CHAPTER 15 #2
“Some.” I hesitated. “The beginnings of a fresh start, but it wasn’t supposed to include anyone else. I wasn’t planning on people. Guests, sure, but not…anyone else. I told myself, No distractions.”
Blanche’s smile faltered slightly. “Yeah. I wasn’t planning on becoming one.”
A quiet passed between us. It wasn’t awkward, but I sensed that we were both in our heads, turning over the words.
I ran my finger once around the rim of my mug. “Anyhow, I owe you an apology since you didn’t deserve the things I said. These are my issues, not yours. It wasn’t fair to dump them on you.”
“I’ve said worse to people I loved,” she said. She looked down at her mug. “And I’ve let worse be said to me.”
My brow twitched at that, but I didn’t press.
She added, more softly, “Still…it hurt. Not because you said it, but because some part of me feared you were right.”
“It still wasn’t my place to say anything.
I didn’t know the relationship you had with June.
And I’m dealing with my own shit, and I took it out on you,” I said.
“I really am sorry, Blanche. And I thought about just leaving it. That maybe you would be better off if I never came here, if you never saw me again. But I couldn’t leave it like that. ”
Her gaze drifted to the window again, watching as a delivery bike zipped past, the city blurring behind it.
“When my grandmother died…” she began, her voice low, “I didn’t just lose her.
I lost this thread. This tie to something good and something real.
I didn’t even realize how thin it had gotten until it snapped. ”
A loud group of businessmen in cheap suits came through the door, laughing as they bellied up at the counter to order. Blanche’s gaze flicked to them before they returned to me.
“I’ve spent the last eight years trying to make something of myself.
I got the shiny degree, landed a job right out of school, which was more than some of my peers could say.
Climbed fast. Faster than most. And I thought…
just two more years. Just make it to ten.
Just get that promotion and all the things I thought I wanted.
The security. And my grandmother was getting older.
I wanted to be able to take care of her, make her feel safe too, to get the money to help fix up the cottage so she wouldn’t have to worry about anything.
” Her fingers tapped absently against the mug.
“But lately…it doesn’t feel like I’m climbing anything.
It feels like I’m sinking.” There was a raw honesty in her voice, one that surprised me.
Enough to straighten in my seat, my gaze glued to her, coffee going cold.
“Like I’ve been racing toward this goal for so long, and now I can’t tell if it’s even real anymore.
Or if I’ve just been dragging myself through quicksand, mistaking struggle for progress. ”
She inhaled, blinked hard.
“I missed so many calls from her. So many invitations. I was always working. Always busy. Always telling myself I’d make it up to her when things slowed down.
” A pause. “Only they never did. Life just got more hurried, and with it came a blur that caused me to lose focus of what actually mattered. Her.”
Blanche’s mouth twitched like she might cry but refused to let it show.
“She used to tell me I was meant for more. But I think her interpretation of what that was was very different than mine. And now I feel lost,” she said softly. “And it seems at one time, you were too. So, what helped? What’s the secret to finding your way again, Jonathan Wolfe?”
I blinked, caught off guard by her honesty.
There was no armor or deflection, just a raw question laid bare.
I wasn’t ready for it. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because it meant admitting how long it had taken to find one.
And suddenly I didn’t want to give her the kind of answer that just sounded right.
I wanted to give her one that meant something.
“There’s no secret,” I said, voice low. “Just time. And pain. And being willing to sit in both for longer than feels comfortable.”
She nodded, processing the blunt words.
“When I came back to the Hollow, I hated it. Not the trees or the quiet…just what they reminded me of. All the things I lost. The things I ran from. My childhood, my father, the parts of myself I’d buried so deep I didn’t recognize them anymore.”
I leaned back slightly in my chair.
“I used to think returning home meant failure. Like I’d proven everyone right, that I wasn’t strong enough to make it last in the bigger world.
But over time the woods stopped feeling like a punishing reminder of everything I had done wrong in life…
and more like a place where I could finally breathe.
” My voice grew quieter. “Eventually, I realized…maybe peace isn’t something you find.
Maybe it’s something you remember.” I hesitated.
“And there’s still more I was hoping to show you out there.
Not just the cabins or the garden or the lake, but something else. Something that might…help.”
I looked at her fully now, drawing myself up straighter.
“Anyhow, I hope this next thing I want to say comes off more heartfelt than forward but…if you ever feel like taking a break from all of this,” I said, motioning vaguely to the steel-gray skyline beyond the café windows, “I’d like to invite you back out to Juniper Hollow. ”
Her expression shifted. “To the B&B?”