“That’s the first time you’ve ever said her name to me. Do you know that?”
Startled, he said, “No, I’m sure I—”
Addie shook her head. “So that’s a good thing, you know? Some things don’t get better in time, but some things do. And I know you want things to be better. Or easier. Jake’s a dear, and he doesn’t want to hurt you. I think he really wants you to be proud of what he’s doing. It’s a tribute to you, to your skill at fiddle playing, at fiddle making, as much as it is to his mom and her singing.”
“I am proud,” Will said, his throat tightening up all over again. “Very. I’ve told him that. He knows he has my full support. I just . . . don’t listen to his music much.” Or at all, not if you can help it. It wasn’t something he was proud of. “He sounds so much like her. And that’s a good thing in this world, a great thing. Her—Zoey’s—voice, was how we met,” he said. “She was singing the night I met her, with a little trio, just off base. I was playing with a few of my buddies after her set.” He sighed again, this time in fond remembrance. “I think I fell in love that night. But as I got to know her, those feelings only got stronger. Music was always a strong bond between us. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I am . . .” He searched for the right words to do justice to the immenseness of what Jake’s gift meant to him. “I’m thrilled, relieved, so many things too big to name with words, that a part of her—of Zoey—” he said, making himself say her name out loud, realizing Addie was right. He hadn’t known that he’d protected himself so deeply, buried his grief so deeply, he couldn’t even say her name. It made him feel ashamed. And cowardly. Zoey deserved so much better than that, so much better than him.
Addie laid her hand on his arm again, then pressed her palm to his heart once more, and waited until he could open his eyes and look at her. “Because in Jake, part of her is still here, walking this earth,” Addie said. “I know you have felt saved by that, and terrified by it, too, in equal measure. Maybe . . . just maybe, now is the time to find a way to start celebrating it, too.”
He looked at Addie, knowing his expression was bleak. “I don’t know how, Addie Pearl. If time was going to heal me, wouldn’t it have happened already?”
She didn’t look at him with pity, or even sorrow. What he saw on her face looked more like . . . determination.
She took in a long, easy breath and let it out the same way. He felt himself doing the same, willing a calmness to enter him, to soothe some of the ragged edges.
A smile creased her weathered face, filling her ancient-as-the-hills eyes with a clear, beatific glow. “So, here’s the thing about time, and about healing,” she said quietly, gently, and kindly.
Will waited for her to tell him he needed to find a good counselor and work through the grief he’d bottled up for way too long. He might shock her by telling her he’d already been considering that very thing, quite seriously. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he could use some help. He just had no idea where to turn to find it. And maybe you could have worked a little harder to figure it out.
“Sometimes we just get stuck,” Addie told him. “Or a part of us does. Doesn’t keep us from going on about our daily lives, living, working, appreciating our blessings, overcoming the obstacles. That’s how life is. But sometimes those little parts just stay stuck in the convenient cubbyholes we’ve put them into so we can ignore them. For them, time stands still. We don’t work on them, try not to think about them. Sometimes with neglect, by starving them from being fed any fear, or anger, or pain, they wither and die all on their own. In those cases, time, all by itself, does heal. And when we do take them out and examine them later on, we discover that we have truly moved on and they have no power over us any longer.” She tucked her walking stick in the crook of her arm and brushed her palms together, as if whisking away the last of a few crumbs.
She didn’t have to tell him that his wasn’t one of those cases.
“In my seventy-some-odd years on this earth, I’ve become a firm believer that not everything that’s ever happened to us in life needs to be worked on or sorted out.” She put the tip of her stick back on the ground. “Sometimes the very best thing—the kindest thing—you can do for yourself, is to just forget it, or at least shove it in some dark place and leave it be. Bad things, sad things, doesn’t matter. Let them shrivel up and die.” She leaned both hands on the knob of her hiking stick and held his gaze purposefully, but easily. “Not everything festers if left unattended. And if it’s not affecting your life, your ability to live it as you please, then”—she shrugged—“who cares? The past is the past is the past. Focus on the now, look toward the future.”
