I laugh at my delusion.
Thayer would never be in Summerton.
And who knows ... it’s been almost a decade since he last saw me.
I’m probably nothing but a faded memory by now.
Chapter 31
Thayer
I stop at a little coffee shop on the square in downtown Summerton. I’m running on adrenaline and a total of four or five intermittent hours of sleep, but I refuse to slow down.
My flight arrived early this morning, but I had to wait until the rental kiosk opened at five thirty so I could grab a car.
I order a coffee. Black. And take a seat at the bar next to a sweet-looking elderly couple drinking hot tea and sharing a cranberry scone.
“And here you are,” the barista, a woman who looks to be in her late twenties, slides the coffee cup and saucer in my direction.
According to Google, Summerton’s population is around twenty thousand. The odds of this woman knowing “Delilah Hill” are slim to none, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask.
“Excuse me,” I say before she gets too far away.
“Yes?” She comes back, dark brows arched. Everything about her is harsh. Penciled brows. Pencil-lined lips. Pointed features. She looks nothing like the kind of person I’d picture hanging out with Lila, but you never know.
“Do you know anyone by the name of Delilah Hill? She lives around here.”
The woman looks me up and down, skeptical almost. “You’re not some crazy stalker ex-boyfriend, are you?
“No,” I laugh, though I realize in a way there’s very little difference between me and a crazy stalker ex-boyfriend at this point in time.
“Delilah Hill, you said?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Never heard of her. Sorry.” The woman struts to the cash register to help another customer.
I’d be disappointed if I weren’t already accustomed to having my hopes dashed.
"I couldn’t help but overhear that you’re looking for Delilah Hill,” the woman-half of the elderly couple beside me swivel in their bar stools, facing me.
“Yes,” I say. “I am. Do you know her?”
The woman places her hand over my arm and smiles. “We sure do. We were friends with her grandparents for years. We got to know Delilah and MJ quite well.”
“MJ?”
“Her daughter,” the woman says. “Adorable little thing.”
The idea of Lila having moved on, met someone new, and started a family with them is a shock to my system, and for a second everything around me fades out as the woman continues talking. Over the years, I’d always known anything was possible, but hearing someone confirm one of my worst fears? She might as well be ripping my heart out sans anesthesia because I’m feeling it all right now.
I remind myself that I don’t yet know if it’s even Lila, and until I have the facts, I have no business assuming the worst.
“Do you know where I can find her?” I ask. Earlier this morning when I was waiting for the rental car kiosk to open, I performed a dozen searches trying to find an address for “Delilah Hill in Summerton, OR,” only to come up empty-handed every time. For all I know, she doesn’t even live here. The obituary Roland found was from last December. People move all the time.
“I’m sorry … how do you know her again?” the woman asks.
“We’re old friends,” I say. “We lost touch. I’d like to see her again. She was a very special part of my life many years ago.”
The woman and her husband exchange wistful grins before she turns back to me. “Isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard, George?”
“It is,” her husband says, picking bits of scone from his white mustache.
“Does she still live around here?” I ask.
The woman takes a deep breath. “Well. Let me think. Last time I saw her was back in December at Jane’s memorial service. And I know Ted’s over at the Willow Creek Center. You know, I don’t know where Delilah lives these days, but I can tell you they used to live over in the yellow house on Bayberry Lane.”
Yellow house.
Bayberry Lane.
Willow Creek.
This is good. This is a start. I can work with this.
I ask the barista for a to-go cup and thank the elderly couple for their help, and then I head to Bayberry Lane.
Chapter 32
Lila
I spent the better part of the morning at Willow Creek with Grandpa. By the time I left, he seemed to be in better spirits, though he was still calling me “Junie.” The important thing is, I got him to eat three-fourths of his breakfast, so it was well worth the trip.
I hover over the kitchen island as I take a bite of my turkey sandwich lunch, and then I circle a Help Wanted ad in the paper for a part-time assistant at a local insurance agency with one of my daughter’s Mr. Sketch scented markers that smells like cherries.
A couple years after MJ was born, I finished my dental hygiene program at the local community college and landed a good job at Kellerman Family Dentistry here in town, but as it turned out, Dr. Chad Kellerman was a sexist asshole who had no sympathy for the fact that I was a single mom and sometimes motherhood and working a 9 to 5 schedule got in the way of each other.
I worked for him for five years before Grandma got sick, and between running her to doctor’s appointments and taking Grandpa to his part-time job and running MJ to kindergarten and soccer and dance, I was spread paper thin and had no choice but to quit my job.
We were fortunate in that the money Bertram sent more than covered expenses, but now that Grandpa’s at Willow Creek and Grandma’s stipend is no longer coming, we’re going through our monthly budget faster than ever. Plus, I want to set a good example for MJ. I don’t want her to think all I do is relax all day between running her all over town. She doesn’t see everything I do during the day or all the hours I spend with Grandpa at the care center. She needs to see me work, just as I grew up watching my mother’s insane work ethic.
