by Holly Jacobs
“You haven’t asked her yet?”
“I wanted to have everything lined up first, but I think she’ll say yes.”
So did he, but he wanted to hear why Willow did. “Why do you think so?”
“Because it’s just how she is. She told me that she’ll say yes to things whenever she can, and if I want to do something she is worried about, she’ll tell me why she’s worried. If I can fix it, she’ll still say yes. I thought if I have everything all set up and it makes sense, she’ll say yes because she won’t have any reason to say no.”
He liked her logic.
“Well, go ask her, then,” he said.
Willow took off like a shot, and he watched through the kitchen window as she found Audrey sitting next to Maggie May and Abe Lebowitz on the porch. Willow stood ramrod straight and presented her request in a nonstop string of words.
When Audrey nodded yes, Willow gave a little squeal, and then she ran off. He figured she was going to find Mrs. Wilson.
Willow had trusted Audrey to say yes, to be reasonable. And he suspected trust wasn’t something that came easily to Willow.
He realized that despite all indications to the contrary, trust wasn’t something that came easily to Audrey, either. He wasn’t sure why he felt that way. She took in kids and loved them with abandon, even when no one else would find them very lovable. And she liked her boss and neighbor. But he’d seen no evidence that her circle went farther than that.
He remembered Willow’s comment about Audrey always seeming happy...except at night. What was it that haunted her?
She might not let her guard down easily, except with her kids, but he’d let his down. He was totally enthralled by Audrey Smith.
He watched as she went back to her conversation.
He realized he trusted her, too.
More than that, he cared about her.
“Hey, Sawyer,” Bill said as he came into the kitchen, “the kids challenged us grown-ups to a game of water polo.”
“Do they know how to play water polo?” Sawyer asked.
Bill laughed. “I don’t think so. I’ve watched Bea for the past half hour and the version she’s playing seems more about dunking people than scoring points.”
“Lucky for her, I’m good at dunking.”
Sawyer had thought he’d easily win, and maybe one-on-one he would have, but the kids seemed to operate as a single unit. Both Bill and he were more frequently the dunked than the dunkers.
Soaking wet and having admitted defeat, he was drying off at the edge of the pool when Audrey came over to him, grinning. “You guys so lost that battle.”
“You should have joined in instead of standing on the sidelines and laughing.”
“I know how Bea and Clinton operate. No way was I volunteering to be drowned.”
“Chicken,” he said. He threw the towel on a lounger as he stood.
Audrey was staring at his chest. She finally looked up at him and blushed.
Sawyer was pretty sure he’d just been ogled. And he was absolutely sure he liked it.
“Uh, I wanted to say...” Audrey’s sentence trailed off.
He leaned down, picked his T-shirt up off the chair and put it on. “You wanted to say?” he asked.
She sighed. “Thank you. I wanted to say thank you for saying yes to Willow. And for offering her keys to the garage.”
“She said no to taking the keys.” He knew it was dumb to trust Willow, someone who’d broken into his place, and still had never given up her accomplice or accomplices. But he did. He was pretty sure that his belief in her was a reflection of Audrey’s belief in her.
“Yes, she was right not to want your keys. But your offer...it mattered to her. And to me.”
“Then I’m glad I at least made it,” he said. “Any chance you’d like to come up and visit with my parents for a bit. They’re anxious to spend more time with you.”
“Why is that?”
“It seems someone’s been telling them about this wonderful woman who thinks she can save the world one house at a time.” He smiled and added, “One compost pile at a time. When she’s not saving the world, she’s saving kids.”
He’d meant it as a joke, but she grew very serious. “Don’t tease me, Sawyer.”
“Friends tease each other, Audrey. But that wasn’t really teasing, you know. I told my parents about this wonderful woman I’ve met and, of course, being loving parents, they want to check her out.”
“Great. Now I’m not nervous at all. You’ve given them a bunch of hype I can never live up to.”
He shook his head. “Truth be told, I didn’t say enough.”
Feeling emboldened, he took her hand as he led her across the yard to find his parents.
* * *
AUDREY’S FIRST INSTINCT was to pull her hand away from Sawyer’s. She had never thought of herself as a handholding sort of woman.
Frankly, she’d never felt any inclination to hold anyone’s hand.
And yet, she didn’t mind the feel of Sawyer’s hand on hers.
She didn’t mind the way their arms brushed as they walked.
And she certainly hadn’t minded looking at his bare chest as he got out of the pool.
What on earth was wrong with her?
She caught Mr. Lebowitz and Maggie May grinning as Sawyer led her onto the deck. She felt her cheeks warm and she pulled her hand out of his.
She wasn’t prepared for the feeling of loss.
His parents were sitting next to her friends.
“Mom, Dad, I brought you Audrey as instructed.”
“Sawyer,” his mother scolded. “We just said we were hoping to get to visit with your new friend.” There was the slightest pause before the word friend.
Audrey felt her cheeks warm again.
This was ridiculous. She was a grown woman. She didn’t need to be acting like some starry-eyed teen meeting her youthful fantasy.