“Okay,” Will said, even though he wasn’t sure that that was okay at all. Which made no sense since she sounded like she was making his case for him.
She lifted a hand when he opened his mouth to speak. “The thing is,” she went on, “sometimes, they just stay sealed up, as fresh as they were when we put them there. You can go on getting by for a very long time, with those things boxed up and forgotten, and all is well. Then something comes along and jerks them out of that cubbyhole, rips off the lid, and there they are, just as fresh and alive and powerful as they were the day you stuck them there. That’s the downside, the risk of not dealing with stuff when it happens. Because you can’t always know which ones will die, and which ones won’t, until they get sprung on you, and knock your world sideways all over again.”
“It’s not that I don’t want help, Addie,” Will said.
“I’m not here advocating for help,” Addie Pearl said flatly. “As far I can tell, you’ll either spend time dealing with loss when it happens, or later on when it gets sprung on you. It’s rarely a convenient time, then or now. And hey, maybe you can get away with never dealing with it, so sticking it in that dark, airless cubbyhole can be a risk worth taking.”
He was just plain confused now. “Then what are you advocating?”
Her expression softened. “The thing is, sometimes you think you’re going along, living your best life, content to leave those cubbyholes all sealed up, when the truth is, you’re really not.”
“If this is about Jake needing more of a connection to Zoey—”
“Jake is fine,” she said, waving her hand. “He’ll do fine whether you talk to him about his mom or not. I’m talking about you.”
“Me?” Will said. “I’m fine. My only concern is for Jake. I don’t want to let him down. I—”
“Then don’t,” she said matter-of-factly. “From the sound of it, you aren’t. He’s doing what he loves, finding fulfillment in that. You can’t always be everything he needs you to be, and he can’t always be everything you wish he would be. You’re giving him all the tools he needs, all the love, all the support. He knows it, too. He’s fine. Better than.”
“Then what—”
“You’re not fine.” She stepped closer, reached up and cupped his cheek, and looked deeply into his eyes. “Honey, Jake will be all grown up and gone before you know it. If you think the years have flown by, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Right now he’s figuring out how to be the man he wants to become. So, naturally, he’s looking toward the two people who made him for some answers. While he’s busy finding his, I can’t think of a better time for you to maybe find a few of your own. Like, what kind of man you want to become, when you’ve only got yourself to fend for and take care of.” She patted his cheek knowingly, almost cheerfully, as she stepped back. “Then you’ll both be ready for what comes next.”
Chapter Six
“That’s very sweet of you to offer,” Hannah told Jake as she guided her Jeep up the steep driveway that led even higher into Hawk’s Nest Ridge. “But Addie Pearl isn’t expecting another mouth to feed, and I—”
“She always makes enough to feed twice as many people as she expects.”
“And probably depends on those leftovers,” Hannah told him, not allowing herself to be swayed by his eager, boyish charm. “So she only has to cook for an arm
y every other night.”
Not to be so easily outmaneuvered, Jake said, “Well, I’ll only have one serving then, so it won’t matter either way.” He grinned triumphantly.
“And if you saw how much he can put away, you’d know that extra helping would feed you and two of your closest friends.” This from Bailey, who was riding shotgun.
Hannah caught Jake’s sheepish shrug in her rearview mirror, as he didn’t deny the truth of that statement. She couldn’t help it—she laughed. “Very gallant of you, kind sir,” she told Jake as she parked the car in front of Addie’s beautifully restored log cabin.
They all climbed out and closed their doors. Jake and Bailey started toward the front porch, but Hannah stopped to take in the full impact of her surroundings. “Oh my, would you look at this,” she breathed as she took a slow turn around. “The view from inside must be breathtaking,” she said, feeling her heart fill as it did every time she stepped outside the farmhouse. Soaring pines crowded the log cabin on either side and filled in most of the front yard, such as it was. The parts of the property that weren’t pine-needle-carpeted moss were filled with jutting mounds of dark gray granite boulders and flat, silvery-green shale.
