Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
T HE THING ABOUT Rory was that she’d always been a quitter. Something she was thinking about as she sat in the farm store, working a shift while Fia harvested more from the garden.
The farm store she’d be leaving next month.
Quitter behavior. Some might argue.
She’d first realized she was a quitter when clinging to the bottom of a rope in PE, looking up and doing mental calculations on how difficult it would be to get to the top. She was never going to make it. She’d realized that she could struggle and strain and get halfway, and then fail, in spite of getting mostly there...or she could just stop before she started.
She opted for that.
She’d failed PE, which she hated. She’d had straight A’s otherwise.
The grades were very important. Because she wasn’t athletic, she wasn’t popular. Her braces, glasses and knobby knees had precluded her from being part of the elite set. And her grades were all she had.
For all the good they’d done her.
Unlike most of the Four Corners kids, she’d gone to high school an hour from the ranch. Another aspect of her...quitter-ness. She just hadn’t been able to deal with her family during that period of time and the opportunity to put a little distance between herself and the turmoil at home had been a blessing.
She’d met her best friend, Lydia Payne, at a parade in town that her mom had taken her to when she’d been eight years old. Lydia had decided to collect Rory and make her into a pet of sorts, and Rory had soaked up the attention. In her own household, she was often lost.
Less confrontational than Fia. Not a rancher like Quinn. A little less—a lot less—brave than Alaina.
When she’d gotten into middle school, she’d begged to be able to go to school in Mapleton, along with Lydia. Her parents had agreed, since it didn’t mean any extra work for them, given transportation would be handled by Lydia’s older brother.
That had given Rory her own space. Her own time. A little room to breathe.
That was when she’d started fantasizing about a life away from Pyrite Falls and Four Corners. Maybe if she had even more space around her, she’d feel that much more free.
The problem was she’d still been a quitter.
Her quitting continued to the team-building hike they’d had to take one year in school, and she’d gotten midway up the rocks, looked down, scared ten years off her life and refused to go any farther.
She’d achieved her dreams. She’d gotten into college far from Pyrite Falls, Oregon, and away from her family. Away from everyone who knew her.
For three months.
She’d spent a semester in absolute misery and had turned with her tail between her legs after experiencing the most humiliating night of her life. She’d thought one of the guys wanted to make out with her; instead, she’d ended up abandoned in a closet for an hour and when she emerged, she’d had beer dumped on her while they’d laughed about small-town virgins with tits that weren’t any bigger than mosquito bites.
She’d confided in her friend Lydia about the humiliation, and Lydia had been pragmatic: It could be worse. You were at a frat party. You could have been a statistic.
But then, in addition to being a quitter, Rory Sullivan could never be a statistic.
Because she was too invisible to be counted as a statistic.
She was certainly invisible in her hometown.
It was one reason she needed to get out. She’d always felt like she wasn’t going to be the hometown girl who blossomed when she went away. She’d had years to figure out how to blossom in Pyrite Falls, after all, and it hadn’t happened. She’d been picked on at school, and even the one time...even the one time she’d thought she’d triumphed, it hadn’t been enough.
Everyone thought they knew what to expect with her, and as a result she lived down to those expectations.
Not anymore.
She had a plan. She had a job lined up, which felt like a small miracle, since she had often felt like maybe she had torpedoed her chances of success of any kind when she left school.
But she’d been working at the ranch ever since then, and had also been part of establishing the new Sullivan family farm store. She had gotten so much experience coordinating that, and additionally she had experience managing rental properties. Even though it wasn’t a lot of experience, it was still experience. It had started with houses on the ranch, and had expanded to a couple of places in the outlying area since people realized she had been doing such a good job with them at Sullivan’s Point.
That had opened up an opportunity for her outside of Four Corners. It hadn’t been her intention when she had started doing it, but it was certainly her intention now.
She felt like those doors were open again, ones she’d thought she’d closed forever with her youthful cowardice, and now she saw a new chance.
She wanted to take that chance.
To be worthy of the boost she’d been given all those years ago, that she hadn’t been able to do enough with then.
