by Amy Vastine
“I love you. I love Violet. You are both so special to me.”
Ruby’s chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. He could tell she wasn’t sure if she should be happy or not. Something was telling her this wasn’t going to end the way she hoped. He was sorry that was true.
“The other day when I was at your house, Emmy texted me.”
“That’s great news. You’re still in touch?”
Boone nodded. The tightness in his throat was going to make this next part harder than it already was. He tried to clear it. “I’ve decided to head back to Nashville. I’m going to finish recording my album up there and focus on repairing my relationship with Emmy in person, not over the phone.”
“You’re leaving?”
He nodded again.
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning, if I can get someone to come get me.”
“Tomorrow,” she said with a gasp. “And you can’t do this... You can’t be with me while you’re doing that.”
He had no voice. All he could do was nod.
Her bottom lip started to quiver, but she quickly bit down on it. “Great. I’m sure Violet’s going to be really impressed with how fast you could ditch us and run back to your real family.”
Her anger was justified, but the words still cut deep. “I’m not ditching you,” he finally choked out. “I’m trying to do what’s best for my daughter. I know you’re going to be okay. I know you don’t need someone like me messing up your life.”
Ruby blinked back the tears. “As Violet would say, please don’t give me the empowerment speech. I’m fine. I don’t care what you do. I was coming to tell you that I think I’m going to go to Seattle by myself. Maybe I need a little distance from this place and everyone in it.”
“Ruby...” he said, but she waved him off.
“No, really. Don’t feel bad. You got to slum it with us little people for a bit, and now it’s time to go back to your real life.”
“Being with you was not some social experiment. I care about you so much. I’m not doing this to hurt you—I’m doing this so I can heal my relationship with my daughter. I have to do that, Ruby.”
“Of course you do. Goodbye,” she whispered and ran to her car.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THERE WAS AN old Elvis song called “Can’t Help Falling in Love” that summed up Ruby’s problem perfectly. She was a fool. A complete and utter fool for letting herself get carried away by these feelings she had for Boone.
But she couldn’t help it, no matter how hard she tried. And she had tried.
Foolish. So very foolish. Thank goodness she hadn’t made a complete idiot out of herself by admitting she loved him back. That would have been a nightmare.
Ruby pressed the doorbell outside Levi’s house. She was later than she had planned, but she figured Violet wouldn’t care. Nobody really cared how Ruby felt. Not her father when he left when she was a kid, not her sister when she up and moved to Seattle, not Levi when he admitted he couldn’t be married, not Boone when he left to go back to his real family, and certainly not Violet, who always cared more about gaining Levi’s affection than Ruby’s.
Everyone always left Ruby behind. That was just the reality of her life.
Levi opened the door. “You made it. We were starting to get worried. Violet was sure you’d be here before breakfast. Late night with the famous Mr. Williams? Should I check TMZ?”
Ruby had to keep breathing. The tears were just begging to flow freely, and she was not going to give Levi the satisfaction of making her cry.
“I’m kidding, Ruby. Are you okay?” Levi actually seemed concerned.
“Is she ready? If you hand me her stuff, I’ll go put it in the car.”
“I’m ready,” Violet came up behind her dad, pulling her suitcase and holding her pillow. “Bye, Dad.” She kissed him goodbye, and Ruby had to look away. She couldn’t handle seeing their affection right now. Violet never wanted Ruby to hug or kiss her. Ruby was forbidden to touch her most days.
“I guess we’ll talk later this week about what’s next, huh?” Levi asked. “I think it would be better to get her up here at least a week before school starts, right?”
Ruby took that to mean he was still planning to take Violet away.
“Ruby?” He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “What’s going on with you?”
“We’ll call you. We need to get going.” She headed for the car.
Violet loaded her stuff in the car and waved goodbye to her dad once she was situated in the passenger seat. Ruby started the car, and Violet turned the radio on.
“You weren’t listening to music on the way here?”
Ruby shook her head and put the car in Reverse.
“Are you okay? You look like someone died. Is Grandma okay?”
“Grandma is fine, as far as I know.”
“What’s the matter, then?”
There was probably no good time to tell Violet that Boone was gone. Ruby figured she might as well tell her now.
“You should know that things are going to be a little different when you go to Helping Hooves tomorrow. Boone decided to go back home. He left this morning. He’s sorry he didn’t get to say goodbye.”
Violet didn’t say a word for the next ten minutes. The silence in the car was deafening. Ruby couldn’t bring herself to say anything else, though.
“He’s going to come back and visit, right? Doesn’t he have to finish recording his album? He has to come back.”
“He’s finishing his album up here. There’s no reason for him to go back to Grass Lake. His family is here in Nashville.”
Violet picked up Ruby’s phone that sat in the cup holder between them. “I’m going to text him that he has a really good reason to come back. That he can’t just leave us.” She searched through Ruby’s contact list. “Where’s his number?”