She took a seat next to Maggie May. “So tell me, Mrs. Williams. Do you have any embarrassing stories from Sawyer’s childhood? He likes to pretend he’s just some ordinary banker, but I suspect he’s got layers. I mean, other than his hitting-parked-semis layer.”
“If by layers you mean he was trouble in his youth, you’d be right. For instance, when he was nine...”
“Stop right there, Mom, or I’m going to tell Dad about our little secret.”
“Do tell,” his father said.
“Don’t you dare, Sawyer.” She turned to her husband. “I am a woman of mystery. If I told you all my secrets, you’d get bored in a minute.”
He kissed her. “Never.”
Audrey had been nervous, but Sawyer’s parents were nice. They didn’t pepper her with questions. Instead, they shared stories about Sawyer, including the time he hit the parked semi in a parking lot, then eased into questions about Willow.
It was painless, to be honest.
Half an hour later, Bea screamed, “Audrey,” from the pool.
“That’s my cue,” Audrey said. “I hope I get to chat with you again later.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sawyer said.
“So what’s your mother’s big secret?” Audrey asked as they walked down the steps of the deck.
Sawyer snagged her hand again at the bottom and whispered in her ear. “She’s discovered online shopping and has orders sent to her friend’s house so Dad doesn’t realize how much of it she does.”
Audrey laughed and didn’t pull her hand away as they walked down to the pool.
Sawyer’s arm brushed against hers and she realized that she could get used to his touch very easily.
CHAPTER NINE
AUDREY OPENED HER front door on Sunday morning and the first thing that struck her was Ava hadn’t ch
anged at all in the past decade. The woman could still walk the halls of any high school and easily get mistaken for a student.
The second thing that struck Audrey was the white box with the telltale logo that her friend was holding. The doughnuts were from a locally owned shop that had been a favorite place to hang out when they were younger.
“Ava, you look wonderful,” Audrey said by way of a greeting. Ava’s hair was shorter, more sophisticated than it had been in high school. It brushed against her shoulders now instead of her hips. Her dark eyes were no longer hidden behind glasses. She’d either had corrective surgery or started wearing contacts.
But her smile was the same as ever.
“Come in,” Audrey said. She led Ava back to the kitchen. “The kids are still asleep.”
“Really? Teens who don’t want to get up early on a weekend?” Ava asked with sarcasm.
“We’ll probably see Clinton and Bea sooner rather than later, but Willow will squeeze in every second of sleep she can get. Coffee?”
Ava took a seat at the kitchen table and said, “Black.”
Audrey nodded. She wished Ava wanted something in the coffee, something that would fill up more time. She felt awkward and didn’t know what to say to this friend she’d once been able to talk to all day at school, then hours on the phone in the evening.
“So how are things?” she finally settled on as she set the cup of coffee down. Awkward. Yeah, that sounded totally awkward.
Ava sighed. “Good. And you?”
“Very good.” Audrey grappled for a next topic. “How long are you in town for?”
“Maybe permanently. I’ve put out applications at a few practices here in town.”
“You’re done traveling?” Right after college, Ava had volunteered in the Peace Corps. Then she’d worked for a traveling nurse agency overseas and helped out in clinics—free of charge—during her down time.
Audrey took the seat across from Ava.
“I just got back from South America,” she said. “It was rewarding, but...”
“But?” Audrey prompted, happy to let Ava talk for as long as she was willing.
“I went to bed one night in my room, which was a cot in a makeshift surgery. We’d been doing operations on clefts that visit. Like I said, it was rewarding, but I suddenly longed for my own bed in my own house. I realized I’d been traveling for a decade and I was hit with the most acute case of homesickness. I wanted to come home. So here I am.”
Audrey didn’t know what to say to that. She put her hand on Ava’s and simply waited.
“I wanted to see you and Merrill and go to the reunion. I thought I’d stay with my dad for a while before deciding what to do next. Then I found this.” She reached into her giant purse and pulled out a small cardboard box. “Dad had it stashed in his office. I wasn’t snooping,” she added. “I went in to find his envelopes, and found it instead...”
“What is it?”
Ava pushed the box across the table. “Open it.”
The box was stuffed with letters. Audrey picked one up. It was addressed to Ava and had a postmark from December 2000. “What are they?”
“They’re letters from my mother’s parents. They sent them almost monthly until my grandmother passed away when I was fifteen. After that, my grandfather continued sending a letter every year on my birthday and at Christmas. Did you know that Ava can mean little bird? My grandmother’s clan was hawk. The Senecas trace their genealogy through matriarchal lines. I didn’t know that. One of the letters talked about it.”
“Oh, Ava.” Audrey had always thought it was bad having a mother who loved drugs more than she loved her own daughter, but she’d always known where she stood. Maybe it was worse to find out the people you thought didn’t want you at all...did. And the one person who claimed to love you more than anything had lied to you your entire life.
