by Kara Isaac
Derek glared at her. “If it’s broken, I’m going for assault.” His words were muffled through his hands.
Allie took another step so they were almost toe to toe. “I’d think pretty hard about that. You make me lawyer up again and I’ll be coming after you for fraud, theft, and whatever else they can come up with. Now that I have all my money back, I need something to spend it on. Now, get out. Now!”
Derek spat some blood onto Susannah’s hardwood floor. Adrenaline surged through Allie’s body at the undisguised loathing on his face. She fought the impulse to back down, put distance between them. For the first time it struck her that maybe now was the time to be afraid, not feisty. But she was done with being afraid.
After one last glare, Derek spun around and stormed out, the echo of his feet detailing the path of his departure.
Allie let out the breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding, her head whirling as the vibration of the door slamming echoed through the house. The whole thing had been a lie. Derek was gone. Forever. It was over. Finally.
Her legs buckled, and she hit the shiny floor.
Allie’s whole body heaved against gravity as it was swallowed into an ocean of grief. One with no shoreline in sight.
This was not how her story was supposed to end.
The light outside grew dimmer until darkness tiptoed through the windows. So many things spun through her head, she couldn’t even finish one thought before another interrupted, clamoring to be heard.
She waited for the much-talked-about “peace that passes all understanding.” For some kind of epiphany that would make things better or at least bearable, but nothing came. Just the big, gaping chasm.
She’d tried to do the right thing, but in doing so, she’d destroyed what she had with the guy she loved to be with the one she was married to. She’d turned down the opportunity to apply for her dream job. All for nothing.
Thirty-Two
“ALL RIGHT, ENOUGH. TIME TO move on out.” Susannah’s very loud voice accompanied bright sunlight flooding Allie’s nice dark cave, also known as Susannah’s spare room, which she hadn’t moved from since Tuesday night, except for the bare necessities. It was now Friday. Or maybe Saturday.
For all of their differences, her big sister had proven to be more than adept at dealing with the mess of a human she’d come home to after Derek had stormed out. It turned out that nothing accelerates the reformation of sisterly bonds quite like one of them needing to be scraped off the kitchen floor.
“Up. Up. Up!”
Noooo. Allie groaned and burrowed farther under the covers. She’d handed in her notice and still had a couple of days before she was due to return for her final tour.
Her sister was determined. Sheets and blankets were ripped back. Allie scrunched her eyes shut against the glare. Who knew sunlight could be so painful? She rolled over and buried her head under her pillow. Maybe if she ignored her, Susannah would go away. Actually, scratch that; it had never worked before.
“I. Am. Not. Getting. Up.”
The pillow was ripped from her grasp. “Yes. You. Are.”
Lifting her head up, Allie looked at her sister through blurry eyes. As per usual, Susannah looked immaculate in a blue sweater and cargo pants, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She also looked insanely cheerful for what had to be some obscene hour of the morning.
“Susannah, I’m heartbroken. In fact, let me rephrase that. I am heart-shattered. Into a gazillion tiny pieces. I’ve spent the last three days bawling my eyes out.”
Her sister looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Actually, darling . . .”
Definitely more than a hint of sarcasm in “darling.”
“. . . you’ve only spent part of the last three days bawling your eyes out. You’ve also spent part of it watching every chick flick I own”—she gestured at the pile of DVDs on the floor—“eating the supermarket out of every cheesecake and tub of ice cream they have in stock, and reading far too many trashy magazines.” Her foot nudged the precarious pile at her feet.
Allie glanced around the room. Hmm, there were a lot of empty ice cream containers scattered around the place, now that she mentioned it. It also smelled a little like a gym bag had been left to fester in a corner somewhere.
She sat up and crossed her arms. “Yeah, so?” She scowled at her sister. “I think I’ve earned the right to a few days of self-pity. Don’t you? Now if you’ll excuse me.” Reaching over, she grabbed her pillow from Susannah’s arms. “I am going back to wallowing. Feel free to open the window as you close the curtains on your way out.”
Susannah sighed and sat down on her bed.
No. Don’t do that. You’re going.
“Bug, I love you, and if I thought floundering in your misery would help you get over it, I would leave you to it, but it’s not. All it does is give you way too much time to rehash Jackson-and-Allie memories and second-guess everything you ever said and did. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning. It’s time to reenter the real world. Because for a start, if you don’t get your backside on that plane tomorrow, you might not have a job left to show up to.”
Like that was such a big loss. “I don’t care.” Allie moaned, throwing herself back on the bed and burrowing her head in her arms.
The bed shifted as Susannah reached down. The sound of pages turning filtered through. Allie peered at her sister over her arms. Why was her sister always right?
Susannah held up a couple of magazines. “Look, most of these headlines are about famous women getting dumped. It happens to the most successful women in the world. You’re in great company.” She pointed at one cover. “I mean, it’s not like your husband had an affair or you got ditched on national television.”
If only. “Look at all those girls. We both know in a couple of months they’ll all be back on the cover with some hot new guy while I’ll still be here alone and heartbroken.” She looked at all the ice cream containers around her. “And faaaaat.”
