Chapter 2
Two
“Yeah, I just want to get going. The sooner I go, the sooner I get back. I made you sausage and eggs, just the way you like. There's plenty of coffee and some toast, but I know you don’t eat many carbs.”
“Thanks.” Angela ignored his stare, focusing on her breakfast. “Thank you for this. I was starving after yesterday, and now we can get going without even stopping.”
“Good.”
Angela had packed her bags the night before and was ready to leave shortly after breakfast, dragging her suitcase behind her. She stopped at the driver’s side door. Steven stood in front of her, with his hand held out.
“I’m driving.”
“No, you're not. You don’t even know the way to Mistletoe Harbor.”
“I can GPS it.”
“No. I’m driving. It’ll help me stay sane during the trip. And you can sleep, since I know you were up most of the night playing games with your friends.”
Steven snatched the keys from her hand and hopped into the driver’s seat, leaving her no choice but to climb into the passenger seat.
“You know, Mom, you really need a hobby, and I don’t mean work. When are you going to stop watching every move I make?”
Given that they would be spending a considerable amount of time together, she chose to remain silent to avoid any potential conflict. They made it out of town and headed east before she finally spoke up. “Take the interstate. It’s the fastest.”
“And the costliest. It's not like he’s alive and hanging onto life, Mom. He’s gone. A few hours more, and it's not going to matter.”
Angela was in no mood. The journey would be long, and they had to survive it and get to Mistletoe Harbor in one piece.
“It’s going to matter to me. You know how I dislike driving for long hours in a car. The interstate, or I stop paying the car payment when I get back.”
“Fine.”
She ignored the loud music he blared from the stereo, not her usual choice, but after an hour, she couldn’t ignore his driving skills. “You’re driving too fast, Steven. Slow down.”
“It’s the interstate, Mom. You're supposed to drive fast. That’s why they make them to get you to where you're going faster than the route I was planning to take.”
“If we crash and die, you're going to meet your grandfather sooner rather than later, and he hasn’t always been a nice person at times.”
Angela was grateful her son slowed down to a reasonable speed for a while. Deciding her only way to find peace was to admire what flashed outside her window, she turned to the passing scenery. The cold, frosty landscape that usually calmed her did nothing to bring her peace.
The evergreen trees swayed with the beginnings of late autumn's departure. All signs of life that nature once showed had fallen into slumber as the gloom of the day echoed her feelings. She sighed, almost forgetting her son’s driving, and closed her eyes.
The moment she closed them, Evander appeared in her mind.
His face, with his warm smile, was just as she remembered it.
He looked down at her, and his twinkling eyes mirrored the depth of her feelings for him.
A love that had come so quickly and deeply shattered every illusion she had about her life until then.
“Oh, Evander.”
“Who’s Evander? Is that Grandpa’s real name?”
“What?” Blinking her eyes open, Angela realized she’d spoken his name aloud. “Oh, no, Grandpa was Jack. I thought you knew that.”
“Then who’s Evander?”
“Nobody, just someone from my past.”
“From the way you said his name, it sounded serious.” The words from Steven sounded way more serious and curious than Angela liked.
Still, she wouldn’t lie to her son anymore. “It was serious at the time, but long since over. It was a long time ago. We were over long before you came along, but yes, it was, or so we both thought.”
“What happened?”
“Your grandfather is what happened.” Her stomach grumbled, and seeing the sign for food just in time, Angela used it to her advantage. “Listen, I’d rather not talk about it or him now. Let's pull over and grab a bite to eat. I’m starting to feel hungry again.”
“Okay.”
Her son, who had an insatiable appetite, would never refuse food if he could help it. After grabbing a quick burger and fries, they were back on the interstate heading east to Mistletoe Harbor, Maine.
“So why did you leave town? I mean, neither you nor Grandpa ever told me, and neither did Emma. Why go so far? Chicago is a far cry from Maine.”
At a loss for how to explain things without giving too many details she wasn’t about to share, Angela sipped the last of her soda and put it in the cup holder.
“It’s a long story, but your grandfather and I didn’t see eye to eye.
I ended up in Chicago with Aunt Beverly, whom you remember. I just never left.”
“Well, from the looks of things, I can see why.”
The hour was getting late, and her son had been driving for way too long.
She’d had one too many energy drinks, and now she was buzzing with nervous energy.
“You’ve been driving a long time, and we still have about six hours or so to go.
Why don’t you let me drive? You can rest, and I’ll wake you when I stop for gas and dinner. ”
“Fine.”
After a quick stop, they switched seats, and Angela was surprised he didn’t put up a fight over the change. Quickly, her son settled into his phone, forgetting about her and the journey for a while. This suited her just fine as the darkness of nightfall covered them in a cozy blanket.
By midnight, with a hard yawn and somewhat blurry eyes, she finally pulled into Mistletoe Harbor. To her right, Steven had long since fallen asleep, and despite his youthfulness, she smiled.
“Ain’t got anything on your mom.”
The house was dark as she quietly drove into the driveway of her childhood home, a place she’d rarely visited since leaving years earlier. “Where is Emma?”
Seeing no sign of her sister's car and feeling frustrated, Angela nudged her son to wake up and got out of the car. “All those kids probably held her up.”
“Who?”
“Your Aunt Emma. Come on, let's go inside. I still have a key, unless he changed it.”
