Chapter 3 #2
“Well, I guess we’re going to get married.” There was no proposal. No knee. And the ring had only come later. An heirloom provided by Mrs. McCormick.
I blinked, returning to the present and Max as he gently lifted one of my feet, brushed the dirt off the bottom, and then placed it in my sandal. By the time he repeated the motion with my other foot, I managed to coax my tongue into working again.
“Thank you,” I said, and Max looked up, our eyes locking.
“I don’t think there’s anything my brother wouldn’t do for you.” Harper’s words hadn’t struck me as much earlier, but now, I felt them carry a whole different kind of weight.
“Of course.” Max straightened and brushed the dust from his knee. “Now we can go,” he said, leading me to his truck and holding open the passenger side door for me.
We rode in silence to Stonebar Harbor, and the only thought I had on the drive was, had Todd planned on doing this all along? Was that why he wanted to stay at a hotel here rather than the Lamplight Inn? Was the whole “it’s bad luck to see the bride the night before the wedding” a lie? An excuse?
“Daze.” I flinched at the gentle touch to my elbow, knowing later I’d feel guilty for recoiling from the man who was only trying to help me.
“Sorry,” I murmured, blinking several times to focus.
One minute, I was in the passenger seat of Max’s truck. The next, I was here, at the door to Todd’s hotel room. Somehow, my brain had stopped processing everything between the truck and here.
“I’m going to step outside and call his parents,” Max said, unable to mask his lack of optimism.
I nodded, listening for the sound of the door as it closed. My eyes swept through the room again.
Todd wasn’t here. What was worse, it looked like he’d never been here at all.
The bed was still made like he hadn’t slept in it. There were no clothes in the closet. No sign of his suit. No shoes. No bag. No toiletries. Everything was in its place.
The only trace he’d left was the contents in the bathroom trash can. The empty little bottles of alcohol.
“No answer,” Max announced when he returned.
“Maybe he went back to their house?” I suggested, as though that wasn’t the last place he would go. As though it wasn’t because of them that Todd had insisted on getting married when, deep down, it truly wasn’t what he wanted.
I might be angry and upset, but his parents…they would proverbially want his head for this. For causing this scandal.
Max shook his head. “I called there. Mrs. Abagail said Todd’s not there, but she’ll let me know if he shows up.”
Mrs. Abagail had been their housekeeper from the time Todd was a toddler. She saw his struggles like the rest of us. I trusted that she was telling the truth.
“He was never going to come,” I said softly, brushing my fingers along the comforter.
Max exhaled roughly. I could tell he wanted to agree, but was too much of a gentleman—too loyal a friend to throw Todd under the bus.
“Daze…”
“He didn’t leave in a hurry. He didn’t get cold feet and run.” I motioned weakly to the room. “He never planned on staying.”
When I turned back to Max, the crease in his brow deepened. He couldn’t argue. He knew I was right.
“Let me take you back to the inn. Maybe he’ll be there when we get back. Maybe he just needed a little more time.”
I closed my eyes and let my sigh bleed through my lips. “We both know he didn’t.” I stroked my fingers over my stomach, all of my worries settling on the tiny, growing human in my stomach.
How could he do this to her? Even if she wasn’t planned, even if he was more anxious than excited, how could he walk away from his responsibility to her?
“I’m going to find him, Daze. I’m going to fix this,” Max promised low as I did one last sweep of the room like I expected to find my groom hiding under the bed or behind the shower curtain.
I shuddered at the soft command of his words, feeling my heart stumble as it slowed down.
Shaking my head, my eyes closed, and I felt the first unwelcome tear slide free.
“You can’t fix this, Max. You can’t fix him,” I said thickly, feeling a ripple of my anger reach in his direction.
Max grunted, and then I heard it—the buzz of his phone.
Hope squeezed my chest as he swiped and answered, “Hello?”
Breathe. Just breathe.
“Shit.”
I sucked in a painful breath, and Max glanced at me, saying, “I’ll call you back in ten.”
“Who was it? Did they find Todd?”
“No, Daze. It was my operations manager, Erica. One of my drivers no-showed today, and we’ve got a full schedule of deliveries…” He grimaced as he trailed off. “Sorry, it’s not your problem. I’ll figure it out once we get back to the inn.”
Not Todd. Not about Todd.
Todd was gone.
Once more, time seemed to hop and skip forward like it didn’t want to land too long on any moment of this traumatic day. Max helped me into his truck, and then a few blinks later, we were pulling to a stop by the lampposts out front of the historic inn.
Lou came outside as Max parked, looking hopeful until she realized it was still only the two of us.
The knot in my throat turned raw from all my attempts to swallow.
“I’ll be in in a minute,” Max said. “I just have to touch base with Erica and figure out what we’re going to do about the local deliveries for today.”
“Do you need to take them?”