The backyard, on the other hand, was nonexistent. In fact, it appeared as if the ground fell away in a sheer drop right behind the house. There was a deep deck that wrapped from the side of the house around to the back, much like the one Jake had described at his house. The McCalls’ house, Hannah knew, was down closer to Blue Hollow Falls, perched on a wooded hill that sloped all the way down to Big Stone Creek. Jake had told her that the wide mountain stream roared right through their property. The sound of it, rushing and tumbling past, was the white noise that Jake said he and his dad fell asleep to every night. Not that she’d ever been there to hear it for herself. Or wanted to go. Liar.
“Do you have time to walk down the trail to see my sheep?” Bailey asked, moving back to where Hannah stood.
“It’s kind of steep,” Jake said, once again glancing somewhat despairingly at Hannah’s footwear.
She saw his gaze and grinned, lifting one foot so he could see the bottom of the flat, Teva-style sandals. “Check out the tread,” she said proudly. “Good for hiking and, well, just making it around my own property.” She looked past Jake and Bailey to where the trees parted beside the house and noticed what looked like a trail leading into the woods, then disappearing rather abruptly as the property dropped off. “I’m not sure about the climbing part, though,” she admitted, her smug smile fading. “I have my rubber boots, but though they are great for mud, I’m not thinking they’re going to be great on steep terrain.”
She knew what she was talking about, at least as far as the mud was concerned. The weather for the previous week had been a steady, thumping downpour, turning the pathways between the rows of lavender bushes into a thick, gloppy, muddy bog. Avery had assured them the lavender would be fine; the drainage system that had been set up as part of the cultivation plan back when the lavender had first been planted years ago would still function as intended now that they’d cleared everything out.
Hannah now knew that the fields had been planted so that the rain and snowmelt would naturally drain downslope, with the run-off flowing into the large pond at the bottom of the hill, and the small creek beyond. If the pond flooded and the creek breached its banks, both of which had happened this week, the pond and creek were situated far enough downhill that the water didn’t threaten the plants or any of the buildings on the property. Someone had been very smart when designing the layout of the farm, for which Hannah was continually grateful. She wouldn’t have known to even think about such things.
Those same downpours had kept Jake and his dad from finishing up the work on the chimneys at Lavender Blue. Will had been off working one of his indoor jobs while the weather was poor, so she hadn’t seen him in over a week. Not that she missed seeing him. Liar, liar.
“It’s not so muddy up here now,” Jake said. “The water runs straight down into the springs, and the wind dries us out pretty quickly. But if you’d rather wait until you get some hiking boots, maybe next time?”
He said it so hopefully, Hannah didn’t want to remind him that she was only up there to drop him off, along with a poster she wanted to give Addie Pearl announcing Lavender Blue’s big, or hopefully big, “Welcome to the Farm” event slated for the last weekend in June. She’d done the artwork herself, and Avery had helped her with the graphics; then they’d had a stack of them printed down in Turtle Springs.
Hannah had dropped one off at Seth’s winery first, as he’d planned to put one up in his tasting room. She’d talked to him the week before about possibly featuring his wine at the event, so they could cross-promote, and he’d readily agreed, all of which Hannah was very excited about.
When she’d dropped it off, he’d mentioned that he could take one up to Addie, who would put it up on the big, enclosed bulletin board outside the mill, where they advertised local events and other places that visitors to the mill might enjoy seeing while in the Falls. He said he’d drop it off when he took Jake and Bailey home, so she’d offered to do it for him. She’d been wanting to talk to Addie about the event, as well as some other ideas she’d been toying with. She’d already been planning to sell her artwork, watercolors mostly, all of local scenery, in the Lavender Blue gift shop, along with their other products. But that wasn’t going to be happening for some time yet, and she could only live off the money she’d made from selling her home and her book royalties for so long. So she was thinking about getting her own stall in the mill, too, maybe sooner than later, and wanted to talk to Addie about formally joining the guild. She knew that would entail doing some demonstrations, maybe teaching, as that was what the guild was all about, and she was okay with the idea. Excited, actually.
