“Let me be the judge of that.”
The temptation was strong. She had a pretty good idea that Moxie had figured things out already. But if she hadn’t confirmed things with Hank last night, she certainly wasn’t going to do so now with Moxie.
Moxie sighed. “You ever have a splinter, Brynn?”
The question was so unexpected that Brynn nodded in agreement before she even realized it.
“Good. So you know that while the splinter is stuck, it hurts like a mother. If you pull it out, things might be tender for a while, but eventually it will heal. But if you don’t pull it out, what happens?”
“It gets infected.” The sick feeling in her stomach strengthened her suspicions. Moxie’s cat-and-mouse comparison had been spot on.
“That’s right. It festers. And what are you left with? A messy, slimy wound that’s worse than it had to be. Takes a hell of a lot longer to heal, too. So what of it, Brynn? Are you going to help my family get rid of this splinter now, or are you going to push it underground until it explodes?”
What did explosions have to do with splinters?
“I’m guessing you promised Taylor you’d keep silent. I respect that. Just nod. Is she in love with Carter?”
Brynn was certain she gave nothing away—she didn’t so much as blink—but Moxie crumpled a little anyway.
“Ah, hell.” The chair creaked as she leaned back. “I wouldn’t have minded being wrong just this once.”
“But I didn’t—”
“That’s right. You didn’t do anything because you knew what I was going to ask. If I was wrong, you’d-a been jumping out of your chair asking what the hell I was smoking.”
Despite everything, Brynn couldn’t help but smile. “I can truthfully say that I never would have asked that.”
“And that’s all you’re going to say?”
“If you suspected something like this—” Brynn chose her words carefully, seeking to avoid flat-out confirming Moxie’s theory “—why did you send Carter to the conference?”
“The truth had to come to light. If it hadn’t, and Taylor went ahead and married Ian... Well, there’s your slimy mess, for sure.”
“But you didn’t say anything.”
Moxie snorted. “Good God, child. You think anyone would have listened to me? One wrong word and they would have been so deep in pretending there was no problem that there would be no getting to the truth. It had to come from them. All I could do was put the pieces in place and let them make the moves.”
Why did those words have a familiar ring to them?
“But it doesn’t matter anymore. Taylor is in Charlottetown and—”
“I know that. The question is what’s going to happen next.”
“What?” The ache in Brynn’s stomach turned into an uneasy roll. “But there is no next. She’s gone.”
“Oh, and here I thought you were smarter than that.” Moxie leaned forward. “Taylor isn’t the splinter. Carter is. Well, his feelings for her. Those aren’t going to go away just because she’s taken her cute little behind to the east coast.”
Oh, hell and damnation.
“But surely with her gone...”
“Leaving isn’t always the answer, Brynn.”
Walking away is the only thing you know how to do.
Moxie leaned forward, cutting through the memory of Hank’s angry words. “Listen to me, girl. I know nobody meant for this to get so messy, and that you two cooked up this solution to keep from hurting Ian any more than necessary. That’s understandable. But what do you think will happen when Ian comes home and everyone is looking after him because he lost the woman he loved, and there’s Carter, who lost her, too, but can’t say a thing?”
Mentioning that Taylor had asked her to help Carter would only add fuel to Moxie’s fire. Luckily—or not—Moxie wasn’t waiting for feedback.
“That’s gonna hurt, Brynn, and it’s not the kind of hurt that goes away easy. It’s going to eat at him. It’s going to make him resent his brother, and Ian won’t know why, and if we try to hide this, even though you’d think it should help, I’m telling you, it will only make things worse.”
She was right. Brynn bowed her head as the truth sank into her. Moxie knew love and she knew her family. If she thought it would be worse to stay silent, then the odds were that someone needed to speak up.
“What do you suggest?”
Moxie sighed. “There’s going to be hurt no matter what. The question is how many people are going to end up hurting.”
“You don’t— Are you saying I should tell Taylor to come home?” Home to Carter?
“Hell no, girl.” Moxie reached forward and knocked Brynn on the forehead. “I’m going to tell Carter to haul ass and go after her.”
* * *
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Hank was adding bits of river rock to the stone fence surrounding the house when he heard the slam of a car door. No surprise, given that the cabins had become Comeback Cove’s version of Grand Central as the festival approached. Stages were being assembled. Vendor booths were going up. The cooking tent was in place and the Grenadier cabin had been turned into a living history display, overflowing with photos and memorabilia and period clothing. Hank had gone in there when he returned from his little chat with Moxie, checked out the exhibit she’d suggested on Northstar Sweethearts and shook his head at how she had used it for her own nefarious means.
With all the comings and goings, a slamming door was par for the course. But Brynn had texted to say she was on her way and he wanted to be sure he was out of range when she arrived.
Cowardly? Hell, yeah. But even though he had thought he couldn’t get any more confused when it came to her, it turned out he’d been wrong. Ever since he walked out of Moxie’s office he’d had the weirdest feeling in his gut—like he was missing something big. Something about Brynn. Something about family.
