Chapter Twenty-Nine
We rode in silence for several long moments as Davis drove us back through town. I felt his heated gaze on my cheek when he stole frequent looks in my direction, but I trained my attention outside the windows, willing my heart rate to settle. My thoughts were tangled and overwhelming. I didn’t even know why it mattered that I was stood up.
Or why I was still aggravated that Annie couldn’t take ten seconds to give me input on my outfit? I thought we’d made progress.
All the little irritations seemed to pile up and compound. I suspected the fact my time in Amherst was coming to a close had something to do with it. Specifically, my unprecedented feelings of dread and general upset. That, and the tension of preparing to meet my admirer, coupled with him not showing, had thrown me into some kind of spiral.
Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. I wanted my pajamas, a muffin, and a fire. Maybe also my journal and some wine.
“I’m sorry about tonight,” Davis said, breaking the awful silence.
“Not your fault.” I forced an easy-breezy expression. “Blind dates probably have a high no-show rate. If I dated more often, I’d likely be used to it.”
“That’s not something you should ever get used to,” he said gently. “This wasn’t the way I wanted this to go—”
My phone buzzed, and Davis’s device did as well. He paused midsentence, focus sliding to the cup holder, where his phone held the same notification as mine. A message from IBOOM.
He pressed the power button to darken the screen, but it was too late.
My avalanche of emotions clutched onto something new. “Are you Historically_Bookish?” I asked flatly, unsure why I hadn’t asked days before. Asking Michael had felt awkward, because I didn’t know him well. But I knew Davis, and I was too wound up to let it go. I deserved an answer to something tonight. If not the identity of my admirer, then this would have to do.
Davis clenched his jaw and fixed his gaze on the road.
“You have season tickets to UMass football,” I said, ticking off the facts as they came to mind. “You love hot wings. Your best friend owns a bar. We have a similar sense of humor. You knew I loved Jane Eyre !” I thought about the book he brought me. I’d never mentioned it was my favorite. Not in person.
And he’d been so confused the day we’d met at the manor. That could only mean—
“You were so confused by my appearance on the night I arrived, because you were expecting my dad. You thought he was ED_Fan.”
Davis grimaced. The truck slowed, and he turned onto the gravel lane. “Emma.” He inhaled deeply, slowly, as tears of frustration pricked my eyes.
“Are you Historically_Bookish?” I asked again, voice cracking from too many emotions in too short a time. Of course he was. No one else made any sense. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” I asked. “You knew how much I wanted to meet the person behind the handle. I confided in you.”
Why was he lying to me again?
“I wasn’t sure at first,” he said. “I put it together in a few days, but by then we’d fallen into something I really liked and didn’t want to ruin. Things were going well. Then we kissed, and I knew I had to come clean about the manor. Telling you I used the bookstore account on IBOOM seemed insignificant in the face of our bigger problems. I wanted to fix those, then go back and fix the rest. I had a plan. It just—”
The truck’s headlights landed on a familiar white SUV, and all thoughts of disappointment disappeared.
“You have company?” Davis asked, disappointment thick in his tone.
“That’s Annie!” I unfastened my safety belt and reached for the door handle as he slowed.
“Wait,” he said, shifting into park. “We need to talk about this.”
My sister opened her driver’s side door and stepped out. Her bump looked twice the size it had a month before.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Wait!” He leaned across the seat as I jumped out. “Emma, we have to talk—”
I shook my head, exhausted from the list of letdowns tonight and looking forward to something much better. “Another time. Goodbye, Davis.” I wiped the pads of my fingers under my eyes to check for smeared makeup, then made a run for Annie.
This was the highlight my trip needed.
“You’re here!” I wrapped my sister in a hug, elated to see her face. “I missed you,” I said, meaning it to my core. Then another thought emerged. “What are you doing here?”
I pulled back, and the tears on her cheeks became clear in Davis’s headlights as he reversed away. Her makeup was wrecked and her cheeks bright red.
“I left Jeffrey,” she said on a sob. “And I have to pee.”
“Oh, hon, no.” I turned her toward the manor. “Let’s go inside.”
“Wait.” She sniffed loudly, then pushed a button on her SUV’s key fob, and the trunk opened. “I need to get my things.”
She wiggled away from me and headed to the open hatch.
The SUV’s interior light illuminated a piece of luggage, a massive makeup-and-toiletries case, and a canvas tote with unfolded clothing spilling out.
Annie looped the shoulder strap for her canvas tote over one shoulder, then hefted the toiletries case in one hand. She reached for the luggage with the other.
