by Zoe York
“She was always going away. She’s a big movie star, remember?”
“Can we have a party for her?”
“I think she’s too busy for a party.” He took a deep breath. “But you guys could write her a card? And Aunt Olivia could pass it on.”
“She’s staying in Grandpa’s house. Why can’t we just go see her?” Of course Jack would ask that question. It was logical and rational and Ryan didn’t have a good answer at all.
“I don’t want to see her if she’s going away.” Ryan jerked his head toward Gavin, shocked at the emotion in his middle child’s voice. The boy’s eyes were full of tears, and he shoved away from the table. “I’m not writing a stupid card.”
“Wait, Gav—” But it was too late, his son was already sprinting up the stairs, and Maya and Jack followed him, making comforting noises.
Fuck.
— —
As the final week of filming drew to a close, talk starting buzzing about the wrap party in the centre of town—which Ryan had every intention of avoiding. Not just the party itself, but any talk of the party, and all posts about it on Facebook. He stopped going online completely, moving through his days like a zombie.
It didn’t mean he actually escaped anything. Everywhere Ryan turned, people had opinions, because no sooner had he blown up his relationship with Holly than the secret slipped out. Jake and Rafe told him he was an idiot and left it at that, but Dani was slower to forgive his secret-keeping. At least the fact that she wasn’t speaking to him meant there was one fewer voice telling him what he should do.
And as the cherry on top of the Nosy Parker parade, Faith just showed up at his house.
“This is probably an invasion of privacy,” he groused as he let her into the kitchen.
“I’m a big Hope Creswell fan,” she said instead of addressing his completely valid point. “So it’s a really creepy small world situation that you were dating her.”
“Do you want coffee?” He wasn’t going to talk about Holly with Faith or anyone else.
“Sure. So like I was saying—”
“Don’t. You can come over here and make sure I’m okay, but we’re not talking.”
“It wasn’t me, by the way. I wasn’t the person who shared the gossip about her being on a date with a local guy.”
“Didn’t think it was. If I did, I wouldn’t have let you in.”
“I don’t think you understand just how visible she is. Probably half that restaurant recognized her. And the way social media works these days…nothing stays a secret.”
“So I’m learning. And it’s a non-issue now.” Which was for the best, because if that was truly the case, he couldn’t be a part of Holly’s world. No matter what his heart or his dick felt, he couldn’t expose his children to that scrutiny.
“Which is why I’m here. Because the chat rooms are humming about how she’s broken-hearted.”
He closed his eyes, glad he was standing at the sink, filling the coffee pot, and Faith couldn’t see his face. He didn’t need to hear that. You already know she’s broken-hearted, you ass. You did it to her.
“So I thought maybe you might be kind of torn up yourself, and need some moral support or something.”
“What part of we’re not talking don’t you understand?”
Instead of being offended, she just laughed. He really needed to work on his growl. “Okay. I don’t know anything about anything, except that keeping stuff inside is deadly.”
He nodded absently. Anything to change the subject. “How’s your kid?”
“Ready for summer vacation. School’s been a challenge this year. Yours?”
Not enough of a subject change, apparently, because his children were broken-hearted, too. “Coffee’ll be done in a second.”
— —
Holly said and did all the right things at the wrap party, but seeing all of Ryan’s friends was hard. So too was realizing this would be the last time she’d see this small town she’d come to love almost as much as one of its most loved families.
After delaying all week—and hoping Ryan would come around, find her, beg forgiveness or at least let her yell at him and point out how moronic he was being—she gave Emmett the go-ahead to book her flight home.
Home. Los Angeles would never feel like home again. Now she knew what a true home felt like—hamburgers for dinner, bedtime routines complete with songs and stories and tickle fights, and friends that kicked your ass if you didn’t go to support groups that had nothing to do with sex addiction and mommy issues.
She’d be back in Canada soon enough anyway. They only had a week break before they re-camped in Toronto for the last phase of principal shooting. She hadn’t decided what to do after that. Joining Liana in Nashville, and then for the last leg of her Asian tour, sounded like a really good idea. Planes, trains, and no more lumberjacks.
“Hope?” Emmett poked his head into her room. “Almost packed up?”
“Yep.”
“You’ve got a visitor.”
She hated the way her heart leapt at that. “Oh?”
“It’s Olivia Minelli.”
“Ah.” Okay. “Send her up.”
Holly carried her larger suitcase into the hallway and was just hefting the smaller one off the bed when Olivia came in. “Hi, Hope.”
“Olivia…” Holly took a deep breath. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Well, no. I mean, I’m not sure.” The other woman screwed up her face and groaned. “I’m not great at this.”
“How about you start by telling me what this is.” Holly leaned on the end of the bed and crossed her arms and watched as Olivia twisted her fingers together.
“I don’t want to meddle. Really. But I thought I should offer myself as a point of contact. For here, I mean. If you might visit in the future.”
Holly shook her head. “I don’t plan to come back.”
“I don’t know what happened. But Ryan’s been through so much. He’s probably prickly.”
