Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
I’d once heard that self-sabotage was a coping mechanism for some people. I couldn’t help but think about that when I checked the text thread I’d started with Irene.
A miniature blue check told me Irene had seen my message. I almost wished I’d turned off read-receipts. Either that, or shoved my phone into a bowl of water and frozen it so I couldn’t check it every three and a half minutes.
After I’d pulled myself into my bed sometime just before daybreak, I’d replayed last night on rewind. Hadrian’s urgency, his touch, then those words. An hour of tossing later, I decided the best thing I could do was get up and start my day. Or at least keep myself busy.
“I’m sorry,” Sayer groaned through my phone. I shuffled outside to my SUV, chill bumps eating up my legs in the cool, damp morning air. Mourning doves cooed in the bramble. If I paused, the trees could be heard whispering to themselves. “I might be down tomorrow, though. If that’s okay?”
“Take the time you need,” I assured him. I unlocked my car and took a tentative look back at the house. “No rush. Not at all.”
All the windows were shut, doors locked, valuables put away. Mom never had been a morning person, but I wouldn’t put it past her to show up unannounced, expecting something since her night away had been completed, as promised.
“Are you sure?” Sayer seemed to home in on my feigned peppiness. “Is your mom there already? I thought you paid her to scoot.”
“I did. And she isn’t. I just had an idea for something for the house, and I’m going to check if Meredith might have it.
” I had a feeling if I didn’t start looking now, I’d find myself back in the attic, buried under boxes of paperwork and dust, staring into a corner with a wondering imagination.
Of all the things that could have happened last night instead of that argument.
I climbed in the driver’s side. I was already pulling out of the driveway by the time Sayer said, “Well, let me know if the loon shows up. I’ll bring my taser. I’ve never had the chance to use it.”
“I’ve had too many firsts lately,” I teased. “Maybe don’t put assault on my list.”
“Tasing someone isn’t assault,” he guffawed. “This is self-defense we’re talking about, Lan. Your right to a peaceful house. With no money swipers.”
“Okay, fine. I trust your judgment.” I flipped my blinker on and turned toward Stetson.
By the time I parked and approached Meredith’s, I regretted not making a cup of coffee to go. My eyes felt heavy, my throat hoarse. Without thinking, I hurried across the street to The Blue Corduroy. The door tinkled in welcome.
I didn’t want to be here. But I knew I needed to try.
Last night made me realize that.
He’d changed. So could I. I could start small. Tiny, tiny steps. In a different way.
This time, the waiting area was stuffy with laughter and voices.
A short line of three people waited, while two hovered by the pick-up counter.
An older gentleman with sprigs of white hair scribbled down orders.
A heavenly warm scent clouded the air. I took a place in line, and by the time he waved me forward, I’d already decided. A tumble of anticipation in my belly.
He gave me a crinkled smile. “And what can I get you, young lady?” His glasses’ lenses were so thick his eyes looked like needle points when he blinked. It was cute.
“Can I get a bagel with cinnamon cream cheese?” I scratched the inside of my arm. “And a vanilla latte?”
“Why, absolutely.” He rattled off my total; I told him to keep the change.
My fingers tingled while I waited in the huddle of people at the pick-up end. The same woman from before—Bernice—flung drink after drink out onto the counter. Not one spilled.
“LARRY,” she hollered. She smacked a paper-wrapped bagel and plastic sample cup next to it, then my coffee.
I gathered my breakfast. “Thank you.”
She glanced up at me. Her wrinkles didn’t so much as twitch. “No problem, dear.”
My chest warmed.
Just as I turned to leave, my phone vibrated. I pulled it from my pocket, coffee and baggie in one hand, as the door jingled above me. A text.
MEREDITH: Hey honey, can you stop by soon? Got a question about one of the chickens.
I found the same bench I’d sat on the first time I’d come by and took a seat. The humidity hadn’t quite set in yet, but a hint of balm hovered at the edges of my face. Within the hour, it’d be sweltering.
I took a sip of the coffee, then unwrapped my bagel. Stared at it.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a bagel.
I held it tight with both hands, scared I’d drop it. I didn’t have to eat all of it. Just some of it. Just a little. Or I’d feel like trash the rest of the day.
Anger is like a train, my heart whispered with a squeeze. You don’t have to take the first stop, but you can always get off the train whenever you want to.
I couldn’t keep doing—this. I wrangled with my heart, the feelings of empathy toward Hadrian and what he’d been through, chewing on his advice while trying to keep my logic intact.
Was my frustration with him because of what he’d done?
Or was I pushing him away as punishment for myself, for still wishing I’d had the courage to act on my feelings as he did?
I could acknowledge what he’d done was wrong.
I could acknowledge that my own actions were wrong, too—but did I have a right to play God?
Did I have any room to shove him into a box, when I’d done the same thing to myself in the vein of protecting my heart, my feelings?
And was I pushing him away so I chose for him to leave me behind? To avoid him deciding to leave himself?