She’d been blindly applying for jobs in cities for the last couple of months, and finally she’d gotten one. There was a building manager at an apartment complex in the north end of Boston, a beautiful historic building, and the long-time manager was retiring, leaving the vacancy.
And that meant...finally, she had a chance to start over. Finally, Rory had the chance to reinvent herself.
She was older now. She was ready now.
She wasn’t a scared eighteen-year-old away from home for the first time. She’d had a lot of time to sit in her failures.
To sit in the quitting.
She wasn’t going to do it anymore.
Of course, she had some regrets about leaving. Because yes, she thought as she parked her car in front of the store, it meant leaving the store. Arguably quitting. Though this was quitting to begin.
Her best friend, Lydia, still wasn’t happy about it. And her sisters weren’t especially thrilled, either.
Though at least they were understanding. Because they knew. They knew what it had been like for her growing up. They knew what it was like for her now.
And they were all...paired off.
Well, not Fia. But that didn’t surprise Rory. Fia didn’t want that kind of thing, and Rory wasn’t sure she did, either. Or rather, she had other things to worry about first.
Such as getting a date. Getting kissed.
Not being such a loser.
Well. She was on the right path.
She had four weeks left in Pyrite Falls. And she had a plan.
Her Summer of Rory.
It was such a funny thing, but she’d been thinking a lot about reputations and legends. Rory Sullivan had, for the longest time, been known as a quitter. A weird girl, best ignored—which was easy enough because it wasn’t like she was going to push her way into a social group. Somebody you didn’t want to invite to your birthday party. Somebody that you poured beer on after abandoning her in a closet.
Rory was a wet blanket because her reputation preceded her, and she allowed it to define who she was. She was done with that. She was redefining herself.
Perhaps not by kissing strange hot men in the woods, but there were other ways to have a rebirth. She was certain.
Thank God for Lydia, because without her, Rory wouldn’t have had anyone. But Lydia liked that Rory’s humor was quiet and a little bit sly. She liked sitting in a corner, too, even though Rory was confident that Lydia didn’t have to do that if she didn’t want to.
Rory had always been a bookworm. Content to experience adventure in the pages of those books, because she was too anxious to do it any other way, and it was far too easy for her to let herself back out of things when she was uncomfortable. But if she was going to make this move to Boston, if she was going to start over, if she was going to reinvent herself, then that meant she had to get a firm foundation underneath her.
It was funny that all of this was happening when Gideon Payne was coming back home.
His name elicited a reaction from everyone. He was a legend in town.
But the reaction he elicited in her was different.
Personal. Somewhat embarrassing. Definitely deep.
She stared down at her journal, an ironic thing to be looking at while thinking of Gideon. But writing things down had always been formative for her. And yes, that had backfired on her that time in middle school. But she wasn’t a teenager anymore.
Thank God.
This list was a part of her plan. A big part of it.
But she wasn’t going to share it with anybody. And anyway, this was all part of her whole process. She didn’t need to feel silly, because she was happy enough with what she was doing. She didn’t need to feel silly, because she stood by the decision she was making to change her life. And maybe all of this would blow up in her face, but this was about being active, rather than passive.
Well. Quitting was active. In its way.
She had actively shoved herself into the category of the beige secondhand sweater .
If she were an article of clothing, that would be her.
She wanted to be a pair of stilettos. A miniskirt.
A bit exciting, a little racy.
How could she go to her new life in Boston when she hadn’t even conquered the life she had here?
She started to feel warm and peeled her sweater off.
And nearly groaned when she realized that she had a beige T-shirt on underneath.
She was still wrestling with the sweater when Fia walked in, carrying a basket overflowing with fruits and vegetables. Bright pink and golden raspberries, sun-warmed apricots, carrots with cheerful green tops. She loved that. She would miss it.
“Can you go check on our new tenant today?” Fia asked, setting her heavy basket down.
Gideon.
Rory’s heart gave a very unnecessary thump.
“Yeah,” said Rory, setting her notebook down.
“Good. You might bring him some more food. I know that you put coffee and milk and the like up there for the morning, but he’s probably going to need lunch.”
The reaction she felt to actually going there when he might be home was something like...panic. And she couldn’t explain why.
