by Darcy Burke
Derek grinned. “Yeah. What can I say? When you know, you know. Right, Tori?”
Tori, who’d also undergone a speedy courtship capped off by a secret Vegas wedding, leaned over the counter and high-fived Derek. “Absolutely.”
Liam snorted. “Whatever. Just leave Aubrey out of the conversation, please.”
“Why?” Sara asked, closing one of the dishwashers. “She’s awesome. You could do a lot worse and not much better.”
Liam uncrossed his arms and lifted them. “I’m not looking for a girlfriend! But if I were, I’d take your suggestion under advisement.” Because he agreed—Aubrey was awesome. And so many other things.
Sara smiled. “Good.” She closed the other dishwasher and programmed them both. “I’m done.” She looked around at the others in question.
“Me, too,” said Tori.
Derek nodded toward them. “You go on ahead. Liam and I will sweep up.” He went to the pantry to fetch the broom and dustbin.
The girls left, and Derek started sweeping while Liam finished the counters.
“What’s the real story with Aubrey?” Derek asked.
“Does it matter? Sounds like you’ve all drawn your own conclusions.”
“No, we haven’t. I have zero opinion other than I like Aubrey, and I obviously like you. Though sometimes I wonder why.” Derek tossed him a sarcastic smirk.
Sometimes Liam wondered why, too. Aubrey was great, and she deserved to be someone’s girlfriend in precisely the way Derek had said. Liam wasn’t sure what he deserved. “I’m not to that point yet—for that intimate, potentially forever relationship you just described.”
Derek paused in sweeping to look at him. “And she is?”
She’d said she was looking for Mr. Right, and she didn’t want to be tied up with Mr. Right Now and maybe miss him.
Liam nodded.
“Then you should probably leave her alone.” Derek held up a hand. “Not that you aren’t, but if you aren’t . . . just something to think about.”
He’d been thinking of little else.
They finished cleaning up and headed downstairs. Liam lost himself in the show while it was on—thank goodness for fictional tragedies to take your brain offline—but as soon as it was over, the specter of Aubrey rose hard and fast in his mind.
Derek was right. He should leave her alone.
He looked around the theater at his family, at the couples, at the happiness and love filling the room. He didn’t belong here. He’d moved to Denver to take himself out of the emotional equation, and after Alex had killed himself, it had been the perfect buffer to keep himself safe. The longer he was here, the more everything threatened to break through that wall. He’d have to do what everyone else was doing—move on, grow up.
He stood abruptly. He wasn’t some kid who couldn’t mature. He owned and ran a multimillion-dollar real-estate development company, for Christ’s sake. And it was past time he got back to it.
THE IMMENSE SENSE of relief Aubrey felt at filing the zoning brief was tempered by the nudge of anxiety caused by how—or if—Liam would respond. She’d e-mailed all of the Archers as soon as she’d filed it and provided them with an electronic copy. She doubted most of them would read it but expected Liam to.
She and Uncle Dave had worked all weekend making it perfect, and she felt great about how it had turned out. It was out of her hands now, at least until the oral argument, which Uncle Dave had agreed to do.
Aubrey refreshed her e-mail again, but still nothing from Liam about the brief or the flying date he’d promised her. It’s not a date, she told herself. Then she stood up from her desk to get another cup of coffee.
Tori appeared in her doorway. “Hey!”
Aubrey smiled in greeting, surprised to see her. “Hi, what are you doing here?”
“I wondered if I could take you for a celebratory cup of coffee. Since you filed the zoning brief.”
Just like she’d told Liam, Aubrey was reluctant to celebrate anything yet, but she wasn’t going to turn down an offer for coffee. “As a matter of fact, I was about to get a refill.” She held up her empty mug.
“Put that down. We’ll walk over to Books and Brew.”
“Sure.” Aubrey set her mug back on her desk and followed Tori to the door, telling the receptionist she’d be back in a bit.
