I knew I’d see him, of course I did. I just hadn’t realized quite how tentative my grasp on my own resolve really was. Just hearing that voice made me want to give up all my plans and beg Michael to give us a chance, to see that we were better together.
But he’d been the one to make the choice. And I needed to accept that my own life did not lie here in Singletree in a ridiculously large old house.
“Thanks,” Michael said again, and too late, I realized he and Liam were coming out the back door. I sprang into the bush next to the door, crouching and then realizing a few seconds too late that the bush had dropped its leaves for winter, and I was essentially kneeling behind a pile of twigs. Michael’s head swiveled to where I was hiding, and his face showed his surprise at finding me there. “Ah, hi,” he said, his brows knit together.
I stood, brushing myself off to free my gauzy dress of twigs and dead leaves, and tried to look composed. “Um. Hi.”
“Caught the coons,” Liam told me, holding up two long black boxes.
“They’re in there?” I asked, momentarily distracted from the way my heart was beating around in my chest like a trapped bird.
“Yep.”
“And where will you take them?” I asked him.
“Out to the woods. Hopefully they’ll get set up out there and won’t be back to bother you none.”
“Oh. Okay.” I felt Michael’s eyes on me as I quizzed Liam, and suddenly wished I could think of many more raccoon-related queries to keep Liam talking so I didn’t have to talk to Michael. But I was out.
“Just bill me,” Michael told Liam, and the tall man nodded and left.
“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” Michael said to me. The blue of his eyes looked deep and heavy in the fading light, and I had an urge to cup his cheek in my hand. He looked weary and sad. Much like I felt.
“I promised Daniel,” I said, feeling other words crowding up my throat. But I wouldn’t let them out. I was tired of being the woman men gave up easily, and I wasn’t going to beg.
“Right,” he said. “Listen, ah—“
“No.” I interrupted him. “Let’s just get through tonight. I’m leaving tomorrow, and then we can just coordinate at a distance. It’ll be fine.” I spun on my heel and retreated around the side of the house, fully aware that I was acting like a child. But with my heart in tatters in my chest and my sanity similarly frayed, it was the best I could do.
Night fell soon enough, and the purple lights sprang to life around the yard. Daniel and his friends greeted guests at the gates and walked them through the house along the path we’d set up. You could hear shrieks and screams as the jump scares and spooky surprises worked their magic, and I was more than happy to stick by the front gates and distribute candy as our guests left, laughing and smiling over the fun we’d planned. I imagined that in the future, my Halloweens would be slightly less family-oriented. New York City didn’t really lend itself to high school fundraisers at big ancestral houses.
As our visitors became fewer and further between, some of the helpers began to depart, until finally it was just me, Dan, and Michael, tidying up the yard and putting the house back together.
I was picking up dropped candy when Michael approached me, the ghostly lighting making him seem almost ethereal.
“Listen, Addie,” he said, his voice soft, raspy, almost like it pained him to talk.
“Michael, don’t.” I didn’t think I had the strength for almost anything he might say. But there didn’t seem to be any stopping him.
“I can’t just let you leave,” he went on, undeterred. His strong hand wrapped my wrist, as if to keep me from running, and warmth shot up my arm, making me feel hot all over. And confused. What was I doing?
“I need to tell you why I said what I did, why I acted that way. I was confused. It’s just, I’ve lived my life one way for a long time, thought about things one way,” he paused for a breath and I pulled my arm away. I couldn’t think when he was touching me. “And then Shelly—“
“I know,” I said. “Listen, I can’t do this. I just can’t. I can’t talk to you right now. It’s all too hard.” I turned away from him and practically sprinted out the front gates and down the hill to where I’d left Mom’s car at the curb. I couldn’t get away from Singletree fast enough. I needed a fresh start.
Another one.
33
Ghostly Departures
Michael
I watched Addie walk away, her white dress almost mocking in its ghostly beauty, it’s symbolism of a fated love between a Tanner and a Tucker. Maybe something like that only happened once, I figured. And our love was closer to the Romeo and Juliet kind than the Lucille and Robert kind. Star crossed, for sure. Maybe Filene just didn’t understand the complications that would arise between us.
“Where’d she go?” Daniel asked as I came back inside the house, which was still draped in cobwebs and fucking creepy.
“She left,” I told him.
“But I thought you were apologizing.” Daniel’s eyes were big and sad, and I realized that he had become very invested in my relationship with Addie—he wanted this to succeed. I’d believed it had upset him when he saw us kissing, that he’d thought I was betraying him somehow, but the opposite was true. And now I was failing my son again because I didn’t have what it took to get the girl back.
“Some things are just too complicated to work,” I told him. “Sometimes it just isn’t as easy as you want it to be.”
He shook his head, his big eyes widening farther. “She loves you, Dad. I know she does.”
Did Addie Tanner love me? I didn’t know. There had been moments when I’d held her close, felt her wrap around me, body and soul, and thought it could be true. But we hadn’t had a chance. We’d never said those words, or anything close to them.