Because it was easier to turn my back when I’d been the one to walk away.
My chest tightened at the words I’d hurled at him. The anger behind them I hadn’t meant, not really.
I inhaled. Dipped the bagel in the cream cheese, and took a bite.
I didn’t step off the train, but I stepped onto the platform. At the very least, it was a start.
It wasn’t.
As soon as I walked into Meredith’s, their voices rang clear through the storefront from the backroom. Every thread of composure I’d tied together out on that bench immediately burst into flames.
“Did I say you could?” Meredith snapped. “I can call the police for trespassing.”
I stopped at the checkout counter. “Meredith?”
My mother’s voice shrieked, “Just tell me where her things are! Where’d she hide them?”
I dropped my wrapper, leftover bagel, and empty coffee cup into the trash can and hurried through the displays. A metal train caught on my hip and fell over—I muttered as I picked up the pieces, hooked them back together, and rushed to the back.
Meredith held one end of a hefty cardboard box, eyes wide. Mom grappled with the other end like she was readying to wrestle an alligator.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted. Both women’s attention whipped to me.
Meredith’s forehead glistened with sweat. “Landry, tell your mother—”
“She has Cadence’s things!” Mom pressed. She tugged at the box like a rabid dog. “She can’t just sell them!”
I stalked forward and attempted to wedge my way between my mother and the box. The side ripped. “Mom, let go. I gave them to her.”
She released. The box toppled sideways. Meredith grunted. I stepped between the two, but Mom’s expression had already crumpled into betrayal.
“Why would you do that?” she sputtered. “Her things—”
“They’re mine now.”
Mom drew up to her full height. We were eye level with only a taped box between us. “Landry May Frederick, you listen to me, and you listen good. This is selfish of you. You don’t even offer me a chance to look through her things before you get rid of them?” she spat.
The slightest niggle of guilt worked its way into the base of my skull. I tamped it down—no, I’d asked. I’d offered. I’d sent ashes, I’d tried to have civil conversation, and she’d trapezed over it each time.
“Mom—”
“Who do you think you are, Landry? Is this the person I raised you to be?” she sputtered, cheeks reddening.
Meredith stood still behind me against a storage shelf, eyes bouncing between the two of us.
“After all I did for you? How ungrateful can you be. I get it, I’m a horrible mother.
I did an awful job with you, I ruined you, I ruined your life, but have you ever thought about how you ruined mine? ”
The room became uncannily still. Whatever little pieces of hope, sympathy that congregated in my chest a moment ago suddenly whisked away on a cold breeze.
Mom stepped over another box and stopped inches from my face, angry tears puddling in her lower lashes. “You ran him away, you took my sister, and you took everything she would have left me. You’re so much better than me, aren’t you? Ever since you hit high school, it’s only ever been about you.”
The tang of liquor floated off her breath. I didn’t dare inhale all the way.
This wasn’t my mother talking. I knew it wasn’t. But I’d be lying if I said the words didn’t hurt all the same.
With a final huff and pat of her hair, which dangled at the nape of her neck in a knotted bun, she stalked from the storage room. Something hit the floor with a thud—likely from a display. Then the door jingled.
Meredith sighed. “Well.”
I bit my lip, unsure what to say.
“You okay, Lanny?”
I bit my tongue and willed the lump in my throat down. So many emotions. Too many. What was more exhausting than being reminded of everything that was wrong with your life?
“I’m fine,” I murmured.
She set the box down. I didn’t turn when she wrapped her arms around me; she gave me a sturdy squeeze.
“It’s okay, baby. She’s not mad at you. She just hates life a little bit more than most.”
I let my head fall on her shoulder. “She’s always been like that.”
“I know.”
I don’t know what made the words fall—maybe because it was Meredith, and Meredith felt like a warm place to sleep, like sitting in a chair in the sunshine.
“I was always mad that Aunt Cadence didn’t let me stay with her,” I said.
I felt her sigh. Then nod. A bit quieter, she echoed, “I know.”
“She probably broke a display.”
“Ain’t nothing a bit of love and patience can’t fix. And super glue.”
If only that were true.
She patted my shoulder. “Well, now that you’re here—I think I found something you might have been looking for.”
I perked up a bit. “What?”
Meredith wove back toward a shelf with an opened box labeled CHICKENS.
In my handwriting.
She peeled the flaps back, pulled out a rooster, and twisted his head. When she dumped him upside down, a key jingled into her palm, attached by a leather strap and a rolled-up envelope, no bigger than a greeting card.
My heart flipped. Spots emerged at the edge of my vision. Was that—
Her eyes softened. Turned watery.
“I’ve done sold everything else you brought me, but this was the last box of stuff I had left.
Was going through it late last night. And I heard something rattling in that rooster and found this.
Figured you might need it.” She held out the key, then the envelope.
On the keychain: BOX 148, and on the little teal envelope, one word looped across the front:
LANDRY