Chapter Seven
There was something about the way he said that name.
Kacey.
Matilda found herself leaning closer and keeping her eyes trained on Tennessee, because something about the way he held himself had changed, too.
She thought that she ought to have felt some kind of jolt when he’d said it.
Something like jealousy, but she didn’t.
Instead, she felt the way she always did when she saw a creature wounded.
She just wanted to put her hands on him and see how she could help. Sometimes she couldn’t. Right now, help appeared to be the simple act of listening. And she knew she could do that.
But first she led him back inside, winding through the gauntlet of overexcited dogs and the much warier cats in their hiding spots, and then made them all lie down somewhere other than the couch.
Matilda sat and waved to the cushion beside her, encouraging Tennessee to sit down with her.
He frowned, and she wondered if he was going to make a run for it.
He moved toward the door and she bit her lip to keep her disappointment inside, because she knew better.
Sometimes you had to let the hurt ones find their own way, no matter how much you thought you could help.
Then, in the end, all he was doing was shrugging out of his jacket and taking off his boots, lining them up neatly in the entryway where she’d kicked hers aside.
A little Tennessee detail that made her throat feel tight.
“Kacey and I dated from the moment we hit middle school,” Tennessee told her when he came back to the couch and sat down, then turned to face her so slowly that she wondered if it actually caused him pain to open up.
“Not that it was really dating in the beginning. She lived down in Marietta and we only saw each other in school. I’m pretty sure her parents hoped the kind of sweet we were on each other would fade, but it didn’t.
” He blew out a breath. “We were each other’s first everything.
We thought we’d be each other’s only everything, too, and when we were sixteen we planned out our whole life. ”
“I planned out my whole life when I was sixteen too,” Matilda offered. “It involved pop superstardom. Tragically, only the dogs like it when I sing.”
“We were very practical,” Tennessee said, and she couldn’t quite decipher his tone then.
Was it self-deprecating? Or something laced a bit more with the kind of grief she supposed everyone had, at some point, about the things they’d imagined they’d do when they couldn’t really imagine what shape their lives might take?
“I would start working in the store full-time at graduation. She would leave to get a degree, then come back so we could start building our family. We figured we’d be an unstoppable team.
I started fixing up the house on the property that had been falling down my whole life for us because I had no doubt, ever, that we would do exactly what we promised each other we would do. ”
He shook his head and looked away. And because he was quiet for a moment, she took the opportunity to breathe in the fact that he was really here. Sitting on her couch, in her house, where she’d imagined him sitting a million times or more.
Though she’d never really believed a dream like that would come true. And now that he was not only here, but opening up about his life… She hadn’t bothered to dream about something like that. Her imagination only went so far. This was impossible.
But he was still here.
“Long distance is hard,” Tennessee told her.
“We thought we could handle it, because it wasn’t as if we’d ever even really lived in the same town.
But it was harder than that. And not because we didn’t trust each other, but because our lives became so different.
” He was staring straight ahead, his gaze on the fire, but Matilda suspected that he was somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere back in time. “And the longer it went on, it became obvious that while her world was getting bigger and bigger with possibilities that had never occurred to us, mine was staying the same.”
“I think it makes sense that your head can get turned when you live somewhere else,” Matilda said quietly. “When your world changes, you change with it. That’s only natural.”
“Oh, her head didn’t get turned,” Tennessee said with a short laugh.
“Mine did. If I’d listened to her, she’d never been happier, because she knew where we were heading.
The plan was the plan and we were executing it exactly the way we’d dreamed up when we were sixteen.
If I’d listened to her, we would probably be married now. ”
Matilda studied his face, and that frown he wore. “And that would be a bad thing?”
“I went to visit her on her campus in Billings,” Tennessee said after a moment.
“It was supposed to be a surprise, because she’d had a tough run of classes and I hadn’t been able to get away.
I knew her schedule, so it was easy to find her.
I just waited outside for her class to let out.