“Whoa.” I stopped her. “I’ll get this. You get the hatch.”
“I can do it,” she said. “I put it in here, and I can carry it twenty more feet to your door.”
I leaned my weight onto the suitcase when she tried to pull again. “Will you please stop? You’re like twelve months pregnant. You’re obviously upset. You’ve been crying. You drove forty miles in this condition, and you came to me. You knew I’d help, no matter the problem. So, you should also know I’ll stand here and face off with you over this luggage until the baby’s born if I have to. I won’t, however, stand by and watch you strap another bag to your body like some kind of tiny sobbing pack mule.”
Annie tried to glare, but her tear-filled eyes ruined her attempt.
“You can be mad at me,” I said. “But give your kid a break. Don’t stress your body any more than it already is.”
She cast her gaze aside. “Okay. Thank you.”
I let us in the door and deposited the suitcase in the foyer. I pointed her to the bathroom and headed for the kitchen, refusing to think of Davis or all the conversations we’d had online. How I’d thought of Historically_Bookish as one of my closest friends, and he hadn’t been honest with me about who he was.
Annie returned a few minutes later and sat at the table while I put on a kettle and set out a tray of baked goods and charcuterie.
We didn’t speak as I prepared two cups of tea and ferried them to the table.
Annie nibbled on fruit slices while she waited. Her splotchy skin and desperate mood had cleared by the time I sat down.
I felt Emily’s presence with me as I placed a bottle of water beside Annie’s tea. In a letter to her cousin, Emily had written the perfect words for this moment. Affection is like bread, unnoticed until we starve. Before my trip, I’d been at odds with my little sister for too long, and I was starving. Seated across from her now, I wanted nothing more than to hug her tightly. To tell her how much I loved her. And to fix every broken bit of us immediately.
“How was the drive?” I asked instead.
“Dark and lonely.” She sniffled. Her puffy brown eyes snapped to mine. “I’m leaving Jeffrey.”
I forced myself not to respond, because Annie leaving Jeffrey was ludicrous. He adored her and vice versa. But my opinion on the topic didn’t matter unless she asked for it, maybe not even then. So, I kept my thoughts to myself. “You want to talk about it?”
She slumped. “No.”
“Okay.”
“He told me I should be nicer to people.”
“Oh?” I bit my tongue. Bold move, Jeffrey.
“He thinks it’s nice you started sending me letters, and that I should call you and answer your texts more often. For the record, I didn’t answer tonight because I was driving. You look very nice, but you were gone when I got here, so I didn’t get to tell you. I told him to butt out, then I burst into tears, because my hormones are a mess, and he apologized. Then he went to get my favorite ice cream from the parlor on Main Street. I packed some things and left while he was gone.”
Ironic, given the catalyst for their fight, that she would come here, but I kept that to myself too.
“I just started driving,” she said. “I wound up here. Hopefully your invitation to visit still stands.”
“Always.”
She narrowed her eyes, seeming to see me for the first time since her arrival. “Did you have a nice night?”
“Nope.” I lifted my cup, running my thumbs along the warm sides. “But it’s improving now.”
Annie’s lips formed a small, hesitant smile. “I’m sorry I’ve been so awful. I don’t want to fight with you anymore. We never should’ve been like this.”
“Why were we?” I asked, still unsure what exactly had gone wrong along the way.
“You stopped making time for me a long time ago, and it pissed me off.” Her expression turned self-deprecating. “I’m not completely over it.”
I rolled her words around in my head, trying to make sense of them. She was angry I didn’t spend more time with her? She could’ve tried being a little nicer once in a while. Maybe not taken every opportunity to either snap at me or avoid me. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy,” she said in chorus with me. “Yeah. I know.”
I bristled. “I’ve been working more so you could work less. I’ve been exhausted all the time.” And growing bitter, I realized. “I barely do anything other than work and attend Saturday-night family dinners.”
“Hire help,” she said. “No one asked you to do everything.”
“You don’t think I’ve brought that up? Mom and Dad always say they’ll come in more often so we don’t have to hire help. Then they just don’t show up. I’ve been stuck in this cycle for years.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What is your problem?” I blurted the words that I’d held back for years.
“You’re my problem!” she said. “And Mom, Dad, and Jeffrey. You all treat me like a fragile little infant, and that was way before I got pregnant. You push me out of the serious conversations and only ask me about petty things that don’t matter. It’s as if none of you see me as a full-grown woman who has actual thoughts. I have a degree,” she said. “I have a brain. No one wants me to use it. And for the record, I am not fragile. I was a gymnast and cheerleader for twelve years. I could bench-press my weight since I was eleven. I’m not some meek little thing you all have to protect and look out for.”
