13. Holly
THIRTEEN
HOLLY
I scrolled through my phone. It seemed I liked inflicting as much pain on myself as possible. Graham had left a dozen messages, more voicemails that I deleted immediately because I figured they said the same things as his texts.
It’s not what you think.
Damn it. Text me back.
I’ll explain.
Piper was wrong. She lied. And I’ve already yelled at her.
We were not engaged, Holly, I swear it.
Don’t block me over this .
That text had included a winking emoji after. I couldn’t bring myself to smile. After the first handful of texts, they trailed off to daily ones sent horrifically early in the morning.
My daily text to make sure I’m not blocked…
He was joking. He was worried about me and needed to be focused on his games and his life, and he had absolutely no idea what was waiting for him when he returned, and still, he was cracking jokes.
By Thursday, I caved. He’d be back in two days, and we had to have this conversation whether I wanted to or not, whether I was ready or not. I’d spent the week making my own decisions. It was better to end this now, quickly.
It was after his early morning text that I got as soon as it came because I’d barely slept all week, when I finally texted him back.
We’ll talk when you get back.
Thank God. Finally. Seriously, Holly, we weren’t engaged. U okay? Is your week okay?
How’s work?
I should have known that’d open the floodgates, and tears blurred my vision as I texted back.
It doesn’t matter if you were. We’ll talk when you get back.
As soon as he saw, as soon as he heard, I had no doubt he’d do everything he possibly could to forget my schedule and go far out of his way to ignore me on campus for the rest of the year.
Only six more weeks to graduation. I had to make it through, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him anyway.
I turned Do Not Disturb on my phone so I wouldn’t get alerts from him and climbed out of bed. I’d planned on spending all week at the diner, working as many hours as I could to stock up on tips, but Caroline took one look at me on Sunday morning before the brunch crowd rolled in and declared me off-limits to the customers.
Apparently, I looked horrific.
Her exact words? “You look like you got stomped on by a pack of buffalo.”
I’d never seen a buffalo, but her point was clear. I was raw, broken down, and definitely beaten up.
Sleep would help, if only I could manage to do it for longer than twenty minutes at a time.
Instead, I spent the rest of the week finalizing her taxes. Then more time reorganizing her office. It was such a disaster that I worked two eight-hour shifts and still had more work to do. Then I was planning on setting up a new inventory system for her. She had to stop using scrap pieces of paper and backs of receipts to take stock of her refrigerator items. I was finding them balled up in all corners of her desk drawers. It was no wonder why the restaurant consistently ran low on important items like onions and tomatoes.
Caroline loved people and serving and helping cook good food and making sure people had a good time, but when it came to numbers and planning? From the looks of it, the systems hadn’t been updated since my grandparents were alive. I was hoping to make something simple so her life would be easier once I left.
At least I could do something good for someone.
I showered, cleaned my room, and washed the dishes I’d been too tired to take care of the night before. By the time I got to The Grille, I’d missed most of the breakfast rush. Business was already slowing down. We’d get some traffic during the elementary through high school spring break next month, but that always fell at a hard time of year. It was usually too warm to ski and tube, but not warm enough to enjoy a long day of hiking. Which was a bummer. A restaurant packed full of tourists could have kept me too busy to think about the conversation that would soon come.
Instead, that was all I spent my time doing once I got tucked away in Caroline’s office.
Her office door opened, and she appeared like I’d conjured her up. “You doing okay?”
“Splendid.”
She stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but I’m guessing it involves that boy?”
“Graham. And yes.”
Caroline didn’t immediately respond, and I glanced up at her. She had her lips pushed to one side, and while she was silent, she said a hundred things with her look. She did this often, torn between being the fun aunt and wanting to be a mother figure, and since I’d gone to college, that struggle had only increased.
I sat back in my chair and pushed away from her desk. “Say it.”
“He was really cute. And he seemed smart.”
“And he’s a hockey player,” I filled in for her. “Do you know the last name Marchese?”
Her brows wrinkled. “No, not off the top of my head. Why? Should I?”
“Apparently, he was close with Sophie.”
“Sophie…” She trailed off. It didn’t take her long. A blink of her eyes, and then her shoulders drooped. “Crap. That Sophie?”
“He has another friend who doesn’t like me so much, or rather, doesn’t like that he’s with me. She freaked out last week. Mentioned Sophie being killed by a drunk driver near here and that they were engaged.”
“Engaged?”
“Not really the point, Care.”
“What’d you say to him?”
“Nothing. I bolted, and he’s been on a trip with his team.”