“I deleted it. There was no point in keeping it.”
“Oh my gosh, Mom! Seriously?” She set the phone back down and folded her arms across her chest. A few minutes later she said, “I’ll ask Jesse. He probably has his number.”
They drove the rest of the two hours home without saying a word.
* * *
MONDAY MORNING, VIOLET was ready to go to Helping Hooves an hour before she was due for her session with Jesse. Ruby gave in and drove her over there a little early.
“Can you come back early, too? I want to talk to you and Jesse about moving to Dad’s.”
Ruby couldn’t wait. The first time Violet invited her to a session and it was to iron out the plans to leave her. Fabulous.
“Sure. I’ll see you in less than an hour.”
Ruby drove to the end of the drive and parked there to wait. She had nowhere else to go. Forty-five minutes felt like an eternity. When it finally passed, Ruby dreaded getting out of the car. The parking lot was nothing but a nasty reminder of being dumped by one more person she’d bothered to love.
Violet and Jesse were hanging out near the larger of the two paddocks. Jesse greeted her with a smile. As if there was anything to smile about.
“Violet and I had a really good discussion today. I’m glad we can all talk a little bit.”
“Did she tell you about her plans to move back to Nashville?”
“We talked about Nashville. Actually, Violet, why don’t you tell your mom what we talked about?”
Violet turned away from the horses she had been watching and pressed her back to the fence. “I don’t want to move in with Dad. I never really did. I actually thought he was going to say no. When he didn’t, it felt so good to know he wanted me that I didn’t say anything.”
Ruby couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You don’t want to live with your dad?”
“Why don’t
you tell your mom how you were feeling about the other thing?” Jesse prompted Violet.
“I was kind of mad when you didn’t fight Dad about it. You just said if that was what I wanted, I could go.”
“You were trying to get me and Dad to fight?”
“I didn’t want you to fight. I mean I wanted you to say no. I wanted you to make me stay so I didn’t have to admit to Dad that I don’t want to go.”
Ruby considered pinching herself to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep behind the wheel and was actually still at the end of the drive.
She grounded herself by touching the fence in front of her. She couldn’t do that from her car, so this had to be real. “Violet, that’s not the right way to handle—”
“Maybe you could start with how that makes you feel,” Jesse interrupted.
“That makes me feel pretty mad and frustrated because she’s always changing the rules on me. I thought that she wanted to be more independent, so I tried to let her make choices without interfering. Now she’s mad at me for not interfering?”
“What I’m hearing is, it makes you feel like you can’t win. Right?” Jesse asked.
“That’s right.”
“We talked about how you might have felt like that.” He shifted his focus back to Violet. “Not being honest about your feelings really messed things up, didn’t it?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth, Mom. I feel bad that I made you think I didn’t want to be here with you.”
It was a day of many firsts. Violet usually wasn’t much of an apologizer.
“Apology accepted. Thank you, Violet.”
Jesse smiled his approval of their good work. “Violet and I talked a lot about how her behavior affects others. And how it affects your feelings. And that brought up another issue. Violet’s been worried about you.”
“Worried about me?”
“Are you sad or mad that Boone left?” Violet asked.
Jesse’s words about the dangers of not being honest about their feelings made her take pause. “I’m both. How are you feeling?” she asked Violet.
“At first I was really mad. Then I was sad. But after talking to Jesse, I think I’m proud of Boone.”
“Why are you proud of him?” Ruby couldn’t understand where that came from, because she felt a lot of things, and proud was not one of them.
“He’s doing the right thing. He’s trying to be a good dad to his daughter. He didn’t think he could be, so I’m proud of him for really believing in himself for once. Plus, it had to be hard for him because I know he cares about us, too.”
He said he cared, but Ruby didn’t believe that once he said he had to leave. She was so wrapped up in how his choice impacted her that she hadn’t thought about what it had taken for him to make it.
“I wish he could have stayed, though,” Ruby admitted. “That probably makes me a bad person.”
Jesse cocked his head. “Why does that make you a bad person?”
“Because I wanted him to choose me even though I knew choosing me meant he couldn’t choose his daughter. Of course he should have chosen his daughter.”
“You love him, Ruby. You wanted him to choose you. Just like you wanted Violet to choose you. I’m guessing there are other people in your life you wish would have chosen you.”
He was freakishly accurate in his assessment. “Well, the good news is, Violet doesn’t want to move to Nashville.”
“I didn’t say that,” Violet interjected.
“What do you mean, you didn’t say that? You said you want to live with me.”
“I do want to live with you. But I don’t want to move to Seattle.”
Ruby was over Seattle. Even though she’d told Boone she was going by herself, she couldn’t move so far away from Violet. Levi wasn’t going to agree to letting Violet leave the state, and Brittney wasn’t begging her to come, anyway. Her sister had her own family to worry about, and a relationship with Ruby had never been one of her priorities.
