Chapter 8
I sag into our grandmother’s arms, her kindness and understanding the balm that soothes the wounds of the past, offering a glimpse of the love and acceptance we so desperately need.
—Ghost Lake by Ava Howell Brooks
“Thank you again for helping me today. I can always use another set of hands.”
“I don’t mind,” Ava lied to her grandmother, giving her a practiced smile. In truth, she had absolutely zero desire to sit all morning at the Emerald Thumbs Farmers Market at the town park that took up an entire city block in the center of downtown.
Less than zero.
Too many people knew her in this town—friends of her grandmother and of her sister as well as Ava’s own friends from the two years she had lived here while she finished high school.
She wasn’t even sure which of her friends were still in town, as she hadn’t done a great job of keeping up with people.
She had never been particularly great at small talk. She did not expect she would suddenly find she was any better at it now, after spilling everything raw and real in her memoir. What could she say to people, now that everyone knew?
If she had her way, she would spend the entire summer hiding away here at Leona’s house, tucked away on Elkridge Drive.
She couldn’t do that, unfortunately. She owed her grandmother far more than the sacrifice of a few hours selling bouquets of flowers at the weekly summer market, as well as early strawberries, new potatoes, peas in the pod and baked goods prepared by Leona’s tight circle of friends she affectionately called the Esmeraldas.
Her grandmother had opened her life and her heart to the two of them after the events of that summer. Not for an instant had she wavered from her willingness to take on two orphaned teenage girls suffering emotional and physical trauma.
Leona had provided love and care, a roof over their heads, endless trips out of town to doctors and rehab specialists for Madi, hours spent helping Ava’s sister with exercises and physical therapy.
And love. Especially love.
Leona had offered them the sweetest gift of all, her unconditional love and support. That alone had done more to help them begin to heal than anything physical therapy or counseling ever could.
Ava knew she could never repay her grandmother. Spending a Saturday morning at the local farmers market couldn’t even begin to reconcile the ledger.
“I don’t mind,” she said again as she carried the final bucket of bundled flowers toward her grandmother’s stall at the farmers market, covered with a large flowered patio umbrella. “You might have to help me figure out what I’m doing, though.”
“Nothing to it. You only have to stay there until everything is gone, which usually won’t take longer than two or three hours. Then we pack up the table and our umbrella and go.”
“Sounds easy enough.”
What her grandmother did not mention were all the people Ava would have to talk with. High school friends. Neighbors. Church acquaintances.
With any luck, the farmers market would mostly be frequented by tourists staying in town to enjoy the mountain setting, the hiking and biking trails, and the many recreational opportunities from the actual Emerald Creek the town was named for and the mighty rivers that curved their way through the landscape outside town.
If not, she would simply smile and be polite and try to deflect any questions or comments about her book.
“Sometimes your sister helps me out at the market, but she was busy today. Something to do with helping Luke this morning with some sheep.”
At least Ava wouldn’t have to deal with another Madi confrontation.
Her sister was so angry with her. Ava had no idea how to defend herself, or if she should even attempt it.
“We should have ordered some copies of your book for you to sign,” Leona grinned at her, her lipstick bright and her silver hair with its blue highlights gleaming in the sunlight. “We would have had a line all around the park! Maybe we can do that another week this summer.”
Right. That was never happening. Ava shuddered at the very idea.
“I don’t know if that would be fair to Meadowside Book Nook. I saw they had a big display.”
“We can order them through the store so they get a cut. I’m all about saving our local independent bookstore. Ingrid Jenson has worked so hard to make that place a success.”
Ava had gone to high school with Ingrid. Right after Ghost Lake came out, the other woman had reached out to Ava through their graduating-class Facebook group, begging her to come to town and do a signing. Ava had refused politely, explaining she didn’t get back to town often.
This had all been before her impulsive decision this week to escape to her grandmother’s house.
“I’ll try to stop in and sign some of her inventory,” she said now to her grandmother.
“You should! What a great idea, though, of doing a signing at the market. It’s called the Emerald Thumbs Farmers Market, but why not celebrate our local authors? Planting seeds through words is as important to the mind and the heart as growing vegetables can be to the body.”
