Chapter 9
NINE
DELILAH
Ruffy won’t stop staring at the fence.
It’s been twenty minutes since Levi left, and my dog is sitting at the back gate like a furry, dramatic statue of unrequited longing. If he could write poetry, it would be terrible and very sad.
“He’s not coming back tonight,” I tell him.
Ruffy whines. The whine of a creature whose soul has been ripped in two.
“You literally met him four hours ago. This is not a great bromance. This is two dogs sniffing each other in a backyard.”
Another whine, more operatic this time. Apparently I’ve adopted the canine equivalent of a Hallmark movie hero.
I sink onto the porch steps, coffee long gone cold, and try to process what just happened.
Levi Beckett was in my backyard. Sitting on my porch.
Drinking my coffee like we were in some kind of Folgers’ commercial for emotional baggage.
Talking to me about his brother’s wedding song like we were.
..friends. Like the last ten years were a minor scheduling conflict and not a decade of me fleeing the state every time feelings got too real.
And I helped him. I sat there and helped him figure out his song, and it felt natural. Easy, even.
Which is exactly how horror movies start.
Ruffy abandons his vigil and comes to lean against my legs, sighing like the weight of the world rests on his fluffy shoulders.
“Dean lives one street over,” I say out loud. “One street. Levi visits Dean all the time. Which means Levi is going to be approximately thirty feet from my back door on a regular basis.”
Ruffy’s tail wags. He thinks this is excellent news.
“It’s not excellent news. It’s a logistical nightmare wrapped in emotional landmines.”
He wags harder. Clearly we have different definitions of nightmare.
I pull out my phone. There’s only one person equipped to handle this level of crisis, and she’s currently six hundred miles away, probably cheating at shuffleboard.
Mom answers on the third ring.
“Delilah! I was just thinking about you. Aunt Patricia made the most incredible key lime pie, and I said, ‘Delilah would love this recipe,’ and she said—”
“Mom.”
“—that she got it from a woman at her church who got it from her grandmother who was apparently a bootlegger during Prohibition, which has nothing to do with pie but explains why the woman had such steady hands for meringue—”
“Mom.”
“—and I thought, that’s the kind of origin story every recipe needs. A little scandal. A little mystery. A hint of felony—”
“Mother!”
“What is it, sweetheart? You sound tense. Are you eating enough? You always forget to eat when you’re spiraling.”
“I’m not spiraling. I’m...processing.”
“Processing is just spiraling with a college degree. What happened?”
I take a breath. “Did you know Dean Beckett lives one street over from your house?”
Silence.
“Mom?”
“Dean Beckett,” she repeats slowly, like she’s never heard the name before in her life. “Refresh my memory.”
“The fire chief. Jo’s fiancé. Levi’s brother.”
“Oh, that Dean Beckett.”
“How many Dean Becketts do you know?”
“Well, there was a Dean Beckett in my graduating class, but he moved to Oregon in the eighties and got really into woodworking—”
“Mom. Focus. Did you or did you not know that Levi’s brother lives one street away from your house?”
A pause. When she speaks again, her voice is coated in enough innocence to qualify for sainthood. “I may have heard something about that. You know how neighborhood gossip is. Just floats around. Hard to keep track of specifics.”
“You’ve lived in that house for twelve years. You know everyone’s business within a five-block radius. You know which neighbors are having affairs, which ones water their lawns during restrictions, and which ones—and I quote—‘have suspicious recycling habits.’”
“The Millers put their cardboard in with regular trash, Delilah. It’s not suspicious, it’s criminal.”
“Mom.”
“And the Jeffersons’ son comes home at two am every Thursday, which I’m not saying is nefarious, but it’s certainly worth monitoring—”
“Mom. The point.”
She sighs, and I can picture her settling into Aunt Patricia’s wicker chair, preparing for a conversation she’s probably been anticipating since I moved in.
“Fine. Yes. I knew Dean lived nearby. I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“You didn’t think—” I make a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a scream. “You didn’t think to mention it? ‘Oh, by the way, Delilah, your ex-boyfriend’s brother lives close enough to see your bathroom light from his kitchen window’?”
“Can he really see your bathroom light?”
“I don’t know! Probably! That’s not the point!”
“You should get better curtains.” She’s laughing. “Why does this matter so much? You and Levi ended things a decade ago. Ancient history. Water under the bridge. Spilled milk that’s been thoroughly cried over—”
“He was just in my backyard.”
The laughter stops. “In your backyard?”
“His dog escaped. Ended up here. With Ruffy.”
“You got a dog?”
