The Long Road Home (These Valley Days, #1)

by Bethany-Kris

Next to the bay windows that faced the boardwalk lining the riverfront across from their house, Gracen’s favorite feature of her shared rental was the rooftop deck overlooking their fenced backyard and the backstreet snaked with towering pine trees. The trees and their bushy branches offered privacy for the row of townhouse apartments behind the pizza shop next door—Checkered & Cheese. The pizzeria was decorated as the name suggested, too, which made it a terrible eyesore to eat inside, but other than the standard Greco’s across the river, it was the best pizza in town.

  Thankfully, they offered take-out and delivery.

  She found the best way to relax on top of her roof, reclined in a sunchair when the weather permitted. As summer began, even the evenings were comfortable enough to sit out for hours, too high for the gnats to bother her while the town’s energy and low noise buzzed around her. Sometimes, she could hear the boats on the rivers. Or the kids playing at the community park at the end of the back street behind their house.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Even if it seemed like it.

  Gracen didn’t startle when the half door in the stairwell opened to expose Margot who climbed the last few steps with her head ducked until she was beyond the safety of the roof’s overhang. Presenting the white plastic shopping bag bulging with familiar shapes, Margot beamed. No doubt because of her favorite Sunday night treat.

  She produced the item she’d been keeping behind her back to confirm Gracen’s suspicions—a bottle of red wine.

  “Nothing better than poutine and wine on Sundays,” Margot said, grinning wide.

  Mouth already watering, Gracen reached for the bag, asking, “From the dairy bar?”

  “They’re the only place in town that uses shredded cheese, so ...”

  Right.

  And Margot hated curds.

  The chewiness was an acquired taste. Gracen preferred the curds, to be honest, but it was her friend’s Sunday to buy, so she chose. It didn’t really matter. At the end of the day, the cheesy, gravy-soaked fries all went down the same way.

  Especially with red wine.

  “Are we waiting for Delaney?” Margot asked, falling into the matching sunchair across from Gracen’s.

  She didn’t answer right away, instead focusing on pulling the larger of the two poutines out of the bag on her lap—two handy packages with salt and pepper, utensils, and a napkin on the small deck waited on top for her to grab first. Usually, she’d split the poutine with Delaney, but she made the unfortunate mistake of forgetting a detail when Margot called earlier to say she was picking up the wine and food.

  “Uh,” Gracen started, dumbly. Frankly, she didn’t know how to say what she needed to without adding some attitude on top of it all, so she didn’t even try to hide it. “Well, she’s with her family tonight, anyway.”

  Margot didn’t miss it. “What—Jesus, are you two still fighting about her cousin?”

  “It’s not about her cousin,” Gracen corrected.

  “Sonny getting married, then?”

  That made Gracen cringe. “I don’t care if he’s getting married.”

  Not really.

  Or she was pretty sure ...

  After thinking about it for a couple of days.

  Margot chirped a laugh, and slapped her bare thighs below her jean shorts before asking, “So, what is the problem? I’m lost, and considering two days ago you told me there wasn’t any problem, maybe you could see how I would like to be filled in.”

  The wooden railing was the only thing to keep someone from walking right out from the door off the roof. It didn’t permit more than the chairs and a small table between them for decorating room, but Gracen still loved it.

  It could have been because the deck was only accessed from Gracen’s bedroom. In a way, it felt like her private space in—well, outside, technically—the house. Whereas Delaney’s bedroom had the windows facing the river, something she liked more than rooftop relaxation.

  “Well?” Margot asked, reminding Gracen that she wasn’t ready to move on from the conversation. Unfortunately.

  Gracen fiddled with the utensil package as she explained, “I’m only a little mad that Delaney didn’t tell me she had agreed to do something for her cousin—not because of the Sonny situation, but because of how her family has treated her for the last five years.”

  Margot nodded. “That’s fair.”