That hardly touched the level of hurtfulness he’d exhibited. But she knew Olivia was right on at least some level. “Look, I care about Ryan. And that’s why I’m going. It's just not the right time. He's not ready for a relationship.”
“Please keep in touch. If anything...just keep in touch. I'm not sure if there's anything I could do, but we all care about him, and by extension, you. I mean, I care about you, too. On your own. Oh, jeez, I’m bungling this. But you were good for him. We all saw a change, and we didn’t know what the cause was. And now it’s like he’s right back—”
Holly held up her hand. She couldn’t be responsible for how Ryan was now. He was a big boy, and she wasn’t dead. If he wanted to make things right, he could reach out to her. “Between you, me, and the walls, I love Ryan Howard with all my heart. But he’s not ready. At all.”
“Tell him that,” Olivia said more urgently, her voice pleading now.
Holly winced. Time to bare her soul. “I did. That’s the problem. And now that’s enough of that. But I will keep in touch.” She smiled and pointed at Olivia’s growing belly. “I want to know all about that little one.”
Olivia took a deep breath. “Okay. I also have something to give you. From Maya.”
Holly hadn’t been prepared for that in the least. “Oh?” she asked, her voice thick and her eyes wet.
Olivia pulled a bright pink envelope from her purse. “Here.”
Holly waited until the other woman had left to open it. As soon as she did, she had to close her eyes and let the sobs just wrack her body for a few minutes before trying to read it. Ryan had obviously helped her write it, and that he would do that for his daughter but couldn’t do it for himself made her so angry and sad at the same time.
Dear Holly,
Thank you for the strawberry salad. Good luck with your running and movies. We will miss you so much.
Your fairy friend,
Maya
Below that, Gavin and Jack had written their names, and ad
ded, Her Brothers.
“Emmett,” she called out. “I need paper and an envelope!”
— TWENTY-THREE —
SHE’D really left.
He’d told her to, so he didn’t know why he was surprised. Did you expect her to wear a hair shirt and beg you to take her back? What sort of backwards fucking world do you live in where you get to treat a movie star—or any woman—like shit and still keep her in your life?
He deserved the pain of walking through his in-laws’ empty home, waiting for movers to bring back their furniture. Restore the lake house to it’s pre-Holly look. Standing in the master bedroom, remembering how he’d made love to her and how she’d fallen asleep in his arms. How he’d held her and wished for exactly what she’d turned around and offered him a week later, and he’d lost his mind.
That bed was now gone, and the room was scrubbed clean of her memory, as if she’d never been there. Never marked him irrevocably.
A loud knock on the door downstairs broke him from his misery.
It wasn’t the movers, though. It was Jake.
“Hey, man.” Ryan scrawled a note. Door’s open, bring stuff in. He stuck it on the sliding door and tipped his head up the lane. “Let’s go back up to my place. I’m tired of waiting down here.”
“That’s where I parked.”
They fell into step together, and Jake launched right into why he’d stopped by. “I know you’re not looking for full-time work, but I’ve had a couple of things come up recently. Repeat clients asking for help with little tasks, and I end up losing one of my guys for half a day or more for what is basically a handyman visit. On the other hand, I want to protect those client relationships, so I don’t want to pass that full cost of that guy’s entire daily wage on…so I was wondering if you’d take those jobs—if your schedule allows.”
“Be a handyman?” He was a trained paramedic and soldier. He didn’t hate the idea, but he didn’t love it.
“Be a part of Foster Construction. Do this now, and more later, when you’re ready. Taking these calls would be a favour to me.”
“I do owe you and Dani an awful lot.” Ryan opened his front door and waved his friend inside.
He immediately regretted the decision.
“Owe me enough to talk about your woman?”
“So the job talk was a ruse?”
Jake shook his head. “Nope. I’ve just got things to say on this front, too.”
“I thought you didn’t. I preferred it when you didn’t.”
“Well, bully for you. I’ve lived it, remember? My dad raised us all by himself.”
“I know.” Ryan scrubbed his face with his hands. “I do, okay? I’m just trying to keep it together for my kids, so they don’t fixate on Holly being gone like everyone else seems to be.”
“What exactly happened? In hindsight, it was so obvious that you guys were into each other.”
“We were in different places, that’s all.”
“And you couldn’t find a way to get in the same place as her?” Another head shake.
Ryan was so done with being judged. By his father-in-law for falling for Holly, and by everyone else for not falling hard enough. “It’s not that easy. I’ve got kids to consider—”
“It’s better to have loved and lost applies to kids, too,” Jake said quietly. “I know that’s hard to believe now, but you’re not doing them any favours by shutting her out of your life. Because you’re shutting her out of their lives.”
“They don’t love her yet.”
“But you do.”
“No.” Yes. Maybe. Just maybe…he’d walled up his heart enough that he wasn’t sure. “No,” he repeated, glaring at his friend. “And if I got too wrapped up in her, then that’s even more to the point—I don’t want my kids to fall in love with her only to have her leave them. And I can’t bear to see them lose someone else they love.”
“I don’t know, the way she looked at you, I didn’t think she had any plans to leave.”