Susannah stood up. Finally. Thank goodness, she was going to give in and let her stay in bed. She turned around as she reached the door, perfect ponytail swishing. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t want to do this but you’ve given me no choice.”
Huh?
A few seconds later her sister returned, holding Ed waaaaay out in front of her.
What was going on? A second later her nostrils were assaulted by the smell of something between mustard gas and a cowpat she’d once had the misfortune of falling into. “Good grief. What is that?” She pinched her nose, but to no avail.
Susannah grimaced. “That is my darling son. Check this out.” She turned him around to reveal a slimy brown stain seeping down his pants. Allie retched, eyes watering. “Here, hold him a sec.”
Before she could refuse, Susannah shoved the little stink bomb into her arms and disappeared.
Allie adopted an identical pose—holding her nephew as far away from her as possible. It wasn’t easy, when he wasn’t exactly the world’s most petite toddler. “Hey. You can’t leave him here. Where are you going?”
Her smelly nephew grinned. “Stinky poop!”
She couldn’t hold him any longer so she lowered him to the floor. “Aren’t you supposed to be toilet trained by now?”
“Nappy is gross!”
“Yeah, no kidding, pal.”
Susannah marched back into the room dragging Ed’s activity table behind her and chucked it into the corner closest to the bed.
Allie caught a glimpse of the evil plan her sister had brewed. Oh no, she didn’t!
“Right.” Susannah spoke through her own pinched nose. “Here’s your choice. You can stay here as long as you like. Weeks, in fact. But he stays in here with you.”
Over her dead body. Which, judging by the potency of his nappy combined with the small size of the bedroom, might well be sooner than she had imagin
ed.
“Aw, come on, Susannah. That’s cruel and inhumane. In fact . . .” She paused to try and wipe her watering eyes on her T-shirt-clad shoulder. “I’m pretty sure it could be classified as biological warfare.”
Susannah took her son from her hands and serenely carried him toward his toys. “Be that as it may, I’ve given you your options. Outside with the world, or in here with Mr. Stinky. Your choice.”
Allie looked around her Laura Ashley–inspired cave and then over at her nephew grinning up at her. With every second, the smell grew even more gag-worthy. No way she could stay in this room with that. She was depressed, not suicidal.
“All right. I give up. But it’ll be all your fault when Ed doesn’t have cousins. You’ve put me off of ever having children.” As if it was even a remote possibility anyway, right now.
Her sister glanced at her son and grimaced. “Well then, poor Ed’s going to be stuck with just his big sister, because he’s put me off having any more children as well. Now, you’ve got thirty seconds to decide what big move you’re going to make to change your life. I know we have our differences, but we are Shires. When we get knocked down, we get back up. End of story. You are scary smart and beautiful, and you are too good to waste any more time wallowing over a guy who was never worth you. Twenty seconds.”
Her sister’s words powered up something inside her. She was better than this. Derek had taken all he was going to get. God had not given her breath so she could waste one more of them on him. “Can you pass me my phone?” She gestured to where it sat on the armoire.
Susannah picked it up and tossed it to her, underhand style. Picked up Ed from where he’d wrapped himself around her legs.
Allie scrolled through her contacts. Please let her have saved it. Please. The name lit up her screen, and she hit it before she could second-guess herself.
“Dr. Everett.”
“Dr. Everett, it’s Dr. Shire here.”
“Dr. Shire.” He sounded surprised, but not in a bad way. “What can I do for you?”
“My family situation has changed since we last spoke. I was wondering if the applications were still open for the position we spoke about.”
“They are.” She could hear a smile in his voice. “But only just. They close in four hours. That is, they close today, but we didn’t specify a time, so I’m assuming we’ll be accepting them until midnight.”
It couldn’t have been more an answer to prayer if an enormous divine finger had appeared and painted GO TO ENGLAND on the wall.
Blowing out her breath, she managed her first genuine smile since the second before Derek had shown up in the café and shattered everything. “You’ll have my application by then.”
“I look forward to it. Good night, Dr. Shire.”
The dial tone left her with an uncontrollable grin on her face.
“What was that about?”
She stared at her screen for a second, then up at Susannah. “I’m applying for a lecturing job at Oxford.”
Her sister’s eyes widened. “When did this all happen?”
Allie didn’t respond, a stark realization seeping into her. She couldn’t go to Oxford, or really move on with her life, until she at least tried to make amends for one of her biggest failings.
Allie looked at her sister. “I need to find Jackson. I can’t do this until I make things right. In person.”
“How are you going to do that?”
Given that she’d wiped his number from her phone the day she’d decided to give Derek another chance, there was only one way she could think of. “I’m going to Iowa.”
Her sister high-fived her. That hadn’t happened in a decade. “Oh yes, you are.” She dropped Ed onto Allie’s lap. “After you change one nuclear nappy.”
Thirty-Three
Four weeks later
ALLIE HADN’T BEEN THIS TERRIFIED since she defended her thesis. Twenty-eight hours from Auckland to Des Moines, via L.A. and Chicago. Then another three hours on the road to Pennington.