  “It just so happened that Sonny is involved, and considering the last time I spoke to him was when he ended everything ...” And couldn’t even give me the respect of telling me why while he did it, she added inside her head as it sounded too pathetic to be said out loud. Gracen shrugged. “I feel like I’m, justified in also having unresolved shit to deal with there.”

  Delaney’s family and Gracen’s situation with her feelings toward her ex could be two separate things that existed outside of one another, but also intertwined because circumstance made it so. Gracen wasn’t in control of what the universe dropped in her lap. Wasn’t that her whole entire life in a fucking nutshell, anyway?

  It seemed like the universe had been having a good laugh at her expense since forever. Starting with the untimely death of her parents. Thank God her paternal grandmother had been there to support the broken girl who came out of that experience—the best and only way she knew how until she couldn’t, anyhow.

  “But that has nothing to do with the Delaney thing?” Margot asked, putting their conversation back on track.

  Like a hound after a bone, Margot clearly had questions she intended to get answered. That’s how Gracen knew Margot was probably still considering her place at the Haus in relation to her bosses’ current issues.

  What could she say?

  Sometimes, friends fought.

  It wasn’t that deep.

  Or ... it shouldn’t be.

  Gracen shrugged. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

  “But she—”

  “Might have a different opinion,” Gracen muttered, interjecting the final truth about the whole Delaney situation before Margot could muse on it further. She might as well get things set straight, and deal with what it all meant. “It’s fine, we’ll figure it out. The last time we had a spat like this, it lasted a month before we could stand to sit together in a room without yelling.”

  This wasn’t new. No, they’d simply gotten better about it.

  Over the years ...

  Gracen didn’t bother to mention that, though.

  “Well, if it helps,” Margot said, suddenly more interested in studying her cuticles than taking the bag with her food that Gracen tried to hand over.

  “If what helps?”

  “I offered to help Delaney with the wedding stuff. Any aesthetician stuff, I’m game. If she’s sure she’s got the girls hair handled, and I can do the rest, then you won’t have to worry about getting a call asking you for the favor of a lifetime. Right?”

  Neither woman moved.

  Gracen’s eyebrows lifted high like her messy, blonde bun while Margot puckered half her face in preparation for something unkind from the woman sitting across from her. Not that it would happen. Gracen wasn’t as upset about the wedding as everyone apparently thought. That was just an unfortunate detail involved with everything else.

  “Delaney is cool with you helping?” Gracen asked.

  Margot nodded.

  “Will you really do anything, though?” she pushed harder. “They’re not allowed to wear makeup or get their nails done, so—”

  “You’re sounding a little judgy,” Margot pointed out quietly. “And Delaney said they could on special occasions wear or do something little that enhances their natural beauty. Nude or clear gloss, French tips. You know, simple stuff.”

  “Right,” Gracen scoffed. “In the image of God, and all.”

  “Again, a little judgy there.”

  “What difference does it make if a bride has hair that reaches the floor on her wedding day, or a bob? It’s foolishness and shouldn’t determine who is the
most faithful to God. Delaney says it’s ridiculous, too, and she grew up in that fucking church, Margot.”

  “Exactly, so she can say it. In a way that explains how it hurt and affected her. I’m not so sure you should.”

  That comment made Gracen’s jaw snap shut because nobody had put her in her place regarding her opinions about the very conservative, fundamentalist church and its congregation on the hill. Although, if she were being honest, Gracen didn’t tend to share those opinions of hers outside of Delaney, who had helped to form most of them.

  “Take a second to think—a lot of the church’s congregation are willing participants in their faiths demands. They attend nightly service three times a week, work hard to give back twenty-percent tithe to their church’s community, and in return they have security and a place of worship that provides back for them so no one in their community must struggle. All in all, as an atheist like me looking at it,” Margot said as she unpeeled the cheap bottle of wine’s cap to find the screwed on top underneath, “they don’t have the general idea wrong. I’m just not about the bible-thumping bit, you know?”

