Chapter Ten
Nora
Firebrook Valley
The next morning, I told myself I was finally going to the barn.
I even got dressed like I meant it: jeans, boots, hair swept up. I wanted to look like the old me. I wanted to find the girl who used to wake up thinking about horses before coffee and fall asleep smelling like hay, leather, and sunshine.
Instead, I somehow ended up sitting on the back steps behind Mabel’s with a mug of coffee I’d already reheated twice, staring at the road that led toward my family’s stables.
I wasn’t avoiding it. I was just . . . not going yet. It was a distinction I was beginning to suspect only existed in my own mind.
The morning air was cool enough to raise goosebumps on my arms, but it carried the promise of afternoon heat. Firebrook Valley did mornings beautifully—pine-scented air, birdsong, and that soft, holy hush before the town truly woke up.
My phone buzzed on the step beside me.
Harper. Again.
Your gelding is officially offended, the text read. I told him you were back and he looked at me like I was a liar. No pressure, but he’d sure like to see you.
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it, though guilt followed close behind. Harper had been texting me versions of that since the moment I got back—gentle invitations, no pressure, no judgment. Just little nudges.
I typed back, erased it, and tried again. Tell him I’m coming soon.
Soon. Such a useful word when you weren’t ready to do something but wanted to sound like you were.
My phone rang before I could sit with that thought for too long.
Drew.
I smiled before I even answered. No matter how messy things were, my brother was always a welcome call. Even when I was a tangle of emotions.
“Hey,” I said.
“Nora.”
With one word, I could hear it all: the guilt, the tension, and the way he was already braced for me to tell him everything had gone sideways. He was ready to come charging home like the protective big brother he’d always been.
“You sound cheerful,” I noted.
“How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“Now tell me the truth.”
I sighed. “It was hard. It’s still hard.”
“Dad?”
“He’s okay.”
“I should be there. I should have handled this myself.”
“No, you’re where you belong.”
“I can be there in a few hours.”
“No need.” I looked out toward the road again—the one that curved toward the barn—and tucked one leg beneath me on the step. “Let this be my wedding present to you. When I said it’s hard, I meant confusing, but I’m happy for you.”
“What should I do, Nora?”
The answer came to me without hesitation. “You should allow yourself this time with Bella. Guilt free. And have a little faith in me. I’ve got everything under control here.”
“I know.”
“Dad will be okay. Is he happy about this? No. But he’s eating. He’s not throwing things, and he’s not picking fights with random people in town. He hasn’t burst into flames. So, by Firebrook post-elopement standards, he’s doing pretty well.”
Drew let out a breath. “I hate that you’re the one there dealing with this.”
“I’m not dealing with it alone.” That part, at least, was true. Mabel had me, the town had me, even if I was only beginning to realize how much they’d been holding me up since my return. “And it was time for me to come back.”
“Is that what’s hard?”
I looked down at the coffee in my mug, wishing I could tell him about Brady and Evan, but not wanting to lay more at his feet. “Yeah, but it’s getting easier.”
He was quiet for a moment, then murmured, “I’m sorry.”
There it was. The apology I knew was coming and still wasn’t ready to hear. My throat tightened, but I kept my voice steady. “It’s okay.”
“No, Nora, it’s not. I’m really sorry. About the wedding. About you not being there. About all of it.”
I pressed my lips together. There was no point pretending it didn’t still sting. “It hurt,” I said finally. “I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t. We don’t get that moment back.”
Drew made a low sound, like he’d expected the blow, but it still landed hard.
“But,” I added before he could spiral further into guilt, “I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t understand why.”
He didn’t speak right away. When he did, his voice was quieter. “I didn’t want you in the middle of it. I didn’t want you feeling like you had to choose.”
I could have countered that claim by asking him how having me tell Dad hadn’t done that, but being right didn’t matter as much in that moment as being there for each other. I shut my eyes and admitted that being invited to a wedding our father wasn’t would have also been hard for me.
“You made the right choice,” I said softly.
“I know Dad doesn’t see it right now,” I continued, staring out at the lawn stretching green and beautiful in front of me.
“But I have to believe someday he’ll wake up and realize all of this is nonsense.
We love him and he loves us. That’s all that should matter. ”
Drew let the silence sit between us for a beat. Then, quietly, “Do you think he’ll ever understand that?”
I laughed once, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Not today.”
He chuckled sadly. “I don’t like how all of this went down, but I’m glad you’re back in Firebrook Valley. You were always happy there.”
I smiled faintly. “I still am.” Mostly.
Before I could untangle that thought, Drew asked, “Have you been to the barn yet?”
The question hit so directly I stopped breathing for a second. No easing into it. No careful lead-up. Just . . . the barn.
My fingers tightened around the mug. “No,” I said. It came out small. More honest than I’d meant it to be.
Drew didn’t rush to fill the silence. I appreciated that, and hated it a little too.