Ava couldn’t disagree. That still didn’t mean she was in a big rush to do a book signing while she was in town. Signing inventory was one thing, where she could do it on her own time and didn’t have to interact with readers. A formal book signing was something completely different.
“Oh, I am loving this idea. Meet the author at the farmers market. I’ll talk to Joe Hernandez. He runs the market.”
Joe was another friend from high school, a year ahead of her in school. Ava had always had a bit of a crush on him, with his dark eyes and high cheekbones.
That girl who used to blush every time she saw him in the hallways of their high school seemed another person, so very far away.
“How long have you had a table at the farmers market?” she asked, quickly changing the subject.
“I started last summer. My flowers are so gorgeous, I love the chance to share them with the community. And then I have always grown far too much produce than I could use. I’ve been giving it to the food bank but even they couldn’t use it all. I had the idea of selling the leftovers to help your sister. So now any of my friends who have extra produce donate theirs, and I have other friends who always make baked goods to sell every week. It’s one small way we can help Madi with her efforts to run the no-kill shelter.”
Ava greatly admired her sister’s efforts to save animals—and her grandmother’s efforts to help Madi.
“What a good idea. Like a PTA bake sale except for animals.”
Leona chuckled. “Exactly. Except we’re all in our seventies and haven’t had to go to a boring PTA meeting in years. I’m not sure the PTA would have us now. The Esmeraldas are considered the town troublemakers. We picketed the grocery store last fall because they stopped selling organic, locally sourced beef and chicken. Too expensive, they said.”
“Did your protest make a difference?”
“Yes! We picketed and also led a boycott until they decided they couldn’t afford to make us mad. Now they offer both. Yes, it’s more expensive to go with organic producers, but there are plenty of us who are willing to pay that price to help the environment as well as our local community.”
“I would have to agree,” Ava said with a small smile of approval for her rabble-rousing grandmother.
Ava’s mother had inherited Leona’s activism. She could remember Beth marching in a protest against the school board’s book censorship in their eastern Oregon hometown.
Her father, she remembered, had fully supported her. That was before Beth died, before grief and loneliness had somehow twisted him into someone unrecognizable.
The air was still cool at Emerald Park, but the square buzzed with activity as people unloaded vehicles and set up tables and shade canopies.
They were situated directly across the street from the historic courthouse, with its pillars and sweeping stone staircase. She had often thought the building would make a lovely backdrop for wedding pictures.
Her own wedding pictures had been rushed. She and Cullen hadn’t wanted a huge wedding. They had married in the leafy backyard of his mother’s house in Portland in a ceremony officiated by his grandfather, who was an ordained pastor.
Those in attendance had consisted mostly of his friends and family and their shared group from the university in attendance. On her side, only Leona and Madi had been there, she remembered, along with her best friend, Jada.
Jada had texted her five times over the past two days, asking how she was doing. She was the only one who knew the truth about the rocky road her marriage currently faced, and while Ava appreciated her concern, she really didn’t want to talk about it. As a result, she had ignored each of the messages.
She was going to have to get back to her friend at some point but right now she had no idea what to say.
As soon as the Emerald Thumbs market went live, Ava quickly realized why her grandmother wanted her assistance. Yes, she had been helpful carrying items from Leona’s car, setting up the stall and putting up the umbrella. But Leona really needed her to handle the cash register and the tablet for online transactions so that her grandmother could spend the morning chatting with every single person who walked past.
Leona seemed to know everyone, from the older people around her own demographic to young mothers pushing strollers to middle-aged couples loading their bags with produce.
If Leona didn’t know the shoppers, she chatted with them anyway, asking where they were from and how long they planned to visit the area.
Ava didn’t mind. Though their table was shaded by trees and the large patio umbrella did the rest, she kept her sunglasses firmly on and pulled down the sun hat she had borrowed from Leona.
With any luck, no one would recognize her and she could make it through the morning without having to talk to anyone about anything but Leona’s vibrant flowers and whether they had any gluten-free offerings among their baked goods.
After the first hour or so, she started to relax. She might have even begun to enjoy the simple hustle and bustle of the market, if not for the vague nausea she couldn’t seem to shake and the ever-present worry that she wouldn’t be able to fix her marriage or her relationship with her sister.
