by Kat Brookes
Honey and Grits dropped their balls and greeted Finn with eager, wet puppy kisses, nearly knocking him down with their enthusiastic welcome. Her son’s boyish giggles filled the room.
Lila stood watching, soaking in the joy that came with her son’s laughter. It was a balm to her aching soul. While her child was eager to finally meet the gramma he’d only spoken to on the phone—because Lila had been too afraid of Mama Tully guessing her long-kept secret were she to meet Finn in person—he’d also fretted over leaving Alabama at the start of summer break and missing out on all the fun his friends would be having. Maybe, just maybe, the pups would help to ease Finn’s longing for his friends back home.
As she stood watching her son playing with the two dogs, she noted several near yawns, which he determinedly held at bay. Finn was tired and understandably so. “I think it’s time for you to turn in for the night.”
“But, Momma...” he groaned.
“It’s been a long day,” she told him. “And we’ll be heading to the hospital in the morning. You’ll have plenty of time to play with these two when we get back tomorrow,” she said. “Now, let’s go get you washed up and then into bed.”
“Okay,” he relented, sounding as tired as she herself felt.
Once that was done, she tucked her son into bed in what had once been Addy’s bedroom. “I’ll grab the rest of our things from the Jeep. Then I’ll take Honey and Grits out for a short walk before I turn in for the night. Will you be okay in here?”
“Momma, I’m not a baby,” he replied.
A tender smile moved across her face. “No, sweetie, you’re not.” Finn had lived in several places, so sleeping in a new bedroom wasn’t as intimidating to him as it might be to other children. And knowing that it was his gramma Tully’s house had to be comforting, as well. But she’d had to ask. Leaning in, she placed a good-night kiss on her son’s brow. Then she straightened, wished him good-night once more and then started for the door.
“Don’t forget to call Aunt Addy,” Finn called after her.
She cast a smile back over her shoulder. “I won’t. Hopefully she’ll be able to free up some time to come join us here soon. ’Night, sweetie.”
“’Night, Momma.”
Turning off the overhead light, she left only the soft glow of the night-light on before pulling the door closed behind her and heading outside. Her thoughts went back to Mama Tully, hating the idea of her lying there all alone in that hospital room. She hoped they’d be able to bring Mama Tully home from the hospital very soon. It all depended on how quickly she recovered. However long it took, Lila would be there for her. School wouldn’t be back in session until summer’s end.
She paused at the edge of the porch, looking out, noting how big the shade trees in the front yard had gotten. Being back in Sweet Springs had stirred up so many emotions—happiness to be home again, longing for the life she’d once had and heartache at knowing the lie she had lived with for so many years would weigh even more heavily on her conscience with each passing day.
Lila drew to a stop at the edge of the porch, closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh country air. The mouthwatering scent of ripening peaches beckoned to her. She found herself moving toward it, cutting at an angle across the front yard in the direction of the orchard that edged that side of Mama Tully’s property. Mason’s family’s orchard. Stopping just shy of the tree line, she closed her eyes once again and let the sweet fragrance of the plump, ready-for-picking fruits dotting the rows of trees wrap slowly around her, sweeping Lila’s thoughts back to the past. To the time she’d spent among those trees with the boy who managed to find his way into her not-so-trusting heart. To Mason.
* * *
Mason Landers had decided to walk to Mrs. Tully’s that evening to pick up Honey and Grits. He’d offered to see to his neighbor’s dogs, along with her yardwork and garden, after she’d gone into the hospital. He would leave the dogs in their “playroom” during the day, making sure to stop by to let them out a time or two throughout the day while he was working in the orchard, his family’s source of income. Then he would pick them up later in the afternoon to evening, after his work was done, and bring them back to his place to sleep.
He’d also felt the need to ask the Lord for peace where his heart was concerned. Spending so much time at his neighbor’s place had evoked a lot of memories he’d forced aside years before. Memories of Lila. The girl he’d loved, had planned to spend his life with as husband and wife and had then lost, because she could never see how incredible she truly was. How lovable she was, even if her biological parents hadn’t been able to show her because of their struggles with drug addiction.
He had spent a lot of evenings just like this one sitting on Mrs. Tully’s front porch with Lila, looking up at the stars and talking about their hopes and dreams. Lila had been fostered there for a little over three years and had become so much more than a friend to Mason.
As he rounded the front of the house to grab the spare house key Mrs. Tully kept tucked away under a flowerpot on her porch, Mason halted midstep. A woman stood with her back to him at the edge of the side yard, arms wrapped about herself as she stared off in the direction of his family’s orchard.
“Can I help you?” he called out.
The woman jumped with a startled gasp.
“I didn’t mean to...” he began, trailing off as she spun to face him. Mason’s jaw dropped, and his heart, along with his feet, skidded to a halt. It had been years since he’d last seen her, but he would recognize that face anywhere.
“Mason?” she half squeaked, her sky blue eyes widening. Eyes that still lingered in his dreams along with Lila’s infectiously bright smile. Not that she was doing any smiling right now. At that particular moment, she looked more like a deer caught up in the bright glow of a truck’s headlights. Still, there was no denying that it was Lila Gleeson who stood in Mrs. Tully’s front yard, staring back at him.