“Harper keeps asking me to come down,” I admitted. “Texting me updates. Telling me Sunny is missing me. Things like that.”
A little laugh came through the line. “That sounds like Harper.” Another pause followed. “Everyone understands why going back to the barn is hard for you. Maybe we should have let Dad get rid of the horses. Found them good homes. It’s not too late to.”
My head came up so fast my coffee nearly sloshed over. “No.” The answer was instinctive. Immediate. Fierce enough that it surprised even me. “No,” I said again, quieter but no less certain. “I love Sunny. I wasn’t ready to see him, but because then I’d have to see . . .”
I stopped there because I didn’t even want to say it.
Imagine it.
The barn was waiting for me, the smell of leather, the sound of hooves, the halters hanging on the wall. But so were the memories.
Drew was quiet, but listening. I stared at my boots.
“I told myself I was healing,” I said slowly. “That I just needed time.”
“You did need time.”
“I know.” I swallowed hard. “But I think maybe I also used that as an excuse not to face any of it.”
There it was.
How had I not seen it?
“I’ve been putting it off,” I said, more to myself now. “I haven’t ridden. I haven’t seen my horse. I haven’t even really let myself think about that part of my life. I just shut the door on it.”
The truth of it settled heavily. Because once I named it, other realizations lined up right behind it.
I hadn’t had the hard conversation with Brady either.
I should have. I should have pulled him aside and said, “Hey, just so we’re clear, I adore you, but I don’t think we’re secretly building a life together one ski trip and one bowl of soup at a time. ”
Instead, I’d kept enjoying him. His company.
His ease. His goodness. And when Evan looked at me and saw Brady’s almost-girlfriend, I hadn’t chased after him to correct it.
I hadn’t done any of the hard things. I’d smiled, deflected, and let time pass, pretending that was bravery. Pretending that was strength.
“Oh,” I whispered.
“What?” Drew asked immediately.
I laughed, but it sounded shaky. “I’m starting to think I’m not as brave as I thought I was.”
“You’re brave, Nora.”
“I don’t know.” I rubbed at my chest absently. “I think maybe I’m good at making hard things sound prettier than they are.”
“That sounds like a very Nora thing to say.”
“I know.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then, gently, “You don’t have to figure all of it out today.”
“No,” I said. “But I do have to stop pretending I already have.”
After another pause, Drew—who always knew exactly when to shift from truth to tenderness—asked, “Do you want me to come there?”
My eyes burned unexpectedly. I looked out at the road again. Toward the barn. Toward the place I still hadn’t gone and the things I’d been telling myself I’d face “later.”
“No,” I said. He started to protest, but I cut in softly. “No. You know what? I’m okay.” It wasn’t fully true, but it wasn’t fully false either. I took a breath. “At least . . . I know I will be.”
That felt more honest. And maybe honesty was the first brave thing I’d done in a while.
Drew exhaled. “If you change your mind—”
“I know.”
“I mean it. You can call me. Day. Night. I’ll come.”
“You’re a good big brother.”
“I love you, Nora.”
That one never caught me off guard, but it still went straight through me. “I love you too.”
We stayed on the line a second longer, neither of us saying anything. Then he hung up.
I sat there with my phone in my lap and my lukewarm coffee, staring at the road to the barn.
I hadn’t skipped two summers because I was healing.
I’d skipped them because I was afraid. I was afraid of the barn, the memories, and the risk of finding out that grief had ruined the one place that felt like mine.
And that thought led me right where I didn’t want to go: To Brady. To Evan. To every conversation I had avoided because I didn’t want the answer.
I should have talked to Brady. I should have chased Evan down. I should have gone to the barn the first day I got back. Instead, I’d done what I apparently did best: I smiled, I stayed warm, I stayed useful, and I quietly stepped around every sharp thing in my path.
It might have looked like grace from the outside, but it was avoidance in a pretty dress.
A breeze lifted the hair at the back of my neck. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear a horse calling. My horse. Or maybe not mine anymore in any real way, except on paper, in memory, and in the guilty ache under my ribs.
I slipped inside Mabel’s house, rinsed my mug, and wrote her a quick thank you note. I’d only meant to walk by her house, but when she’d seen me, she’d met me with a hug and a coffee. How she’d known I was there? She called it mother’s intuition.
I didn’t remember my own mother having any of that, but maybe it was time to start letting go of that too. I headed back outside, looked toward the barn road again. One step. That was all it would take.
I took it. Then I stopped.
Not because I didn’t want to go, but because now I understood exactly why I hadn’t.
I stayed there for a long moment, looking at the road that led to a whole side of myself I had shut away and called “healed.”
The barn had gone from my happy place to looming like a storm on the horizon.
I’d done my best to pretend it wasn’t there, but rather than making things better, it had only intensified the darkness of the clouds.
For a long time, I’d turned my back to what I didn’t want to see, and told myself I was happier that way, but was I?
I didn’t know. And that scared me more than the barn ever had.