She was busy helping a woman with pink-dyed hair choose between a dozen chocolate chip cookies or a dozen sugar cookies—why not get six of each?—when she sensed some strange shift in the atmosphere.
A disturbance in the Force, her Star Wars–loving nerdy husband might have said.
A scent drifted to her above the baked goods and the sweetness of the flowers. Something earthy, rugged, masculine, with notes of black pepper, sandalwood and leather.
Cullen used that same kind of soap. She bought it for him at a trendy boutique in Portland’s Nob Hill area.
She scanned the area, trying to pinpoint whatever man might be using the same kind of scent. She spotted a couple of guys in the next stall over and stared at them.
It wasn’t some other man using Cullen’s scent.
It was Cullen himself.
The air seemed to squeeze out of her lungs and she felt lightheaded, shaky. The mild nausea bloomed into something more and she fought down the dry heaves.
She really should have tried to eat something.
Ava gripped the edge of the table to keep her balance. What on earth were Cullen and his fellow researcher doing here, at the Emerald Creek farmers market?
Buying produce, apparently. From the neighboring stall, they bought early cucumbers and tomatoes that had to have come from a greenhouse, as naturally grown tomatoes were still weeks away from being ripe.
As the men finished the transaction and paid, Ava couldn’t seem to figure out what to do. Should she make some excuse to her grandmother and escape into the crowd or should she stay and try to talk to him?
She was still trying to decide when he took the choice out of her hands. He and Luis Reyes left the neighboring booth and headed toward theirs. She quickly averted her face, shrinking farther into the shadows under the umbrella as she heard him recognize her grandmother.
“Leona!” he exclaimed. “How good to see you.”
Out of the corner of her gaze, Ava saw Leona send her a surprised look, then her grandmother reached out and hugged him.
Cullen and her grandmother had always shared a good relationship. Why wouldn’t they? Cullen was smart, interesting, dynamic. For all his nerd tendencies and his passion for all things dinosaur, he could carry on a conversation with anyone and was genuinely interested in other people’s stories.
What had he ever seen in her in the first place? It was a question she had asked herself often over the past four years, since they started dating seriously after meeting at a party thrown by a mutual friend.
And he was gorgeous. She couldn’t forget that part.
She hadn’t seen him in nearly a week and the sight of his handsome features—already tanned and stubbled from living in primitive conditions in the mountains—seemed to steal her breath.
Something sharp and hard lodged under her breastbone and she fought the urge to rub at the spot.
“Why, Cullen. Darling!” her grandmother exclaimed. “What a wonderful surprise! What brings you to town today?”
Ava shrank farther into the shadows, wondering if anyone would notice if she sank to the ground and commando-crawled to hide under the table.
He stepped away, still not noticing Ava. “I’m working a fossil dig site in the area, up in the backcountry. I’ll be around all summer.”
“I know that part. Ava told me. I wondered what you were doing here.”
“Oh. Right. We had to resupply our provisions and this is the closest town with a large grocery store. Our alternative is heading ten miles farther into Hailey. We were trying to make it a quick trip. I didn’t realize today was the farmers market. To be honest, I didn’t realize Emerald Creek even had a farmers market.”
“That’s because you haven’t been back to visit often enough in the summertime. We’ve had it for several years now. It’s a great place to pick up all your fresh produce needs, especially in a few more weeks when more vegetables and fruits will be in season. Can I interest you in anything?”
He and her grandmother stood outside the circle of the umbrella, on the other side of the tables displaying Leona’s offerings. Ava stayed firmly on the opposite side of the stall, her back turned to him.
He still hadn’t noticed her. She told herself she was relieved, even as she felt a pang that apparently he hadn’t sensed her presence like she had his.
On the other hand, she had full knowledge that her husband was working in the area, while he had absolutely no idea she had packed up her suitcase and headed to Idaho after him.
“I don’t think I really need flowers right now. Not sure where I would put them. But thanks.”
“We have a lovely assortment of baked goods. The proceeds all go to help feed Madi’s animals at the sanctuary.”
“Oh, that’s nice. How’s that going?”