“Do we provide room and board now?” she asked, her heart pounding in her ears.
“No. But he is... He’s Gideon Payne. He has a Purple Heart. He took Mapleton High School to state in football. Nobody else has ever done that.”
“You didn’t even go there,” Rory pointed out.
“No. Maybe I didn’t. But you have to admit, it’s impressive. This is a tiny little area, and it’s never really been on the map for much. But when it has been...it’s been him. Well, and Sawyer Garrett putting a mail-order bride article out there on the internet, and getting picked up by worldwide news outlets. There was that. But otherwise, it’s Gideon. He’s a war hero and he’s...”
“I get it. Are you sure you don’t want to go deliver the stuff? You seem like you have a little bit of a crush on him.” If that sounded pointed, it wasn’t on purpose.
If it was deflection, she didn’t mean it to be.
She was just about to see the man she’d had a totally teen-years-defining crush on for the first time in forever and it was just fine.
She wished, she really did, that the timing of this were different. That she’d run into him again after she’d become interesting.
Or at least even half of what he’d told her she could be that day he’d rescued her at school.
Lord knew she wasn’t now.
Not that she harbored secret fantasies about anything happening, it was just that...of course she wanted to be a little more amazing when coming face-to-face with the man who had defined masculine beauty to her when she’d been fifteen. Who wouldn’t?
“I don’t,” said Fia. “I’m merely giving admiration where admiration is due. Because I am good like that.”
“Let me tell you, Gideon Payne is just a regular guy. I think it’s great that his reputation precedes him, and as a war hero, he deserves some credit. But... Don’t forget that I am still very good friends with his sister. And I used to see him around the house quite a bit. He is a regular guy .”
Her heart fluttered as she said it, like it was calling her a liar. She wasn’t lying. He was a man. An amazing one, sure. But he wasn’t...the demigod her mind had built him into all those years ago, so she and everyone else could calm down.
“Okay. If you say so,” Fia said.
Rory remembered him all clean-cut, and the last time she’d seen him had been right before he went into the military, so not only had he been clean-cut with that square razor-sharp jaw, but he’d had the high and tight haircut that made his looks even more severe.
He was basically Captain America.
And good for him. Good for him.
She went to the store, putting together a little care package to bring up this afternoon since Fia was bound and determined to overextend the hospitality.
She thought about what kind of thing she might do in a much larger apartment complex, where there were a hundred and twenty units.
It was massive.
But she would also have more resources. She’d already done many video calls with the other manager, learning that there were other resources available to her should there ever be emergencies. She wouldn’t be on the hook personally for repairs. Her job was simply to facilitate all these things and make the tenants feel like life in the apartment complex ran smoothly.
They were premium apartments. And Rory would be getting one as part of her job.
She tried to imagine that life. A life nestled in this beautiful city she’d never been to.
Bricks and noise and streetlights, all things that they didn’t have in Pyrite Falls.
It was such a huge step, but one that she felt was necessary.
It was the kind of step a heroine in a rom-com might take. A small-town girl making it to the big city and finding new friends. Drinking martinis. Having a shopping montage. Meeting a man who thought she was different and interesting instead of a faded wallflower. She wanted that.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll drive up to greet him.”
It was strange because she wasn’t feeling nervous about it or anything; she did know him, after all. And also part of her job was talking to a lot of people she didn’t know.
It was her function on the ranch, and off. She made a lot of phone calls to people she’d never met, she had a lot of meetings with people she’d never met, and she was willingly jumping feet first into a job that would require more of the same.
Meeting people just didn’t fill her with a sense of anticipation or anxiety. Funny, because so many things did.
But for some reason, as she drew closer to the cabin, she felt a strange tightening of anticipation.
Maybe because he was kind of a legend. Maybe because she hadn’t seen him in so long.
The last time she’d seen them, he’d been headed off for basic training. He had been back since, but she hadn’t...visited with him.
She had collected a list of facts about Gideon over the years. Things she’d kept written secretly inside her own heart, and definitely not in a diary anywhere. If you didn’t learn from your mistakes, what was the point?
