Chapter 3
MOLLY
I texted the book club chat an hour ago and asked for an emergency meeting.
Within minutes, Sadie Barlowe offered to drive and Avah suggested meeting spots.
We’re so different as individuals, but I know without question they’d drop everything for me if I asked.
Just like they did today. We’re having lunch at the diner where Iris’s brother runs the kitchen because she convinced him to save the big table in back for us.
I shrug and focus on my half-eaten turkey sandwich. “I told him he needed to be gone by the time I got out of the shower. And he was.”
Sloane sits back in her chair and studies me. “You didn’t specify whether or not you made it clear he shouldn’t come back.”
I press my lips together, but don’t answer.
Avah lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Molly, come on. This is the guy who tried to convince Teddy not to marry you.” She leans forward like I need to focus on her words. “On the eve of your wedding.”
“I was there, Avah. I remember. But Linda hired him. She told me she’d pay for a nanny while she’s on her trip, and I need the help. If Chase is her choice, how can I say no?”
“Sweetie, we can find a better candidate.” Iris Dixon, Skylark’s former mayor, reaches across the table and takes my hand. “If your mother-in-law refuses to pay for your choice of nannies, we’ll pitch in. You have options.”
“What options?” I swallow back the emotion threatening to choke me.
“This morning proved I can barely get the kids off to school on time, let alone handle my flower business and the farmhouse. It’ll be weeks until I’m off crutches, and longer until I’m cleared to drive.
Even if I could handle the farm, I can’t make deliveries or set up the booth at the local markets like this. ”
“We’ll take turns driving you,” Sadie offers without hesitation. “I have lots of flexibility in my training schedule. We’ll put together a calendar.”
“It’ll be like a meal train, only a ride train,” Iris adds. “At least until we find somebody else you can hire.”
This is exactly what I love about my friends.
Sloane—who owns the local bookstore, Cover to Cover—brought us together under the guise of a book club, but somewhere along the way we became each other’s ride or dies.
I don’t bother repeating that my inability to pay someone for the kind of help I need is part of the problem.
Sure, I make okay money once the spring and summer seasons kick into high gear and I’m selling flowers to florists, co-ops, and setting up my booth at the weekly farmers market and local art and craft festivals. But still, money is tight.
Teddy lit up every room he walked into, the kind of person who made everything feel like an adventure.
Basically, the polar opposite of me. At least this current version of me.
I was in bad shape after he died. The suffocating guilt over what had pushed him to take those early-season risks on the river—namely the state of our marriage—made it feel like I was the one drowning.
Plus, our five-year-old twins missed their daddy and didn’t understand that he was never coming back home.
This business I run is one I love and created through my own hard work.
It gives me purpose. No one had any reason to believe I could make flower farming a success, even me.
But it’s going better than I hoped, and I don’t want to give it up.
Growing flowers means something to me, and finally being independent means everything.
“It’s time to stop letting Linda control your life.” The words sound so simple when Avah says them. She’s gorgeous and confident and has a hot investment banker fiancé. I’m supposed to be providing the flowers for her elopement at the end of the summer, but it’s doubtful I’ll even be here then.
“What does it matter when we’re moving to Albuquerque with her?” I ask, more to myself than my friends.
Silence greets the statement, like no one knows how to pep-talk me out of my sad, small existence. Not that I expect them to. It’s a prison of my own making.
“You don’t have to live the life everyone expects.”
All of us turn at the words spoken by Piper, Sadie’s younger sister. She became part of the book club a couple of months ago after she moved back to Skylark at the end of last summer when she broke off her engagement. We all wanted her to join, but it took Sloane to convince her to agree to it.
Sloane doesn't seem to realize that she touches her fingers to the ends of her hair every couple of minutes.
It's growing back after months of chemo.
First, the brutal rounds last summer and fall, then more treatments leading up to her stem-cell transplant at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville right before Christmas.
She came home to Colorado in February, and the soft dark fuzz has been filling in ever since.
