Chapter 46 Violet
VIOLET
I assumed the conversation I had with Sawyer would be the end of it, but I was definitely wrong.
For the next couple of weeks, the three of them are everywhere, even though I don’t see them.
They don’t leave town, which is the first major surprise. I would have thought they all had things to get back to, now that the reason they were in Sweetwater Lake again in the first place is over.
After I talked with Sawyer, I thought that was basically all the closure they needed to finally let themselves go back home.
It was good closure for me too, in a way.
At least I know now that they didn’t say those horrible things about me. I should have known it was just Isabelle, being a jealous, terrible person as always. To think that my own sister would stoop so low just to hurt me makes me angry and sad all at the same time, but not surprised.
Christmas passes quietly, and I don’t go see my family. My mother calls me once, but I don’t answer. I consider blocking her, to spare myself from her reaching out more, but decide against it.
No one else from my family calls, and that hurts as much as it helps. I hoped maybe my dad would reach out, but no. He’s never going to go against my mom, and she’s firmly on Isabelle’s side, the way she always has been. So there’s nothing to hope for there, really.
I order myself a nice chicken dinner and eat it in front of the fireplace with Christmas movies on. It’s better than being at my parents’ house, getting berated for eating too much or not being joyful enough or whatever, but definitely lonely.
Rhett, Lennox, and Sawyer all text me to say Merry Christmas, and I cave and read the messages. The first ones from right after the rehearsal dinner are all them apologizing and asking to talk, saying they don’t understand what happened.
After the day when I had that conversation with Sawyer, the men switch to telling me they aren’t leaving and they don’t want to give up on this. They say that they miss me, and reading those words makes something clench painfully in my chest.
I can’t lie to myself and pretend I don’t miss them too.
It doesn’t help that the men clearly aren’t satisfied with just sending me texts. They keep doing things, surprising me with over the top gestures that I never would have expected.
On the day I move the last of my things out of the bakery, I come home to three dozen roses on the doorstep of my house. There aren’t any notes, but each vase has a card with one of the brothers’ initials on it.
There’s a huge snow storm the day after Christmas, and I bundle up and get ready to go outside to clear off my car and shovel my driveway, but when I step outside, I’m shocked to see it’s already been done.
There’s no trace of anyone else there, and it’s early enough in the day that if someone had come that morning, I would have heard them.
I turn to go back in the house, but then see that there’s something in the front seat of my car.
When I check it out, it’s coffee, kept warm in an insulated bag, from my favorite coffee shop.
And French toast in a Styrofoam container from that place we never got to try because Rhett got hit by the car.
That solves that mystery.
When I get my period right after Christmas, someone knocks on the door. I manage to stagger over to it, only to find a delivery person there with a big bag of supplies. The pads and tampons I prefer, the tea I asked them to get for me the last time, and a few DVDs of movies to watch.
A couple of days later, there’s another delivery, this time with different herbal syrups and some rose and orange blossom water from a brand I never would have been able to afford.
There’s a note from Rhett with that delivery that says “So you can keep experimenting”, and my throat goes tight to read it.
There are so many things like that in the days after Christmas, and I can’t wrap my head around it.
Clearly they want me back. Clearly they want me to know that they’re still here, still thinking about me, but the question is why?
When they could have anyone they wanted. When they could just go back to their lives and pretend none of this ever happened.
Why are they spending so much time trying to do this?
Sometimes I bring up my texts with them, wanting to just ask, but I always chicken out at the last minute. I don’t know what I want the answer to be.
It would be so much easier if they were just willing to let it go, so we could all move on, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
I keep telling myself that they’ll get bored eventually. They’ll get tired of me not responding to their texts and their gestures, and they’ll move on.
But it doesn’t seem to be happening yet.
New Year’s Eve comes before I’m ready for it, and while I’m cleaning my house as I do every year, the doorbell rings.
I open it to find a bottle of champagne and a delivery of sushi from the nice restaurant in the city that I offhandedly mentioned wanting to try once.
There’s a simple card that just says “Happy New Year, Violet,” with no signature, but of course, I know who it’s from.
So I end the year on the couch, drinking champagne and eating sushi, feeling conflicted.
If it was just that the three of them don’t like to lose and want to have this end on their terms, they definitely would have given up by now. I keep waiting for them to be like Andrew, to throw in the towel when they can’t get what they want, but they never do.
In the morning light of the first day of the new year, I have to admit to myself that maybe… maybe Sawyer was right when he said that it was real for them.