“It’s great. She is officially open now and will be quitting her job to start giving all her energy full time to it in a few weeks.”
“That will be great for her.”
“Everything looks delicious,” Luis said. “We can grab some cookies. You know how much the team loves treats.”
“Choose what you’d like. I’ll cover you,” Leona said.
“Don’t be silly,” Cullen said. “It’s for a good cause. We can pay for our own cookies.”
“Fine, if you insist. Ava will be happy to help you check out.”
A shocked silence greeted Leona’s words, words Ava knew had not been uttered by accident.
Left with no choice, she turned around slowly to face the man she loved with all her heart. The same man she had wounded deeply, possibly irreparably.
“Ava!” he exclaimed, looking staggered to see her. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Portland.”
She forced a smile. “Surprise.”
She waved to Luis, who had worked with Cullen for years in the same university department and was a good friend to both of them. He had attended their wedding.
He, at least, looked happy to see her. “Hi, kiddo. Good to see you. Congrats on the New York Times bestseller list. You are officially a Big Deal. Capital B, Capital D.”
She hugged him. “Thanks.”
After she stepped away, she wasn’t sure what to do. Should she embrace her own husband? He stood looking down at her, his features still shocked to find her here, as if she were one of his dinosaurs come to life.
She took another step away from both men, a move that apparently didn’t go unnoticed by Luis, who looked between the two of them with a concerned expression.
“Um. I’m going to keep shopping, Cul. Text me when you’re ready to take off. No hurry.”
Another customer had moved up to the stall and was considering which bouquet of flowers to buy. Leona started talking with the woman, which left Ava to face her husband alone.
He continued gazing at her with stunned disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to visit your grandmother?”
“It was...a last-minute decision.”
She immediately felt stupid. Of course it was a last-minute decision. That had to be obvious to him, considering he had only left their apartment earlier that week and she had said nothing to him about coming to Emerald Creek.
“What about the book tour? I thought you were supposed to be going to New York to kick things off.”
“I... It’s been postponed indefinitely.”
She didn’t tell him she had backed out after realizing she would completely collapse under the pressure of trying to be engaging and articulate to readers and booksellers when she felt so wrecked, physically and emotionally.
Her publisher was not thrilled with her about it.
We need to ride the wave right now, Andrew Liu, her in-house publicist had said, looking almost in tears at a virtual meeting Sylvia had arranged to explain to her team that they needed to pause plans for the tour. You’re hot right now and everybody wants to meet you in person. We’ve had interest from indie bookstores all around the country. I hate to tell everyone no. In another month, someone else might have the book du jour.
The book du jour. The phrase made her cringe. She didn’t want to have penned the book du jour. While some tiny part of her couldn’t help being thrilled that others apparently found her words worth reading, on the whole, she found the entire fuss mortifying.
At the same time, she knew she was in no state to show up in public and talk about being a survivor, when right now, she felt anything but resilient, when she was failing at the one thing she valued above anything else. Her marriage.
“What does Sylvia have to say about that?” Cullen’s expression was veiled and she wished she could read what he was thinking.
“Everyone agrees it’s for the best right now,” she lied. “Maybe before school starts again, we can do a tour. The timing isn’t right.”
“That’s good.”
They acted like polite acquaintances, like dozens of other people who had visited their stall and chatted with her grandmother about the weather and the price of hay and the volunteer fire department’s pancake breakfast, coming in a few weeks.
Her chest felt heavy, each breath scouring her lungs.
They weren’t polite acquaintances. Cullen was the love of her life, her rock, the one person on the earth who made her feel cherished and valued and...safe.
From the first time they met, he had seemed like an old and dear friend. She remembered talking with him for hours at that party, and then, when he offered to give her a ride home, they had sat for hours more in his car on a rainy Portland night, enclosed in an intimate bubble as they shared hopes and dreams and life experiences.
She knew about his first kiss in second grade, delivered by a girl who had caught him under the art table when he had rolled the persimmon crayon there and they both crawled after it.
She knew about his older sister’s problem pregnancy and his father’s death when he was seven, and his mother’s successful career as a pediatrician and her remarriage.
