Chapter 19
Vanessa
When I get back from Jack’s place, I notice Sam’s car is back.
I check my phone, but I didn’t miss her text.
She didn’t send one. When I get to her place, no lights are on, and she doesn’t answer the door.
I wonder whether things went badly. Maybe she’s riding it off?
It’s late for her to do something like that, but I wouldn’t put it past her.
Actually, it might be the most Samantha thing ever to be doing horse-therapy to deal with a bad date, even at eleven at night.
I fumble my way into the dark barn, realizing she must not be riding unless she’s using night goggles. Once I find the switch, I hit it, startling a few horses whose heads immediately pop up from their stalls. “Sorry, guys, sorry.”
I stand here for a minute, just breathing in the barn smells.
I miss it—usually when I come out here, I’m being pressured to ride.
I should come out more and just be around the horses.
Foxy’s one of the ones in her stall, so I walk over and rub her neck, and then when she flips around, her backside.
I can’t help noticing that the new barn really is nice.
Nat and Sam have outdone themselves. The stalls, the large loafing shed where the horses who struggle with being stalled can be together, even in terrible weather, all of it is so well done.
Quality materials, beautiful construction, and thoughtful designs.
But if Sam’s not here, where is she?
I decide to check out the tack room, while I’m already out here.
Even though the lights weren’t on in the barn, who knows?
Maybe she was conserving energy and she just beelined for the tack room and only turned on that light.
Organizing the almost entirely repaired tack room.
sounds like it could be therapeutic. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like the lack of a text from her after a dinner with Richard’s father isn’t promising. Something tells me it’s bad news.
Only, when I go into the tack room. . .it looks entirely fine.
Exactly like it did before.
What on earth have they been doing this whole time? Two weeks ago, when I was walking into Natalie’s place to get Amelia, I heard them talking about picking colors and getting tile. Why would they need to do that if it looks exactly the same?
Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. I pull out my phone and start scrolling for the photos I took of the twins and Trina posing in the new tack room right after it was finished. I enlarge it, and I study the images. Not a single solitary inch looks different.
Have Natalie and Samantha been lying to me?
I wander outside, deep in thought, flipping off lights before I go.
But then, I’ve finally reached the path beside the barn when I trip on something and nearly crash on my face.
When I look around, I realize it’s my own shoelace.
How embarrassing. I crouch to tie it, and when I stand back up and head down the path, I nearly collide with Samantha.
It’s hard to tell in the dark and with a coat over part of it, but it looks like she has some weirdly light streaks on her navy dress.
“Hey, I was looking for you.”
She freezes, and then she glances over her shoulder. “You were?”
I frown. “Where were you?”
“I, um, well, I had that date with Richard.” She hugs herself with her arms, chilly out here in the winter night’s air.
“I know, I saw your car.”
She sighs. “It went really, really badly.” She inhales and looks up at the stars, casting her features in moonlight. “He—I had to tell him about my lie, that I can’t have kids.”
“Oh, no,” I say. “It had to come out at some point, I guess, but are you alright?” I step closer. “Do you need to go eat some ice cream or something? I’m pretty sure I have a brand-new container, unless the kids got to it.”
“You know, I just cried on Natalie for about an hour.” She snorts. “I—I’m still struggling, but I feel a lot better.”
Natalie.
She was crying on Natalie, but I had no idea. She’s fine now, because Natalie and her already had a little meeting without me. “What’s going on?” I feel like my anger’s bursting out of me, and I hate it, because I know Sam’s probably really upset.
But I can’t help it.
“You and Natalie are, what? You’re just so close, that you tell her about your miscarriages first.” That came out wrong.
“You tell her about the lie you told Richard first. You go to lunch, and you go shopping together, and you apparently lie and tell me you’re remodeling a tack room that’s completely fine.
” I throw my hands up in the air. “Do you guys just hate me? Why did you convince me to come here at all?”