Eventually I hope to land another full-time dental hygienist job, but with Grandpa and everything going on, I’m going to have to take something part-time.
I take another bite of my sandwich and turn the page, circling another job for a part-time receptionist at a bank.
There’s a knock at the door just as I’m finishing the last of my turkey on rye, and I wipe my hands on a napkin before heading that way. Sometimes Ms. Beauchamp gets deliveries that need signatures, and she’s designated me as an approved third party. Anytime there’s a knock on the door this time of day, it’s almost always FedEx.
I swing the door open, prepared to greet Mark the FedEx driver.
Only it’s not Mark the FedEx driver.
It’s Thayer Ainsworth.
Chapter 33
Thayer
I found her.
I found Lila.
“Oh my god.” She gasps when she sees me, and then she takes a step back, though I can still see her perfectly through the screen door that separates us. “What are you doing here?”
“Lila,” I say, breathless and frozen with shock. “It’s you. I can’t believe it’s actually you...”
She steadies her hand on the interior knob, eyes shifting.
“You can’t be here.” She glances over my shoulder, peering up then down the street. She’s closer now, and though we’re still separated by a thin gray screen, I can tell she’s just as stunning now as she was a decade ago.
She definitely looks more like a twenty-eight-year-old than an eighteen-year-old, but in the best of ways. Like she grew into her features. She still has a crown of pale blonde hair and her deep-set eyes are still the same shade of amber-green framed with long lashes.
“You should go,” she says.
This isn’t exactly the long-awaited reunion I’d conjured up in my mind, but I didn’t come all this way just to turn around and leave.
“Can we talk first?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “We can’t. You have to go. Please.”
“Lila. I don’t understand. You just left …” my voice trails. “I flew three thousand miles to find you, and I’m not leaving without an explanation.”
If she had any idea how much this mystery has haunted and plagued my life for the last decade, she might relent. But she doesn’t know. And now I’m beginning to think she doesn’t care.
And maybe she never did.
Maybe I had her all wrong all those years ago.
Maybe I projected something onto her that was never there, convinced myself she was someone she wasn’t.
The woman I thought she was would’ve never left like that. And the woman I thought she was wouldn’t turn me away from her door ten years later.
Her gaze flicks all around me, not lingering in any one place for too long. I don’t know if she’s nervous or scared, but I hate seeing her like this.
“Come in,” she says as she gets the door. “And hurry.”
Chapter 34
Lila
Thayer’s standing in my small foyer, looking at me like it’s the first time all over again. This isn’t ideal—having him here, inside my house—but I know how persistent he is, and I think he would’ve stayed on my doorstep all day until he got what he wanted, so I had to bring him in.
“You really can’t be here,” I tell him. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
“One person.”
My stomach free falls.
If Bertram were to find out, we would be completely cut off, we’d be forced to leave the only home MJ has ever known, and I don’t want to even think about how I’d pay the exorbitant fees at the assisted living center.
“Who?” I ask.
“The private investigator I hired to find you.”
I glance away, smirking. Of course he did that.
“Ten years,” he says. “For ten years, I’ve looked for you. Wondered about you. Missed you. Worried about you. Finding you was the only thing that mattered.”
“Come on, Thayer,” I say. “You can’t expect me to believe you never moved on and that you’ve literally spent ten years looking for me.”
He says nothing.
“That sounds sweet and all, but you’ve always been gifted in the art of telling people exactly what they want to hear,” I say. “I find it extremely hard to believe that someone like yourself would waste the best years of your life looking for someone like me.”
My coldness is intentional.
I hate speaking to him this way.
I’d love nothing more than to tell him everything, to introduce him to his daughter, and to make up for all the years we’ve lost … but that isn’t an option for me. Not at this point in time.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “You’re acting like you’re angry with me, but you’re the one who left.”
He has a point.
And I don’t have a good response for him right now.
My cell phone rings from the kitchen.
“Wait here,” I tell him before leaving to answer it. The caller ID reads SUMMERTON ELEMENTARY. “Hello?”
“Delilah Hill?” a woman asks.
“This is she.”
“This is Jacqueline,” she says. “I'm the school nurse at Summerton Elementary. I’ve got MJ here, and she’s complaining of a headache and she says her ears hurt. I took her temp and it’s 101.3 right now, so unfortunately we do require that you pick her up within the hour. Sooner if possible.”
“Of course. I’ll be right there.” I end the call and return to the foyer where Thayer stands waiting for me.
He’s dressed in navy slacks and a white button down cuffed at his elbows, and I can’t help but notice the sleeve of tattoos that covers his left arm—completely unexpected.
As if he wasn’t already a Greek Adonis at nineteen, he had to grow up and become an even hotter version at twenty-nine, all filled-out and equal parts edgy and clean cut.
“I have to pick up my daughter from school,” I say, swallowing the lump that forms in my throat when I realize I’d do anything to kiss him this very moment.
