Chapter 1 #2
I turn and do a final scan of the shop, letting my eyes linger on the portrait of my grandmother that hangs above the register.
Ever since she passed away, I’ve taken to imagining her lilting Irish accent in my head like my own personal Jiminy Cricket, only if Jiminy had been a highly opinionated grandmother with a penchant for swearing.
Paige, you’re a feckin eejit. You’d better scrub that countertop within an inch of your life, I can hear her saying now.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Nana. I’ll sage the store tomorrow,” I say. It’s easy to imagine her behind the counter, glaring at me from over the rim of her glasses, mumbling under her breath.
I grab my purse from the back office, turn off the lights, and walk out the back entrance. The sky is just starting to turn sherbet colored. My favorite time of day. I pull in a grateful lungful of crisp, fall air.
Apart from the steady stream of guests arriving at the church, the rest of the street is deserted.
A small part of me is tempted to hide myself in the back pew and then, just before the vows begin, start scream-singing the lyrics to Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.” The look of horror on John’s face might be the last thing I need to finally be one hundred percent over him.
As enticing as ruining John’s wedding day sounds, the bookstore relies too much on the patronage of his wedding guests for me to go full psycho ex-girlfriend.
I’ll have to settle for a drive home with the windows down while an angry female songstress blares into my eardrums instead.
Loud, angry music is just what the doctor ordered for this weary soul of mine.
That and a seven-foot blue-skinned Fae Prince.
My phone buzzes in my purse and I grab for it as I sling myself into the car. A text from Jo pops up on my screen, and my face splits into the first genuine grin I’ve had all day.
wine n whine tonight?
I consider her offer for a second, as she’s the only person I can imagine that would make this day feel even slightly better. As tempting an offer as time with Jo is, wallowing alone feels necessary.
gonna go home and marinate in my tears. breakfast tomorrow? I’ve got about a million stories to tell you
She hearts my text and then sends me the sunset emoji that’s our typical sign-off.
I queue up a particularly angry playlist before tossing my phone onto the passenger seat.
I back out into the street and roll down all four windows.
I crank the volume to barely tolerable as I near the church.
I slow to a stop…and then stomp the gas and peel rubber all the way down the block.
May the sound of my rageful tires drown out your wedding vows, you cheating, lying, pedantic asshole of a man. Suck it, John.
* * *
My nightly drive home is my favorite time of day.
It’s my therapy. It’s my twenty minutes to thirty minutes of pure, uninterrupted peace.
I listen to music and I force myself out of my head so I can truly take in the world around me.
This drive reminds me that I am fortunate enough, despite said life implosion, to live and work in my very own paradise.
Silvercreek is a small town with a population that barely tops 3,000, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in jaw-droppingly beautiful vistas.
No matter which direction I look, it feels like I’m living in a Wish You Were Here postcard.
Craggy pine-and spruce-covered mountains on one end of the valley smooth into sloping hills, dotted with flowering sage and the shifting golden hues of prairie grass.
In the late spring and early summer months, the hills are overtaken with wildflowers and the entire valley looks like a giant painter’s palette.
A wide, winding river cuts the valley in two on the western side, where I live and supposedly boasts some of the best fly-fishing in the state.
I couldn’t care less about fly-fishing, but I do appreciate the steady flow of tourists into the bookstore during the season.
My cabin is at the less-inhabited end of the valley tucked into a rocky spruce grove just off the county road.
I share the road with a small campground that’s open during the warmer months.
Living out here may make me hermit-adjacent, but after a busy day being surrounded by people in the store, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I round the final bend before the road dips down into the canyon grassland and my breath catches in my throat.
The sky is awash with corals and pinks, threaded through with lines of deep gold and purple.
This is the type of sunset poets write sonnets about.
A wriggling worm of a thought creeps into my traitorous brain.
John’s wedding photos are going to be stunning.
I smack my hand on the steering wheel so hard it stings. Screw that. John can’t have everything.
This right here is my gift for surviving today. This sunset is for me. I hope his photographer doesn’t know what they’re doing.
