by Sophie Stern
“And then you met Jake?” I asked. I got the feeling that he hadn’t treated her right, and that rankled me. They’d been together a long time, but from what I could tell, they had never married. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to marry someone as cute and sweet as Cordelia?
“Yeah. Then I met Jake.”
“You were together a long time.”
“On and off for what feels like an eternity. We got a job at the same firm and worked in digital media together. For awhile, it was fine. After a few years, we were more like roommates than anything else.”
That was strange, but not uncommon. A lot of couples would grow apart as their lives moved forward, but in different ways.
Jake and Cordelia hadn’t grown apart, though, I suddenly realized.
“He cheated on you,” I said, finally understanding.
Cordelia didn’t say anything for a long time. I noticed that she liked to take her time formulating her thoughts. It was a good habit. A lot of people spoke too soon and listened too little. Taking a few minutes to consider what she wanted to say was important.
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. Then again, I didn’t really care.”
She bit her lip and shook her head.
“That’s messed up, isn’t it?”
“A little,” I agreed. “It’s not a good sign, anyway. Well, unless you and your partner are polyamorous. It sounds like this wasn’t the case, though.”
“It wasn’t. We were supposed to be monogamous. We were supposed to be happy together. I kind of thought we’d get a happily-ever-after, you know?”
I just waited, watching her. She definitely deserved a happy ending.
“I made a ton of money, though, and I was happy in my career. Then I wasn’t. It was like one day I just woke up and realized that I was in my 30s and that was it. I was in my 30s and I was working at a job where I wasn’t respected and I had a boyfriend who’d fucked every girl in the office. When things ended, I was hurt, but I was more hurt that I’d wasted so much time pursuing things that didn’t make me happy. Sometimes it feels like I’m too old to move forward.”
She wasn’t too old.
“You’re only 31.”
“Yeah. Is that too late for second chances?” She asked.
“Absolutely not.”
I gestured around the bakery. She had spent a lot of time painting, reorganizing, and decorating the space. Hannah had created a homey, wonderful bakery. Cordelia was making it spicy. She was making it an even more wonderful space. Now it seemed not quaint, but sleek.
“You’ve whipped this place into shape,” I said.
“It was nice before.”
“It was charming,” I said. “Now it’s sleek and sexy and even more charming.”
She laughed. Once again, I was caught off-guard by just how wonderful that sound was. I wanted to make her laugh again. Over and over, I wanted to make Cordelia smile. She’d had a hard time. It had been a rough life for her, and while I couldn’t help her reclaim the past, there was a part of me that wanted to help her channel the future.
I wanted to help her take care of what was coming. I wanted to help her figure out who she wanted to be and where she wanted to go.
“Thanks, Coop,” she said. “That means a lot.”
“Anytime.”
“What about you?” She whispered. “What happened to you after high school?”
I opened my mouth to tell her, but suddenly, my phone rang, interrupting the moment. It was James. My little brother didn’t call me too often, but when he did, it was usually important.
“I have to go,” I told her. “Trust me, I’m not happy about ditching you right now. Rain check?”
“Yeah, of course,” she nodded. “Thanks for holding my hair while I puked.”
“Anytime,” I said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So I can take you to dinner,” I said.
“Cooper, it sounds like you’re asking me on a date.”
I grinned. Hell yes. It was years overdue, but I saw an opening, and I was going to go for it. Cordelia wasn’t the only person who worried they were too old for second chances. I worried about that every damn day. I was going to take my own advice today, though. I couldn’t change my past, but I was the one in charge of my future.
“I’m asking you on a date. Will you go out with me, Cordelia?”
The smile she offered told me everything I needed to know.
5.
Cordelia
A DATE.
I was going on a date.
I was going on a real, proper, regular-person sort of date, and I was going with Cooper Clark. Somehow, it seemed like a dream and a nightmare all at the same time. I had a million questions rushing through my head.
Was I ready?
Was this another trick?
Was fate somehow going to taunt me and then throw me under the bus again?
Cooper and I parted ways. I hung up the flyer in the window of my shop. It still felt strange to think of it as my shop and not Hannah’s shop. Still, it was the kind of place where anything could happen – even reconnecting with someone I used to adore, apparently.
My walk home was quiet. When I got back, instead of going into my apartment and taking a long, much-needed shower, I went to the main house to talk to my aunt and uncle. I knocked on the door, and Hannah called out for me to come inside.
“You know, you should check who it is,” I told Aunt Hannah.
“I knew it was you,” she said.
“How?”
“A hunch,” she smiled. Aunt Hannah patted the couch next to her, and I went and sat down beside her. She reached for the remote and turned off the television.
“Where’s Uncle Ray?”
“Sleeping,” she told me.
“Already?”
“He’s tired a lot these days.”
“Not you?”