But she knew he’d been deployed to Afghanistan, that he’d gotten married. She knew he’d been to classified locations that Lydia wasn’t even allowed to know details about. He’d been injured in the line of duty. He’d gotten divorced.
Rory wondered if he would be different.
For some reason, that thought didn’t hit until right when she pulled up to the cabin. Because he was a legend. And legends felt fixed. Statues, plaques, immovable objects that stood as a testament to a moment.
He’d been injured. But in her mind she’d imagined him walking on crutches and waving bravely to a crowd of people. A man in a parade, like always.
How bad had it actually been?
She realized her own images of the whole thing had been cinematic. A man with an artful cut on his cheek bravely lying in a hospital bed with his family by his side before returning back home.
She got out of the car and took the basket with her, walked up to the front door and knocked. His truck was there, so she imagined that he was, too. She didn’t exactly know what he was doing with his time until the ranch was ready for him. Visiting his family, likely, but it was fairly early in the day.
The door opened, and she stood there, face to chest—until she tilted her chin up—with a stranger.
Because this was not Gideon Payne. Not as she remembered him.
This was the stranger from the woods.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Immediately, she felt like she was on fire. Like she might die from being this close to him. Or die if she didn’t get closer.
She could hardly see him for all the raw magnetism she felt just by standing in front of him, but when she took a breath, she took stock of all the differences.
He wasn’t the smiling boy with a loud laugh and an easy manner. Gone was that clean-cut look, that aggressively homegrown handsomeness.
He was big. Much bigger than he’d been back then. His chest was deep, heavily muscled. He was lean, but he was the kind of muscular that looked like he could effortlessly flip a tire. Or lift a car.
His hair was long, dark and shaggy, and he had a heavy beard.
She had to look, hard, for any feature that made him recognizable as the man he’d been. This wasn’t Captain America.
Those blue eyes, though.
They were familiar. But different somehow, too. There was no humor there. No warmth. No recognition as he looked at her.
Not from earlier. Not from back then.
He wasn’t scarred. At least, not that she could see.
He had tattoos. She’d noticed the tattoos from afar, but hadn’t been able to tell what they were. Up close she could see. Smoke, and fire, it looked like. A dragon. And on the other arm, water. Waves and a large sea serpent. She felt silly staring like that, so she didn’t manage to take a visual tour of the other arm before she looked up to meet his gaze.
Her mouth felt dry. Her heart was pounding hard. She hadn’t realized it, because she’d been all distracted trying to take in the differences in him. Trying to find something familiar.
“Gideon?”
“Yes.”
“I... Rory. Rory Sullivan,” she said. Still, she didn’t see any recognition. It wasn’t like they’d been friends but he had driven her to school every day. She hadn’t expected him to forget her completely. Was she really that beige? They’d...they’d talked on those car rides. She’d treasured them. He’d saved her. It had mattered to her. And today she’d thought... Did he not think about her at all? Had he not actually noticed her yesterday? “I’m Lydia’s friend.”
“Oh,” he said.
“My sister wanted me to come by and make sure that you were getting settled in okay. And to bring a bit more food. Since we figured it might take you a couple of days to get settled and assembled. I manage the houses that we rent out on the property. In addition to some around town.” She didn’t know why she added that last part. It wasn’t relevant to him.
He probably didn’t care.
She cleared her throat and pressed on. “Anyway. I just wanted to bring you this.”
“Thanks. Did you make the pie?”
“Oh. Yes. I did. We have blackberries in our garden, and...”
“You remembered ice cream.”
“What’s pie without ice cream?” she asked, smiling. Or trying to. “You found the coffee and everything, too, right?”
“If I hadn’t, I would never have answered the door. I wouldn’t have been upright.”
He was talking, but it was all clipped and short. Like he didn’t want her to accidentally get the idea he wanted to carry on a conversation.
“Anyway. Here you go.” She handed him the other basket.
He took it, and didn’t ask what was in it. “Just a second.”
He turned and went into the house and reappeared a moment later with a bottle of wine. “You can have this back.”
“Oh. Is that not... It’s not a kind that you like or...”
“Don’t drink. Thanks.”