“Lila?” he heard himself say. He was just trying to process the fact that the girl he had once loved and had been loved by, the same girl who ran off without even a word of goodbye—unless one counted the brief note Lila had left for him at the base of “their” tree—was actually standing right there in front of him. Same long, curly blond hair and striking blue eyes. Still petite in stature, but less waiflike. Then again, she was no longer the teenage girl he’d once been completely cow-eyed over. The one he had so foolishly fallen in love with, despite her constant pleading for him in the beginning not to love her, telling him that she was unlovable. But he hadn’t given up on her and they’d fallen in love. He believed that enough to buy an engagement ring and begin planning how he would surprise her with his proposal of marriage. Only he found out the hard way—Lila wasn’t unlovable. She was just incapable of trusting her heart completely to anyone.
“Y-you’re back?” she stammered as if his presence unnerved her. But then it might, seeing as how things had ended between them.
As his surprise at finding her there faded, the resentment he had harbored threatened to resurface. “Back?” he said, wanting to point out that she was the one who had pulled up stakes and left town all those years ago.
“I thought you were living in Chile.”
“Where did you get that idea?” he asked. “Sweet Springs is the only place I’ll ever call home.”
“Of course, it is,” she said, biting at her bottom lip as her attention shifted from him to Mama Tully’s house behind him and then back again. “I meant that your momma told Addy you were living there on a mission trip when they spoke a month or so ago, so we thought—”
“Addy knew how to reach you?” he cut in.
As if realizing what she’d just revealed, Lila lowered her gaze. “Yes.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath. Addy and his mother talked every so often, but she had never once let on to any of them that she knew where Lila
was. And it hadn’t crossed his mind that she might be keeping Lila’s whereabouts from them. If she’d left both Mrs. Tully and him without a word of where she was going, why would he think Lila would have done otherwise with her? His mistake had been assuming that if anyone knew where Lila was they would have made mention of it. Addy had to have known how Lila’s leaving had affected them all. “Well, you and Addy thought wrong. Why are you here anyway?”
“I came to be here for Mama Tully, to care for her after she gets home. At least, until Addy gets here to take over.”
“Apparently, Addy, through my mother, has filled you in on everything that’s happened in regard to Mrs. Tully,” he remarked with a frown.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re also aware that Mrs. Tully nearly died. Yet, here you are, back in Sweet Springs. Have you given any thought to what the shock of seeing you after all these years, without any warning whatsoever, could do to her?”
Her teary gaze lifted to meet his. “She knows I’m here.”
“She knows?” That made no sense. He and Mrs. Tully had both grieved over Lila’s leaving. Prayed for her to have a change of heart and come back to them safe and sound. After that first year, they’d stopped talking about her. It had become too painful to them both. “So Mrs. Tully has been in contact with you, too?”
“For a little less than two years,” she admitted. “It took me that long to gather up the courage to contact her.”
To contact Mrs. Tully, but not him. The man she’d said she loved and had talked about marrying someday. Jaw clenched at the betrayal he felt for so many reasons, Mason said, “Getting back to your question, I returned home a couple of weeks ago. Because that’s what Sweet Springs will always be to me—my home. Not that I’d expect you to understand that. Home seems to have a completely different meaning for you. Something more temporary with no emotional commitments.” His words were harsh, but Mason couldn’t bring himself to regret them. They’d come from his heart. A heart that had been left battered by her betrayal of their friendship. Of their love.
Tears pooled in her eyes. “I suppose I deserved that.”
His father had given so many sermons over the years on forgiveness, but at that moment Mason couldn’t seem to recall the particulars of any of them. All he could think about was what Lila had done to him, to all those who had cared about her, when she’d run away. He wanted to demand to know where she’d gone to, not that she owed him any answers. He had searched for Lila for months on end after she’d gone, scanning the faces of every person he saw in every town he went to. He made the mistake at that moment of looking into those big blue tear-filled eyes, and guilt he didn’t want to feel shoved his anger aside.
“No,” he relented with a heavy sigh, “you didn’t. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“I know that I hurt you—” she began.
“I was young,” he said, cutting off the apology he guessed was about to come. He didn’t want or need it. “We both were,” he added, trying to temper his words. “Those foolish notions I had in my head as a young boy are long gone.”
Liar! his heart countered as he said aloud, “As far as I’m concerned, the past is where it belongs, leaving me free to live my life without any of the complications a relationship can bring.”
She looked up at him in pained silence for several long moments before nodding in agreement.
Mason shook his head, frustration filling him. Much to his dismay, she’d become even more beautiful with the passing of time. “Lila, why are you here? You certainly haven’t made any attempts to visit before this. Why now?” He folded his arms across his chest, as if doing so would keep his pounding heart from beating its way right through his rib cage. He longed to have answers to all the questions that had taken up permanent residence in his mind in the months, even years, since. But that had been a long time ago. He’d turned his focus to getting his business degree and implementing changes to the family market and orchards, doing his best to move on. Not that thoughts of Lila, both good and bad, hadn’t still crept in from time to time, but he’d done his best to shove any lingering feelings he had for the woman standing before him aside.
She shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, her gaze drifting again in the direction of the house, as if deciding whether or not to make a run for it. It wouldn’t surprise him if she did.
“As you’ve already pointed out, Mama Tully almost died,” she said woefully. “When Addy called to tell me that Mama Tully had taken ill and that she couldn’t get the time off work to come here right away, I knew I needed to do whatever I could to help her as she recovers.”
He still couldn’t believe she was there. After all these years. “Just how long has Addy known how to reach you?” he asked, feeling the fool.
Lila’s lips pressed together in a grimace before she finally replied, “Since right after I left Sweet Springs.”
He turned away, dragging a hand back through the thick, wavy strands of his dark hair. Why hadn’t he thought to get ahold of Addy and press her for information about Lila’s whereabouts? If he had, then maybe they could have worked through whatever it was. Maybe they would have still had a chance to have that future together they had talked about so often. And why did any of that matter now anyway? He knew why. Because a part of his heart still hadn’t let go.
“Please don’t be upset with Addy,” Lila pleaded. “She didn’t know about my leaving Sweet Springs until I showed up on her doorstep. I made her promise not to say anything to anyone.”
“Well, you might have at least let Mrs. Tully know that you were safe instead of waiting years to do so. You weren’t even eighteen,” he said. It didn’t matter that she would have been on her birthday the week after she’d left town. She was still underage and that caused everyone to worry after her. “She was half out of her mind after you’d gone. Filled with fear that something bad might happen to you. Did you know that? Not to mention buried in guilt, wondering what it was she had done to send you running away.”
Tears spilled down Lila’s cheeks, and it was all Mason could do not to wrap his arms around her. “She didn’t do anything. I told her as much in the letter I left her. I wanted her to know that she was the mother I had always dreamed of having and that I would never forget her.”
Unlike Mrs. Tully, he hadn’t received a letter telling him how much he’d meant to her. His letter, brief as it had been, had consisted of Lila apologizing for leaving the way she had and saying that she wanted him to be happy, something her being in his life could never bring him. As far as he was concerned, he should have been the one to decide whether or not they could be happy together. That was what had been the catalyst for her leaving. Or had it been?
“In the letter you left me,” he said, unable to keep the question bottled up inside him any longer, “you said you were leaving because you couldn’t make me happy. And since I know that’s far from the truth, I have to ask, is it because of what happened between us that day?” He didn’t have to specify what day. They both knew what he was referring to. The day he had allowed the comfort he sought to give her following the unexpected news of her birth parents’ deaths due to overdoses to turn into something else. He should have been strong enough to stop things before they went too far between the two of them. It didn’t matter that he’d loved Lila with all of his heart. That he’d intended to ask her to marry him, to wear the ring he’d intended to surprise her with on her eighteenth birthday until they’d finished college and could begin their lives together as husband and wife.
What they’d done that day had changed things between them. They both knew they had sinned. But while he knew that sins could be forgiven, Lila hadn’t seemed to be able to forgive herself, which had her distancing herself from not only him but the Lord, as well. She stopped going to church, making up excuses as to why she couldn’t go, and then began pushing him away emotionally. Before he could figure
out a way to set things right between them, she was gone.
“Mason,” she said with unexpected tenderness, “you and I both know neither of us were prepared for what happened between us. And we both know it was wrong in God’s eyes. I know because I saw the guilt there every time I looked into yours. Felt it myself.”
“It was wrong,” he agreed, “but at the same time, it was right. I cared for you, Lila.” More than she would ever know.
“And I cared for you,” she said with a regretful smile. Sadness filled her eyes. “I was so sorry to hear about your daddy’s passing. I wish I could have been here for you.”
“But you weren’t,” he stated, hating the hurt he heard in his voice when he spoke. “In fact,” he said, “you were long gone by then.” His father had died from an undiagnosed heart condition a few years after Lila had gone. When he hadn’t returned from his church meeting, and hadn’t returned any of their mother’s calls, Mason and his younger brother, Jake, had offered to go check on him while their momma and Mason’s younger sister, Violet, continued making peach preserves to sell at their family fruit market. Mason and Jake had found him. He thanked the Lord every day that their mother hadn’t gone with them that day. That was not the last memory he wanted her to have of her husband.
“Addy didn’t find out about your daddy’s passing until a week after his funeral. If I had known...” she said sorrowfully, eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
“What?” he scoffed, not wanting to talk about his father. Not wanting to talk about what she might have done when he knew better. “You would have come home?”
Her gaze dropped once more.
“I didn’t think so.” Distracted by the mention of his father’s passing, Mason nearly let her other words slide by. She wasn’t going to be the reason he gave up on his dream. That, and the shame their youthful indiscretion was why she had left all those years ago? Why hadn’t Lila come to him about her concerns? They’d talked about everything else, including her painful past and the insecurities it had left residing within her. Some of his anger left him. “You shouldn’t have given up the home you’d found for my sake. I didn’t need protecting, Lila. I would have faced up to what I’d done and set things right.”