She had told him many of the details of her own life, too. Growing up in eastern Oregon, the small hobby farm where her father had grown corn and tomatoes by the bushel and about her beloved sister, Madi, who was studying to be a veterinary technician.
And the car accident that had killed their mother when Ava was fourteen and Madi was twelve.
She had glossed over so many things. The long, hard months after their mother’s death they had all spent in eastern Oregon on the farm. Her father’s descent into conspiracy theories and survivalist dogma as a way of coping with his grief. His association with others who were like-minded, an association that had somehow morphed into Clint Howell’s absolute conviction that he needed to protect his daughters by selling their farm and moving with them to the mountains of Idaho, to a compound ruled by a pair of heavily armed brothers she now considered sociopaths, at the very least.
She also hadn’t shared with Cullen other details of that time. The constant gnawing hunger, bitter cold, cruel punishments meted out for any small infraction of the Coalition’s ever-fluid rules.
Or her “marriage” that had lasted less than a day, to a man she abhorred.
She had loved Cullen Brooks with her entire heart, from that very first night. That he had fallen for her as well, Ava had considered nothing short of a miracle, a rare and priceless gift from a capricious God she thought had abandoned her a long time ago.
You should have told me everything, Ava. How do you think I felt reading about all these things that happened to my own wife? Things I had no idea about, things I should have known from that first night? It is a huge part of what makes you who you are and you never told me anything. I have to wonder if the woman I thought I married ever even existed.
“Would you...want to grab a coffee?” she asked, hoping he couldn’t hear the desperation in her voice. “Leona tells me the food truck over there sells a good blend. The scent has been drifting over us all morning and it does smell delicious.”
He shifted his gaze to the group of food trucks selling everything from homemade empanadas to freshly pressed lemonade.
“I don’t have time. Luis will be looking for me. We still have to finish our grocery shopping and head back to the site. We have a new crew of student volunteers showing up this evening.”
“Okay. Um. Will you be coming through town again soon? We could...meet for lunch or something.”
“I’m not sure. I really don’t have a set schedule yet. I can’t commit to anything.”
At least that wasn’t an outright no. He had suggested they take a break while he was working at the dig. Her following him to Idaho and hounding him to meet up the first chance he had probably didn’t exactly qualify as a break.
“How’s the excavation going?” she asked, desperate to keep talking to him.
His features lit up and a smile even played at his mouth. “Amazing. Better than we expected. It’s a nest of some kind but the fossilized bones don’t really fit the pattern of the usual dinosaurs found in this area. We might be on to something big.”
She was happy for him. He had worked so hard and so long for this opportunity. “I’m so glad it’s working out. You must be thrilled.”
“Yes,” he said, his features still bright. As he looked down at her, her mind filled with memories of all the evenings they would sit together at their small kitchen table with their laptops. She would grade papers or work on her thesis, the work that eventually became Ghost Lake, and he would prep lesson plans or go over research documents.
Sometimes she would look up from the screen to find him watching her with the expression of a man who had been given everything he could ever want.
She wanted to cry, suddenly, and had to fight back the tears.
“How long will you be staying with Leona?” he asked.
She debated how to answer him. Should she tell him how much she had hated even a few nights by herself in the apartment, how the rooms echoed with emptiness?
“Right now my plans are open-ended,” she finally said. “My summer break seemed like a good opportunity to spend some time with Grandma and Madi.”
Of course, Madi currently wasn’t speaking to Ava but she decided not to mention that small detail to Cullen.
“I’ve talked to the Fosters next door about collecting any packages and forwarding mail,” she went on.
He nodded, looking as if he had much more to say. Instead, he looked at his watch.
“I should go.”
“Right. Okay.”
He gazed at her. “Maybe while you’re here in Idaho so close, you could come up to mountains sometime and check out the site. It’s pretty rugged in parts. You’ll need a Jeep or an all-terrain vehicle to get all the way there. You could park down below and I could come get you in the side-by-side.”
Panic fluttered through her. She knew exactly where the site was. About a mile away from the actual Ghost Lake.
She hadn’t been back there since the night she had drugged James Boyle with valerian root and mountain deathcamas Madi had found, on the rare occasions they were allowed out of the camp to bathe in the creek.
