Chapter 35
I Think You’d Love Him, Mama
WINONA
“Yes, leather seats, Pad Thai, a paraffin hand wax and… what else…” I looked around the cabin. “I think that’s it?”
“My god,” Sarah said on the screen. “That’s it?”
I laughed. “Oh, and the fact that I’m video calling you from a kajillion feet up in the sky?”
“Right,” Sarah said. She glanced somewhere off camera. She was on site at the Rolling Hills. Apparently things had been going relatively smoothly for the past few weeks.
I didn’t tell her I’d had a chat with Jamie’s son Seamus a few days after Jamie’s blow-up in her office back in the fall.
“Everything okay down there?” I asked. “At the reno, I mean. Cher’s told me a little about it, but she hasn’t let me sit in on more than the weekly staff meetings since we started the paperwork.”
“She’s doing that for you, you know,” Sarah said.
“I know.”
Cher had been firm about me stepping back from Heartbreaker Plumbing. Just like I’d asked her to be, on Mitchell’s suggestion.
After the incident in the road, where Cassandra had explained to me what had happened to his father, Mitchell had parked outside my house.
“You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “I just… I need some time to process, and I don’t want… I don’t want our last moments together to be sad, Winona.”
“Too late,” I’d said, through watering eyes. My heart broke as we stepped out of that car, for Mitchell, never getting to gain any kind of closure with his father. He didn’t even get to show him his book.
But mostly, selfishly, I cried for us.
I didn’t ask him to come in. I knew he had to go.
The news from his brother had been followed up by a 911 call from Sal, who said they actually needed him several hours earlier in Zurich.
We both knew it was over. We stood there on my porch, with Mitchell brushing the hair from my eyes and thumbing the tears from my cheeks.
“Don’t wait with Heartbreaker,” he said. “You’re ready now.”
“But the renovation…”
“Cher can finish it. You said she’s competent, right?”
“Beyond.”
“Then you’ve waited long enough. Sal got those contacts for you on the west coast when you’re in California. But I promise I’ll be hands off from here.”
“You mean besides the prepaid lawyers, accountants, and administrators?”
“You can always turn them down, Firecracker, but they’re excited about this now. And you’ve done everything on your own long enough.”
I nodded. Then I gently pressed my lips to his.
He held me like he was drowning after that, my head tucked under his chin. I fell too, tumbling into a spiral of stars, already hearing the ocean in my ears.
“Goodbye, Firecracker,” he’d whispered in my ear.
He saw me inside, and then with the rumble of the car’s engine, he was gone.
I stepped back out on the porch when he left.
Then I’d walked down the stairs and tipped my face up to the rain.
“Goodbye, Mitchell Harrington,” I’d said, thinking of that hard rain the first night we’d gotten together.
How that had been so indicative of what we’d had.
Fast, hard, big, loud. All-consuming, then gone; a rainbow in its wake.
When I finally turned around to go inside, the curtains next door had dropped.
Mrs. Moody.
I smiled. She was finally giving me some space. Seemed to be a theme with me, lately.
On the plane, I reached up, surprised to find hot tears twinning down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Sarah was still on the call. She gave me a soft look. “Nothing to be sorry about. Loving someone you can’t have is its own special kind of hell.”
But just then Sarah jerked her face up. “Sorry Win—” she whispered, “Don’t hang up.” She muted me, listening to someone off-screen.
I reached into my bag, thumbing the smooth ivory envelope the flight attendant had handed me when I’d sat down.
It was a quick flight to St. John’s, just under two hours in this type of jet, the pilot explained.
I told myself I’d open the envelope before I landed, but I didn’t have the stomach for it.
Not yet. In fact, my stomach had been queasy for days leading up to this trip.
I suddenly wished I’d accepted Mitchell’s offer of a bodyguard, if only to drive me around in case I got sick.
I didn’t need to be scared of an old man in a prison cell.
He had no control over me. I knew that now.
Sarah came back on the line then. She looked pale.
“Sarah, is everything all right?”
She blinked. “Um, nothing. It’s fine. Just Jamie.”
“Now what?”
Her chin trembled, and I realized she was on the verge of tears.
“Sarah, what is it?” I asked, alarmed. “What did he say?”
But she blinked rapidly, looking up. “It’s fine,” she said. “Nothing I can’t handle. I’ll see you at the big meeting next week, okay?”
Heartbreaker Trades’ inaugural meeting was set for Wednesday.
“Sarah, are you sure—”
“Winona, seriously, don’t worry about me. I’m one hundred percent.” She smiled widely as if to prove it. If I hadn’t just seen what I’d seen, I’d have bought it, too. But I couldn’t argue, because she disconnected the call.
I shot Cher a message through the airplane’s phone to check up on Sarah for me.But there was nothing more I could do from here.
It was only after I was disembarking into the cool, sharp wind at St. John’s International Airport that I registered what Sarah had said. That she might know something about loving someone she couldn’t have.
Sal’s assistant had booked not only all the transport and hotel for this trip, but a full itinerary, too, and somehow she’d gotten every spot I wanted to see.
Not somehow—Mitchell had obviously told her everything.
My hotel was an ornate Art Deco building right on the water, with violin music piping into the lobby. A place that sold goods that weren’t up to snuff for Mama and me in the windows downstairs.