“My father wanted to ignore my mother’s heritage, but she named me Ava as a way of reminding me where I came from. I was so young when she died, I never knew any of that. My father cut off all communications with my grandparents and the rest of my mother’s family.” Ava pulled out a letter. “I thought they didn’t love me. The only thing my father ever said about them was they didn’t approve of him because he wasn’t Seneca.”
Audrey remembered Mr. Parker as a hard-drinking, hard-living man and she wondered if that had more to do with Ava’s grandparents’ disapproval than his heritage or lack of it.
“I thought they forgot about me after my mom died, but they didn’t. More than that, I don’t know what to feel about my father.” She paused. “He had to know how much it hurt me.”
Audrey didn’t say that she wasn’t surprised that Ava’s father would selfishly put what was good for him over what was good for her. She’d never liked the man and was sure that colored her feelings. Instead, she simply said, “I’m sorry you lost all that time with your extended family, but you can go see your grandfather now.”
“I plan to, but, Audrey, I’m so angry. I’m so angry that I could spit.”
There was vehemence in Ava’s words that Audrey had never heard before. Ava had always seemed as gentle as the bird she was named after. “I’m sorry, Ava.”
Clinton walked into the kitchen. “Hi, Ava.”
Ava had stopped in sporadically over the years, but her discomfort with Clinton had never eased. Her anger at her father was replaced by surprise, then guilt. Audrey reached out and squeezed her hand, then turned to Clinton.
“Ava brought doughnuts.”
“Great.” He headed toward the white box with the iconic logo. “Sweet, you got cream filled.”
He took three doughnuts and then poured a glass of milk. He held it aloft as he walked by them toward the front of the house. “See, I’m nutrition minded.” He paused a moment. “I didn’t hear what you were mad about Ava, but if you want to stay on Audrey’s good side, don’t spit in the house. She takes offence.”
They heard his laughter as he went up the stairs.
Ava offered Audrey a wan smile. “That sounded like personal experience there.”
Audrey recognized that Ava needed a moment to collect herself, and she was glad she had a funny story to distract her. “Oh, it was a personal experience. A few months after Bea came to live with us I caught him teaching her the perfect spitting technique. They were aiming for a garbage can.” She paused a moment, then added, “They didn’t always hit their target.”
Ava grimaced and grinned at the same time. “Gross.”
Audrey laughed at the memory. “It was absolutely gross. The sounds that went with the exercise still haunt me. But it makes a good story.”
For a moment they both simply smiled, then Audrey tapped the box and quietly asked, “Did your father offer up his reason for not giving the letters to you?”
“No. He had the audacity to yell at me for invading his privacy. I packed and left after that. I took my box of letters, my mother’s chest and all my things.”
“Do you need somewhere to stay?” In her head, Audrey was already organizing things. She’d ask Bea to share her room. She could move the girls into the same room, but she thought Willow needed her space and wouldn’t welcome Bea sharing it.
Ava reached across the table and took Audrey’s hand. “As I was packing, I knew that I could drive over here and just show up on your porch and you’d take me in. It wouldn’t have mattered how awkward things have been between us, or how long it had been since we’d talked. I mean really talked,” she said before Audrey could protest. “I knew that you’d take me in, no questions asked. But it means a lot to hear you say as much.”
“I do mean it. We can make room.”
“Thanks, but I moved out to the cottage for the time being. I know I should feel bad because technically it’s Dad’s, but it was Mom’s at heart. And she
’d like knowing I was there.”
Audrey had been to the Parker camp. It was a small shack on the shore of Lake Erie, just west of Valley Ridge, New York. Ava used to tell her and Merrill that her father had bought it for her mother because she found living in the city oppressive. He’d bought it for a song from a poker buddy who was cash strapped, and in high school it was one of their favorite places to escape to.
“My mom must have told my grandparents about it. Grandmother said in a letter something about it being a place for Mom to reconnect to her heritage. She said Mom wasn’t built for the city. She needed woods and streams, farms and lakes, to be her true self. Maybe that’s what I need, too.”
“I’m glad you’re home.” Audrey realized she was.
“So am I,” said Ava. “Despite what happened with my father, or maybe because of it, I needed to know that my mother’s family never abandoned me.” She realized what she’d said. “I’m sorry, Audrey. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“Hey, don’t worry. My mother and her family...well, I think there’s a good chance that their forgetting about me was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
Ava’s expression said she wasn’t buying it.
“Really,” Audrey said. “I’ve thought a lot about it. Everything that happened to me led me here. To this place. And, Ava, I love my life. I love the kids and the home we’ve all built together. I love my work. Even what happened that night led me here...to this place. I try to remind myself of that when I have nightmares.”
“You still have them?” Ava asked gently.
Audrey nodded. “I think it’s my subconscious making sure I never forget.”
“That’s the difference between the three of us. You remember it...you’ve built your life around remembering it. Merrill’s done her best to forget.”
“And you?” Audrey asked.
“I walked away unscathed. I don’t know. I guess the fact that the cops and everyone said it wasn’t our fault helped. And, Audrey, even if it had been our fault, Jude was driving so he would have been responsible.” She shook her head. “That sounded callous, but that’s not how I meant it.”