The morning had started cloudy and cool, but the clouds were burning off to reveal a bright blue sky. Aubrey didn’t bother grabbing her jacket. It was only a couple of blocks to Books and Brew anyway.
“It has to feel good to get the brief filed,” Tori said.
Aubrey walked beside her along the sidewalk. It was still a little cool, so she wrapped her arms around herself as they made their way to the intersection. “It does. One step closer.”
Tori nodded. “Have you talked to Liam?”
Aubrey cast her a sidelong glance, but Tori was looking straight ahead toward the main street that ran through town. It was an innocent question . . . maybe. Probably. “No.”
Tori came to a stop at the crosswalk and turned to look at her. The breeze rustled her dark hair, and she tucked a wayward strand behind her ear. “He went back to Denver this morning.”
Aubrey’s gut clenched, and the slight chill she’d felt became a blast of ice that permeated every part of her body. He hadn’t said a word. They’d exchanged impersonal texts on Friday, both of them saying they’d enjoyed themselves. It was the same thing they’d always done: hook up, bask in the afterglow, go their separate ways. Repeat.
Only she hadn’t intended to repeat. She’d been so stupid to think she could allow herself just one more night without there being emotional consequences. Every time they were together, she became more vulnerable.
She should have shut him down. She’d tried, but the truth was she’d wanted one more night with him. She’d done it for herself, and she wasn’t going to regret it.
They walked across the street and into Books and Brew, which was on the corner.
“Are you okay?” Tori asked as they made their way to the counter to order.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Aubrey stepped forward and ordered a latte.
Tori asked for a black coffee and paid for the drinks, then they found a table next to the wall.
“I thought you and Liam were maybe seeing each other,” Tori said.
Of course she did. Sara had said as much the other day on the phone. “That would imply we were dating. You remember what I drank to that night, right? You weren’t that drunk, if I remember correctly.”
“So it was just sex.” Tori pursed her lips. “Liam’s such a jerk.”
“Hey, I knew what it was. He never promised me anything, and I bailed as soon as I realized where things were going.”
Tori raised her eyebrows. “Nowhere?”
Aubrey laughed softly to cover her inner sadness. “Exactly.”
The barista called their names, and Tori jumped up. “I’ll get the drinks.”
Aubrey considered changing the topic when Tori returned, but why bother? It actually felt good to talk about this with someone who knew Liam, someone who understood his . . . issues. Or whatever.
Tori came back with the drinks and set them on the table before sliding back into her chair. “Can I ask how long you’ve been . . . what, hooking up?”
“Yep, hooking up is exactly right.” Should she tell her the truth? That they’d jumped on each other in a fit of anger and grief? Opting for a less provocative description, she said, “Not too long after Alex died. When Liam would come to town, we’d get together. Not always intentionally, but we always seemed to end up—‘in bed’—together. Then we actually planned to meet up at the Dave Matthews Band concert weekend last Labor Day.”
Tori sipped her coffee. “Really? That’s usually his dudes’ weekend.”
Just like it was usually Aubrey’s girls’ weekend. “That’s when it became clear—to me, anyway—that I wanted more than he did.”
“I take it you wan
t a boyfriend?”
Aubrey sampled her latte. It was still pretty hot. “Yes. I’d actually like a husband. A family. I’m ready to settle down.”
Tori stared at her. “Wow, that’s so foreign to me.”
Aubrey laughed. “But you’re married!”
“No one was more shocked than I was.” Now she laughed, too. “I wasn’t ready to settle down at all. I had a rockin’ job, a crazy bright future, things were movin’ and shakin’.” She snapped her fingers. “Then I met Sean, and they started moving and shaking in an entirely different way. He completely swept me off my feet. Still, I didn’t think I’d change my trajectory. To be honest, we jumped headfirst without really mapping that part out.” She looked down at the table for a moment. When her gaze came back up, it held the faint sheen of tears. She blinked several times. “Then Alex died, and everything came to a crashing halt. I didn’t know you before that, so maybe you didn’t realize that I was very different after he died.”