It was probably nothing. It wasn’t like he’d been getting enough sleep lately to be working with a clear head. But until he had a better handle on it, he thought it might be smarter to avoid her.
Though when he spied the Saab sitting in his parking lot, he almost would have preferred Brynn.
Carter had his hands in his pockets and his head down as he picked his way through the tangle of sticks and wires.
“Careful,” Hank called. “You don’t want to fall someplace you have no right landing.”
Judging from the way Carter flushed, Hank’s meaning hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“I know you think I’m an ass—”
“Oh, I’d say it goes a lot further than just thinking.” Hank picked up a slab of limestone, eyed it critically. “Come to think of it, ass is a pretty mild description, too.”
“Believe it or not, Hank, there’s nothing you can say that’s worse than what I’ve said to myself every minute of the day for the past year.”
“A year?” He hadn’t expected that one. “But that was before Ian left.”
Carter placed a hand on the smooth hunk of stone that was currently on top of the portion in progress. “Probably longer, if you want to know the truth. There was always something special about Taylor, but the timing was never right—she was in school, then I was in law school, and there were other people in there. By the time I was done with law school and came back, she was with Ian.” He pressed down on the rock. “My God, Hank, you have to believe I never meant for this to happen. I tried to make it stop. I saw other women, I stayed away from her, I spent extra time with Ian when he was here to help me remember that he’s my brother.... I did everything I could except move, and I was even going to do that once Ian came back.”
“So what changed?” Hank didn’t want to feel sorry for Carter, but damn, if what he was saying was true, it was hard to keep him firmly in the villain camp.
“What changed was that I could see she wasn’t happy. Then Moxie sent me to that conference, and Taylor was doing her damnedest to avoid me and I decided I had to know.”
“You took a hell of a chance.” Hank wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or distressed by that gamble, so he opted to stick with confusion. “Did you think she would ditch Ian and run off with you, all from one little conversation?” At least, he hoped it was just a conversation.
“She had already decided to leave Ian. She said she was on the verge months ago, but Brynn talked her into giving it another shot.”
The worst thing she ever did was listen to me.
No. He couldn’t let Brynn into his head now.
“She went along with it because she thought maybe it would work and everyone could end up happy. Except she didn’t know that I...” He picked up a small bit of limestone and threw it hard, sending it sailing through the air.
“It sucks all around, Hank. I know that. I hated myself, called God some pretty sick names, let poor Jenny in Accounting think we were going somewhere when all I was doing was using her... If there was a good way to handle this, I didn’t find it. I’ve been such an ass that I don’t understand how anyone could even put up with me, but she does. She loves me, Hank. And believe it or not, knowing that is enough to make all the other shit worth it.”
Believe that one? Yeah. He did. After all, how many times had he himself found himself thinking that meetings and rehearsals were easier to get through because they gave him a chance to hang with Brynn? And that hadn’t even been love, just sex and laughs. The real thing would probably take over a life. Transform it. Make a man look at everything in a whole new way.
Kind of like what Moxie had said this morning about him.
Hank whirled around and blindly chose a piece of stone, glad for the ache in his arm when he lifted it too fast. It beat the hell out of thinking about what Moxie had been implying.
“So why are you here?”
“First, to apologize for last night. For being an ass in general and for what I said about you and Brynn. I know you were trying to keep that under wraps and—”
“Save your breath. There’s nothing to wrap or unwrap.”
“Really?”
“Really. And I have a lot of work to do, so if you have anything else to say, could you spit it out and move on?”
“I’m flying to Charlottetown tonight.”
Hank set the stone down too fast and narrowly missed pinching his fingers. “Son of a— What the hell, Car?”
“Moxie marched into my office and read me the riot act. She said... Well, to be honest, most of it didn’t make sense. She kept going on about splinters and infections and—anyway, she made me see that keeping quiet, pretending, could be worse in the long run than being honest.”
“Sure. I bet Ian would say so, too.”
“No, he didn’t.”
That one left Hank gaping. “You told him?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s my brother. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life resenting him for something that wasn’t his fault.”
“But why would you—” Hank began, then shook his head. “Let me guess. Moxie?”
“It made more sense when she said it.”
That, Hank could believe.
“How is he?”
Carter gave the limestone a shove, setting it wobbling. “About how you’d expect.”
“But you’re going to Charlottetown anyway?”
“Yeah. I am. And if I’m luckier than I deserve to be, I’ll be staying there with Taylor.”
Hank was getting tired of feeling like he’d just taken a fist to the gut.
“It’s the only way,” Carter continued. “We can’t be here, not with Ian. Nothing good could come of that. Maybe in a few years, once we’ve all had time to get past this...” Carter made a strangled sort of noise that Hank assumed was supposed to be a laugh. “Listen to me. Making plans when Taylor doesn’t even know I’m coming out there.”
“So help me, Carter, if you don’t stop dropping bombs on me, I’m gonna shove one of these rocks onto your foot. And I don’t think fancy lawyer shoes have steel toes.”