“Damn. That’s tough.” Her shoulders heaved. She lifted her head. “He seemed like a really good guy…”
“He is.” Which made this all harder, because for the first time since I could remember, I’d started dreaming . Not chasing practicality and safety, but I’d started collecting hopes and dreams of the images he’d planted in my mind. I’d started wanting things, believing I could have something more than survival and a comfortable income.
But luck had never shined my way, and I never should have gotten my hopes up.
“Maybe he won’t?—”
“Don’t.” I shook my head. “Tracey already tried that. No one can be close to someone and then date the killer’s daughter. That crap only happens in movies.”
While my life definitely could have been a made-for-TV special on the dangers of drug addictions and alcoholism, this story wasn’t that kind of movie. And there was no happy ending here.
“Okay, no platitudes, but I’ll still hope. In the meantime, if you can handle it, I have other news that isn’t so great.”
“My dad called you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Lydia did.”
I stared at my lap and then closed my eyes. Caroline quit calling her my mom years ago, before I was a teenager. I hadn’t heard from her since I was eighteen years old. She’d showed up a week after my birthday, which was a day after my high school graduation. For the briefest moment I’d hoped she came to congratulate me.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Her teeth were yellow, her hair stringy and greasy. Her clothes were two sizes too big, but that was more due to the fact that she was all skin and bones and scarred cheeks. Dad hadn’t been home then. He’d still managed to hold down jobs, and that was the only thing I was thankful for. He hadn’t seen how horrifically ruined she’d become. She’d stumbled into the trailer, saw me, and instantly went to the kitchen cupboard where they’d always kept spare cash in a coffee can. When she found the can gone, then she’d remembered I was there.
“Where’s my money?”
“Gone. You took it when you left, a decade ago.” She didn’t notice her daughter standing right in front of her. I wasn’t sure she knew who I was. If a grenade went off nearby, threw me thirty feet into a pile of lumber, would that hurt more than my mom standing in front of me, treating me like I was nothing?
“There’s always money here.”
“We don’t have any.”
“You probably do. Probably working at that restaurant, doing the right thing, being the good girl you always were.”
Good girl. So she did know who I was. She just didn’t care. I imagined a mom calling me that for years, and now I wanted to vomit. Her eyes were glassy, and she couldn’t stand straight. I should probably give her coffee to sober up or a bed to sleep it off, but there was no way I could let Dad see her like this. He’d go on a bender, and I’d have to hunt him down. Or he’d beg her to return and based on the way she kept looking to the door, she had no intention of that.
I went to my room, closed and locked the door, and rummaged through a small hole I’d made in my closet wall. When I opened my door, she was standing in the same spot, now leaning against the cupboard like the effort to stand was too much for her.
“One hundred dollars. It’s all I have.”
I said a quick prayer that she didn’t go looking for more. She was right. I did have plenty. I worked long hours, every second I could, but I had college to pay for and a car I wanted to buy to get me there.
She took it from my hand and left the trailer Dad and I had to move to the last time he went months without working.
She never once looked back. Or said thank you. Or said goodbye…just like the first time she left.
“So she is alive.”
“Seems that way.” Caroline nodded and then swiped her hands over her mouth as she sighed.
“What’d she want?” I asked, as the memory washed through me, making my pulse race, my fingertips shake, and my voice tremble.
“She asked where your dad was working.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“Nothing. Said I didn’t know, which isn’t a lie because if he does have a job at the prison, I don’t know what it is.”
She quirked a half-smile, but the joke fell flat.
“She’ll come here looking for him.” It’d been almost four years since she showed up. She probably needed money again.
“She also asked about you.”
That was worse. “Considering I gave her money all those years ago, that doesn’t surprise me entirely.”
“Yeah. I’m torn between being glad she’s still alive, hopeful I can maybe convince her into rehab if she does show up and wanting to move to Alaska so she can’t find us and tear out our hearts again.”
All valid feelings.
“Alaska feels extreme,” I quipped. Caroline and I didn’t have much, but we had each other. She had this restaurant, I had my future, and we both had our sarcasm.
She chuckled. “I just thought you should know, in case she does show up and asks about your dad. I wouldn’t have figured she knew about the accident, but I also have no idea where she’s been, so she could still learn if she tried hard enough.”
“She wouldn’t even have to try. All she has to do is stumble into Golden Eye, and she’d hear it all.”
“And find Mick,” she suggested.
“And find Mick,” I agreed. And that would bring its own set of problems. The man had wanted her, but he beat his wife and son. In a dream world, Lydia would go to rehab, discover the error of her ways, get sober, come back here and help Caroline run The Grille, and then stay far, far away from Mick.
But I’d given up dreams a long time ago, and this mess with Graham only confirmed why there was no point in having any anyway.