by Bella Andre
Knowing her mother would find out soon enough, Sarah forced herself to say, "Calvin and I met tonight. To catch up." The words were sticking in her throat. "And to talk about my project."
Again, her mother was silent for a few moments before gently saying, "You two haven't seen each other in quite a while. How was it?"
All her life, whenever she'd had problems, Sarah had gone to her father for advice. Of course, her mother had always been there with cookies and Band-Aid strips and hugs and bedtime stories, but Sarah had just never felt as connected to her mother, not when they were so different. But tonight she wanted to blurt out everything that had happened with Calvin. She wanted to cry on her mother's shoulder. She wanted to ask for help, for guidance, for some salve to patch the old wound in her heart that had just been reopened. But she couldn't. Her mother was still grieving, still reeling from her father's death. Sarah didn't need to add in her problems too.
"It was fine. I'm just surprised by how tired I am. I haven't spent that many hours on my feet, like I did today in the store, in a very long time." She got up and kissed her mother's cheek. "Good night."
Up in her childhood bedroom, she changed into her pajamas, sat down on her bed with her open laptop, and tried to focus on answering the dozens of e-mails that had come in during the day. But she was hard-pressed to focus on work with all of the things Calvin had said zinging through her mind.
You knew I could never say no to you.
You're not from here anymore.
I know all about your promises, Sarah.
Do you really sleep at night telling yourself these lies?
No, she thought, as she replied to an e-mail from her assistant. It was unlikely that she'd be getting any sleep tonight at all.
CHAPTER SIX
Calvin couldn't stop thinking about Sarah, about the things he'd said to her at the tavern.
As mayor, he often peacefully disagreed with friends and neighbors over issues, but he never lost it. Never. So then, why had he all but blown apart when Sarah had pushed those condo plans across the table to him?
She wasn't the one who had made it personal--she'd been all business. He was the one who'd taken their discussion from condos to their screwed-up past.
And to the fact that he didn't trust her anymore.
He hadn't known Sarah would still have the power to rock his world as much as she ever had. He should have known that the first shock of seeing her, talking with her, touching her was going to be bad, but like a fool with his head stuck in the sand, he hadn't.
*
Ten years ago...
"Sarah, he's dead."
"Calvin? Is that you?"
He sat in the dirt outside his trailer. He'd wrapped Jordan in a blanket and had the phone propped against his shoulder. He could hear the sounds coming from Sarah's dorm room at Cornell, music and laughter, so different from the almost perfect silence that surrounded his trailer by the lake, a silence broken only by an occasional frog...and his infant sister's whimpers.
"Wait a minute," Sarah said. "I can't hear anything. My roommate's stereo is too loud. Let me go out into the hall."
He could hear her walking past people who said her name in greeting. Her college life was a whole other world he knew virtually nothing about.
"Okay, silence. Finally. That's better. I'm so glad you called, Calvin. I was just thinking about you. I was just missing you. Can we start this call again?"
"He killed himself, Sarah. He put a bullet through his brain."
"Wait, what are you talking about?"
He knew he wasn't making any sense, but it was hard to make sense after what he'd seen.
After the way his life had just imploded.
"My father. He shot himself."
"Oh God. Oh no."
All he wanted was for her to be here with him, to put her arms around him, to tell him everything was going to be okay, to see her and know that they'd figure things out together.
"I left to get some groceries and diapers, and when I came back, he was on the floor and there were brains--" He almost threw up again, barely swallowing down the bile. "Jordan was in her crib. She was crying. Her diaper was dirty."
It was still dirty. He needed to get back inside and grab the diapers he'd bought to change her. But he couldn't. He couldn't go back inside.
"Have you called the police?"
"No."
He'd needed to call her first. Needed to know that there was still someone left who loved him, that there was still someone left who cared about him, who wouldn't leave him when the going got too rough.
"I'm going to hang up right now, Calvin, so that you can call 911 and tell them what happened."
"I need you, Sarah."
"I know. That's why I'm coming right now. Right away." He heard a sob in her voice before she said, "I love you. Be strong and wait for me. I'll be there soon."
She hung up and he called 911. The paramedics and police would help him and his sister. His neighbors would help.
But Sarah was the reason he would make it through.
As long as she was by his side, he'd be okay.
*
Present day...
Calvin woke from his dream, sweat coating his skin, his heart pounding almost through his chest, the sheets kicked off.
He had to force himself to look around his bedroom, to see the house he'd built on the lake four years ago. He wasn't that kid anymore whose whole life had changed in an instant. He wasn't the boy waiting outside in the dirt for someone to come save him.
Still, he couldn't stop thinking about those first hours after he'd discovered his father on the floor of the trailer. Right after getting off the phone with him, Sarah had called her family, and Denise had come to take him and Jordan to live in the cottage behind their big house. By the time Sarah had gotten back to the lake, the trailer had been closed off by the chief of police while they investigated whether there had been foul play.