Carter’s grin was a mere shadow of its usual warmth, but it was familiar enough to set something a bit more securely inside Hank.
“Let me get this straight. You and Taylor have a thing—”
“It’s called love, little brother. We’re out of elementary school. You can say it.”
“Whatever. So you’ve had a thing for her, and you waited too long to man up and talk to her, but you finally did. She decided to do the honorable thing so she broke up with Ian and moved away. But now Moxie has a splinter and that means you had to spill it all on Ian, and you’re flying to Charlottetown to talk to a woman who doesn’t even know you’re on your way?”
Carter’s eyes flitted back and forth as if reading some internal script before he nodded. “In a nutshell.”
“Nutshell. Huh. That sounds pretty accurate.”
“Yeah, it does.”
They both fell silent. Hank squinted at the limestone in front of him, pretending to be noting its shape and size when all he wanted to do was grab it and hold on, because it sure as hell was the only solid thing about this day.
At last Carter spoke. “I know it’s a lot to take in. My head is still spinning, and I’ve gone over it more times than I care to count today, what with Moxie and Ian and Cash and Mom and Dad. But I just keep coming back to something Moxie said—something about, sometimes the only way out of something is to go straight through it.”
“Say what?”
“When Taylor and I decided that nothing could ever come of this—well, we were trying to go around the problem. We thought that if she left, if we kept quiet, then we—the North family—could move on. Except I still love her. That could turn into the elephant in the room someday, and God, Hank, I don’t want to lose Taylor but I don’t want to lose my brother, either. The only way we can get past this is to drag it out in the open, admit it’s there and then find the way through.”
Accept and move on.
Oh, God. Had she been right?
He inhaled, short and sharp. There was a difference between moving on from a bad situation and plain running away. Wasn’t there?
“I gotta be honest, Car. I don’t like any of this.” Especially the fact that he wasn’t sure if he were talking about Carter or himself. “But I think you have a point.”
“Thanks.”
“And I hope— Well, I hope I don’t see you soon. Know what I mean?”
A sad sort of grin split Carter’s face. “I think that’s one of the nicest things anyone has said to me all day.”
“Yeah, well, don’t let it go to your head.” Hank glanced up at the sun. “I’d better get back to work now. It’ll be time to get Millie pretty soon.”
“Yeah. Say goodbye to her for me?”
Oh, that was going to be a picnic. Millie was still trying to understand why Brynn had moved out and Taylor wasn’t going to be Auntie Taylor anymore, and now he was going to have to explain that the aunt thing might happen after all.
“I will. But the way things have been changing around here, I might start by telling her you’re on vacation.”
“Can’t blame you for that one.” Carter shifted. “I’ll get out of here, then. Bye, Hank. I’ll keep you posted.”
Hank nodded. “Have a safe flight.”
Carter stepped forward, hesitated and turned around. Hands in his pockets, he trudged back toward his car.
Hank looked from his brother to the wall taking shape beside him.
“Shit.”
He pulled off his work gloves and sprinted down the path. “Car! Wait up!”
When Carter turned around, the hope on his face was almost more than Hank could stand to see. He solved the problem by throwing his arms around Carter.
“Good luck.” He thumped Carter on the back, hard.
Carter nodded against his shoulder. Hank was pretty sure he knew why his well-spoken brother was staying silent.
After a moment, he stepped back, his hands still gripping Carter’s shoulders. “One piece of advice.”
Carter cleared his throat. “Yeah?”
“If you want to make this work, for the love of God, keep your hands off her Pop-Tarts.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT WAS THE damned tulips that did her in.
Brynn was holding it together fairly well, all things considered, until she arrived at Sam and Libby’s on Sunday night for a quick visit. She had way too many tasks on her list to be paying a visit to anyone other than contractors, electricians or vendors, but apparently Casey had started believing she was gone again. She would be leaving soon enough. She didn’t need to cause her one and only nephew extra distress right now.
She rearranged her schedule, woke an extra hour early to deal with some of the never-ending emails, did a quick site check—taking care to time it for when she knew Hank and Millie would be at church—and then drove to Sam’s place. She pulled into her usual spot and hopped out of the car with a determined smile on her face. She would be cheerful, dammit. Cheerful and laughing and totally focused on Casey, who needed her.
Nice to know someone still did. Though if she were being honest, she would have to admit that Casey wasn’t the neediest one in this equation.
But as she walked down the rock-lined path to the house, her eye was caught by a burst of color beneath the leafy maple. The first tulips had opened. Fiery red, sunshine yellow, deep orange—they tugged at her, practically demanded that she wander over and drink them in.
Until she saw the purple ones. Double tulips, streaked with hints of pink, so fat and full they could easily be mistaken for peonies. And her brain decided to throw a memory in her path, just in time for her to stumble over it: her and Mom, the first spring after that terrifying fall and winter, when they were just starting to believe that Mom might beat the cancer after all. Mom had sat on a blanket in the mild May sunshine and instructed Brynn as she weeded around the purple tulips that had popped up that year.
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