All of it was exciting. The idea for the community event had been Vivi’s. After months of blood, sweat, and tears—all four of them experiencing each of those pretty much in equal measure—Lavender Blue seemed to be suddenly coming together very fast. It was thrilling and not a little daunting. They still had many more obstacles to be hurdled, not all of which would happen by their first big preopening event. The tearoom would have to wait until closer to the fall—who knew you needed that many permits to serve tea and scones—along with other repairs and restorations. But this would be their big start, their first introduction of themselves and their new business venture. New life venture.
“I’m not sure when I’ll get back up here again,” she told Jake truthfully, not wanting to let him down, but actually unsure just how involved she wanted to be with Will’s son. She adored Jake—it was impossible not to. He was earnest and bright, a bit nerdy and apparently quite talented. She identified with all of that. He was at that awkward stage between adolescence and adulthood, when you want so badly to be smooth, and inevitably end up at least a little bit goofy. She remembered those feelings all too clearly herself.
The crestfallen look on his face tugged at a different part of her heart.
Jake had come out to the farmhouse regularly after their serendipitous jaunt through Bluestone & Vine, helping his dad with clearing the chimney rubble. She’d been relieved and happy to discover that the initial little jabs to her heart that had come with the unavoidable comparisons between Jake and Liam had diminished. There were pings, to be sure, but they were tempered now with her sincere fondness for the young man. And that was a good thing, a reaffirming thing . . . she just wasn’t certain she wanted to deepen the relationship any further. Selfish perhaps, yes. But for all she worked hard to push herself forward, she’d also learned that it was okay to protect herself. Not everything had to be a test to pass or a battle to be conquered.
“No, that’s cool, I understand. No worries,” he said.
Hannah caught Bailey shifting her gaze between her and Jake, a considering expression on her young, gamine face, and found herself wondering just what the worldly-wise eleven-year-old thought she sa
w. Maybe that was something else she didn’t need to know.
“We’ve got some boots you can wear,” Bailey said before Hannah could change the topic. Bailey had said it casually enough, but Hannah wasn’t fooled. She was trying to help her friend—which was admirable and kind—and possibly also judging the lay of the land with Hannah.
Hannah hadn’t spent a lot of time with the precocious youngster. Bailey was lanky and tall for her age, with a wiry build, pretty red hair, and a splash of freckles that Hannah could personally identify with. She was tanned rather than fair, with blue eyes that missed nothing, and was pretty much everything Jake had proclaimed her to be. Bailey had come out to the farmhouse with Will and Jake several times but had spent most of her time out by the paddock, watching Chey’s horses. What Hannah had observed about the young girl was that Bailey didn’t take anything at face value. She observed, drew her own conclusions, then spoke or acted on them. Given her background in foster care, that was both a wise and understandable approach.
“I have pretty big feet,” Hannah replied dryly. She stuck one of her sandaled feet forward. “I often think it would be easier to just buy the shoe box rather than what’s inside. I’d have a broader selection at any rate.”
Bailey tilted her head. “What, you’re like a size nine? Ten maybe?” She nodded. “We’ve got you covered.”
Hannah thought she detected the merest hint of challenge in Bailey’s gaze, though there wasn’t so much as a thread of it in her tone.
“Well,” Hannah said, still hesitating, “you’d better bring a rope, and maybe have a winch handy up here, in case you need to drag me back up.”
“Is that a yes?” Jake asked, his eyes wide with surprised glee.
Hannah backpedaled. You’ve got a lot going on. Don’t stretch yourself too thin. What her little voice meant, of course, was don’t stretch your heart too thin; it might break again. “Well, I really should get inside and talk to Addie Pearl about this poster and be on my way. I don’t want to hold up your supper.”
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