“No,” I told my son as we sat at the kitchen counter. There was a little pile in the center—my watch, the missing ring, a few other shiny items. “It’s for the best. I can focus on you and me now,” I said, but I heard the hollow mistruth in those words.
“That isn’t what either one of us wants,” he said. “I want you to be happy. And I want to eat pizza with Addie and watch movies.” His big eyes shone, filling with tears. “I think maybe I love her too, Dad.”
My heart twisted inside my chest, aching and pulling, trying to find a quiet corner to curl up in to escape the pain. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that white dress disappearing again. Addie disappearing from my life.
“I know you love her,” Dan said, his tone almost accusatory. “And if you say you don’t, you’ll just be lying.”
I stared at him. He was right, of course. In the weeks spent cleaning and painting, hammering and tiling, I’d lost parts of myself. To this house, to the process, to the chance at something new. But mostly, to Addison Tanner. I did love her. But of course I’d been too afraid to even acknowledge it to myself.
“Maybe,” I admitted to my son. “Maybe I do. But it’s too late tonight to do anything about it. Let’s go to bed.”
“Does that mean you’ll do something about it tomorrow?” Dan asked, bouncing on his chair as one of his hands reached forward and gently pushed the old ring out of the little pile to rest in front of me. I ignored it.
“We’ll see.” The oldest Dad answer in the books came out of my mouth without me even thinking about it. It was second nature, routine. And maybe that was part of the problem. I’d been stuck in this routine for so long I couldn’t even see the way out.
As Daniel’s face fell—because all kids know ‘we’ll see’ usually means no—I stopped myself and dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Dan.”
He looked up at me. And I saw then the way his cheeks were starting to sharpen, the dark eyes that were becoming deeper, older even. The chin that no longer had the little boy softness. My son was growing up. Maybe it was time I did the same.
“Yes. Tomorrow I’ll do something about it.”
His face broke into a wide smile then, an
d my son said, “I’m proud of you, Dad.”
34
The Train to Crazytown
Addison
Taking the Amtrak into Penn Station on Halloween had been a mistake. I’d changed out of my wedding dress, but I would have fit in better had I left it on, along with the ghoulish makeup I’d been wearing. The Amtrak was populated with ghosts and zombies, vampires and more Avengers and Superheroes than I could stomach.
I stuck my nose in a book and pretended to read, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart, in fact, was broken.
Part of me thought I shouldn’t have left at all, that if I wanted Michael Tucker, I could tug up my big-girl pants and just tell him so. But the sting of rejection was just too fresh, and he’d basically already told me there wasn’t a place for me in his life. I couldn’t risk being told, once again, that I wasn’t worth choosing.
The closer I got to the city, the more I missed Singletree and all the charm my little town held, even without a certain Tucker. I’d come back because I knew I’d been happy here once. I’d designed a life for myself here once. And now I was trying to fit myself back into that life, but I already knew we’d both changed shapes and I wasn’t going to fit. There were new angles and curves to me that hadn’t been there before Luke left me, before I’d fallen in love with Michael Tucker.
Still, I had committed. I’d had to do something.
So I stepped onto the platform at Penn, immediately swept up in the fecund subway steam, the swell of humanity pressing up the escalators to the concourse. I let the crowd carry me along, up to the subway entrance, and then I rode the red line up to Eighty-Sixth Street, where my couch awaited. Janet had said I was welcome to come tonight, though she and her boyfriend would be out until late.
And as I stood in the crowded subway car after midnight, swaying as the train jolted and turned, I realized I might be the only person not going out that night. New York City was always pulsing with life, but any opportunity for publicly sanctioned costume wearing was a special day—and the citizens took full advantage of the chance to let freak flags fly high and proud. There were far more costumed subway customers than non-costumed folk at this hour, and it made the entire world feel surreal and a little bit insane.
I walked to the building where Janet lived and spoke to the doorman. She’d left my name downstairs with a key, and I went up to the ninth floor, carrying my heavy bag through her apartment door and finally setting it down in the quiet of her space.
Janet was another analyst at my firm, and she was doing very well. She’d bought her apartment last year, and I’d been here once for the housewarming party. Now, in contrast to my mother’s cottage, and the huge mansion on Maple, it looked tiny and meager. And the city outside the windows that had once felt vibrant and wild seemed dirty and exhausting.
Maybe I couldn’t do city life anymore.
Either way, it didn’t matter now. I laid down on the couch, which Janet had made up for me, and closed my eyes, falling asleep without even brushing my teeth or removing my jacket. Sometime in the middle of the night, Janet came in, giggling, with a male voice accompanying hers.
“Shhhh,” one of the whispered dramatically, and once they’d shuffled through and closed the bedroom door, I got up, got dressed for bed, used the bathroom and laid back down.
I awoke late, to a dreary gray Sunday morning. Janet shuffled down the hall a few minutes after I’d used the bathroom, rubbing her eyes.
“Hey,” she said. “How are you, Addie?”
“Well, I’m sleeping on a couch,” I said. “So I guess I’ve been better. Thanks so much for letting me stay.”