That had been the same night she and Madi had crept away through the darkness, braced for the instant when the dogs that had been cruelly trained to attack would be let loose on them.
She forced a smile, trying not to shudder. “Maybe,” she said, hoping her expression didn’t betray her deep reluctance.
“I need to go,” he said again. He hugged her, the gesture awkward and stilted, then he was gone and her heart cracked apart a little more.
There was a time not very long ago when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
They used to try to coordinate their return from their respective campuses.
She usually arrived only moments ahead of him. She eagerly waited until she would hear his key in the lock, for that moment when Cullen would open the door, set down his battered messenger bag beside the comfortably battered armchair and pull her into his arms with a deep, heartfelt sigh.
As if she were his moon, his stars, his everything.
Cullen had been hers.
And she had been his.
All day as she tried to teach sentence structure and literature to largely disinterested middle school students, she would anticipate the seconds until they would be together again, when she would feel his strength around her and smell that masculine soap on his skin and the cinnamon mints on his breath as his mouth covered hers.
Her breath caught and more tears rose in her throat.
“Are you all right, darling?”
She looked up to find Leona watching her, eyes brimming with concern.
“Yes,” she lied. “Fine. I just...wasn’t expecting to see Cullen this morning. I didn’t realize he would have to stop in town for supplies periodically.”
“You never know what will happen at the farmers market. That’s one reason I love having a stall here so much. Embrace the unexpected. That’s what I always say.”
Ava had never once heard Leona say that. Her grandmother had plenty of other pithy adages.
Don’t be afraid of an honest day’s work.
Live in the moment.
Say you’re sorry, but only if you mean it.
Embrace the unexpectedwas a new one. She appreciated the sentiment, though in reality, facing the chaos of change had never been easy for her.
Ava had always struggled with new things, even before that year when their world had been completely upended.
She was a long way from embracing the unexpected.
“You look wilted, dear. Like a daisy in a rainstorm. Do you need to sit down?”
“Yes. That’s probably a good idea,” she said. The busy scene around them spun as Ava sank into one of the blue canvas lawn chairs she had helped carry to the booth.
Again, she thought that she should have tried to eat something for breakfast, even if the thought of food right now made her stomach twist.
“Can I get you something? We’ve got a couple of scones left.” Leona’s voice was soft, tender. Ava suddenly wanted nothing more than to rest her head against her grandmother’s ample breast, close her eyes and weep.
“I’m okay,” she lied. “I only need a moment to catch my breath.”
“At least have something to drink,” her grandmother ordered.
That adage hadn’t changed. Drink more water had been another of her grandmother’s mantras.
Leona handed over Ava’s insulated water bottle, ice clinking. She wanted to gulp it down but forced herself to sip, knowing too much cold water on her empty stomach probably wasn’t the greatest idea.
He wanted her to come visit him.
Near Ghost Lake.
She sipped at her water, wondering how she would ever find the courage to go back there.
“Here. Eat a scone,” Leona pressed. “It’s cranberry lemon, my favorite. My friend Agnes makes them and they’re so delicious.”
Ava still wasn’t hungry but she forced herself to take a bite. The pastry melted in her mouth and helped settle her stomach a bit, she had to admit.
“There. You look better. Not so pale, anyway. I thought you were going to pass out.”
“I didn’t eat anything this morning. I’m sure that was to blame.”
“Is that so?” Leona looked doubtful.
“Yes. My blood sugar probably dipped.”
“Right. Well, finish that and you can go back to the house and make yourself an omelet or something. I can handle the rest of the market.”
She was slightly ashamed at how tempted she was by the suggestion. Her grandmother’s house offered a calm and peace that always seemed to embrace her when she walked inside.
She wouldn’t. What good would come from trying to hide away from the world so she could grieve for the marriage she might have destroyed?
“I’m fine. I feel much better now. The scone helped. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Though taking a rest and putting your feet up would probably be even more helpful.”
Ava shook her head. “You’re almost sold out of everything. We shouldn’t be here much longer. I’ll stay to help you carry everything back to your car.”
Her grandmother looked as if she wanted to argue but she only shook her head, eyes worried, as she turned back to greet another customer.