Sam blinks. “No, I mean—”
“You have these little secret parties and little jokes, and you go to lunch, and you lie to me about things, and if it weren’t for Jack, I’d wish I hadn’t even moved here at all.”
Samantha’s jaw drops, and she stares at me, blankly.
From a few feet behind her, Natalie starts to clap.
I turn, a little horrified at all the things I said, and I start to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
But then I notice that whereas Sam has a few streaks, from what I can see, Natalie has lightish paint all over her. In fact, she looks like she rolled around on a freshly painted fence or something.
“What on earth is going on?” I throw my hands up in the air. “Are you guys, like, I don’t know. I can’t think of anything that would—”
“We got you a house.” Natalie’s smiling.
So is Samantha.
“You what?”
“For Christmas this year, we got you a house,” Sam says. “Or rather, we got one for Trish, so you can have your house back, finally.”
“You said she’s been making you crazy, with the reorganization, and the changes, and the micromanaging,” Natalie says. “Right?”
I blink.
“So you know the gardener’s cottage?” Natalie’s jogged to my side, and she grabs my wrist. “Let’s go back there and see it. We were going to do a treasure hunt to take you to it on Christmas day, but we’re only a week early.”
“Ten days,” Sam says. “Can’t you count?”
Natalie sighs. “I’m tired, alright? While you went out there and had a fancy meal in a posh dress, I was working.”
For a split second, I see the sadness behind Sam’s eyes, and I realize that Natalie could have come up with a lie.
She could’ve put me off again. They’ve been doing that to me for months now, while they worked on a surprise.
. .for me. My heart swells. I should’ve known it was nothing bad.
I know they love me. They may love me more than anyone else.
How could I doubt them?
I let my imagination run wild, and instead of getting mad at me, they’re smiling, and what’s more, Natalie’s using this as a way to try and heal Sam. She’s clearly had a really bad day. She said they cried for an hour.
So I play my part, and I let them lead me around the corner in the dark, and I wait while we get barn lights turned on, and I let Natalie rush ahead and turn on the porch lights to the gardener’s cottage, and then I ooh, and I aaah, and pretty soon, I don’t even have to exaggerate my oohs and aahs, because what they have done right under my nose is nothing short of spectacular.
“If you had been more keen on riding, you’d have caught us way sooner,” Sam says, her eyes bright again.
“Yeah, the guys were running late, and they took way longer to do the parts of the project we hired them for. We thought we were cooked, but you’ve been a stinker and skipped out on any barn time, so we were able to keep it a secret.
” Natalie nods slowly. “So thanks, but now you have to come ride with us again. Okay?”
I roll my eyes. “You two were so close, I felt like you were leaving me out, and that made me even less excited to go.”
Sam shakes her head. “We need you back. This one’s been really bugging me. Look what she did to my favorite dress.” She gestures at the blue streaks.
“Hello,” Natalie says. “You’re the freeloader.
I’ve been doing all the gruntwork here.” She’s on a roll now, pacing.
“She’s all, ‘well, I cut the tile, so you need to lay it.’ Or, ‘now that I’ve done all the hard stuff, you can do the grout.
’” She groans. “Do you know how hard grout is on old knees like mine?” She pats her knees, smearing one of her blue spots into a blotch.
“It’s really hard, okay? Plus, she has these fancy kneepads, but I don’t.
I just have to deal with it. I had to double the morning collagen I usually drink just to walk upright after we did the floorboard trim. ”
I love watching Natalie when she’s ranting.
And the cottage they remodeled is so bright, and so inviting, and so beautiful, that I find myself crying again.
“Thank you,” I say. “This is—Trish is going to love it.” And what they’ve given me is space.
Freedom. Privacy. Things I didn’t realize I needed until they’re right there, within reach again. “You guys are just. . .”
“We figured since you were the last one to officially join, you didn’t think you could ask for it,” Natalie says.
“And since I burned the barn down—” Sam winces. “I knew you didn’t want to cost us extra money.”
“If I whined about the slow season less, you might have asked,” Natalie says. “So that’s kind of on me, too.”
