CHAPTER SIX
I was fifteen going on forty. At least, that’s how it felt when I stood at the kitchen counter, slicing apples into perfectly even wedges for the Fallfest pies.
Mom had stopped reminding me to do my homework, stopped caring if my shoes were scuffed or my hair was knotted.
She carried on like nothing had changed, humming off-key while she missed deadlines and forgot appointments.
So I picked up the slack. If she wasn’t going to keep everything together, I would.
The knife slipped once, nicking my thumb, and I nearly cried—not from pain, but from the dot of blood staining the neat circle of slices. I tossed it into the trash and started again. Everything had to look how it always did.
“No one’s going to measure the apples.” Teddy leaned against the kitchen threshold, grinning in that infuriating way.
“They’ll notice,” I muttered, realigning the wedges until they formed a perfect ring.
He sobered, stepping closer. “Nobody’s grading you, M.”
Teddy was right, but for the reason he would never come to understand: nobody waited in the wings for me. Nobody was coming to double-check the work or step in when it went wrong. That was the point. The only person I could count on now was me.
So I straightened my spine, wiped the counter clean, and kept slicing.
I had no room to fail.
???
PRESENT DAY
The glass on the Morning Bell’s door was cool as I pushed it open.
It was the only part of my body that wasn’t flushed with pure, unbridled rage. Without my coat, the wind bit my skin in an unpleasant clash of temperatures, probably sizzling on impact and leaving tiny puffs of steam.
Georgie followed behind me, wordless for once, something between terror and panic coloring her features. I stood on the cobblestones, hands balled into fists at my sides, waiting beneath a swaying tree as a crowd of tourists passed between us.
My heart slammed against my ribcage as they finally dispersed. Our eyes met, as if I was looking in my reflection. Only, I hated what I saw.
I lunged across the sidewalk, Georgie hanging behind like a silent but supportive shadow. Or maybe she was just petrified of what I might do.
He opened his mouth, gaze flying wide as it shot between his daughter, mid-rampage, and someone beside him. I stopped in my tracks. Someone else blinked back at me. In that single, frozen moment, the hot air was swept from my body, and all I wanted to do was curl up in a dark hole.
“Who’s that, Daddy?” She hugged his leg and looked up at me with my own chocolate eyes.
I forced my clammy fingers to unfurl. My knees did an admirable job of keeping me upright, even if the ground seemed to be rapidly shifting underfoot.
Andrew Wade—I’d never taken the time to change my last name—scooped her from the ground and into his arms. It took everything in me not to curl my lip in disgust.
“What are you doing here?” I said, fighting to control the vitriol.
She couldn’t have been older than five. I tried not to notice the way she buried her face in the same coat I did, or the lopsided pigtails that were undoubtedly an Andrew Wade signature. As another crowd passed and parted around me, I sucked in a ragged breath and swallowed the bile.
“It’s good to see you, Margot,” he said, completely ignoring my question. The salt-and-pepper scruff on his jaw made my heart twist.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated.
“We’re here for Fallfest,” he replied, and for some reason, it felt like his words poured molten lava into my chest. “Not here for you,” he might as well have said. “Didn’t Ruth tell you I was coming?”
How many rugs could be pulled from beneath my feet in the span of five minutes? At least there was an explanation for my mom’s attempt at a conversation. Even if a heads-up of more than a few hours would’ve been nice.
“Yes,” I lied. “Fallfest is nine days away. You’re a little early, no?”
Andrew swallowed. “I wanted to show—” I watched with open distaste as he scanned Main Street. “Are you free for a coffee, Margot? Maybe you could join us for some apple cider doughnuts?” He jerked his chin toward the bakery.
I wanted to say that doughnuts had never sounded less appealing. Or that, if he hadn’t vanished from my life ten years ago, he’d know I wasn’t much for sweets anymore. But that little girl kept blinking up at me, dark eyes glimmering with shy curiosity.
Now was not the time to throw my father in front of a moving vehicle.
“I hate apple cider,” I said instead, staring at him as my implication registered. “And I have better things to do.”
I wanted to kick myself as I strode away and caught the girl’s flinch in my peripheral vision. Maybe it hadn’t been my most gentle alternative. I wasn’t going to stick around for the aftermath, though—watching him pretend to be a father for five minutes was more than I could stomach.
Georgie caught up to me at the bottom of Main Street, as I slumped against the wall facing Seaglass Beach outside of Captain’s. The sky had darkened, and a gust whipped from the ocean and nipped at my skin. It felt strangely poetic.
“Are you okay?” she started, then shook her head. “Sorry. Stupid question. Of course you’re not okay.”
I hugged my arms around my middle. Where was my coat? Oh, right—on the back of a chair in the Morning Bell, where I’d left it after seeing the Ghost of Christmases Missed.
“I might throw up,” I mumbled.
“You never throw up.”
“Gee, what an astute observation.”
Georgie smacked her forehead. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what to say in this scenario.”
“You mean you’ve never seen your best friend’s dad make a sudden reappearance after ten years?” I looked at her flatly. “If there’s a manual somewhere, feel free to loan it to me.”
She leaned beside me and we fell into a silence as my heart rate steadily slowed and the wind cooled my boiling blood.
Without the anger, a deep, inescapable ache was all that remained. It had been my companion for so long, as elusive and organic as my own shadow. I’d practically forgotten it was there.
Because the world didn’t stop spinning when my father left.
It tilted a fraction off axis—like the temperature shifted a degree or the days were an hour shorter—but I never stopped to take stock of my new reality.