Now it's a bit longer than a buzz cut, making her delicate features even more beautiful.
Her doctors say she's doing well, that her counts look good, but I catch the way she still touches her hair like she's making sure it's real, that it's staying this time.
Piper flashes a half-hearted smile. “I mean, do as I say, not as I do. I’m not exactly a role model for making living-your-best-life decisions.”
“You made the decision not to marry an asshole.” Sadie gently nudges her sister. “That’s something.”
“I’m not living anywhere close to my best life,” I agree, almost reflexively.
“You’re a great mom,” Iris tells me, and I know I should just accept the compliment.
I love my kids more than life, but I’m twenty-seven and have spent almost my entire life letting fear have power over me.
Fear of being left behind or a burden to people.
Of not being worthy of love unless I’m contorting myself into knots to make other people happy.
I shrug and take a sip of water to ease the sudden burn in my throat.
“What kind of example am I setting for my kids? That it’s okay to let someone else dictate your life?
That you should just accept whatever scraps of affection people throw your way?
I’m teaching them that love means being treated like an also-ran, and that terrifies me. ”
“Then maybe it’s time to step up to the bucket list challenge,” Iris suggests. “There’s nothing like checking something off a to-do list to make you feel good.”
“Not all of us are Type A plus,” I counter, attempting a smile.
“A plus plus is more like it.” Iris pushes a leftover sweet potato fry around her plate, and the din of the crowded diner fills the brief pause in conversation as servers weave between tables balancing plates of Nick Dixon’s delicious comfort food.
“There’s no shame in my tightly wound game.
But we all know what it’s like to let fear dictate our lives. ”
Sloane’s gaze meets mine. “We do need someone to step up next for the challenge.”
“It won’t be me,” Piper announces. “I’m going to play the new cool girls book club member card.”
“I’m going to play the ‘I like my life just the way it is’ card,” Avah declares.
Must be nice, I think, not without a hint of longing. I can’t remember the last time I felt content with my life. I don’t know what it’s like to be satisfied and at peace with the present moment instead of always looking ahead to when things might get better.
My friends wait for my answer, the expectation in their gazes making my cheeks heat and my skin prickle like there are ants crawling across it.
“The plan had been to take the kids on an adventure before we moved, but…” I pat my right thigh.
My foot is elevated on another chair because the injured ankle swells if I’m on my feet—or foot, as the case may be—for too long.
“I was thinking of a theme park, but we might have to take a rain check on that.”
“Riding ‘It’s A Small World’ isn’t a bucket list item,” Avah says matter-of-factly.
“That’s rude,” I mutter. Avah is my best friend in this group, and we’re definitely an opposites-attract kind of vibe.
Taylor’s smile is softer. “The bucket list challenge is about you, not the twins.”
I breathe out a laugh. “I’m a single mother of two high-energy first graders. There is no me.”
My best friend squeezes my fingers. “Not until you find her,” Avah tells me.
Tears sting the back of my eyes. I love these women. I don’t know how I would have made it through the past couple of years without their support and friendship. But they don’t understand.
“I think she’s been gone for too long,” I whisper then clear my throat to dislodge the rest of it—my origin story.
“I was only five when I went to live with my grandparents after Mom died. From the day I carried a trash bag filled with all my worldly possessions over their doorstep, Nana and Pops made it clear they weren’t taking me in because of love.
As much of a train wreck as my mom made of her life, they wouldn’t let strangers raise her kid. ”
“Her actions and the consequences from them weren’t your fault or responsibility,” Iris says. She’s speaking from personal experience. Her mom was a magnet for scandal, and my friend paid a price for that.
“My grandparents loved me,” I say like it needs explaining, “but they always worried I was going to turn out like my mom. I worried that they’d give up on me if I did anything out of line, so I became who they wanted me to be.
Then they died in that car wreck, and I went on my first adventure to Colorado.
” I throw up my hands. “We all know how that turned out.”
“It led to you being part of our lives,” Sloane reminds me.