She smiled sadly and shook her head.
“I don’t have much time left, my dear. I don’t want to waste it on sleeping.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“You aren’t going to fight me?”
“On what?”
“Talking about death.”
I shook my head. No, I wasn’t going to fight my aunt. She was the one facing the end: not me. Who was I to tell her how she could talk? I didn’t know what she was going through or what she was facing. It was up to her how she wanted to handle things from here on out. My only job was to listen to her and help her through all of this as best I could.
“No,” I said. “I won’t fight you.”
“How was your day?”
“It was okay,” I said, wiggling back onto the couch. I tried to make myself a little more comfortable. She watched me carefully.
“Something happened.”
“What?”
“Something happened today,” she said. “What was it?”
“Nothing gets past you, huh?”
“I’m sick,” she said. “Not blind, and not dead.”
“Cooper Clark came by Savored today.”
“Did he now?” She reached for a sip of her water, and she looked over at me.
“Wait a second,” I realized. “You knew.”
Her eyes sparkled mischievously.
“Oh, what are you talking about?” She laughed. “Knew what?”
“You knew he was going to come by.”
“I might have placed an idea in his head,” she waved her hand. “That’s all.”
“What idea?”
“Flyers?” She winked.
Clever girl. Cooper had told me it was his idea. Hannah had a way of doing that, though. I wondered what question she had asked to get him thinking of using the shop as a way to bring more people to the high school’s carnival booth.
“Wait, when did you see him?”
“Cooper comes by every day to check on me,” she said. “Eve
r since he ran into you baking and discovered I was sick. He’s been coming by either on his lunch break or after work to make sure I’m doing okay. He’s been helping your uncle, too.”
“What? I didn’t know that. You didn’t say anything.”
“There wasn’t really anything to say,” she told me. “Cooper is a good man, and he does a lot for this town. It was kind of him to think of a little old woman, but I didn’t want to bother you by telling you.”
“Why would it bother me?” I asked quietly.
She just shook her head.
“All of those years, and you still love him, don’t you?” She whispered.
I swallowed hard.
“You knew?”
“That you were in love with your best friend from the time you were in kindergarten?” She chuckled. “Yeah, I knew. Your mom and I both did. We wondered when you kids were going to figure it out, but then...”
Her voice trailed off.
“Larissa happened,” I finished for her.
“Larissa was never a nice girl,” my aunt said. “She was always looking out for herself. She’s still that way. Your mom and I...well, we wanted to let you make your own choices and your own mistakes. Besides, if we’d told you that she was playing you and Cooper, neither one of you would have believed us.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked. I was a little bit rankled that she hadn’t at least tried to say anything. Shouldn’t she have said something to me? She could have saved me some stress and some anxiety by filling in the blanks for me, but she seemed unconcerned with that.
“Because your mother and I were the same way,” she said. “Only our mom did try to warn us about things, and neither one of us ever listened to her. We both had to learn things the hard way,” Aunt Hannah said. “And you’re like us in that way.”
I thought about that for a moment. My mom? I’d never really thought of my mom as anything but a parent. It was probably because she’d died when I had just started discovering myself. From my perspective, my mom had always just been...a mother. Hearing about her life from before I was around was kind of interesting and kind of wonderful. She and Aunt Hannah had always shared stories and little jokes with me, but I’d never really talked with them about dating. Now, I found myself wanting to know more.
“It wasn’t Larissa’s fault,” I said carefully. “I mean, it was, in a way, but I could have pressed harder. I could have fought harder.”
“That’s a very mature thing to say,” Hannah pointed out.
“Tonight, Cooper told me that he only took her to the dance as a favor to Larissa’s brother. Apparently, he owed him.” I believed him. I wanted to know what Hannah thought. She always knew more about the people of Ashton than she let on.
“That’s true.”
“I thought they dated for years,” I admitted. “Larissa told everyone at school that she did.”
“That was why you were so unhappy your senior year?” Hannah asked. “You never told us exactly what the problem was. We just thought that you missed Cooper.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Larissa told everyone they were a couple. What did my mom think about that? Did she know?”
“She didn’t know what exactly had happened. I think she figured that if you wanted to talk to her, you would.”
“I hadn’t wanted to talk,” I admitted. It probably hurt my mom that I was so closed-off for so long. I think that I figured if I could shut my feelings off, I could start moving forward. That hadn’t worked out so well for me.
“She still loved you.”
“I know. I loved her, too.”
“You know, after your mom passed away, Cooper lost his mom, too. It was around the same time. He used to come by here and talk with me. Sometimes he’d come by the shop, too.”
“So he came back right after college?”
“Yeah. He came back and started working at the middle school, but when the job for the high school principal opened up...well, he was kind of a shoe-in.” She smiled and sipped her water. “Everyone has been very impressed with the way he’s managed to turn things around for the high school. He’s done an incredible job.”