  “You say that and also blatantly ignore red flags about their—” Gracen made air quotes with her fingers. “Faith’s demands.”

  “You mean the modesty restrictions?”

  Gracen let out a hard breath, already over this whole conversation even if Margot had been kind with her argument. “To start. Even that’s glossing over some of it. Let’s not overlook the purity culture they stuff down every girl’s throat from the time she can walk; how does color or lack of it make you closer to God? No, it’s all about dresses long to the ankles and sleeves to the wrists so work and devotion are what’s on everyone’s mind, and not the sin of temptation—blah, blah, blah.”

  Her hands flew up in a gesture of peace because nobody needed Gracen Briggs to go into a rant. Plus, maybe it wasn’t her place to discuss the lives of people she wasn’t actively helping in some way. “I get they have a choice, but I learned with Delaney that their other option is when they grow up and say, hey, no. I don’t want to wear only black dresses, or I want to cut my hair, or no, I don’t want to get married to the only boy I’m approved to date ... The other option is no community, no support—no one who is supposed to love you. That kind of thing damages, too.”

  “Well, yeah,” Margot conceded.

  Oh, but, Gracen wasn’t done. If her biases made her judgemental, then so be it. That didn’t mean she had to be shallow about it; there were also valid reasons for her feelings. “In high school, Delaney had two phones so she could actually have friends outside of the maybe five Pentecosts that went to school with us. Her other one was tracked by the church; every device they can use to access the internet is tracked with an app they’re required to download.”

  “So what, if you see some porn, the pastor’s having a chat with you?” Margot asked.

  If only it was that simple. Gracen worried it went way deeper than that when even Google searches about their faith or teachings had been enough to get people called in for a talk—or so Delaney told Gracen.

  It was entirely possible that Gracen just had too much time and YouTube on her hands, but she could recognize specific behavior—cultish behavior—when she saw it.

  “Look up the BITE Model—Steven Hassan basically wrote the how-to for quick and easy cults,” Gracen said even knowing the joke was lame. “Just because they’re doing their thing in a sleepy, small town, and it doesn’t look harmful doesn’t mean it’s not making generational trauma somewhere down the line.”

  Margot snorted. “You sure you were supposed to be a hair stylist? That sounds like something a person with PhD alongside their name might talk about over wine, but not you and me. Maybe that’s where we agree to say people way smarter than us need to unpack that kind of mess, you know what I mean?”

  Well ...

  “You’re not wrong,” Gracen admitted, and happily, too.

  “Did they put cups in the bag?” Margot asked, gently moving the two back to the most important thing at hand.

  Their cooling food.

  “Didn’t see any.”

  The redhead squinted with an embarrassed smile. “They’re catching on to me. I’ll ask for cups, but don’t order any drinks.”

  Gracen giggled as she stabbed her fork into her first bite of cheesy, fried potato goodness. Nothing beat a maritime poutine. She’d been as far as Alberta to visit her mother’s side of the family throughout the years, but she hadn’t found a poutine in Canada that competed with her hometown’s.

  “There’s lots in the kitchen,” Gracen said, pointing her fork full of food toward Margot. “You know we need the wine for this.”

  Margot stood from the chair with a roll of her eyes. “For all of this, actually.”

  Well ...

  “That’s probably true, too,” Gracen agreed, setting her friend’s food aside before digging back into her own for a proper first bite.

  As Margot slipped down the stairs and ducked for the roof to fit through the small door, Gracen’s phone on the table buzzed with a text. Gravy-coated, warm gooeyness filled Gracen’s mouth as she picked up the phone for a better look at the unknown number who’d sent her a text.

  Guess I can’t ask if this was really your number when it was on a business card, huh, Blue Eyes?

  Gracen’s slightly amused gaze narrowed on the words, and the pet name that said the man from the parking lot on Friday had noticed something about her, and remembered the color of her eyes. She used one hand to unlock the phone and carefully type out a response. Who’s Blue Eyes, Bike Boy?