Sarah ran to him, held him, rocked him in her arms. Calvin could see how badly she wanted to help, only he was already way beyond help. Because, somehow, seeing her made things worse, reminded him of all the things he could no longer have.
From the moment he'd found his father lying on the floor, everything had changed. His sister became his number-one priority, and any dreams that he'd had for himself--dreams that had always included Sarah--had to be stuffed away.
He didn't remember falling asleep on the couch between questioning from the police and practically being force-fed by Sarah's mother. All he remembered was waking up to the sounds of his sister's wails--and seeing Sarah calmly changing Jordan's diaper, even though he knew she'd never done much babysitting. It was a messy job, but she was calm and collected and methodical.
And Calvin knew he couldn't do any of this without her.
Over and over he'd told himself not to ask her to stay. It wasn't her life that had exploded. It wasn't her mess that needed to be dealt with. But in that moment, it was less courage than desperation that had him asking. Begging.
"Stay with me, Sarah."
She had looked at him with such shock, as if what he was asking of her was so utterly unexpected, that he knew he shouldn't say anything more. He should have told her never mind, that he didn't mean it, that it was the exhaustion--and grief over losing his father--that was making him say crazy things.
But he hadn't done or said any of that. Instead, he'd decided it was a test. A test to see if she really loved him, or not.
"Defer college for a year. Help me with Jordan. Help me get my feet on the ground. I don't know if I can do it without you."
She'd stared at him, then scanned the four walls of the cottage as if she could find an escape route if she looked carefully enough. "Of course you can do it."
She hadn't needed to say anything more. Those six words had made everything perfectly clear to him. But he'd still pushed. Still hoped.
"I need you."
He'd watched the care, the love, with wh
ich she carefully laid his clean and dry sister down in the donated crib and covered her with a blanket, kissing her on the cheek. Jordan had waved an arm in the air and Sarah had caught it, holding on to it with a smile for the little girl. Hope had flared in his chest one last time as he watched the sweet interplay between the two people he loved most in the world. But then she had turned to him, and he'd read the truth on her face.
She wasn't going to stay.
"Of course I want to help you. I'm going to come home and visit you whenever I can, on weekends and school breaks, to help you through this."
"I thought you loved me."
"I do love you, Calvin. But you know I can't stay here. I can't live in Summer Lake. And if I defer for a year, I'll get so behind I might never be able to catch up. You know I've waited my whole life to get away and become something. Please don't ask me to give it all up now."
Reality had hit him then, like fists pounding all over his body, and a deep rage had taken over, so swift and strong that he could no longer stop himself from giving in to it.
"Just go!" He'd yelled the words so loud that he'd startled his sister out of her sleepy state, and she'd started to whimper from her crib. But that hadn't stopped him. "You'd better hurry back to school, or you might miss an important test."
She had come toward him, her arms outstretched. "Please don't be like this. Please don't push me away. I can still be there for you. I'll come home on weekends, and whenever you need to talk on the phone."
But he'd gone to the door and flung it open. "I need to concentrate on Jordan right now. Not a long-distance relationship."
"So this is it? You're breaking up with me?"
"You're the one who's already leaving."
And a few seconds later, she did, heading back to a life that had nothing to do with him.
The scene replayed over and over inside his head all morning as he showered, dressed, made breakfast, then got in his truck to head to the meeting he had in a town half an hour away.
Betsy had taken Jordan and Kayla to school this morning after their sleepover. There was no reason for Calvin to drive past the school. But he sat outside the building and let his brain play tricks on him anyway.
He and Sarah had gone here together. He'd pulled her pigtails, and she'd knocked him off the monkey bars. They had been too young to admit their real feelings for each other until they were sixteen.
Seeing her again was a big deal. A huge deal. All of his old feelings were much closer to the surface than he wanted them to be. Not just his latent anger, not just the fact that he wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anyone else...but also the fact that he still felt a strong emotional connection to her, even after all this time.
He'd let down his guard in the bar for a split second, had let himself forget everything but her sweet smile and soft laughter, had even let himself give rise to the secret hope he'd held on to--that one day they'd meet again and it would all work out.
Boom! That was when she'd come in with her condo plans. He'd felt so burned, so crushed, like such an idiot for letting himself start to fall again when he knew better--and yet again, he'd lashed out. Said things he shouldn't have said. Things he didn't mean.
She had wanted to clear the air last night, and now he knew she was right. There was no question that they needed to say whatever needed to be said, to let bygones be bygones. And when they were done settling the past back in the past where it belonged, then they could have a rational discussion about her condos. The rational discussion they should have had last night.
But first, he owed her an apology.
*
Sarah woke up on top of her covers, her laptop teetering precariously on her stomach.
With the sun streaming in over her pillow, she had no choice but to drag herself into the shower. She stood beneath the warm spray, but none of her muscles relaxed. Not when she'd been a ball of nerves since the moment she'd seen Calvin last night. Earlier than that, actually. She had been wound up like a tangled ball of yarn from the moment she'd blurted out to the Klein Group that the condos should be built at Summer Lake.