His head snapped up, and he quickly answered, “No,” but I knew if it weren’t for me, for Todd and our wedding, he would.
Max was one of those business owners where there was no task that was beneath him.
“I’ll find someone to handle it. I should’ve known Tucker was going to flake,” he grunted.
“He’s missed four days in the last three weeks, and I kept covering… ”
He kept giving him the benefit of the doubt. Enabling him. Just like he’d done for Todd.
I looked back at the inn and Lou waiting in the doorway, her pity both understandable and suffocating.
Suddenly, the inn was the last place I wanted to be. Not with the decorations. The flowers. The dress. The plans. And now my almost in-laws.
A familiar BMW with tinted windows pulled up behind Max’s truck.
“Can you handle it?” I asked, desperation clawing at my voice.
“What?” Max’s brow creased.
“Can you tell her you’ll deliver them?”
Max used to do all the deliveries back when MaineStems was just getting off the ground. I would ride along in his passenger seat, just like I was now, except I’d be studying between Max’s stops. Driving helped me think. Helped me process. That was why I’d go along for the ride.
Todd never did deliveries. He’d say it was because his job was to schmooze his parents’ rich friends for investment money, which it was, but the deliveries usually started early. If Todd had been out the night before, he never wanted to wake up.
It was actually Todd’s suggestion that I ride along with Max. Ironically. Not because he remembered how much I enjoyed going for drives, but because it obscured how many mornings he woke up hungover. That was before it became impossible to hide.
“I could, but I’m not going to. I’m not leaving you. Not until—”
“I want to go with you,” I blurted out. “I want to take the deliveries with you.”
He stared at me like I’d grown a second—well, technically, third head. And in turn, my stare darted back to the darkly dressed couple getting out of the grossly expensive car, who stuck out like stuck-up thumbs in this small town.
“I can’t go back in there right now, Max.
” Honesty was brutal but necessary. “Everything’s set up for the wedding—a wedding that obviously isn’t going to happen.
And I can’t…I won’t just sit in there hoping my fiancé decides to change his mind and come back for me and his child, all the while being judged by his parents because I’m sure, in their mind, this is somehow my fault. ”
“What did you do? What did you say to him? How could you let this happen?”
“You’re carrying his baby. Of course, if he left, it has to be something you did.”
I could hear them now because I’d heard them countless times before. The way they treated Todd when something didn’t go right. The things they said about me, even when they knew I could hear them.
They wanted us to get married because of the baby, but that was about all they wanted from me.
They didn’t like the idea of their son’s fiancée, the mother of their grandchild, working as a bartender at a local restaurant in Portland or going to school at night for my master’s in chemistry.
They didn’t like the appearance of my keeping an apartment by the school, as though Todd’s home—their property—wasn’t good enough for me.
It was all a twisted game of smoke and mirrors, and I hated that doing what was best for my baby and our future could be so easily conflated with acquiescing to the wants of people who were so heartless.
People who only cared about money and image and power, and who sought to control their son’s life at every turn.
Anger sank its hooks into the hollows of my sadness, and it was the only thing that kept me from caving in on myself.
“Daze, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Max rumbled, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Please.” I hated to beg, but I hated it less than the thought of walking back into the place where I was supposed to be getting married right now.
“I can’t just sit here and wait for Todd to decide to show up and have his parents blame all of this on me.
” A tear dripped onto my tightly locked hands. “Please get me away from here.”
When I looked at Max again, he wasn’t staring at the steering wheel in turmoil or even looking at me with concern. His gaze was trained on the single splatter of wet on my hand. He looked like he would willing amputate a limb to make the tear disappear.
“All right,” he agreed roughly. “Let me just talk to them, tell them what happened, and tell Lou where you’ll be so no one sends out a second search party.”
Max got out, and before he could talk to Lou, he was accosted by Todd’s parents.
I assumed he must’ve left them a voicemail when he called them at the hotel, so they had an idea of what was going on.
They started arguing. Not loudly. Never loudly.
But I knew what their presentable arguments looked like—like snakes hissing and snapping at one another.
Deadly but not loud. After a few minutes, and with no one else to levy the blame, they both returned to their car, cell phones pinned to their ears.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the NSA was searching for Todd by the end of the day.
Max’s conversation with Lou was much shorter and contained a small intermission when she darted inside, returning not even a minute later with a small, white paper bag that she gave to Max before waving to me.
“Pastries,” Max said, handing me the bag as he climbed back into his truck. “In case you get hungry.”
What about you? I wanted to ask, but I already knew the answer. There wouldn’t be a single moment of this day when Max Hamilton stopped to think about himself or what he needed, only me.
As he pulled away from the curb, I lacked the strength to fight off the irony that the only man who’d gone down on his knees for me, who took care of me, and who put me first on my wedding day was my fiancé’s best friend.