“This sunset is mine, bitch!” I hang my head out the window and howl. I’m so wrapped up in the moment that I nearly miss my turn.
I curse and cry out, cranking the wheel hard to the left. I’m going about twenty miles per hour faster than I should be for such a last-second move. The loud, metallic crunch of my Subaru bottoming out on the raised lip of the road sets my teeth on edge.
“Sorry, girl!” I say, reaching up to pat the roof.
Several bumpy minutes later, I manage to make it up my steep, barely paved driveway in one piece and whoosh out a breath of relief.
Home.
I’m not sure what I love most about my gingerbread cabin in the woods.
Could it be the snowy-white paint with the sky-blue scalloped trim?
Or the cherry-red door? Maybe it’s the lavender bushes that make the exterior of my house smell like fresh laundry when the sun hits them just right.
Or maybe it’s the simple fact that every time I pull into the driveway, I can picture Nana waving at me from the kitchen window, beckoning me inside with a fresh cup of tea.
It’s impossible to pick. It’s all of these things. It’s home.
Growing up, I didn’t know what “home” meant.
My mom, Nola, and I moved around a lot. She has a very artistic temperament and just the idea of putting down roots sends her spiraling.
My only constant was the summers I spent here at my grandparents’ cabin.
When the nomadic mood struck her, Nola would start the same old conversation.
“You know, honey, I’ve been hearing that Western Michigan has some of the best ice cream in the country. How about you and I head that way and start our own taste tests.”
“You know, honey, there’s this place in California called Juniper Crest and they have tumbleweeds the size of an adult buffalo. Maybe we should head that way and check it out for ourselves?”
When I was a young, impressionable six-year-old, these adventures were exciting.
But by the time I’d morphed into a very disgruntled teen and my freshman and sophomore years had been spent at three different high schools, I lost it.
I vowed never to speak to her again unless she let me move to Silvercreek and live with my grandparents so I could finish high school in peace.
It took several months of tears (from both of us), yelling (mainly me), and a small amount of blood loss (I nicked my forehead on our coffee table dramatically flinging myself around), but just before the start of my junior year she agreed to let me go.
I moved in with my grandparents here in Silvercreek, and I never looked back.
The roots I’ve sunk into this rocky outcrop of mine stretch miles deep.
I love every single thing about this rickety old cabin.
Even though both of my grandparents are gone now, this cabin is a testament to the love they shared and the life they made here.
There are memories sewn into every inch of this place, and I am so grateful I get to reside among them.
A dragonfly swooping dangerously close to my face snaps me out of my reverie.
I bat it away and dart up the porch steps.
Within seconds of closing the door behind me, my bra and skirt are in a pile on the floor.
I can go a whole workday without thinking about my boob holster, but the moment I cross the threshold at home, it becomes public enemy number one.
Tossing the offending clothes down the hall toward the laundry gives me a small thrill of pleasure. A major perk to living alone is being able to throw your undergarments wherever you wish without another person saying, “You gonna pick that up?”
People thought it was crazy that John and I never lived together.
We were in a relationship for ten years, even engaged for the last year of it, and we never cohabitated.
It wasn’t because we didn’t want to—we just could never agree on where we’d live.
John hated this house and I couldn’t imagine leaving it.
He begged me to rent it out and move in with him.
He lived in a fancy new condo smack in the middle of town.
“Imagine rolling out of bed, grabbing a pastry on your walk to work, and being home in less than five minutes after closing,” he’d say to me.
And while thirty percent of that argument did sound amazing—who wouldn’t love the idea of walking to work with her mouth full of pastry?
—I could never abandon this cabin. I entertained the idea of moving for about two seconds and look what happened. My life completely fell apart.
John couldn’t understand my attachment. He couldn’t see that the cabin wasn’t just a house—it was the first place I’d ever really felt safe and secure.
He saw only a too-small kitchen with a creaky floor, and drafty windows, and a bathroom desperately in need of an overhaul (he called it an indoor outhouse).