Maybe it would be safe for me to believe in it. In them. Maybe I can risk my heart and not end up with it shattered into pieces.
It would be easier to just let this play out and hope that they give up one day, but every time I come home to a new gift, a new gesture that shows how well they know me and how much they’ve been thinking about me, it wears me down a little more.
Because in my heart, I can admit that I don’t want to move on.
I still care about them. All the feelings that I had before didn’t just go away. I don’t know if they ever could.
It doesn’t help that I also haven’t been able to work at the bakery. I bake at home to try to stave off the tide of missing it, but it’s not the same. I miss interacting with customers and the routine of getting up and going in every morning.
Without the bakery, I don’t have anything else to do, but sit around and think about the guys and wonder if I should reach out.
Of course, there’s also the worry about what I’m going to do for money going forward. I have some savings, since the last few weeks of the bakery’s run were some of the best I’ve ever had since opening it, but they’re not going to last forever.
The thought of getting a nine to five makes me want to cry.
I worked more than that to keep the bakery going, but that was for me. That was mine. I don’t want to punch a clock for someone else, or have to conform my dreams and ideas to what someone else wants.
I thrived with the freedom the bakery offered me, and I don’t want to lose that.
I don’t have any idea how to get it back, though.
I do some research into other buildings, trying to see how much I could afford. Maybe if I took out a loan or something, I could manage it. I’d have to have a lot more business to cover the costs though. Seeing how much things cost just makes me feel even more stressed about the whole situation.
A few days after the new year, I get up and go to the bank.
I need some cash and maybe I can talk to someone about loans or financial planning or something.
I have the passing thought that the guys are probably good at this kind of thing, but I dismiss it just as quickly.
Reaching out for the first time to ask for help doesn’t feel right.
I go to the ATM first, putting in my card to see how much I can take out. I stomp my feet against the cold, rubbing my arms to stay warm as I wait for the numbers to pop up on the screen—but when they do, I nearly choke on my own spit when I see the balance in my account.
It’s been higher in recent weeks than it was before, but unless there’s a glitch on the screen or I’m having a really weird dream, then something very strange is going on.
Because the number blinking on the screen has way too many zeros.
“What on earth?” I whisper to myself.
I close out of the transaction and put my card in again, but the number stays the same. There are over fifty million dollars sitting in my account.
Heart pounding, I punch the buttons to retrieve my card, glancing around almost guiltily as if someone is going to storm up to me and accuse me of trying to rob the bank.
There has to be some mistake, I tell myself as I head inside the bank, my heart thudding against my ribs. I’ll just clear it up, and it will be fine.
“Hi, can I help you?” The teller greets me with a smile, and I step up to the counter, clearing my throat and feeling a bit silly for what I’m about to say.
“Um, hi.” I try to erase the startled, slightly guilty look on my face. “This is probably just a glitch or something, but there’s a lot more money in my account than I was expecting there to be, and I was just wondering if you could pull it up and… I don’t know, verify it? Or something?”
“Of course,” she says. “I just need your card and your ID.”
I hand them both over to her, and she taps on her keyboard for a few seconds before scanning the screen. I see the moment her eyes go wide, and it strikes me that it’s probably about the same way I looked when I saw the screen on the ATM outside.
“Oh wow.” Her brows shoot upward. “That’s a lot of money.”
“I know,” I tell her. “And I didn’t deposit it, so I have no idea where it came from.”
“Let’s see if I can track it,” she says.
She types for another minute or two and then looks up at me.
“There are three deposits here,” she says.
“Each for quite a bit of money. The first one is from an account tagged to the last name Sullivan… actually, all three are from Sullivan accounts, but they’re all from different banks. Do you recognize that name?”
I swallow hard.
Because of course I do. But there’s no way they would do something like that, right? I know they have money to throw around, and I remember how much they bid at the charity auction to win a baking lesson with me, but this makes that look like loose change.
“I do,” I tell the teller. “I’m just… sorry.” I shake myself. “I’m just confused why they would do this.”
“I wish I had friends who deposited this much money into my account,” she jokes. “But it does seem to be legitimate. If you want, I can contact the bank these came through just to be sure, but if you know them and they have access to these kinds of funds…”
“Yeah, you don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “I know them, and yeah, they do have this kind of money. Um, thanks for your help.”
I walk out of the bank feeling bewildered and unbalanced. The gifts and gestures were one thing, but this is on another level.
I scroll back through my messages to where they told me where they were staying and put the address into my GPS.
The only way to get to the bottom of this is to go to them directly.