Chapter 4
GINNY
I'm just getting ready to head out when Sally heads over in her pink Lucky's uniform
"Came to give you a hug goodbye," she announces with a fake theatrical tone. "Bruce says you're headed up to Forks Lookout. Given the storm, I may never see you again."
Charlie Boy greets her with an enthusiastic woof. Sally, a good family friend, had been a regular visitor to our house before Dad passed.
"I'll be fine. Provisions have been delivered. Road's clear. What's the issue?"
"You're too independent for your own good, Ginny-girl," she says, settling into the vinyl seat beside me.
"So I've been told."
The TV above the bar flickers to some entertainment news segment.
Suddenly, I'm staring at a face I know better than my own.
Those dark eyes that once looked at me with soul-crushing passion.
That easy grin that got him out of trouble with every teacher in high school.
Wyatt.
The camera pans out, and I see he's wearing a tuxedo, not his NFL uniform.
And beside him, a girl with willowy limbs and perfect teeth. She’s wrapped in a wedding dress exactly like the one I dreamed of wearing beside Wyatt .
I grip the edge of the table, feeling the sticky residue of spilled beer under my fingers.
Sally registers my surprised expression. "You haven't heard the news?"
The TV screen blurs as I stare at it.
I can still hear Wyatt's voice from that night in his truck, the rain drumming on the roof. "I'm gonna marry you one day, Ginny girl. Soon as I make it."
He ‘made it’ the day after graduation, when he got picked up to be in the minor league. But no proposal came.
Not then.
Not ever.
"I don't keep up with celebrity gossip," I tell her with a shrug.
“Celebrity?! You two were going steady since high school. When he came back home to visit your pa, I thought you said..."
"You thought wrong.”
I turn back to the screen with a sense of disbelief. Just a few weeks before Dad died, Wyatt visited Whitefish to pay his respects.
Dad had been the football coach for our high school, in addition to heading operations for the Glacier View Ranger District.
During Wyatt's short visit, Wyatt ditched Dad’s overt questions about our future.
But I didn’t get the hint. I couldn’t accept it was over
"I apologize for snapping at you,” I say, inhaling Sally’s fragrance of old-school White Shoulders perfume as I embrace her.
"It's okay, honey," she says, patting my back. "We've all been there."
Turning back to the TV, I look at his fiancée. "What is she? Actress? Model?"
"Model," Sally confirms. "Men like Wyatt... the kind born with a chip on their shoulder, always go for them. Let him have his supermodel. You'll get yourself a better man."
I say nothing.
Since Dad died, I'd thought about moving to a bigger town. Finding a new man.
But until now, I couldn’t believe a future with Wyatt wasn’t in the cards. “It’s getting late, Sally. I better go.”
As Charlie Boy and I enter the parking lot, the snow beneath my feet is much higher now. But it’s an easy drive to Forks Lookout.
We'll be there in no time.