Aubrey fought the urge to reach across the table and hug her. “I knew. I might not have known you personally, but Alex told me enough about each of you that I felt as if I sort of knew you.”
“Is that because of the letters?” Tori’s question was soft, tentative.
Alex had written each of them letters and entrusted them to Aubrey with explicit instructions on when they were to be delivered. “Not really. I didn’t even know about those until he died. You understand that, right? I had no inkling he was going to kill himself.” They’d all asked if she had. Liam had gone so far as to say she had to have known.
Tori nodded. “I do. When did you get them?”
Aubrey’s gaze fixed on a poster on the far wall of a sunflower. It was a maybe twenty-year-old advertisement for the Ribbon Ridge Festival. The bright happiness of the sunflower was the absolute polar opposite of what she’d felt when she’d opened that package. “It was quite horrible, actually.” She looked at Tori. “I’m sorry. You can’t want to hear about this.”
“I do.” She circled her hands around her coffee cup. “If you want to tell me.”
Aubrey hadn’t recounted it to anyone except her aunt and uncle. She took a deep breath and decided she needed a fortifying drink of her latte first. “He sent me a package. It was waiting for me that morning. The morning after.”
Tori nodded. “That was the morning after I got married.”
Aubrey couldn’t begin to imagine how Tori had rebounded from that, but then it had taken her the better part of a year. In hindsight, Aubrey was pretty pissed at Alex for instructing her to hold Tori’s until the first anniversary of his death—which she hadn’t done after Evan Archer had convinced her last fall that Tori needed her letter.
“Did you know he called me that night?” Tori blinked again, then cast her head back. “Ugh, some days these tears will stop, right?”
“Evan told me about the call when he came to demand your letter.”
Tori dropped her head, eyes now dry, and her lips curved into a smile. “That sounds like him.”
“He said you missed the call, that you felt unbearably guilty.”
“It’s true. I still do sometimes, but logically I know there was probably nothing I could’ve done. He’d planned everything out so thoroughly. He was going through with his plan regardless. I just wish I knew why he’d called.”
Aubrey did, too. “His letter to you didn’t say?”
Tori shook her head. “It read like he’d written them well before that night.”
“That makes sense. The package he left for me was quite organized.”
“He left it for you? Where?”
“On the front porch of my uncle’s building.” She’d gone into work early that morning, like any other Monday. So early that the building had been locked and dark. She’d walked up the steps and seen the package in front of the door addressed to her. “It was kind of scary, because it was this nondescript brown paper package with my name written in black Sharpie. I thought it was a bomb.”
Tori smiled. “Because you were involved in some sort of dangerous case?” It wasn’t a serious question, and it lightened the mood a little.
“No, it was just . . . weird. But then I saw there was writing in the bottom corner, so I squatted down to read it. It said, ‘It’s from Alex. It’s not a bomb.’ ”
Tori laughed and brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, that sounds just like him.”
“Doesn’t it? Anyway, I scooped it up and took it to my office.” Where it had sat for maybe a half hour, during which she’d made coffee, watered the plants, and glanced through her e-mail. Then she’d turned her attention to the package, and everything had fallen promptly apart.
“What was inside?” Tori asked, sounding almost fearful.
“All of your letters, sealed into envelopes with your names on the outside. The one on top was addressed to me.” She hadn’t thought about that morning in a long time. It was one of those memories you didn’t want to ponder unless you had a tissue handy and didn’t plan on seeing anyone, because your face was going to be splotchy. She could still remember what he’d written, because she’d read it about a thousand times.
Dear Aubrey,
You likely haven’t heard yet, but I died last night. You didn’t realize it, but you were instrumental in helping me prepare everything so that I could leave this world on my terms.
At that point, she’d sunk into her chair and felt as if the world around her were crumbling into ruins. She’d drafted his will. She’d set up his trust. She’d laid out everything in the event of his untimely death. A death he’d been planning. She’d never felt more sick in her life.