I had the full penthouse suite.
Because of course I did.
I didn’t linger. My driver, a lovely old man called Joseph who held his belly when he laughed and talked just like my Uncle Vern used to, took me to all the places on the list, plus some extras I asked to see along the way.
The apartment building Mama and I used to live in was gone, turned into fancy offices now.
But the library was still there. My favorite fish and chip shop stood just as I remembered, though it looked smaller by half.
Finally, we stopped at the cemetery outside town, where I stood, for the first time, at Mama’s grave. There were flowers there, fresh and crisp roses. Two dozen of them, at least.
Mitchell.
Joseph had given me a folding chair, a thermal blanket, and a thermos of hot chocolate he said he’d been saving for this stop. After I was able to find my voice again, I thanked him, and said he could come back to get me in a couple of hours.
I stayed there all afternoon. And I told Mama everything.
I told her all about Quince Valley, about her sons Ryan and Calvin and how grown up they were now. How they’d come home for Christmas just a few weeks ago and they did all the cooking for me.
I told her I was going to see Uncle Vern tomorrow at his care home, and I told her one day, I’d tell her all about the man I’d met who brought me here.
“His name is Mitchell, Mama, and he’s one of the good ones. I think you’d actually love him.” I swallowed. “I just didn’t get to keep him, that was all.”
I thought of the phone call we’d had on Christmas Eve, how I thought we could keep up a friendship, but the pain of it was too much to bear. “Just take the trip,” Mitchell told me. “And if you don’t want to talk to me after that, I’ll respect your decision.”
A wind whirled through the naked branches of the trees dotting the cemetery, whipping up snow into dazzling stars. While I knew it was the season for it, I thought, for a moment, it was her.
It wasn’t until I was in the car going back into town that I cried.
After freshening up in the hotel, my last stop was a restaurant down by the waterfront, with a view onto St. John’s harbor. I’d put on a green dress I’d found hanging in the closet. Another one of the gifts left for me; the color of Mitchell’s eyes.
My chest had gone tight when I tried it on, and I thought stupid thoughts like Mitchell never saw me in a green dress. But I wore it anyway, feeling in some small part like he was here with me just like Mama had been.
Just for tonight.
The rain had held off all day, but began to come down now, pecking at the glass as I sat at a seat by the plate glass window. The server came by to light the candle on my table.
“Thank you,” I said, looking outside, where cars and people passed like this was an ordinary day, when for me I’d both had my soul wrecked and filled at once.
When I turned back inside, intending to pull out a book, I froze. There was an envelope on the table before me, my name on the cream-colored paper in a familiar looped script.
My heart pitched.
For a moment, I searched the restaurant, scanning all the tables, breathless, before remembering just as quickly that he knew my itinerary, start to finish.
My heart settled down, but only a little as I flipped the envelope around.
As I tore the seal, I couldn’t help remember that moment in the woods, when my heart had beat with anticipation so taut I could hardly breathe.
I felt almost the same, even though tonight would bring me only a beautiful meal and a soft bed on my own.
The card was clearly made by the same artist as the one in the woods. Just like the one before, it was an intricately-carved woodcut of a castle. Only this time, the image looked not menacing, but bright and full of promise. The sun rose in the hills behind the turrets, and a rosebush bloomed.
My heart squeezed almost painfully.
I flipped the card open. Just like the last one, the words were sparse.
This time, there were two words.
Look up.
I jerked my face up, looking around the room once more. There were couples everywhere, diners chatting, the clinking of forks and knives, but no serious-looking men sitting alone, not even up at the bar.
My heart thundered. I willed myself to remember this could be something else. A bouquet somewhere maybe. Another gift that was sweet and thoughtful but paled when compared to what I really wanted, with my whole being.
Who I really wanted.
Giggles erupted from the table next to me. “Oh my God,” said one of the women there. “I think he’s the guy from that show!”
I followed their gaze out the window, across the street. There, a man in a suit leaned against the door of a shiny black car. He was impossibly gorgeous. He wore a trimmed beard, and his hair was slicked back. He wasn’t smiling—he looked serious. Anxious.
And his eyes were on me.
“Yes! They’re filming over by the Commissariat House!” one of the women exclaimed.
I stood, my heart thudding.
He was here. Mitchell was here, in Newfoundland, looking at me.
“Who is he?” one of the women said. “Maybe that guy on that show…”
“He’s Prince Charming,” I said, stepping out from my seat.
I ran. I shoved through the door into the freezing cold evening, not feeling the temperature at all. Mitchell was already crossing the street, and then, I was in his arms, spinning around, crying, laughing, and calling him a damn fool.
“I couldn’t let you come here alone, Firecracker,” he whispered, his forehead pressed to mine.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said through my tears. “We don’t make sense.”
“We’ll make it make sense.”
“Not anymore.” He told me his news. I told him he’d lost his mind.
“Winona,” he said, lowering me to my feet. “All I know is I can’t live without you.”
“Neither can I,” I whispered, knowing in my bones it was true.
“Okay then,” Mitchell said.
I smiled, teary-eyed. “Okay,” I whispered. “Now you better kiss me, Prince Charming.”
“As you wish,” Mitchell said, and pressed his lips to mine.