A numbness she hadn’t expected settled into her bones the moment she drove into town. Still feeling it, Angela tried not to think about her father, or Evander, or how she felt, for fear she’d crumble from it.
Steven was right behind her as she rummaged for the old key she had strangely kept all these years, hoping it would work. When the door finally clicked open, she pushed with all her might and flicked the light switch she remembered being next to the door.
The memories of her last moment with her father, Jack, arguing in the very kitchen she stood in, flooded her system. Stepping back, she ran into her son. “Oh, sorry, Steven, you can go on in.”
“Wow, check this out. Grandpa really had a quirky taste. Look at that clock over there. What’s got you so freaked out, a ghost or something?” His laughter echoed through the dull, brown, and yellow kitchen, which never quite received the updates it needed when she was a kid.
“You could say that, ghosts from the past.” Angela forced her way through the door, ignoring the smell of cigar smoke mixed with mildew. “Your grandfather had a thing for cuckoo clocks. You’ll see them everywhere in the house.”
“Right on.” Angela wasn’t surprised when he threw open the refrigerator, then quickly shut it again. “Ugh, something stinks badly in there. Guess there’s no late-night eats for me.” He laughed, catching Angela off guard.
“You might find something in that cabinet there. He used to keep his stash of snacks he wasn’t supposed to eat in there unless he changed it. If you don’t find anything, you can get the ones I bought from the trunk.”
After a few brief comments, Steven found the mother of all snack wagons and took his chips, dip, candy, and sodas to the living room. “Wow, crazy, he really did like cuckoo clocks!” His voice echoed through the quiet house.
With no idea where to start, Angela stayed in the kitchen, hoping to get her bearings before sleep took over. Her muscles were sore from sitting too long. She knew that slipping into a bed and getting rest would be her only relief.
“Oh, Dad.”
The tears came before she could control them as she slumped in a chair with its flattened seat cushion and began to cry. “I’m so sorry that we didn’t move past this, Dad.”
Pained by her loss and overwhelmed by the loneliness she’d buried for so long, Angela stared at the spare bedroom door for a few seconds. Then she crept into the spare bedroom, grateful her son had taken the other spare room and not her father’s.
The scent of fresh linen lingered on the quilt she hadn’t bothered to crawl under. Remnants of old habits. She fell into a deep sleep, the day's events too much to bear, without even taking the time to look at her phone.
She had hardly glanced at it since leaving Chicago, confident her employees could handle anything that arose.
The scent of coffee woke her, along with the loud slam of a door. Startled, she remembered all the things she’d been through with her son Steven over the years, and she sat up instantly, alert. “Steven? Are you here?”
The sound of footsteps coming down the wood-floor hallway grew louder, and then he was there, opening the bedroom door and staring at her.
He smiled, a boyish grin she hadn’t seen in years.
“Thought I snuck out again? I can assure you, Mom, I’m not doing that here.
Nothing here but a bunch of stick trees and that raging ocean beyond.
Unless I feel like throwing myself in today, which I don’t—we're good.”
He said no more and walked away. Angela quickly calmed her nerves, still struggling to accept that he was a twenty-one-year-old man after everything she’d been through.
Her will had become as hard as nails after years of therapy, endless late-night conversations with him, and finding him in city dwellings better off burned to the ground.
“Do I smell coffee?”
She didn’t fuss much with her personal hygiene, as there was a lot of work to do as she maneuvered through the house. A fluff here, a splash there, and she was ready to go. Too often, she’d eaten and operated on the fly in recent years, making it second nature.
“Over there.”
“Thanks. So, I don’t know when Emma is—”
The back door to the kitchen, leading to the patio, slammed shut. Confused why her son would want to go outdoors in this brisk weather, the worried mother inside her moved to the window to watch.
“What is going on in his head?”
Slowly, Steven moved across the yard and disappeared into her father’s shed. Curious, her heart pounding in her chest, her first thought was to run to the shed, throw open the door, and see what was going on.
“There are all kinds of knives and equipment in there.” She shook her head, remembering how many times Emma reminded her that he was a grown man now.
She stepped away, haunted by memories of her failed relationship with her father. A flood of emotion lurked just beneath the surface, along with thoughts of lost love with Evander, all waiting to erupt.
To keep herself busy, Angela decided to take a walk so she wouldn't follow her son’s every move all day, making him feel boxed in. “Boxed in? Who would have thought that was a thing?”
She made her way to the water’s edge. The craggy rocks were not a comfortable place to sit and contemplate life, but she did it anyway.
Her mind was in a thousand places—feelings and thoughts she couldn’t control—and the present situation loomed over her, and she was troubled. Still, her heart ached for the man she’d known as her father and for her childhood, long gone.
“Why did you do that to me? Why would you turn your daughter and your grandson away just because Evander and I weren’t married? I will never understand. In twenty-one years, I am no closer to figuring it out than I was at the moment. Now I’ll never know.”
The tears came again for a father lost, for time she’d never get back, for a grandson who’d hardly known his grandfather, and for all she’d done, alone. She tossed rocks into the water, the chain linking her emotions—hard when the pain grew and soft when regret hit.
“Always so busy, I was always working. Dad, you had no choice in the matter after I went to live with Mom’s sister.
You left me no choice. Evander would have married me, I know it, but he needed to build his life, and I loved him enough to be patient.
Sending me away was wrong. You left me no other choice but to leave Mistletoe Harbor forever. ”