“It’s really no problem,” she said. “Hey, could you grab the door when it buzzes? I ordered coffee and bagels. I’m gonna try to wash the alcohol from my skin with a quick shower, okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
An hour later, I sat at her small table with Janet and her boyfriend Allen, eating bagels and drinking coffee. Though my mom’s bakery was wonderful, this was one thing I really did love about New York City.
“That’s pretty,” Janet said, touching the slim silver bracelet on my arm.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, slipping it off. “It was in the house, the one I told you about.” I showed it to her, turning it over so she could see the engraving.
“To Lucille,” she read. “Our love defies boundaries. Robert.” She raised her eyes to me in question.
“It’s this beautiful love story between two people from families that hated each other. Kind of like Romeo and Juliet but without all the suicide.”
“Oh,” she said, handing it back.
“Lucille and Robert’s daughter gave us the house,” I explained.
“Some gift,” Janet said, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah.” I tried not to think about what she’d hoped to give us—the house and so much more.
“More lox?” Allen asked, pushing the little board toward me. We’d sliced onions and tomatoes and dressed our bagels with lox and capers.
“I’m good,” I said, leaning back in the chair.
“So what happens now?” Janet asked.
“Well,” I said. “I guess I get some version of my job back. At a lower salary and a lesser title.”
Janet cringed. “Yeah, sorry. I tried to tell them you were coming back.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. I upended pens when I left.”
She nodded. She knew what our office was like. “I heard about that.”
Allen laughed. “That a pretty big deal?”
“Oh yeah,” Janet confirmed. “She might as well have come in with a blowtorch.”
“So anyway, I guess I’ll just go to work tomorrow. See if anyone knows someone who needs a roommate.” Even as I said it, my soul seemed to shrivel inside me. I was a thirty-five year old woman. I wanted a family, a house, a dog. I didn’t want to share a one-bedroom apartment with a stranger. But this was my life. I couldn’t live with my mother forever.
35
Lottie Gets Mad
Michael
I didn’t sleep much. Saying you were going to do something was very different from actually figuring out what the thing you needed to do might be. And when the sun rose the day after Halloween, I wasn’t much closer to figuring it out. I needed help.
So when Dan woke up, we walked down the hill to the Muffin Tin, and went inside, beckoned by the scent of cinnamon and pumpkin spice. Lottie was behind the counter as usual, though there was no sign of Addie, and I realized I’d hoped maybe I could just show up, say something off the cuff and fix everything. But it didn’t seem like that was going to happen.
Lottie’s eyes lit when they fell on Dan, but her brows lowered as she looked at me.
“Daniel,” she said, still frowning at me. “It’s so nice to see you again. What can I get for you?”
Daniel ordered a hot chocolate and a pumpkin spice muffin, and Lottie served it up, avoiding my gaze entirely. She smiled sweetly at Dan.
“I guess I’ll have a black coffee and one of those muffins too,” I said.
“I don’t think you will,” she told me.
I laughed. What else could you do when the proprietor of the bakery refused to serve you? “Seriously?”
“I’m mad at you.”
“Clearly.”
Dan wandered to the window with his breakfast, and I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling exhausted.
“She left,” Lottie said, her voice sounding more sad than angry now. “And it’s your fault.”
“She left? Already?” All the ideas I’d had about bumping into Addie in town before she left for New York fizzed away.
“She left last night, thanks to whatever you said to her.”
I was too tired to be defensive, and Lottie wasn’t wrong. “I didn’t get a chance to say anything. She told me not to bother. She said it was all too hard and walked away from me.”
Lottie sighed. “And you didn’t go after her.”
“She asked me to lea
ve her alone!”
The older woman shook her head, her bob staying frozen around her soft face like a steel grey helmet. “Men.”
Just then the bell over the door rang and Uncle Victor came strolling in like he owned the place, quite a feat considering the last time he’d been here, he’d been busily attaching furniture to the ceiling.
“Dan!” He boomed, spotting my son in the corner. “Oh, hey Mike,” he said upon seeing me. “It’s a regular Tucker family reunion,” he joked. And then he walked right up to the counter, leaned across it, and gave Lottie Tanner a kiss that I would have classified as a little too long to be coffee-shop appropriate. Besides that, what the actual hell?
Lottie pulled away, fanning her face and blushing madly, and then she said, “Good morning, Victor,” in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard her use.
“Are you two . . .” I gestured between them.
“Yes we are,” Lottie said, confirming whatever she thought I was indicating in my speechlessness. “Not all Tucker men are terrible at expressing themselves.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. My uncle had never said a whole lot that I could recall that didn’t involve yelling at the football games he watched on television or at Virgil and Emmett.
“I am not, and you had better figure what you’re going to do to get Addie to come back here, young man,” Lottie said, finally letting loose. “She only thinks she wants to go back to that stinky big city, but I know better. She wants to be here. With you, for God only knows what reason.”
I sighed. It seemed everyone knew my business long before I did. That said, I was pretty sure I needed their help. “Okay,” I said. “I give up. Tell me what to do.”
“Let’s get some muffins and sit down,” Lottie said, finally giving in and letting me have a muffin. She called Amberlynn from the back to work the counter, and we all sat around the table Dan had claimed by the window.
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