Chapter 23 #2
“Last night, I came home from bridge club expecting to have dinner with my daughter. Instead, I found an empty house and a note that said you were sorry. Again.” Her voice cracks, just slightly.
“Do you know how many notes I’ve gotten from you over the years, Delilah?
Do you know how many times I’ve stood in an empty room wondering where you went and when you’d come back? ”
I don’t say anything. I never thought about it from her side.
“And every time, you end up exactly where you are right now. Sitting alone, talking to someone who can’t answer you, wondering why you can’t seem to make things work.”
The words hit like punches. Soft ones, delivered with love, but punches all the same.
“When your father and I divorced, you blamed me,” Mom continues.
Her voice is steadier now, like she’s been rehearsing this.
Maybe she has. Maybe she’s been waiting thirty years to say it.
“You decided I chose this town and this flower shop over you. And I let you believe that, because I was exhausted and heartbroken and I didn’t have the energy to fight about one more thing. ”
“Mom...”
“But here’s the truth, Delilah. The truth I should have told you thirty years ago, even though you weren’t ready to hear it.
” She takes a breath. “Your father and I weren’t happy.
We hadn’t been happy for a long time, years before the divorce, if I’m being honest. We stayed together for you, and all that did was teach you that love looks like two people who can barely stand to be in the same room. ”
I stare at Dad’s headstone. BELOVED FATHER. He was a good dad. But Mom’s right, he and Mom together were miserable. I remember the silences at dinner. The way they slept in separate rooms at the end. The relief on both their faces when they finally called it quits.
I didn’t see it then. I only saw the leaving.
“I’m not saying I handled it perfectly,” Mom says.
“I made mistakes. But the one thing I never did, the one thing I need you to understand, is leave you. I stayed in Twin Waves because the shop was here, yes. But also because I wanted you to have a home to come back to. A place that was always the same. I thought...” She pauses.
“I thought if I stayed, you’d eventually come back.
And you did. Every time, you came back.”
My eyes are burning. I blink hard.
“But this time, baby, I need you to come back for the right reasons. Not because you’re tired of running. Not because you’ve run out of places to go. Because you actually want to stay.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Yes, you do.” Her voice is firm now. “You know how to stay. You’ve just convinced yourself that you don’t.”
“That’s not...”
“You stayed at that flower shop for six months when you first came back. You stayed through the awkwardness with Levi, through all the feelings you didn’t want to feel. You stayed when Penelope made snide comments at the gym. You stayed even when it was hard.”
“That’s different.”
“How? How is it different?”
“Because I wasn’t scared. Not like this.”
“Delilah.” Mom’s voice softens. “You’re always scared.
That’s not the problem. The problem is you think being scared means you should run.
But it doesn’t. Being scared just means something matters.
And Levi matters to you. That’s why you’re sitting in a cemetery at eight in the morning instead of being home with him. ”
I press the heel of my hand against my eye. I’m not going to cry. I’ve cried enough.
“He’s probably furious with me.”
“He drove to our house at dawn. He looked like he hadn’t slept in two days. He sat at our kitchen table and asked where you were.” Mom pauses. “Does that sound like a man who’s furious?”
“You talked to him?”
“We talked. And then Levi left.”
“Left? Where did he go?”
“I showed him your location.”
My heart stops.
“Mom...”
“He should be there soon. If he’s not already.”
I look around wildly, like Levi’s going to materialize out of thin air. The cemetery is quiet. A few other cars in the parking lot, other people visiting other graves, but no truck. Not yet.
“Why would you do that?” My voice comes out sharper than I intended. “I came here to think, to figure things out. And you just…you sent him here?”
“Yes. I did.”
“Without asking me?”
“Delilah.” Mom’s voice is calm. Infuriatingly calm.
“You’ve been running from that man for twenty years.
At seventeen because you were scared of how much you loved him.
At twenty-seven because you thought you weren’t good enough.
And last night because some woman showed you a photo and you decided it was easier to believe the worst than to ask for the truth. ”
“That’s not...”
“I’m not sending him there to ambush you. I’m sending him there because you need to see something, and you’re never going to see it if you keep running.”
“See what?”
“That he comes back.” Something catches in her throat.
“He keeps coming back. You can push him away and run to the other end of the state and hide in a cemetery talking to a dead man, and he will still show up. Because that’s what love looks like, Delilah.
Not perfection. Not guarantees. Just someone who keeps showing up, even when you make it hard. ”
I can’t breathe. My chest is too tight.
“I never had that with your father,” Mom says quietly. “When things got hard, we both just…let go. We didn’t fight for it. And maybe that’s why you don’t know how to fight either. Because we never showed you.”
“Mom...”
“But Levi is fighting. He’s been fighting since he got back to Twin Waves. And if you let him go, if you push him away because you’re scared, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.”
I look at Dad’s headstone. The dates carved into stone. A life that ended too soon, full of things left unsaid.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.
“Nobody does. You figure it out as you go. You mess up and you apologize and you try again.” Mom’s voice is warm now. Gentle. “But you can’t figure it out if you’re not there. You can’t build something real if you keep one foot out the door.”
Ruffy’s head lifts from my lap. His ears perk up.
“I’m scared, Mom.”
“I know, baby. Being scared means it matters.”
A sound. Tires on gravel.
I turn toward the parking lot. And there it is.
A truck. His truck.
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
“He’s here,” I say into the phone.
“Good.” Mom’s voice is steady. “Now stay.”
She hangs up.
I watch Levi park behind my Honda, watch him sit there for a moment, both hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead like he’s gathering his courage. Rehearsing what he’s going to say. Maybe just as terrified as I am.
