Will nodded, and if it were possible, looked even a bit more lost than he had before.
Hannah couldn’t keep up the pretense of normalcy any longer. She walked to him, put a hand on his arm, and looked him directly in the face. “Will, what is it?” she asked quietly. “Talk to me.” She searched his face. “You can, you know. About anything.”
He nodded, and a glassy sheen entered his eyes. “It’s hard,” he said, at length, but held her gaze. “Asking for help.”
Her heart squeezed painfully tight at what was clearly a difficult admission from him, and she reached up without thinking that they were in a public place, or what it might look like. At the moment, it was simply the two of them, and one of them was in need. She cupped his cheek with her hand, placed her other hand on his chest. It was a far more intimate gesture than she’d have made had she taken any time to think it through. She’d simply moved to him instinctively, feeling his pain, needing to soothe it. “One of the hardest,” she said softly. “I’ll help any way I can.”
He looked down into her eyes, not moving away from her touch. If anything, he moved into it. “I don’t want to drag you through your past,” he said, his voice no more than a rough burr, so quiet it just reached her ears. “You’ve done the hard work. I just . . .” He broke off, searched her gaze, then said, “I want to figure out how to do that, how to be able to listen to my son sing and play the fiddle, and not get swamped with feeling . . . everything.”
Hannah’s mouth curved into a tender, sad smile then. “That is the hard work,” she told him. “Letting yourself be swamped.”
She hadn’t thought his beautiful eyes could look more bleak. It was the other thing she saw there, though, that tugged her heart even more firmly toward him. Fear. She understood that intimately.
“It feels brutal at the time,” she said quietly, “like you’re just pummeling yourself, like you’re going to drown in sorrow if you don’t do something, anything, to keep yourself from feeling like that, from remembering things that are so painful.”
“How long?” he asked, and she understood that, too.
If someone could just tell you how long it was going to take until you started to come out the other side, to find a way to manage the tidal wave of emotion, harness it and turn it into something manageable, you could stick it out. But it didn’t work that way. At least it hadn’t for her. “You can’t just suffer through it,” she told him. “You have to let yourself feel it, and find new ways to think about what you’re feeling, so you’ll eventually be able to recall past events in the context of what they meant to you then. If it was a lovely memory before, you need to find a way to remember it as a lovely memory now. Poignant, yes, heartbreaking even, but honor the lovely part, and in time, it helps mitigate the heartbreaking part. At least, that’s how it worked for me. Not everyone processes things the same.”
He took a steadying breath, closed his eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them again, casting his gaze downward. “I don’t know how you did it,” he said, sounding overwhelmed by the task ahead.
“I didn’t,” she said simply. “In the end, I let Liam do it for me.”
His gaze lifted straight to hers. “How do you mean?”
“I started trying to live through the avalanche of memories that seemed to bombard me every waking minute of every single day from his perspective, not mine. For example, I used to see kids playing and I’d get hit by this wall of crippling grief, realizing that I would never get to watch my son play like that ever again. A cavalcade of images of him would assault me—that’s what it felt like, a physical assault—of Liam laughing, Liam playing, all the most beautiful images of him that I would never be able to add to.”
She saw Will’s throat work, and he looked away, past her shoulder for a moment. “I shouldn’t be asking this of you.”
She urged his face back to hers. Her eyes were a little glassy now, too, but that was okay. “Sometimes it still overwhelms me. You saw that up close and personal. But most of the time, I can look at things through his eyes. Remember how much joy he took, like in the example I just gave. Instead of seeing through my sad, grieving lens, I started looking at life through his. How much joy he’d taken in swinging on those swings, sliding down that slide. And I’d hug that joy so tight. Revel in his joy, his laughter, remember all the good and wonderful things he was. Honoring that, honoring who he was, instead of honoring my grief, my loss.”
He nodded, and when she went to slide her hand away, he simply covered it with his own, held it there. Maybe her throat worked a bit then, too. His hand was warm, strong, and remarkably steady, and she drew strength from it, even as she hoped he drew strength from her words.
She waited for him to meet her gaze again. “I began making those memories about him, not about me. I told myself it wasn’t fair to remember him and be sad.” She smiled. “He was a great kid, flaws and all. He deserved to be remembered happily, joyfully. He’d want to bring me joy, not pain. That should be his legacy, you know?”
Will nodded, and his gaze stayed on hers then, as if he was holding on.
“Once I started to think about it that way . . . well, I won’t say I began to heal, because there is no healing. Not really. You can’t expect to get over it. Nor did I want to. I don’t want to forget Liam, or never think about him. This is who I am now, this is my life now. So I had to find a way to live life and keep him in it, but in a way that was good and positive. It was when I started to figure that out, instead of just wishing the suffering would end, that I found a way to move forward. For me, that meant taking Liam forward with me, too. He’s not here physically, but that doesn’t mean I can’t share my life with him.” She smiled more fully then, even as she blinked away a few tears. “I guess you could say he’s like my guardian angel. I want him to be watching over me and feel happy to see what I’m doing, how I’m living my life. I work hard to be the person, the mom, the whatever, he’d want me to be. Maybe that’s nuts, or weird, but I also gave up caring about what my choices looked like to anyone else. If I’m finding a way to live a life that feels good, honest, and positive, then that seems like a healthy outlook to me. It’s a livable one, at any rate. And I’ll take that.”