” He shook his head. “But then when she came outside, I couldn’t do it.
It was like I could suddenly see it all much too clearly. ”
“Was she with someone else?” Matilda asked, quietly. Though inside, she was already feeling indignant on his behalf.
Tennessee let out that small laugh. “Of course she wasn’t with someone else.
Kacey wasn’t like that. She was with her friends.
And she was… light and happy and carefree.
She looked like the girl she’d been in high school, the one I’d fallen in love with.
And I couldn’t pretend to myself any longer that she was still that girl with me. ”
Matilda was riveted. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Looking back, I can see that no matter how much I might have loved her, the important thing to me was that I made sure I was nothing like my father.” Tennessee ran a hand over his face.
“It’s not surprising that I found someone young, held on tight, and thought that if I could do everything right, get it all locked down, I could prove that I was different.
Because deep down, I was desperate to be different. ”
“You are different,” Matilda said at once.
But Tennessee shook his head at that. “Standing there that day on her campus, when she had no idea I was anywhere around, I could see what I was doing was pulling her down with me. Chaining her somewhere that maybe she didn’t belong.
Because she loved me. She would never disappoint me.
Even if the plans she and I made at sixteen didn’t suit her anymore. ”
He swallowed, like it still hurt him, or maybe it was just as he was so busy looking at the past that it felt like the present again.
Either way, he kept going. “I could have broken up with her on the spot and set her free immediately. I should have. But I didn’t.
I didn’t even tell her that I was there.
I went back home and I sat on it.” His mouth hardened.
“And that was how I figured out that given the opportunity, I was exactly like my dad. Selfish. Deeply self-centered. Perfectly willing to hurt someone else if it made me feel better. I’ll tell you something, Matilda. I didn’t like myself much after that.”
“I think you’re being unfair.” Matilda studied him. “I’m pretty sure that selfish, self-centered people like themselves just fine when they act the way they do. Once again, you’re nothing like him.”
But he clearly didn’t want to hear that. “The next time she came home, I did what had to be done. It was messy, because we’d been together so long at that point. We grew up together.”
He let out a small sigh. “Needless to say, she didn’t exactly see things my way.
And I’ll admit that we went back and forth on that.
For years. Because deep down, I think we both liked the dream.
The plan. The idea that two kids could get sweet on each other the first day of middle school, and make it work.
Maybe they can, but we weren’t those kids. ”
“Where is she now?” Matilda asked, already going through every person she’d ever known in Crawford County and wondering if there was a Kacey in there somewhere.
“Last I heard she was a teacher in Omaha,” Tennessee said, and smiled fondly, like he was proud of her all these years later.
That just made Matilda like him more. “Her mom told me that she met a nice man who thought she hung the stars and wanted to give her the world. I told her I was happy to hear it, and I meant it. They’ve got three kids now.
She still sends my mother a Christmas card. ”
“Do you regret what you did?” Matilda asked. “Breaking up with her like that?”
“Not at all.” He shook his head decisively. “What I regret is not cutting it off cleaner. It lingered a little too long throughout our twenties and I don’t think it did either one of us any favors. Nostalgia can be a bitch like that.”
He didn’t say anything after that, not for some time.
The fire crackled and popped. The wind slapped against the side of the cottage.
Fran, Matilda’s old bulldog, snored in her corner.
Montgomery, the ancient dachshund, chased badgers in his sleep, his white-tipped paws scrabbling in the air as he lay on his back.
“That’s the funny thing about these mysteries that folks think need solving,” Tennessee said after a while.
“Most of the time, they’re not mysteries.
They’re not even secrets. Just not anybody else’s business.
But I’m glad to know that people are still sitting around talking about my broken heart.
” His blue gaze lifted to hers, and held.
“That was the trouble, Matilda. It wasn’t my heart that broke.
And in the end, only my telling her that got her to let go.
I should have told her the truth a whole lot sooner and saved her from all that mess. ”