I know that feeling. I’ve been gathering my courage all morning and I still don’t have enough.
He gets out of the truck.
He looks terrible. Rumpled clothes, dark circles under his eyes, hair that hasn’t seen a comb in at least a day. He’s wearing the same shirt he had on when he left for LA, wrinkled now, untucked, like he slept in it. Or didn’t sleep at all.
He looks like a man who flew across the country in the middle of the night and then drove five hours on no sleep to find a woman who ran away without explanation.
He looks like someone who showed up anyway.
Something cracks open in my chest. Something that’s been locked tight for years, maybe decades. The part of me that’s been waiting to be abandoned, waiting for proof that I was right to keep running.
He came.
He starts walking toward me. The morning fog is still clinging to the grass between the headstones, and for a second he looks almost unreal, like something out of the romance novels I pretend I don’t read.
Ruffy’s tail starts wagging. Traitor. Though I can’t really blame him. If I had a tail, it would probably be wagging too.
I stand up. My legs are shaky from sitting on damp grass for an hour, from no sleep and fear and something else I don’t want to name. I probably look even worse than he does. My eyes are definitely red. My hair is a disaster.
He stops a few feet away, close enough to touch, far enough that I could still run.
I don’t run.
“Hey,” he says. His voice is rough. Exhausted. But his eyes, those eyes, they’re looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters. Like now that he’s here, everything else can wait.
“Hey,” I say back.
We stand there, looking at each other. All the words I’ve been rehearsing, the apologies, the explanations, the reasons, evaporate like morning fog. All I can think is: He’s here. He showed up.
Mom was right.
“You didn’t have to come,” I say. My voice sounds wrong. Too small. Too scared.
“Yeah.” He runs a hand through his already-messy hair. Takes a breath. “I did.”
Silence stretches between us. Ruffy looks back and forth, uncertain.
“The photo,” I start.
“Wasn’t what it looked like.” He cuts me off, but gently. “She hugged me for a publicity stunt. I pushed her away right after. I didn’t even know the photo existed until after you hung up on me.”
All those hours I spent staring at that image, the stories I told myself. And it was nothing.
“I should have asked you,” I whisper.
“Yeah. You should have.”
The words sting. They’re supposed to.
“I’m sorry.” The apology feels inadequate. Two words for hours of pain, for a five-hour drive in the middle of the night, for making him chase me across the state. “I’m so sorry, Levi. I saw that photo and I just…I panicked. I convinced myself it was real because...”
“Because you were looking for proof,” he finishes. “You were waiting for evidence that this was too good to be true.”
I want to deny it. But I can’t.
“He’s not wrong,” I admit. “Every time something good happens, I wait for it to fall apart. And when Penelope showed me that photo, it was like…confirmation. Like the universe was finally proving what I’d known all along.”
“That I would cheat on you?”
“That I wasn’t enough.” My voice cracks. “You’d find someone who doesn’t run away every time she gets scared.”
Levi closes the distance between us. His hands cup my face, tilting it up so I have to look at him.
“You’re an idiot,” he says.
Not exactly the romantic declaration I was expecting.
“I know...”
“No, listen.” His thumbs brush away tears I didn’t realize were falling. “You’re an idiot because you think I want shiny. Some pop star who hugs me for cameras and cares more about album sales than actual human connection. That I drove all this way on no sleep because I want someone better.”
“Levi...”
“I want you. The florist who argues with me about coffee and talks to her dog like he’s a person and makes me laugh harder than anyone I’ve ever met.” He pulls me closer. “I don’t want perfect. I want real. And you’re the realest thing I’ve ever found.”
I’m crying for real now. The messy kind that makes your nose run and your face blotchy.
“I’m going to mess this up again,” I tell him. “You know that, right? I’m going to get scared and want to run.”
“Probably.”
“And you’ll what, chase me every time?”
“If I have to.” He pulls back just enough to look at me. “But I’d rather you just talked to me instead. Radical concept, I know.”
A laugh escapes me.
“I’ll try. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect, but I’ll try.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” He kisses my forehead. “Now can we please go home? Your mom is worried and I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”
Home. The word settles into my chest like a key finding its lock.
“The wedding is in three days,” I say.
“I know.”
“You’re the best man. I’m doing the flowers. We’re going to have to see each other constantly.”
“Tragic.” His mouth quirks. “However will we cope?”
I rise up on my toes and kiss him. Right there in the cemetery, next to my father’s headstone, with Ruffy trying to wedge himself between our legs. It’s not romantic-movie perfect. But it’s us.
When I pull back, I glance at Dad’s grave.
“He would have liked you,” I say. “My dad. He would have said you were too stubborn to give up on me.”
“Smart man.”
“He really was.”
We walk back to the cars together. Ruffy bounds ahead, tail wagging, clearly relieved the humans have sorted themselves out.
“I’ll follow you back,” Levi says.
“You don’t trust me not to take the wrong exit?”
“Your Honda might break down somewhere in the mountains.” He opens my door for me. “Plus, someone needs to make sure you actually go home instead of finding another cemetery to hide in.”
“There’s only one cemetery with my father in it.”
“That you know of. You seem like the type to have backup graveyards.”
I laugh, a real laugh this time, and climb into the car.
Ruffy settles into the passenger seat. He gives me a look that clearly says, Finally. Can we go home now?
“Yeah,” I tell him. “We’re going home.”
I watch Levi walk to his truck in my rearview mirror. He catches me looking, waves once, and climbs in.
Someone who showed up anyway.
I start the car. The check engine light glows. The mysterious smell wafts from the back seat.
But nothing else is the same.
I’m not running anymore.