From here on out, she needed to focus on work. It had always saved her before. It would save her again now. And Lord knew, after working the previous day at the store, she had a ton of her own work to tackle today. Especially, she thought with a frown as she toweled off, given Calvin's enormous objections to her project.
She was reaching for a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt when she realized that dressing down in the middle of a workday was exactly what she shouldn't do. She wasn't here for a vacation--she was here on a business trip. She selected a navy-blue dress from her garment bag, and by the time she had a little makeup on, her earrings in, and heels on, she felt a little better, as though she was wearing the proper armor.
Downstairs the kitchen was quiet, and she guessed that her mother was already at the store, opening it up for the day. As always, Sarah was drawn to the leather chair by the fireplace where her father used to read his stacks of newspapers. She ran her hand over the high back remembering how, when she was a little girl and he would be gone for weeks at a time in Washington, DC, she used to curl up in his chair with a blanket and fall asleep because it was the closest thing to being in his arms. And when he was there, she'd spend hours sitting beside his chair while he was on the phone, wanting to be with him but knowing she had to be quiet and not disturb his work.
Uncomfortable with the memory, she headed for the screened porch at the front of the house. As she opened a door, the high-pitched squeak that echoed into the front hall made her realize just how lonely it must be for her mother to live in the large house by herself.
Still, despite its scope--the whitewashed, two-story house was one of the oldest and biggest in town--her mom was good at making each room homey. The screen porch, with its wooden planks and the bright reds and yellows and blues on the furniture's upholstery, was a bright retreat even on rainy days. And of course, there was the basket of knitting in the corner by the couch and a similar basket in every room. Knitters loved to start projects but loved finishing them a whole lot less. Thus, the piles of work in progress near every comfortable chair in every room.
Every time she came home for a visit, Sarah was struck by how different her childhood home was from her city loft. Much like her father's apartment in Washington, DC, she'd always tended toward minimal color, mostly black and white, whereas this house was stamped with her mother's eye for design and color. Fabrics that would have been out of control in anyone else's hands looked just right together the way her mom had arranged them.
Sarah felt simultaneously comforted--and completely out of her element.
She hadn't come home for more than a night or two in ten years, but as she turned around to look out at the rising sun sparkling on the blue water, memories rushed her.
Waking up to go meet Calvin out on the beach to pick blueberries for her mother's blueberry pancakes.
Warm summer nights in front of a bonfire, roasting marshmallows together.
Saturday afternoon sailing races in her Sunfish on perfectly still days where they practically had to paddle their way around the buoys.
Sitting out on the end of the dock on Adirondack chairs, watching the sun fall behind the mountains, making up stories about the images they saw in the clouds.
She'd expected her father's memory to assault her at every turn. But apart from the leather chair in the living room, she saw Calvin around here more than she saw her father. Probably because Calvin was the one she had always gone to after her father left again, always the one who had comforted her, soothed her.
Her heart squeezing, she left the porch and headed around to the back of the house and across the lawn that led to her grandmother's cottage. Sarah saw the top of a large straw hat in the field of yellow and white chrysanthemums before she saw the rest of Olive.
Her grandmother looked just right among the blooms, as pretty as any of the flowers, as much a part of this
land as it was a part of her.
You're not from here...you were never from here.
Calvin's harsh words whiplashed through her head again. She shook it to try to get them out, but they were already lodged way too deep.
She'd only just reached her grandmother when Olive asked, "What's wrong, honey?"
Last night, she had decided she would work things out on her own, but she was defenseless against her grandmother's very real concern. "Calvin and I had a big blowup last night."
Her grandmother handed her the shears, and Sarah was glad to turn her focus over to the beautiful mums for a moment rather than her too-strong feelings for Calvin. She was supposed to have gotten over him a long time ago. Moved on with her life, with her heart. Only to find out within minutes of seeing him again that she hadn't actually managed to do any of those things.
"I know how much you've always cared about him," her grandmother said. "Do you want to talk about it?"
No, she wanted to pretend none of it had ever happened. But she was also wise enough to realize that no amount of ignoring the situation was going to make it go away. "I'm working on a new project. It's the reason I'm here, actually. I have a client who wants to build some residences on the lake. Calvin doesn't think they'd be good for the town."
"And you do?" Thankfully, there wasn't any judgment on her grandmother's face.
Sarah dropped the stems into the basket on the grass. "Yes. And not just because of the money they will bring the town, but because of the new life it will give to the waterfront. That old carousel is nothing but an eyesore."
Olive stiffened. "I thought you were talking about some new buildings. What do they have to do with the carousel?"
Suddenly, Sarah had that same feeling she'd had the night before with Calvin--the one that told her she should not only tread carefully, but probably not tread at all. Yet again, unfortunately, she'd already said too much to turn back. "That's where my client would build the condos, Grandma. Where the carousel is sitting."
"No, they can't do that. Absolutely not." With that, her grandmother turned and walked away.