“Oh. Yeah. No problem. I’m not the biggest... I don’t love wine myself. But a lot of people do. So I like to put it in the welcome baskets and... I guess I should ask.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Except she was worried about it.
Because she worried about a lot of things, and that seemed like a pretty reasonable thing to worry about. She imagined that you probably shouldn’t make assumptions about people’s alcohol consumption.
She’d always seen it as a nice thing, but...
“Don’t overthink it,” he said. “I just didn’t want it to be wasted in my cabinet, otherwise I would never have said anything.”
“Okay. I won’t overthink it. Well. That’s a lie. I will overthink it. Because I overthink everything.”
He shifted, and something about the way the light hit his face then gave her a small glimpse of the boy she used to know. “That’s a difficult way to live, Rory.”
“Is there another way?” she asked.
“Yeah. Personally, I try not to think of much of anything. I find that helpful.”
“Helpful to what?”
“Sleeping at night. Being able to get through the damn day without having a nervous breakdown. Quite a few things.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So... Thanks. I’ll see you around.” She didn’t know what she’d expected. But it wasn’t this. It wasn’t that she thought he would be excited to see her or anything. They didn’t know each other. It wasn’t that she thought he would ask her in. It was just that she remembered him being so...gregarious and friendly. She hadn’t expected it so much as it had just seemed like a given.
He’d always been that way... It was like the party was drawn to him. He was a human flame, and everybody else were moths.
But he seemed to relish that role. He always had.
Every time she’d ever gone to Lydia’s house there had been a group of people there hanging out with her older brother.
He was the perfect one. Women loved him. Men loved him. Everyone loved him.
High school kids, adults, everybody.
And he seems to thrive in that spotlight.
But not this man.
She held the bottle of wine close to her chest and walked back down to the truck.
She hadn’t even gotten to ask him about the parade.
Was there really going to be a parade, or had someone been joking about that? It seemed like a reasonable thing to expect for Hometown Hero Gideon Payne.
But she wasn’t sure that this Gideon would want a parade.
She wasn’t sure of much of anything, which was normal for her. But she had to admit that she felt like the certainty of Gideon might have set her on the right track.
But that wasn’t happening.
Her phone pinged, and she had a text from Lydia.
You have time to meet for lunch?
Yes.
Maybe she would ask Lydia a little bit more about her brother.
She drove down to town and pulled into the Becky’s parking lot.
She hadn’t verified for sure that it was where Lydia wanted to meet, but there wasn’t anywhere else that wasn’t too far afield.
The little diner was made from rough-hewn wood and had a bright blue door.
It was so named for an old miner called Becky who had come out here to find gold but had done better serving up hash browns.
Even though Becky himself had been deceased for going on seventy years, the name remained.
It was right next to Smokey’s, the only bar in town.
A place that Rory herself didn’t frequent. To say the least.
It just wasn’t her thing.
When she walked into the diner, she saw Lydia sitting there. She smiled and gave her a wave.
Rory crossed the space and sat down at the table. “It’s good to see you. We’ve been so busy since the store opened.”
“And you’ve been busy shoring up your plans to abandon me.”
“I’m not abandoning you, Lydia.” Her stomach twisted with guilt. “Or at least I’m not trying to. I’m just trying to...”
Lydia reached out and patted her arm. “You’re allowed to go have a life. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.”
“It’s okay if you do. It’s fair.”
“It isn’t.” Lydia frowned and her friend’s sadness cut her deep.
“You could come with me. I could use a roommate.”
“You don’t need a roommate. Anyway, I can’t leave now that my brother is back. That would be a terrible welcome-home gift.”
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “I saw him this morning.”
Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “He’s here?”
“Yeah, he’s... He’s staying at Sullivan’s Point.”
Lydia looked miffed. “He didn’t... He didn’t tell me that. He didn’t tell me or Mom that.”
Well, now she’d gone and upset Lydia even more, and she hadn’t meant to do that.
“I’m sorry. I assumed that you knew.”
“I didn’t. But communication with Gideon has been... It’s been a challenge the last couple of years.”