“We don’t have to move to Seattle. Your dad seems to be willing to try harder. I think we should show him a little more patience. Maybe he’ll surprise us.”
“But I don’t want to stay in Grass Lake, either,” Violet said. “Two hours is too far to go to see Dad every other weekend. And Boone lives in Nashville. I know you have a job here, but babies are born there, too. Everything we need is in Nashville.”
All of those were good points except one. “We can’t force our way into Boone’s life, Vi.”
“Oh my gosh, Mom. He didn’t want to leave us. He had to. But what if he didn’t have to? What if we were closer? What if he could be there for Emmy and us? People blend families all the time. Didn’t you ever watch The Brady Bunch when you were a kid? Luckily we don’t have to let three boys move into our house if you marry Boone.”
Jesse burst out laughing. “She makes some really good points, Ruby.”
She certainly did. But risking her heart like that wasn’t something she was sure she could do. Could she?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHATEAU WEST WAS neutral ground for Boone and Sara. The hotel had a private room that they could reserve and food that tasted like it was actually worthy of the prices they charged for it.
Sara had agreed to meet there for dinner with their legal representation to discuss the current custody agreement and some tweaks Boone wanted to propose.
Her lawyer was not a Boone Williams fan. Although Boone often wondered if the woman and her permanent scowl were really fans of anyone. She walked in first and was not happy that Boone and his lawyer were already seated.
“It really would have been more appropriate for you to wait outside the room until we arrived. That way we could have chosen where we were going to sit with a tad more fairness.”
This woman could make the color of the sky a debate. “Would you like to sit here, Ruth?” Boone stood up. “I promise I didn’t lick the silverware yet.”
She didn’t find him funny at all. Of course, he doubted she found anyone—or anything, for that matter—funny.
“We’re fine,” Sara said, taking the seat diagonal from Boone so he would have to sit across from Ruth.
“Thank you for agreeing to this meeting,” he said. “I know that there’s been a lot of bad blood between us, but I’m really hoping we can start over. I mean that.”
“I’m here because your daughter asked me to come. She would like to resume visits, not me.”
Boone couldn’t let himself forget where he was and who he was with. There could be no jumping for joy. He and Emmy had talked about visits on the phone a few times, but he hadn’t expected her to mention it to her mother.
“I would like to resume visits, as well. I assume you have some conditions.”
“Number one being the first time you show up to a visit drunk will be the last time you have a visit.”
She was hitting hard right out of the gate. “I have absolutely no plans ever to be drunk again. But I agree that condition should be in there.”
Sara’s eyebrows pinched together. “You agree?”
“Absolutely. I need to be held accountable. Emmy’s safety and well-being are the most important things, and if I jeopardize that, I should lose my privileges to spend time with her.”
She didn’t seem to know how to respond to him when he wasn’t being argumentative. Neither did Ruth.
“We need to think about that. And how it should be worded.”
“It’s your condition, Ruth. What is there to think about?” Boone’s lawyer questioned.
Ruth looked over at Sara, who clearly did not have an answer. “Fine. Second condition...” Ruth and Sara took turns going through all of their concerns and stipulations. Boone didn’t fight any of them. He maintained his cool and forced himself
to take responsibility for the things he had done that had caused Sara to feel like she needed to set those terms.
Once he had agreed to everything, he presented his condition. “I only have one request, and it’s that we do a family dinner once a month on a day when we are all in town and available.”
“What?” Sara’s eyes widened.
“As much as you might wish we’d never met, we are forever bound by our daughter.” Boone searched within himself for some humility. “I have wronged you so many different ways that I don’t blame you for having a hard time believing that I’ve changed. But I don’t know how I can prove to you that I have if we never see each other.”
“You expect me to cook for you once a month?”
“We can go out. We can switch off hosting. It really doesn’t matter to me where we eat. What matters is that we show Emmy that we can be civil. She hasn’t seen that enough, and it scares me. I don’t want her to be afraid to get married someday or to think it’s okay to withhold forgiveness.”
Boone needed her to give him this one thing. If he was ever going to right his wrongs and move forward, he needed this condition.
Sara was trying to figure out what his end game was. Her suspicion was understandable but unnecessary. Boone’s intentions were pure.
“I’ll agree to three months of once-a-month family dinners with a review at the end to see if more should be added or if it does more harm than good.”
“Fair enough. I agree.”
“Is it wrong that I want to pull out my phone and record you saying that, so when you come back saying something else, I can prove you actually did agree to my terms?”
“That was the point of having the lawyers here, Sara. But if you want me to say it into your phone, I’ll do it.”
Ruth stopped taking her copious notes and pushed up her glasses with her finger. “Who are you?”
“I finally figured out what’s important, Ruth. I hope you can do that someday, too.”
She rolled her eyes, and Boone felt a sharp pain in his chest. Things that reminded him of Violet tended to do that. He missed her, and being reminded of her always led to thinking about Ruby.