I blinked as confusion clouded my brain. “No one thinks you’re weak. We’re all half afraid of you.”
“Because I’m mean,” she said. “Just like Jeffrey told me.”
“Well, kinda.”
She laughed and crossed her arms over her bump. “Has anyone considered I’ve just been pissed off my whole life?”
I smiled. “What?”
She sighed. “I’m not blaming anyone for it, but Mom got cancer when I was small, and I don’t remember her being carefree or fun. I remember being smothered, micromanaged, and pushed. When you reminisce about your childhood with her, I feel left out, because all those happy days were before I knew her. My earliest memories are of her puking in a bucket after chemo and you rushing me away to get ready for school. The mom I had was dying, and the sister I wanted was becoming my mom. None of that changed when she got better. I just wound up with two moms. She clung to Dad, and you kept taking care of me. Everyone still treats me like that preschooler who needs rushed out of the room when something tough or uncomfortable comes up. And I resent never having a sister to talk with about boys and my period.”
I sat back in my chair, imagining our childhoods from Annie’s perspective for the first time.
“Sometimes I think I married Jeffrey just to have a partner. A lifelong confidant because fate had taken the one I was meant to have. Or maybe I was just in a hurry for the world to see I was an adult.”
“I know you’re an adult, Annie. And I’ve always been here for you. I tried to be whatever you needed me to be.”
“You tried to be my mother.”
“That may be the way you see it,” I said firmly. “But not once, for even a second, have I ever wanted to be your mother. I want to be your sister.”
She seemed to mull that over, so I pressed on.
“You married Jeffrey because you love him,” I said. “You’re a good match, and you challenge one another in ways that have made you both better people. You got a lifelong best friend and confidant in the process. And that’s just the icing.”
“He used to challenge me,” she said, more softly. “These days he just agrees to everything I say and acts as if he’s on my payroll instead of being my husband.”
I watched her as she watched me, daring me to prove her wrong. “He told you to be nicer today.”
“He asked how I was feeling, and I bit his head off because I’m stressed out. My response pressed his buttons because he’s also stressed out, and he unleashed years of complaints about how I push people away. But I could tell he specifically meant you.”
I made a mental note to hug Jeffrey until he gasped for air the next time I saw him. He was always trying to mend the bridge between Annie and me. Always encouraging her to find joy.
“Ever since I fell, he acts as if I’m dying, and I don’t need that right now. I’m upset enough. Even if I don’t show it like he does.”
My senses went on alert and my muscles tensed. “You fell?”
Did she need a doctor? A hospital? I scanned every visible inch of her across the table, heart rate rising.
“Did you fall today? Before you left home?” A B-reel of terrifying images churned in my head.
“Last month,” she said. “I was carrying a basket of laundry down the steps. I couldn’t see over it and my belly, so I missed a step and slid. Jeffrey wasn’t home. He’d been telling me for months to stop carrying the baskets. But I was on my way down, the basket needed to go, so I took it. I didn’t see the harm because it wasn’t heavy.”
Heat climbed the back of my neck as tears filled her eyes once more. “What happened?”
“My feet slid on the carpet, and I kind of bounced down a few steps on my backside. I bruised my tailbone a little, but it wasn’t broken.”
“The baby?”
“We had an early-morning ultrasound at the hospital the next day. The baby’s okay.”
That must have been the appointment they’d mentioned before I left Willow Bend. I’d known something was wrong. I should’ve pushed for answers.
“I’ve had a little spotting in the weeks since then,” she said, voice cracking slightly. “Nothing too serious, but the doctor is keeping a closer eye on me. I made it past the point of concern as far as gestational age.”
I ran the mental math and frowned. “But you’re not due yet.”
“No, but the baby is big enough to survive on its own now. Premature delivery was the biggest fear.” She released a shaky breath, not sounding at all as if the time for worry had passed. “My blood pressure is elevated, and Jeffrey is supposed to keep me calm, comfortable, and content. Then he picked a fight with me today.” Annie swiped a tear from her cheek and looked away.
My heart broke wide open, and I moved around the table to embrace her. “It’s going to be okay. You and Jeffrey will be great parents. And you and I are going to talk through all our misunderstandings before you go home.”
“I’d like that,” she said, pulling me more tightly against her and leaning her head onto my shoulder.
I’d never been so thankful for Hearthstone Manor and its quiet solitude.