In this box are letters to my parents and siblings as well as a detailed list of when they are to receive these from you. I trust you to distribute the letters as I’ve outlined, regardless of whether they might pester you about them. In addition, you’ll communicate the specifics of my will and trust in person at a time mutually agreed upon by you and my parents. I thank you in advance for your professionalism and dependability.
Mostly, however, I want to apologize for lying to you for so long. I am sick. I’ve always been sick. But I’m not terminal. At least not in the way that people think. In my mind, I’ve been terminal since I was sixteen, when I decided that death wasn’t something to be feared, but something to accept and even look forward to. In death, I wouldn’t be sick anymore. I would be free.
It took me a long time to settle on my plans and bring them to fruition, and I never could have done it without you. I expect you will be horrified, maybe angry, but I earnestly beg your forgiveness—not for me, but for you. I don’t want you to carry guilt or sadness. This is what I want. I have no fear and no regret.
Aubrey didn’t recite the letter to Tori, settling instead for just the highlights.
Tears streamed down Tori’s face unheeded. When Aubrey was finished, Tori blinked and wiped at her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Tori said. “I don’t know that he spoke about his illness—his mental illness—like that to anyone. He actually said that he would be free?”
Aubrey struggled to hold back her own tears. “Yes. I sort of like thinking of him that way.”
Tori nodded, sniffing. “I do, too. Excuse me.” She got up, grabbed a handful of napkins from the counter, and came back to the table, where she dumped them in a pile. “Help yourself.”
Aubrey did, dabbing at her eyes.
“He really did a number on you,” Tori said. “I would’ve been so pissed if he’d manipulated me like that.”
“I was, but I was so shocked. The anger took a while. But mostly I was just really sad—especially for all of you.”
“But to leave all of those letters to you to deal with. I mean, we’re kind of obnoxious, us Archers. How many times did I bug you for my letter?”
Aubrey laughed. “Plenty.”
“I’m sure Liam did the same. The only person in this family more Type A than me is him.”
“Actually,
he hasn’t asked me once.” Now that she thought about it, his disinterest seemed odd. Or maybe he was just really patient.
“So he hasn’t gotten his letter yet?”
Aubrey shook her head. In her mind’s eye, she saw the list Alex had left her. It had stipulated very specific instructions, right down to her driving Evan’s letter to him in Longview, and had included mileage compensation in her ongoing fees as trustee. In the general instructions, he’d asked her to keep the list secret but noted that he trusted her to do what was right. That was why she’d given Tori her letter earlier than he’d stated, because it was the right thing to do. She’d be glad when she was done handing them out. That was yet another way she could untether herself from this family she’d come to care too much about. From Liam.
Aubrey took a drink of her latte and fiddled with the paper cup, running her finger along the edge of its top. “Is it odd that Liam hasn’t asked about the letter?” It wasn’t even a letter, as far as she knew. Instead of an envelope, Alex had left him a small box. She wondered if it held a trinket or some memento that was special to them. “I suppose it is, since you figured he had.”
“I’m not sure,” Tori said. “I would’ve thought he’d ask, but now that I think about their relationship, I don’t know.”
“What sort of relationship did they have?” While Alex had told her about his family, and from that she’d been able to tell how he felt about them, there’d always been an odd . . . something when it came to Liam. They were definitely close, but it was like there was a competition or some sort of strain between them.
Tori smiled. “They were peas in a pod, but I guess that’s to be expected since they are—were—identical twins.” She shook her head. “I still have a hard time with that sometimes. Everyone had a sort of buddy—Sara and Kyle, me and Evan, Liam and Alex.”
Aubrey was curious about Hayden but didn’t want to interrupt.
“Since Sara, Evan, and Alex all had challenges, the three of us sort of helped them.”
“But you were the overall manager, I hear.” Alex had told her that.