The sun still scratched the inky horizon in the morning and dragged below the rooftops every night.
No, his leaving didn’t create some earth-shattering catastrophe or unfillable hole. It only revealed to me, at a too-young age, that he’d never been much of a father to start. And maybe that was the most devastating part.
There was a scrape of a boot against cobblestone before Rhett appeared. He froze, gaze drifting from me to Georgie, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
“I sense I’ve interrupted something,” he started.
I waved my hand. “It’s nothing.”
Georgie frowned and nudged my shoulder with her own. “You don’t have to say that, you know.”
I groaned internally. She only recently stepped down as the queen of plastering on a smile and pretending as if her insides weren’t on fire. Now, she felt it was her job to rehabilitate me from this part of myself she saw as a problem.
I really was fine, though. Just because I’d opened up to her once about my total failure in life didn’t mean I needed to do it constantly.
“Did you need Georgie for something?” I asked Rhett, ignoring the daggers she shot.
He nodded eagerly—or at least as eager as Rhett Briggs could be, the man who was as unreadable as a brick wall until a certain copper-headed girl came around. “There are some people at the shop who want to meet the potter.”
Georgie unsuccessfully fought off a smile. I briefly wondered how he managed to get any work done on his own business. The man was truly an enigma.
“Go,” I told her, not bothering with a fake grin she’d see right through. “I’m going to go on a walk and clear my head.”
She gave me a tight hug and a promise to text me before practically skipping across the street with Rhett.
My chest felt particularly hollow while I ventured back up Main Street, eyes glued to the ground.
The buzz of chatter and increasingly frigid bluster seemed dampened to my ears as I retrieved my coat from the cafe and found myself wandering down Harbor Street.
Seaglass Beach was emptier than I expected, no doubt because of the bite in the air and freezing expanse of shoreline.
I stayed on the sidewalk, boots scraping against the sand that stretched its long arms across the cobblestone and made a home in the joints.
My trench coat, although one of my favorites, did little to keep the wind from chilling me to the bone.
Still, I listened intently to the distant roar of the waves until it was all I heard.
I was so preoccupied, in fact, that the sight of dirty sneakers in my line of vision made me jump.
Teddy grinned, hair thoroughly mussed in a particularly devil-may-care manner. “I knew you didn’t like these shoes, but I didn’t think they were that bad.”
He was unfairly handsome in a cable knit sweater and that same old, tired denim jacket.
I drew back my shoulders and unsuccessfully smoothed my hair. “You’re in my way,” I replied, motioning to the sidewalk he currently occupied with a set of annoyingly wide shoulders.
His smile faltered. He didn’t move.
“Is something wrong?”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “What’s wrong is that you’re ruining a perfectly good walk.”
“So you’re mad,” Teddy concluded. “I knew you were acting weird yesterday.”
“Actually, you don’t know anything about me anymore,” I snapped, edging around him and charging away.
“Care to inform me then?” His thundering footsteps followed me. “Because I thought maybe we would pick up where we left off, y’know? We’ve known each other most of our lives, M.”
I crossed toward Main Street and scoffed over my shoulder. “And where did we leave off, Teddy?”
“Margot, maybe we should just—” He reached for my wrist, but I wrenched it away.
Distantly, I registered the increasingly violent flurries of amber leaves and the walkway that seemed to have emptied out in the last thirty minutes.
I had no idea where I was headed as I stormed past the diner, then the cafe, and even further from home.
A plan of action was the least of my worries.
I turned on him at the corner of Bluebell Lane. “I don’t know what you want from me. It’s been seven years, okay? People grow apart—that’s normal.”
“But you and Georgie seem exactly the same as you were at eighteen.” His eyebrows knitted together in that infuriatingly adorable way, whenever his rose-colored glasses fogged up and blinded him.
“You weren’t here a month ago,” I cut back. “It wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies.”
Teddy searched my face—I didn’t know for what—so I blew past him, apparently deciding on a stroll through the Cove’s most affluent neighborhood. Maybe it wasn’t exactly ideal weather for a walk, but I was a New Yorker by choice. I could endure a chill.
“Tell me what to do,” he said as he caught up to me. “Honestly, I just miss you.”
The words were like a squeeze of barbed wire around my heart.
I snorted. “Funny, because you have my phone number.”
“You’re right. But the last time we saw each other, you wouldn’t even look at me.”
Marigold’s funeral.
Yeah, I could’ve acted with a shred of decorum.
When I breezed back into town, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit and dripping in designer, I thought he couldn’t possibly bring me down.
The last he’d seen me, I was weak. Aching for his love.
I’d been determined to prove that Margot didn’t exist anymore—she’d been stomped out and replaced by someone stronger.
Until I saw his girlfriend.
Swedish, bohemian, and with legs that seemed to stretch for miles. Exactly the right woman to highlight his globetrotting adventures—as if he’d managed to find the female version of himself. Everything I could never be.
“So what?” I hissed, wrapping my coat tighter. “You’re scared of me now?”
“Of course not. But I didn’t want to reach out in case… well, you know—”
“What?” My voice dropped an octave as I froze and squinted at him.
Teddy flushed. “It just seemed that maybe—you still…”
“Say it.”
“You still had feelings for me,” he finished in a rush.
It hit like a comically large anvil to the chest. All I could do was laugh, dry and harsh and foreign to my ears. I didn’t miss the way he winced and rocked back on his heels, blue eyes flashing with something inexplicable.
And then, as if I was a character in a tragicomedy, the heavens tore open and the downpour began.