Driving in the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road with a brain that had completely given up on trying to compute miles instead of kilometers.
Her phone trilled on the seat beside her. Kat. She tried to flick on the indicator so she could pull onto the shoulder but turned on the wipers instead. They emitted a loud screeching sound as they swung back and forth over the dry windscreen.
Navigating the car onto the dusty side and slowing to a stop, she swiped on her phone. “Hey.” They’d last talked on her Chicago stopover when she’d bought a donut just for the brown bag to breathe into.
“So how’s Iowa?”
Allie looked at all the fields lining the sides of the rural road. Green stalks rose as far as the eye could see, a few perspicacious ones reaching taller than her car. “Corny.”
“You far away?”
“I think I’m about twenty minutes.”
“How are you doing?”
“I’ve been traveling for more than a day. I’m sticky and stinky and scared out of my senses. What am I doing, Kat? I’ve lost my mind.”
“Maybe a little. But it’s the best thing that’s happened to you in years. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“That Jackson’s told them all about me. That they hate me for what I did to him. That they won’t tell me where to find him.”
“In which case you’re no worse off than you are now. And at least you tried.”
A thought suddenly stuck her. “Oh my gosh, Kat. His mother has cancer. What if she’s dying? What if she’s dead? What if I show up and there’s a hearse outside?”
“If there’s a hearse outside, I’d say it’s probably not the best moment to knock on the door.” Her friend’s dry response forced her to dial the melodrama a bit lower.
Allie pressed the phone against her ear, leaning her head against the leather seat. “What if I’m not supposed to be doing this? What if I’m messing up God’s plan?”
Kat laughed. “You can’t mess up God’s plan. He’s a whole lot bigger than that. Look, you’re following your heart. And you’re doing it for a good reason. God’s in that. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but He does. And He’s got you. So stop stressing.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She blew out a big breath. “Here goes nothing.”
“Here goes everything.”
Dropping her phone onto the seat, she pulled back onto the road and navigated slowly back into her lane. Thank goodness traffic was light.
Twenty-five minutes later the sign WELCOME TO PENNINGTON. POPULATION 9,649 passed on the road beside her.
Following the directions her phone dictated, she drove through a small but picturesque town center. Quaint shops encircled a town square. Flowers peeked out from hanging baskets, and crisp white frontages set off display windows.
Five minutes later she sat outside 12 Moray Avenue.
What if no one was home? What if there were lots of people there? Odds were slim on a Tuesday morning, but who knew? She hadn’t really let herself think beyond finding their address. She’d rehearsed words on the off chance that she would, but they’d all fled, leaving her with a blank mind and a palpitating heart.
C’mon Allie. You didn’t come all this way just to sit in your rental car and stare at their house.
Brushing the crumbs of a drive-through breakfast off her shorts, she exited the vehicle and closed the door.
She forced her legs to walk up the cobblestoned path, and up the stairs to the porch, where she knocked on the cheerful red door.
“Hello?” A slim woman, headscarf around her head, opened the door. Allie would have been able to spot her as Jackson’s mother a mile away with her same stunning blue eyes, the feminine version of his face.
“Mrs. Gregory?” Not that she needed to ask. She just needed time.
The woman l
aughed. “Please, call me Steph. Mrs. Gregory was my mother-in-law.”
“I was wondering if you could tell me where to find Jackson.” Allie almost banged her head against the doorframe. That was not the speech she had practiced most of the way from Des Moines. Not the opening lines, anyway.
She looked up to see the woman smiling the kind of smile that takes over a person’s whole face. “You’re Allie.”
Allie just stared at her for a second, the ability to form words lost.
Steph laughed. “Oh, honey, that accent is from somewhere far away from here. And I’ve been praying for you since the first time he said your name.”
She what? Allie sagged against the porch, knees taken out by sheer surprise.
“Of course I can tell you where to find him.” Steph looked at her watch. “They’re probably just about to break for lunch.”
“He’s here?”
Steph studied her, smile softening. “Yes, he’s here. He’s been here ever since he got back from New Zealand.”
Allie opened her mouth but no words came. This was not what she had prepared for. Not in a million years. Him being in Pennington. Mere miles away. The possibility of seeing him today. She looked down at her travel-rumpled clothes and had a flashback of her weary face reflected in the rearview mirror. She couldn’t see him looking like a hobo and smelling like a pair of two-day-old gym socks.
“Would you like to come in and freshen up before you go see my boy?”
“Yes.” Allie blinked back the tears that sprang to her eyes in the face of such unexpected kindness from a woman who’d known who she was before she’d even said her name. “Please.”
* * *
It was going to break ninety today, Jackson was sure of it. Splashing some water on his face from the hose, he relished the cool liquid dripping down his neck.
Picking up the brush, he continued scrubbing down the new tractor that had just been delivered the week before. His father’s new pride and joy. He’d never seen the man so happy. All the joy of working on the farm he loved, with none of the stress about cash flow. There was nothing Jackson would ever be able to do or say to thank Louis for the life he’d given back his parents. How ironic that in the middle of his mom’s illness, he’d never seen the two of them with so much zest for life.