But she did. In the end, she’d gone without another word. Because she said the most important words of all and you threw them in her face.
“Sometimes it’s not a choice,” he ground out. His eyes were getting hot and itchy and he was done with this conversation.
“Lynn didn’t leave you.”
“Yes she did. She left our marriage, in her head and in her heart, long before she was killed. And I couldn’t get her back. I couldn’t fucking reach her.”
“You guys had problems.”
“I don’t want to talk about Lynn.”
“Then let’s talk about Hope.”
“Her name is Holly, and I don’t want to talk about her, either.”
“You just want to be a miserable ass?”
Yeah. “You know what, Jake? You don’t need to tell me how I could be a better father. I don’t need that shit from you or anyone else. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
He watched his friend shrug and turn to leave. As soon as he was gone, Ryan went to the cupboard where his bottle of scotch had sat untouched for a month.
Pulling it out, he rocked it back and forth between his hands. Then he twisted off the cap, walked over to the sink, and dumped it down the drain.
— —
June had faded into July. The kids were out of school and into camp, which was a relief, because he wasn’t doing a great job of being fun these days, although he was trying.
His friends were still around, hovering on the periphery of his sadness, but they’d stopped talking to him about almost anything that wasn’t kid-related.
He’d bought another bottle of scotch. It sat, still sealed, waiting for his father-in-law to ask for a drink.
Mike and Gloria hadn’t been over a lot, though. They took the kids a fair bit, but always when Ryan had something to do. He’d been doing odd-jobs here and there for Jake, and ran a short weekend course for the Army.
None of it distracted him from how much he missed Holly.
He’d started a dozen emails to her. Some were complete, others just a random thought. All sat, unsent, in his Drafts folder. He’d deleted her contact profile from his phone, then added it again immediately.
He kept waiting for clarity to set in. Faith gave him a knowing look when he showed up to the July meeting, but nothing new dawned while he sat there, quiet the entire time except for his introduction.
Jake had no more wisdom to share, either.
His friends had all tried. He could feel that in them, a frustration with him that he wasn’t getting it, but he wasn’t sure what it was.
In the end, clarity came in a laundry basket. He’d come home after dropping the kids off. Did the dishes, put on a load of laundry, and grabbed the basket of clean stuff that had been sitting on the dryer for a few days. Carrying it into the living room, he plopped it on the couch and started tossing clothes into different piles. Boys size large soccer shorts—Jack. Star Wars t-shirt—Gavin. Maya’s new size-five sundress.
Size five, Lynn. Our baby is growing up. He glanced up at the photo array above the couch. Lynn wasn’t going to talk back to him, but he wanted to see her face anyway. What he saw instead were babies. They’ve all grown up. There weren’t any new pictures to show that, though. The entire wall was a shrine to a time when Lynn was alive.
He needed to let that time go.
He’d been an idiot. Holly had told him exactly that. Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past.
Heavy, angry regret pulsed in his gut, and he lifted Lynn’s picture off the wall. Cradling it to his chest, he sat heavily on the couch and flashed through fifteen years of memories.
I’ll always miss you. Always love you, baby. But it wasn’t the same love any more. He could remember the passion that started their marriage. But the special part of his heart that ached for a partner was one hundred percent Holly’s now. Cruel irony to realize that four weeks too late.
A knock at the kitchen door interrupted his fugue. “
Come in!” he hollered.
Carrying Lynn’s picture, he headed into the kitchen, slowing when he realized his visitor was his father-in-law, and he didn’t look good.
Ryan took in the drawn expression on Mike’s face and rocked back on his heels. “What’s wrong?”
“Gloria told me to do this weeks ago, I want you to know that,” the older man said, exhaling roughly.
“Do what?” Ryan set Lynn’s photo on the kitchen table and crossed his arms.
Mike glanced at the picture, then back at Ryan. Unease was written all over him. “When the movers brought our furniture back, they found this in the house.”
Ryan took the plain white envelope. It had his name and the kids’ names written in neat letters on the front. His heart pounded in his chest. “I did a walk-through before they arrived. I didn’t see anything.”
“It was in one of the kitchen drawers. Maybe she didn’t want you to find it right away.”
Ryan bristled, his fingers itching to open the envelope, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Mike. “And you decided to keep it from me?”
“I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. It was wrong.”
“You’re damn right you shouldn’t have.” Ryan heard his voice crack; it was like he was listening to himself have this conversation, when in his head he was just yelling get out get out get out so he could open it up. “You have no idea what’s in this envelope. It has your grandchildren’s names on it. You kept it from them.”
It was lucky for Mike that Ryan was all out of fiery outbursts. He watched with a sense of cold detachment as his father-in-law left, but as soon as he was alone, something inside him snapped and all the fear he’d locked away—the fear that had pushed Holly away—flooded his body. Shaking, he opened the envelope.
Inside was a letter for the kids, thanking them for the card, and promising to always respond if they sent her more. She included her Los Angeles address. Behind that letter was another, thicker one. Ten pages, written on notepad paper, and one short note on plain white paper attached to the front.