  Fair was fair.

  His response came in just as quick, too. It even made Gracen laugh, lucky for him. Guys who could laugh at themselves were a rare breed.

  “Walked myself right into that,” Malachi Anders wrote.

  Yep, Gracen sent back with a winky face emoji attached at the end. Before she could overthink her next move, she added another text: I was starting to think you hadn’t used my number because you didn’t really want it.

  Not really.

  She was curious about why it took him an entire day to pop off a simple hello so she could get his contact, too, however. Then, the handsome man she’d not been able to get off the back of her mind had to go and up the ante.

  All’s the same, Blue Eyes. I’m texting now. Are you busy tonight?

  Gracen frowned down at her phone.

  Crap.

  Yeah, she kind of was busy.

  Familiar footsteps pounding up the stairs kept Gracen from answering Malachi’s last text as she blacked out the screen, and replaced the phone on the glass-topped accent table between the two chairs before Margot returned. She didn’t think now was a great time to tell anyone about the gorgeous stranger she’d barely spoken to for more than a handful of minutes when she hadn’t quite figured out what to make of him herself. Unfortunately, her silence would also likely answer his question.

  Chapter 5

  The streetlights along the river had started to flicker on one after the other by the time Margot headed out with the remaining wine and Gracen’s leftover poutine. It was one of the few things she wouldn’t eat as leftovers because it wasn’t the same experience in her opinion. Margot clearly disagreed.

  Gracen waved to Margot as she strode along the front walk that passed the kitchen’s windows. She rented the one-bedroom unit over Patsy’s Flower Shop behind the bank. Out of the three women that worked full-time at the Haus, Margot was the only one who refused to get a vehicle because she proclaimed there wasn’t a need for one. There was always a friend doing something out of town if she really had a need to go—or so she explained it when Gracen tried to sell her the Civic a while back.

  Delaney’s name lit up the screen of Gracen’s phone on the counter next to the sink as she finished rinsing the wine glasses from earlier. She considered not answering the call but figured she didn’t have a reason to do so that wasn’t petty.

  That left
her with one option.

  “Hey, Delaney,” Gracen said when she picked up the call.

  The slight woosh of air in the background of the call told Gracen the news Delaney was about to deliver before her friend could.

  “I just hit the highway out of Aroostook—I’ll be home in fifteen. Don’t bother locking the door, I’ll get it, but I want to run by the Haus first and make sure nobody spray painted any windows or some other stupid shit that we’ll find tomorrow when we open.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  The only time Delaney’s calls sounded like she was inside a wind farm was when she took the highway with her driver’s window cracked to hide the tendrils of smoke from the handful of cigarettes she allowed herself to smoke everyday.

  If anyone asked about the smoking, Delaney lied.

  It was hard to call her on it, too, but Gracen knew. What were best friends for if not to run to the gas store at the end of the street five minutes before it closed to get you a pack of cigarettes because it was the only thing to bring you out of a panic attack, right?

  Everybody had secrets.

  Not everybody would keep them, though.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Gracen asked.

  With the window noise in the background confirming Delaney’s vice that counteracted her anxiety, Gracen felt like she had to ask. Even if she still believed letting her friend help her family in any way was only asking for heartache, Gracen also wouldn’t stop caring about Delaney. Especially when she was hurting.

  It took Delaney more than a few seconds to answer. When she finally did, it was on the long exhale of what Gracen knew to be full of cigarette smoke.

  “I didn’t think just having dinner was going to be that bad, to be honest,” she muttered.

  Gracen frowned. “What happened?”

  “Nothing new. Maybe they share their hurtful thoughts and beliefs in a polite way now that I’m older and not scared to tell them where to shove it, but it’s all the same trash, Gracen. Whatever, I’m used to it.”

  That also meant Delaney didn’t want Gracen to push.

  Still, she felt obligated to ask, “Do you want to talk about—”