“That’s not—yes, I got a dog. His name is Ruffy. He’s perfect and suspicious of everyone and currently mourning his new best friend like they served together in a war.”
“You got a dog and didn’t tell me? What kind? How old? Is he eating the azaleas? Because your grandmother’s dog used to eat the azaleas and it gave him terrible gas—”
“Mom. Levi. Backyard. Focus.”
“Right, right.” She clears her throat. “So Levi was in your backyard. With his escaped dog. And?”
“And we talked. On the porch. Like civilized humans who don’t have a history of me fleeing the state whenever things get serious.”
“What did you talk about?”
“His brother’s wedding. He’s writing a song for the ceremony and he was stuck, so I...” I trail off, realizing how it sounds.
“You helped him,” Mom finishes. “You sat on your porch with your ex-boyfriend and helped him write a love song.”
“It’s not a love song. It’s a wedding song.”
“Delilah Grace Smart, you helped that boy write a love song while sitting in the golden hour light with your dogs at your feet. That’s not a conversation. That’s a scene from a movie I’d watch on the Hallmark channel while crying into my wine.”
I drop my head into my free hand. “This is a disaster.”
“This is a rom-com.”
I pace the kitchen while Ruffy watches from his post by the back door, still monitoring the fence for Rex’s triumphant return.
“This is going to be a problem,” I tell Mom. “He’s going to be at Dean’s constantly. I’m going to see him every time I take out the trash or check my mail or breathe near a window. And now the dogs are apparently best of friends, which means—”
“Which means you’ll have the perfect excuse to spend time together.”
“Which means I can’t avoid him! Avoiding was my whole plan, Mom. Avoiding has worked great for ten years.”
“Has it, though?”
“Yes!”
“You’ve moved six times.”
“...Yes.”
“You’ve never stayed anywhere longer than two years.”
“That’s...a lifestyle choice.”
“You once broke up with a perfectly nice accountant because he mentioned wanting to visit you in the same city twice.”
“Kevin was clingy.”
“Kevin brought you soup when you were sick.”
“Aggressively clingy soup!”
Mom sighs. “Sweetheart. Can I tell you something?”
“Can I stop you?”
“Absolutely not.” She pauses. “When you were seventeen and came home from that summer, I told you Levi wasn’t going anywhere. That he was a small-town boy with small-town dreams, and you were meant for bigger things.”
The memory surfaces—Mom in the kitchen, me crying at the table, her voice so certain.
“I remember.”
“I was wrong.”
I stop pacing. “What?”
“I was wrong, Delilah. I was scared. You were so young, and you looked at that boy like he hung the moon and installed the stars and personally supervised the sunrise.” She laughs softly. “I thought if I didn’t intervene, you’d throw your whole future away for a summer romance.”
“Mom...”
“So I said things I shouldn’t have. Made you doubt something that was probably real.” Her voice cracks slightly. “And then you came back at twenty-seven, fresh off your divorce, and I saw it happening again. That same look. Like he was oxygen, and you’d been holding your breath for years.”
My chest tightens. “So you told me to take the job in Asheville.”
“I told you to start fresh. Move forward. Stop looking backward.” She pauses. “I thought I was protecting you. Turns out I was just terrified of watching my daughter be braver than I ever was.”
I sink into a kitchen chair. Ruffy abandons his surveillance mission and rests his head on my knee, offering comfort he doesn’t fully understand.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you’re thirty-seven. Because you’re still running.
Because every time you call me, you sound like someone waiting for permission to want things.
” Her voice softens. “And I think it’s time to stop waiting.
Not for Levi—for yourself. Figure out what you actually want instead of what you’re afraid of. ”
“What if I want him?” The words escape before I can catch them. “What if I never stopped wanting him, and that’s the entire problem?”
“Then that’s not a problem, sweetheart. That’s an answer.”
We talk for another hour.
About the flower shop. About Ruffy and his fence-surveillance habits. About Aunt Patricia’s shuffleboard rivalry with a woman named Doris who allegedly cheats. About everything and nothing, the way mothers and daughters do when they’ve finally stopped pretending.
By the time I hang up, I’m emotionally wrung out and ready for a quiet evening of overthinking on my couch.
The doorbell has other plans.
Ruffy launches himself toward the front door, barking like he’s found his life’s purpose. I follow, expecting a package or maybe a lost tourist.
It’s Jo. And Michelle. And Amber. And Jessica.
Jo’s holding a bottle of wine. Michelle has a cheese board. Amber has what appears to be an entire pie. Jessica is just holding her phone, probably documenting this ambush for posterity.