“Oh.” She felt a strange, hollowed-out feeling. She wouldn’t have understood what Lydia might mean if she hadn’t seen him today. If she hadn’t tried to talk to him.
If she hadn’t come away from it not certain if he even knew her or not.
Lydia sighed and rubbed her forehead. “It’s embarrassing to admit this, Rory. But... I haven’t talked about it because I didn’t know how to admit that my big brother isn’t himself anymore.”
She saw the pain on Lydia’s face and she felt so guilty . Why hadn’t she dug deeper into how he was doing? Why hadn’t she realized her friend was upset about this? That she was hurting?
“When he got out of the hospital we thought the worst of it was over. He was healing. But it wasn’t that simple. Things I attributed to being cooped up in the hospital—his temperament changes—they didn’t go away.”
“Temperament changes?” She thought of how he’d been today. Terse. Unsmiling.
“I guess. He’s different. He stopped reaching out. He doesn’t talk to us unless we make contact, and he makes it hard for us to get a hold of him. He didn’t even tell us when he and Cassidy split up. She told us. And after that...sometimes we didn’t know where he was for weeks. I... I couldn’t admit that to anyone, Rory. That my perfect brother wasn’t perfect.”
“Lydia...”
“I know. I’m a terrible person. But it’s not about embarrassment. It’s about the way everyone here sees him. He’s a legend here, you know that. It would be like telling them he...like telling them he was dead.”
“No, I don’t judge you. I’m just sorry I didn’t know.”
Lydia shook her head. “Don’t blame yourself. I didn’t want to think about it unless I had to. I avoided it unless I had to. We just...kept it between us, me and Mom. We did not expect him to move back. But we’re glad. It’s been a lot of...worry. But I just keep hoping that since he’s coming back, he’s ready to be himself again. Though his hiding that he’s already here is a little...eh.”
She thought of him, in the woods when time had stood still for a moment, and at his house. He definitely wasn’t what she’d expected. She would have had a hard time imagining the Gideon she knew not contacting his mom and sister.
But the man she’d seen in the woods had been dangerous. The man she’d seen at the house had been altogether feral.
She could imagine that man not communicating with...anyone.
“Well, he is here. And I’m sorry that I didn’t realize that that might be shocking information.”
“It isn’t your fault. My brother is thirty-one years old. He can certainly manage himself if he wants to. He’s been to war. He’s just... I don’t know. I’m hoping that it all gets better now that he’s here. And maybe he needed a few days to accept the fact that he’s back and people will be reporting on his movements. Just like old times.”
“The local girls practically put out APBs on him. Tracking his every move.” She tried to lighten the conversation because Lydia was upset and Rory hated that.
Lydia looked at her for a little too long. They had a pact not to ever mention The Diary Incident, and Rory stared back as if daring her to break the pact.
Lydia looked away. “Yeah. Basically.”
“You’re worried about him.”
“Of course I am,” said Lydia.
They ordered; Lydia got a steak, while Rory opted for a hamburger. It didn’t benefit you to get crazy at a small-town diner. Best to stick with the basics. That was something else that Rory would enjoy about Boston. The food possibilities. In that brief moment she had lived in the city when she’d gone to college, she had discovered so much food. It had been her absolute favorite thing. She and her sisters were foodies by nature. They baked, they made preserves, they grew their own food. It was part of who they were.
But she had limited exposure to broad varieties of food, food from other countries, fusion foods, modern cuisine...
Here they had one diner. And you could order a hamburger.
But she put her focus back on Lydia.
“I can keep an eye on him. Make sure that he’s okay. I mean, he’s going to be at the ranch until even after I leave. I can always...treat him a little bit special.”
If it would make Lydia feel better, she was all for it.
It has nothing to do with you fixating on him? she asked herself.
No.
She wasn’t fixating. She was...getting ready for a whole different life, she wasn’t going to backslide all the way to a crush on Gideon Payne.
But the truth was she cared about him. She always had. He had been there for her when she needed him. If she had the chance to be there for him now, why wouldn’t she be?
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Since he left the hospital. After that, everything with him and Cass fell apart and...and then he kind of ghosted everyone.”