“Will you be around later?” he asks.
I shouldn’t see him again.
This is risky. Entirely too dangerous. But I’m not ready to watch him go yet.
“Let me get my daughter to bed tonight and you can stop by for a little bit. Maybe eight or so,” I say. “But after tonight, you have to leave Summerton. And you can’t come back.”
I grab my purse and keys from a nearby console table and usher us out the door, locking up behind me.
He makes his way to a shiny red car, confirming that it indeed was him that I saw earlier today on my way to Willow Creek, and I make my way to MJ’s school.
I can’t believe I invited him back.
My whole life has been full of surprises. The fact that Thayer Ainsworth is sitting on my sofa while our nine-year-old daughter is asleep upstairs is easily top five.
I always knew we’d reconnect someday, somehow, in some way, I just never knew how so I never bothered wasting my time dreaming up scenarios that were always going to be better in my head anyway.
“Look. I know you have questions, and I’m sure you want closure,” I say.
“Closure?” Thayer scoffs. “Lila, I want answers and explanations. I want to know that you’re okay, that you’re safe and healthy and happy.”
“All right. Well, I’m safe and I’m healthy.”
“But are you happy?”
“I have MJ.” It’s the truth. She’s my happiness. She’s my little piece of him. My memento from one of the greatest summers I’ve ever had the joy of knowing. For three months, I loved and I was loved and every time I look at our daughter, I’m reminded of that.
“What happened after I left?” he asks. “Something happened.”
“I can’t answer that.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, and when he sits hunched over with his elbows on his knees, his muscles strain against the white fabric of his dress shirt. I imagine him in the courtroom, fighting the good fight and using his charm and intelligence to win cases left and right.
A few times over the years, I read about some of his work in articles. I’d be in a wistful, nostalgic mood after a few too many glasses of wine and I’d find myself lying in bed Googling the hell out of this man, almost hoping to find something that would make me miss him less … like an engagement announcement. Something to show me he’d found love again and moved on. If he was happy and successful, that’s all that mattered.
“When I came home that May, Granddad told me Ed and Junie had retired,” he says.
I force myself to remain stoic.
If I so much as hint to him that his grandfather was responsible for any of this, he’ll confront him, we’ll lose everything, and this will have all been for nothing.
“Is that true?” he asks.
“In a way, yes,” I say, neglecting to mention they were forced into retiring.
“What does that even mean?” There’s a hint of justifiable frustration in his voice.
“Mom?” MJ’s angel-soft voice interrupts our conversation, and I find her standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Who’s here?”
Rushing to her, I slip my arm around her shoulders and turn her away from him.
“Go back to bed, sweetie. I’ll be there to tuck you in again in a few minutes, okay?”
She trudges up the stairs in her panda pajamas and I return to the living room. “I’m sorry. This was a bad idea. You should go.”
He draws in a long breath before rising, and he doesn’t take his eyes off me for one second. “Obviously you’re not going to tell me anything. And I can’t force you to. But whatever happened, Lila … whatever you think you did that’s so horrible you had to run away and hide for ten years … “
“Thayer, you have to go. Please.” I place my hand on his back and guide him to the door. “I’m so sorry you came all this way for nothing. Really I am. But I hope you can find some peace now. You checked on me. I’m o
kay. I’m fine. Life moved on and you should too.”
His hand lifts to his face and he rakes his palm along his chiseled jawline as he draws in a hard breath.
“We were spectacular together,” he says. “Weren’t we? You remember it the same way I do, right? Please tell me that summer meant something to you and I didn’t come all this way because I’m some heartsick idiot who romanticized some teenage summer…”
He speaks with a confidence that makes me think he isn’t so much as looking for validation as he is wanting to remind me that what we had was meaningful—as if I need the reminder.
“It was one of the best summers of my life,” I say.
I’ll give him that, but only because he came all this way and quite frankly I have nothing more to give him.
“It’s not too late,” he says.
Clearly he has mistaken me for someone else—for the girl I used to be, the one he fell in love with over a single endless summer forever ago.
But I’m not her.
And I haven’t been since I left Rose Crossing.
But my God, what I wouldn’t give to be her again … so that we could be us if only for a moment.
He steps outside, but before he leaves, he turns back to me. “Just so you know, I kept my promise. For nine months I focused on school and I didn’t so much as think about another girl. I waited for you. And when I came back, you were gone. Not even a letter. You destroyed me. And you ruined me for anyone else. But I see now that you moved on, so … good for you. I hope whatever your reasons are, they were worth it.”
With that he climbs into his car, and I close the door and fight the burn of tears that sting my eyes so I can go upstairs and tuck our daughter into bed.
Chapter 35
Thayer
I sit in my idling rental car in Lila’s driveway, my hands white-knuckling the steering wheel as I think about the picture I saw on my way out. Sitting on a table by the front door was a school photo of a little girl, only she wasn’t little. She was more like eight or nine if I had to guess.
For Lila, Forever Page 13