“He was always very charming.”
“He was. So what happened tonight?”
I filled her in on everything. I wasn’t sure what had shifted inside of me, but I suddenly felt it necessary to do a complete information dump. I told her about Jake, and I told her about my job. I told her everything, and then I told her a little bit more. Maybe it wasn’t fair to share so much information with her, but crying and getting it all out there felt good.
It felt really good.
And on some level, it almost felt like talking to my mom. I felt like if Hannah could accept me for everything that happened, than it was almost like my mom would accept me, too. I had screwed up so many times.
“That’s quite a story,” my aunt finally said. Once I was done crying and blabbering and pouring everything out, she hugged me tightly. “Quite a story indeed.”
“It doesn’t sound like you’re judging me,” I pointed out.
“On the contrary,” she said. “I think you’re very brave. Sharing stuff like this isn’t easy.”
“Does it get easier?”
“As you get older?”
“Yeah.”
“Not really,” she said. “Even your uncle and I have a hard time sharing our feelings sometimes.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“Only if you think getting older means you change as a person. Sometimes we do, but in some ways, we’re always the same. Our bodies grow up, but our hearts? Our hearts stay the same.”
“Aunt Hannah?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think it’s too late for me?”
That was the question that was really bothering me. Was it too late? Had it been too long? Had I worked too hard on the wrong things? Had I screwed up in ways that would permanently prevent me from being able to move forward?
I needed to know. I needed to know whether I was a lost cause. I’d wasted so many years working at a job that didn’t bring me joy. I’d spent time with a man who, when push came to shove, hadn’t been there for me. That was all in the past, but I was in my 30s now. I was old enough to have things like a house and a kid and a husband. I didn’t, though. Was it too late?
Hannah looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Too late?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like, am I too old to have a second chance?”
Hannah started laughing. I bristled, slightly offended. Out of all of the possible reactions I’d expected, her laughing out loud at my pain wasn’t one of them.
“Are you serious right now?” She said, shaking her head. Then she laughed some more.
“I mean, I was serious.”
She reached for her water and took a sip. She held up a hand, gesturing for me to wait as she had her drink. Then she sat it back down.
“Cordelia, you’re 31.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said dryly. That was kind of the whole point.
“You’re not even halfway through your life, assuming you live to be 80.”
“So you don’t think it’s too late.”
“Not at all.”
Relief washed over me. I couldn’t quite explain why it was so important for me that she, out of everyone else in the world, accept me. That wasn’t quite true, though. I still saw my mom in her. It wasn’t fair to put that kind of pressure on Hannah. She wasn’t my mom.
“Honey, when I was your age, I felt just as lost and alone as you do now.”
“You did?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Besides, did you know that Ray and I didn’t get married until I was 38?”
“What?” I asked, shaking my head. “How is that possible? That means you got married when I was a kid. I don’t remember a wedding.”
“We never had one,” she shrugged. “Ray and I had been together a long time, but we hadn’t gotten married. We didn’t really want to
make a big fuss about it. One day, we just went to the courthouse and did it.”
“Did my mom know?”
“Not until everything was over,” Hannah smiled. “She was pissed.”
“I can imagine. Mom liked to be involved in everything anyone did.”
“She was a wonderful sister, and she did her best to be a good mom. I’m just telling you this because life happens on a different schedule for each of us, honey. Your mom got married at 19. She had you right around the time she turned 30, and she was so damn happy about that. She and your dad had some great, wonderful years together. Then he was stolen from her. Then she was stolen from us. The world can be a cruel place, love.”
“It can be.”
“But it can also be beautiful.”
“Aunt Hannah?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you open Savored?”
It was something I’d wanted to know for a long time. I had my suspicions. I thought she had chosen to open it as a way to mourn the loss of her sister, but I’d never asked her. Hannah and my mom had been 50 years old when Mom died. It was young to lose a sister, but people died younger. My dad had been younger, after all. I wondered how old Coop’s mom was when he lost her, but I didn’t want to ask. Somehow, it seemed wrong to ask my aunt about that when I could just ask him.
“Why do you think?” She asked.
“You wanted to do something for the community.”
“And?”
“You wanted to honor my mom.”
“I’d finished teaching. I’d taught for 25 years, and I was done. Tired. That happens when you work at the same place for too long. I wanted something new and fresh, and starting a bakery seemed...well, honestly, it seemed simple.”
She laughed.
“I’m guessing it wasn’t as simple as it seemed?”
“Not at all,” she shook her head. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, honey.”
“But you don’t regret it.”
“Nope. Not at all.”
I thought about what she’d said. I thought about all of it: all of the information we’d both shared. How would my life have been different if I’d had this sort of talk years ago?