“Do you know what happened?”
Rory didn’t personally put a ton of stock in marriage. And she could admit that that was part of why she hadn’t applied some deep meaning to the fact that he had gotten divorced. People got divorced. All the time. It didn’t mean anyone was evil.
It was funny she felt that way. Because her sisters were in marriages that would most definitely last. She had no doubt about it. They were uniquely suited to each other. And all around Four Corners that was the case. Her sister Alaina’s best friend, Elsie, was married, and Rory couldn’t imagine Elsie and Hunter with anyone but each other. Ditto for the other couples on Four Corners Ranch.
But happy endings were only really guaranteed in books. And Rory wasn’t foolish enough to believe they were commonplace outside of them.
“I’m sorry,” Rory said. “I think I’m a little bit cynical about marriage because of my parents. But your parents were married until...”
“Yeah. Until my dad died. And they would’ve been married so much longer if he hadn’t gotten sick. They were forever kind of people. And I know it never occurred to Gideon that he wouldn’t be. I mean, that’s why you get married. He could’ve slept around. He could have had any woman he wanted. He pretty much did when he lived here. And I think did for a while when he was in the military. Not that I want to think about that, but you know...”
“Yes. They made it impossible for you not to think about it.”
“Yes. Anyway. It’s that exactly. But yeah, I think it devastated him. The end with Cassidy. And... I just don’t even know what all his problems are. Because he closed us out completely. And now he’s coming back. Almost like nothing happened.”
“Maybe to him it didn’t.” She thought about her dad. The way he called them periodically as if he hadn’t abandoned them. As if they didn’t have very good reasons for being angry with him. He liked to act like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t cheated on their mother. He hadn’t left them when they were vulnerable teenage girls.
Hadn’t nearly broken poor Quinn. Hadn’t tormented their mother with his infidelity to the point where she’d become so impossible to live with that Fia had run away for a while.
He liked to call them up like it hadn’t been six months since his last call. Like it hadn’t been a few years since they’d seen him in person.
It was something men seemed to be able to compartmentalize. Maybe that fundamentally was why she just didn’t have very high regard for marriage. She didn’t trust men.
So she remained alone.
If she could’ve chosen her sexuality at the beginning of time, she’d have totally picked liking women. It would be way more sensible. Rather than being huddled in fraternity party closets and then getting beer spilled on her the only time she had ever really attempted something physical with a guy.
But something like that... Well. It was enough.
“It isn’t like that. Not with him. I don’t know what he’s thinking. But he’s almost like a different person. The Gideon that I know told us everything. He was always excited, interested and interesting. Not this person I can hardly get two words out of, and now he’s in town without even letting us know.”
“He is different,” Rory said, looking down.
“What does he look like?”
She looked back up at her friend. “Bearded?”
“You’re not sure if he’s bearded?”
“No. I’m sure that he’s bearded. I was just trying to decide if that was the defining characteristic.”
“Oh. Well. Bearded is a change.”
“Long hair. He’s... He’s huge. I mean, weight-lifting huge.”
“He’s always been fit.”
“Yeah, but not like this.”
Lydia grimaced. “Oh. Great, so my brother is now a long-haired, bearded guy with a gym body. There women are going to be feral .”
Rory laughed. She couldn’t help it, because at least in the middle of her very serious distress, there was this amusing distress.
And she did not tell Lydia that she had been fully immobilized with lust at the sight of her brother’s new look. Keeping that to herself was true friendship. “Well, you’ve weathered it before. You can certainly weather it again.”
“I’m going to envy you moving to Boston. My family needs me.”
“Yeah.”
“Rory...will you please check on him? I feel like he doesn’t want to see me.”
“That can’t be it.”
“It can be, actually. He’s here and he didn’t tell us.”
“I promise. I’ll check on him.”
She thought of that day she’d seen Gideon in the woods. When she’d been writing in her notebook.
Get a kiss (kiss from a stranger?).
That made her feel all trembly.
But he wasn’t a stranger, it turned out. He was Gideon.
So she wasn’t going to think about him and kissing in that context.
No, tonight she was going to bring him dinner, for her friend. That was all.