“Anyway, we love you. We haven’t been ducking out on you—or really, we have, but only because we love you.” Sam’s smiling, even after her horrible day, and my heart swells again.
“I’m so glad we all came here,” I say. “Even if I’m dating a young guy who’s way too hot for me. Even if Sam’s boyfriend is an idiot. And even if Natalie’s dating a guy who looks like he poses for GQ while her loser husband follows her around begging for scraps, I think we’re doing alright.”
“When is Mason going to stop pining?” Sam asks. “It’s getting a little pathetic.”
“He’s not pining,” Natalie says. “He’s moved on. He’s just living here for the kids.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Yeah, right,” Sam says.
“Wait.” Natalie looks at both of us carefully. “You think Mason’s still trying to date me? Because he’s not. He said he actually likes Cillian. He likes that he’s kind of bad around kids, because he can be my boyfriend, but not usurp Mason’s role with the kids.”
“Oh, man,” Vanessa says. “He must have some kind of dating coach, because he has upped his game.”
“For sure,” Sam says. “But Natalie, he is one hundred percent still trying to win you back. Is it working?”
Natalie looks totally floored. She looked like this when she lost all that weight and didn’t realize it.
For someone with a remarkable amount of insight into others—she immediately used the cottage to help both me and Samantha with our bad nights—she is just oblivious about her own life.
“I really don’t think. . .” She’s frowning, though.
“Okay,” Sam says. “Here’s your litmus. If he’s really happy with you dating Cillian, and you tell him that you two are getting really serious, he’ll be fine with it.” Her grin is diabolical. “But if we’re right, he’ll lose his mind.”
“That’s mean,” Natalie says. “I’m not even sure how serious I am about Cillian. I can’t go around lying to Mason just to test him. Then I’m the bad guy, playing with people’s emotions like that. Plus we’re in a town of, like, forty people.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” I say.
“But I get your point. There’s a decent chance of Cillian hearing about you saying things are getting serious and either freaking out or celebrating, and then you’ve landed yourself in a mess.” Sam nods. “Fine, fine, be an adult.”
“Someone has to,” Natalie says.
“But we’re right,” I say. “We could see you guys at Thanksgiving, and Mason was eyeing you with more greed than he directed at that tiny pile of turkey.”
“I thought the Irish stew was pretty good,” Natalie says.
“Oh my word,” Sam says.
“Is she always this dense?” I ask.
“Only about her own love life,” Sam says. “You don’t remember high school, I guess, but it was just as bad with Tim and Lance.”
“Tim and Lance.” I laugh. “I haven’t thought about those idiots in years.”
“Can we focus?” Natalie finishes the tour like she’s training to be a real estate agent. “And once we finish the trim here, the lighting here and here, and the faucet in the second bathroom, you can start moving Trish in.” She beams. “Merry Christmas.”
“You two,” I say, “are just the best friends anyone could ever have. I love you both.”
“We love you too,” Sam says. “But the real question is, do you love me enough to incubate your ex-boyfriend’s baby for me? Because that’s how much Natalie loves me.”
I stare at her, completely confused, until Natalie dies laughing. When they explain, I shake my head. “I don’t have an ex-boyfriend, but if Jack and I broke up, nothing on earth could convince me to have his baby for you.” I bite my lip. “Sorry.”
“Oh, no, you’re fine,” Sam says.
“We always knew Natalie was the crazy one,” I say.
“And don’t you forget it.” Natalie smears her hand down my cheek, and I feel something sticky and wet.
“At least she didn’t get it on your clothes,” Sam says.
When I look in the mirror, I realize I now have blue paint on my face, and I don’t even care. I’m just exactly where I want to be with the two people I want to be with the most. It doesn’t stop me from smearing a little on Samantha though, just until she squeals.
Because that’s the kind of friends we are.
Her dress was already ruined anyway, and now we’ll remember this night forever as something good. Not many people can turn sad into happy, but that’s the power of true friendship.