Will continued to study her eyes, her face, looking at her, into her, and seemed to take her words truly to heart. “You’re a remarkable person,” he told her, and she saw that the grief, the pain, and the fear had ebbed from his eyes. “I’ve seen a lot, done a lot,” he said, “here, and overseas when I was in the military, and I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone as strong or as resilient.”
She let out a short laugh. “Trust me, I’m not all that. I’m just . . . finding my way.” She looked up into his eyes. “I’m like that canvas, a work in progress that never quite gets finished. I just have this vision about how I want my life to be, like a giant painting, and I work toward filling it all in. I wish I could say it stops being work, but it doesn’t. Not for me, anyway. I can say that after a while, the work feels normal, and okay. Like doing a good day’s work feels good, this does, too.”
They were all but standing in each other’s arms, and so it shouldn’t have surprised her when he pulled her the rest of the way in, but it did. He hugged her, tightly. She slid her arms around his waist and hugged him back.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her ear. “I don’t know if I deserved the gift you just gave me.” He leaned back then but didn’t let her go completely. “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said, his gaze directly on hers again. “And a new way of looking at things. It’s a way forward, or at least a way to start getting unstuck. I don’t know how to properly thank you for that.”
“If it helps you, then it was my pleasure,” she said. “And I mean that. More of that good work, you know?”
He smiled then, and it warmed his eyes. “I do. I can tell you this. If you’re trying to live a life that would make your son proud of you, you’re succeeding. You’re a hell of a woman, Hannah Montgomery,
whether you understand or believe that or not. Thank you.” He took in a breath and she could feel the shakiness of it, and again when he let it out, but some of the tension left him along with it. “And I hope it’s okay to say this, but thank Liam for me, too.”
Chapter Eleven
The farm looked good. Will stepped out of his truck and took a moment to take in the house and the fields. There was still work to be done. A lot of it. He hadn’t started on the stables, or Chey’s stone house, or some of the other work that Vivienne had discussed with him. She’d explained they wanted to focus on the welcome party and their first efforts at a community event; then they’d start the remainder of the restoration and renovation on weekdays, and open the farm up on weekends for the rest of the summer, for folks to pick their own lavender. They’d be working full time on refining their harvesting skills and producing their limited list of lavender products.
If the various permits they needed were issued in time, Vivi hoped to open the tearoom for special occasions by the final fall harvest. Then they’d spend the fall, winter, and early spring of the following year making and packaging the products they planned to sell at the farm and the mill from their harvested lavender and getting all the remaining big repairs and restoration work done. Vivi told him their plan was to have a series of special events that coordinated with the holidays, maybe another open house–style community event after the new year, then launch as a full-fledged business the following April.
He smiled to himself, thinking if Addie Pearl still wanted to know anything about Lavender Blue, he could give her the full rundown. Somewhere along the line, and he was pretty sure he could pinpoint exactly when that had been, he’d stopped working so hard to shut the world out, and started letting at least those people who truly mattered to him in. Listening more, talking more, filling in the spaces he’d never truly realized he blocked out, like some kind of shield between the world and his grief. He’d been surprised to find that the more life he let into those spaces, the more of a cushion they provided. He was so busy being in the moment now, he didn’t have to work so hard to block out the past.
And if the number of folks he spied at that moment, already wandering up and down the rows of lush, vivid lavender bushes, baskets over their arms, snips in hand, was any indication of how his fellow citizens of Blue Hollow Falls felt about their town’s newest business venture, Will thought the women of Lavender Blue might be a bigger overnight success than they imagined.
“Hi, I’m so glad you could make it.”
Will turned to find Hannah standing behind him. Her pretty face was flushed with excitement, and maybe a little by the heat of the late June sun. She wore one of her broad-brimmed straw hats tied with a brightly-patterned scarf, her hair woven into a single plait that swung down her back. Her top was a pretty pale blue with little ruffled sleeves and a scoop neck that was held up with a thin elastic band that dipped down between her breasts. Her floral skirt was long and fell in several sheer layers that swirled around her calves in something of a gypsy look. He grinned when he got to her footwear—purple rubber garden boots with hand-painted flowers all over them—then lifted his gaze to hers. “They suit you.”
She laughed and did a bit of a pose. “I figured I’d put those oil paints to better use.”
“Looks like you have quite the turnout,” he said, intending to shift his gaze back to the fields, but finding himself watching her as she looked at the fields instead. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her in over a week, not since their emotional talk at the music venue. By force of habit, his first instinct when he’d climbed back in his truck that afternoon had been to castigate himself for making a fool of himself in front of her while simultaneously dragging her through something he’d had no right to ask of her. Then her words had echoed through his mind.
