys and losers I’d dated. But he was also still fun and spontaneous. He treated me like a princess.”
“He did.” My dad had had this magical way of making the people he loved feel special.
I glanced over at Kat and realized that the first thing I needed to do to unsplinter my own heart was to admit the obvious. To admit the truth.
“He loved you, too, Kat,” I said. “He adored you. He may have married you on an impulse, but that didn’t make it any less real. I’m sorry if my actions ever made you doubt or question that fact.”
“Thanks.” Kat picked at her nail polish. “I know he loved me. But thanks for saying it. And I’m sorry, too. I’ve never known what I was supposed to be to you. Your dad and I never really discussed what my role would be. It was all so whirlwind. When we first got married, it was like I felt this pressure to be an unpaid babysitter. I think I kind of resented you for it. It felt like you needed me for everything.”
She let out a laugh.
“Then in a blink,” she said, “You didn’t need me at all. And I guess...I guess I resented you for that, too. That’s really weird, isn’t it?”
Resentment. That was a good word for it. So much unforgiveness had built up over the years. On my side, too. But resentment had turned out to be a bottle of poison I’d prepared for Kat and ended up chugging down my own throat.
“The truth is,” said Kat, “I had no idea what I was supposed to be. Every role felt wrong. A babysitter, a sister, a mom…”
“I would have settled for a friend,” I said Ellie quietly. I pursed my lips. “I still would. That’s all I ever really wanted. Or needed.”
“Friend.” Kat said the word hesitantly, like she was testing it out, spinning it around in her mouth to examine it for holes. “I think I could do that.”
“I think I could, too,” I said.
“So about buying the store…”
“Wait.” I stopped her. “Why do you want to sell it to me?”
“I already told you. Because you’re the one who keeps it running. You do all the work. If you leave, S’Paw Box would go under in about twenty minutes. I can’t do anything right at the store.”
“That’s not true. You, umm, you…”
Kat raised her eyebrows so high she almost managed to squeeze a wrinkle through the Botox.
“I’d love to hear this,” said Kat.
I giggled.
“Okay, the business side of things may not be your strong suit. But there are other things you could do, I’m sure.”
“Maybe.” Kat reached over to pat the horse-sized Great Dane’s head. She rubbed her thumb over the dog’s muzzle and around the back of his ear. He went limp and laid his head in her lap.
“So here’s my next question,” I said. “Why didn’t you try to sell the store years ago? You had to have known that I would have happily taken it off your hands.”
“Part of it was that I thought you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you, Kat. I never have. I just...didn’t get you.”
“I know.”
“Well, if not me, why didn’t you try selling it to someone else? You don’t seem to enjoy owning it.”
“The other part of it is that I was scared. I still am. I’ve never tried to do anything else. I dropped out of school to marry your father. The store’s all I have. If you leave, I’ll lose everything. If you buy it, I can probably live off the proceeds for awhile, but I’ll be back in the same position at some point.”
The dog that Kat was petting was now a lump of Jell-o, it was so relaxed. I glanced down at the Great Dane and then up at my stepmother.
“Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“What if it didn’t have to be all-or-nothing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe you could sell me half of the store?”
“Which half?”
“No.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. Kat really wasn’t the warmest coal on the fire. “I mean, maybe we could be partners. I can manage the store with my eyes shut. And you can...you can…”
Kat looked up at me with a bleak expression. She pulled her hands away from the dog, and he whined, shoving his muzzle back under her palm.
That was it.
“Kat, you could be our pet massage therapist. You could even finish up your schooling if you wanted, although I doubt there’s a license for animal massage. Oh, my gosh. It’s perfect. It would take S’Paw Box to a whole new level. I’ve had clients ask me to recommend someone, and there’s no one on the whole 30A stretch. This is freaking perfect.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes!”
“And you’d still handle all the business stuff?”
“Of course. I mean, if we get as busy as I think we might, we’ll probably have to hire someone to keep up, but you don’t have to worry about any of that.”
“Okay,” Kat sa
id slowly.
“Really?” I said. “You mean, ‘okay’ as in you’re ready to sign the paperwork to sell me half?”
“No.”
Oh.
I scooted away. I knew it was too good to be true, this burgeoning friendship with Kat. But then Kat placed her hand over mine.
“I mean, ‘no,’ I won’t sell you half. I’m going to give you half.”
“But—“
“No buts. We both know that your dad would have loved this arrangement. And I do, too.” She thrust her hand out. “I should have done it years ago. Partners?”
I grabbed my stepmother’s—scratch that. I grabbed my friend’s hand.
“Partners.”
“So,” she said, after we shook on it. “Are you going to let him get away?”
“Huh?”
“James or...Mac.”
“I’m not sure what you—”
“Oh please. We may not have been close, but I watched you go through your awkward high school crushes. And I’ve seen you date men who weren’t worthy to lick your slipper. Don’t let pride or fear keep you from happiness.”
“But—”
“Enough with the buts. You’re in love with him, Ellie. Admit it.”
“Fine! I’m in love with him. I’m in love with Mac. But--”
“Oh, my gosh. And people think I’m the one with the low I.Q. Go after him!”
* * *
Bentley raced beside me, practically pulling my bicycle off the road as I rode up to the marina. I dumped my bike in the sand and ran to the end of the dock.
To the spot where Mac’s boat used to be.
He was gone.
Thirty-Five
Mac
This was the spot.
I dropped anchor in the middle of nowhere. Just past the point where my father wouldn’t be able to pick up a cell phone signal. Where he couldn’t check his emails or get stock updates. Where he’d have no choice but to listen to me.
“Well,” barked Dad. “What’s this magical fix you came up with to save the deal?”