I gave up caring about what my choices looked like to anyone else. If I’m finding a way to live a life that feels good, honest, and positive, then that seems like a healthy outlook to me.
And she was right. Who cared if he made a fool of himself? He needed help, and he had no earthly idea where to start. Then he’d seen her there, watching him, and knew if anyone understood what was going on inside him at that moment, it would be Hannah. He’d walked to her as if drawn toward her, before he could second guess it or talk himself out of it. And her willingness to help had been sincere and true.
He’d immediately begun to put her words into action, starting on the hard work of thinking about his past, about Zoey, the accident, all of it, in a new light. He’d even taken that same new thought process and applied it to his fiddle playing, and his fiddle making. Watching his son on that stage, he’d found it impossible not to think about that, too. Armed with Hannah’s hard-won, been-there insight, he’d started to let the world in around him, and that had caused him to truly start to look at things in an entirely different way. He’d been surprised how swiftly his new life view had changed the makeup of his days, how willing and happy people were to have him take part in the day-to-day conversations he’d simply let swirl around him before, and how sincerely he liked being part of them. He could spend more time castigating himself for cutting himself off from that vital outlet for so long, but that was time he was no longer interested in wasting.
Addie Pearl’s wisdom from that day back by the stone well also resonated more deeply inside him, because now he understood what to do with it, how to put it to practical use.
The other thing he couldn’t deny was that a great deal of his thoughts about Hannah, before and now, had absolutely nothing to do with his learning how to process his long-held, deeply buried grief. When he thought about her, which was a good deal of the time, he realized it was truly about her, all of her. He was undeniably attracted to her, and not because they shared a tragic happening in their past. His clumsy attempt to start something, a conversation, anything, out in the sheep meadow that day was testimony to the fact that he’d been interested in her long before learning they shared that common thread. If she’d wanted to be known as more than a grieving mother, then he could most assuredly confirm she’d accomplished that goal. That was not what he saw, or thought about, when he looked at her.
In fact, at that moment, looking into her happy face, framed by a backdrop that would stir even the most dormant soul, he could truthfully say that nothing of her past or his was on his mind right now. What was on his mind was the kiss they’d started, but never finished in the stable that day. And how badly he’d like to find out what really kissing Hannah Montgomery would feel like, taste like, when there was nothing else, no one else, standing between them.
Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face because her gaze widened just slightly. Then those soft gray eyes grew a bit stormy and dark, but in all the ways a man would so want them to.
“I’d like to see you,” he said, the words out there before he could second guess them. “Not to talk about the past,” he added. “Just to spend some time in the now. Getting to know who we are today.”
She looked sincerely surprised, and his heart sank. Either he was the only one endlessly distracted by thoughts of them spending more time together, or possibly spending time with him wasn’t something she’d be interested in because he’d remind her of her loss, even if he didn’t mean to.
“Never mind,” he said, before she could respond. “I’m probably jumping the gun, anyway.” He tried for a self-deprecating expression, and probably failed by a mile. “Why would you want to get mixed up with—”
“Yes,” she blurted out. “I would love to.” She seemed as surprised by her response as he’d been about making the offer.
They both stared at each other for a moment, then she grinned, then he did. “Good,” he said, feeling a whole cavalcade of things in that moment, but instantly deciding to focus on the one that made him happiest. She’d said yes.
“Very,” she replied, and they both stared at each other again, grinning like loons. “I—uh—I’m glad Jake agreed to he
lp out today, with the tearoom,” she said, making an obvious attempt to get them back on a normal conversational path, though her eyes were still shining in surprised delight.
“He was happy to do it.”
There was a short pause; then she said, “How are you doing?” She hurried to add, “If it’s okay to ask. I wish I could have helped more.” The moment the comments were made she looked instantly regretful. “You don’t need to answer that. I don’t know what made me bring it up.”
He smiled. It looked like neither one of them had this whole how-do-you-date-at-our-age thing down very well. Or at all. Something about that knowledge took the pressure off and relaxed him a bit.
“What?” she asked, clearly confused.
“I was just thinking that it appears neither one of us has had much practice with this.”
She let out a short laugh then, too. “Is it that obvious?”
“I think it’s charming,” he said. “At least where you’re concerned. I’m sure I’m being far less than the gallant knight here, but given you’ve seen my soft, white underbelly already, I guess that jig is up.”
Her smile turned sweet then, and there was honest affection in her eyes. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve both seen each other at far less than our most confident and in-control selves.” She held his gaze. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, you know?”
“Maybe not,” he agreed, then chuckled. “Though, just once, I’d like to at least pretend to be suave around you.”
That got an honest laugh from her. “As I recall, the first time we truly talked, you’d just gotten done being the white knight, saving me from immediate death by chimney rock.” She beamed up at him. “I think you’re pretty gallant. In fact, I think that’s one of your core traits. And I’ll tell you something else,” she said, leaning closer as if she was sharing a secret. “Men who are too smooth? Sound like they’re trying to sell a used car. A little rough around the edges rings far more sincere.”
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