Chapter Twenty-One. Rowan
TWENTY-ONE
Rowan
I needed to play music today as much as the women here at the Sanctuary needed to hear it.
Guilt hits me for the inconsiderate thought. No one has physically harmed me. I’m not hiding out from an abusive significant other. I’m not trying to figure out how to protect my children.
I definitely didn’t need this more than they did—I stand corrected. But I did need it to ground me. To remind me that when all is said and done, regardless of the outcome, I’ll always be Eleanor Rothschild’s granddaughter and that’s a powerful thing.
“Why do you look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders?” Mei-Ling, the center’s director, asks from the doorway.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.” I look up from where I’m putting my cello in my case. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks.”
“Don’t you dare apologize. You know as much as the next person that we don’t judge anyone for their problems here.”
I smile softly at her. “Thanks, it’s just been … a struggle as of late. But not any rougher than what you’ve been dealing with. Any news on the landlord and the eviction?”
“Not yet. I’ve been told it’s imminent, but I just don’t know when.
A part of me is hoping it was just rumblings like there’s been in the past, but that’s wishful thinking.
We’re looking at other places to move to.
I just hope we find one in time because there’s no way I can abandon these families.
” Compassion oozes out of her every pore, and I struggle with what to say.
“Do you know what the potential buyers want to do with the space?”
“Rumors are it’s a revitalization project, but I have a feeling there’s more to it than that.”
“I’ve had so much going on in my personal life, I haven’t been helping you as much as I said I would. I’ll do better. I promise.”
“It’s not your burden,” she says honestly. “Again, like I tell the women here, no need to apologize.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one with the means and the connections to try and help.”
The damn painting and Holden’s voice flash through my head. Do with it what you wish.
Hmm.
“We’ll figure it out,” Mei-Ling continues. “One way or another. I won’t let these women down.”
She’s pulled away and as I finish packing my things, I’m more than preoccupied with how I could leverage the painting. A painting that Holden overpaid for to show my brother up, so I’m under no false pretenses that it’s really worth $3 million.
But money is money when it comes to this, and any little bit will help.
“Simon,” I say long before I reach my favorite security guard.
He crosses his arms over his chest and gives me side-eye. “Girl, don’t be thinking you’re going to come in here and cozy all up to me after I find out you’re engaged. And here I thought I was the love of your life.”
“I couldn’t wait anymore. I mean, your wife is just holding on to you too tight. She doesn’t seem to want to let you go.”
“Can you blame her?” He holds his arms out, his grin wide and his large chest jumping up and down with his laughter. “I am the catchiest of all catches.”
“You most definitely are.” I chuckle loudly, not realizing how much I needed this lightheartedness right now. When Simon opens the door to the Sanctuary to follow me outside, I say what I always say. “I’m good. No need to walk me out to my car.”
“I know you know you’re good, but after the last two weeks, I’ll be walking you out myself.”
“Last two weeks?” I glance over to him, and the look he gives me makes me feel like an idiot.
“There have been a few shootings. Cops ain’t sure if it’s drugs or gangs or just desperate people trying to take what’s not theirs to survive, but three people have died.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yep. One in a parking lot walking to their car, so, Miss Rothschild, I’ll be walking you to yours.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem at all.”
“Simon.” I pause before I ask what I want to ask. “How come this isn’t all over the news? How come it isn’t a much bigger deal, or why isn’t there a larger police presence?”
His smile is melancholy when he offers it to me. “Because it’s Fairmont.”
Those three words stick with me long after I drive down the town’s pothole-ridden street, past vacant, graffiti-riddled buildings, and beyond its city limits where I feel I can breathe a little easier.
And I hate that once I cross the river, I do just that—breathe easier.
But I do and it bugs me, so I find myself driving aimlessly.
Through the adjacent town. Over to Westmore where I belong, but I keep driving till I’m in the city of North Hampton and am looking at the neon-blue letters of the diner’s sign.
I don’t know how I ended up here or why I’m sitting in my car under a gloomy, gray sky, staring out of my dirty windshield at a diner I really only have two connections to.
My siblings. How, when I was at boarding school, Cassie and Rhett would frequent here after football games.
I rarely came here myself, but somehow, every time I see this place, I think of the sister I never got the chance to know as an adult, and the brother I did, but sometimes wish were different.
And Holden. The first time we slept together happened after we sat here, shared a milkshake, and talked about anything other than work. It was the first time Holden Knight’s impervious mask dropped a bit and he let me in.
It’s the bright orange butterfly that catches my attention. The sun isn’t out, there is none of its warmth for the insect to enjoy, but it’s still out, still flitting around my windshield and just outside my driver’s-side window.
Cassie.
The thought makes me smile. I feel silly and hopeful for thinking it, but at the same time, the type of silly and hopeful that this is my twin’s attempt to let me know she’s still there somehow. That she’s around.
The first tear drips over and for the first time in the longest of times, I let it fall without immediately brushing it away.
There is no one here to think I’m weak for missing her. There’s no one who will tell me how wonderful she was and how she would have been the perfect Rothschild for society.
It’s just me sitting in silence, thinking of my twin who will forever be seventeen years old as I sit in front of a place I’m pretty sure she helped raise hell in.
I miss her.
I don’t think I realized just how much until this moment. Were we different in every aspect? Yes. Most definitely. But I could always confide in her. I knew she’d listen without judgment and appreciate me for being uniquely me.
She’d probably tell me I was out of my ever-loving mind agreeing to marry Chad so that I could secure Gran’s inheritance sooner to try to gain some power back.
“Jesus,” I mutter. Just thinking that makes me realize how crazy it sounds.
The butterfly continues to dip and weave and dance outside my windows.
“I see you, Cass. I miss you so damn much.” The wave of sadness hits hard. Her laugh is fading. I have to watch old videos to remember its sound.
I miss the way in middle school she’d dive-bomb into my bed so we could spill secrets on what boys we were crushing on.
Then later, when I was away at high school, how we’d talk for hours on the phone so she could tell me what trouble she was causing at the country club and I could bore her with all-girls-school antics.
I can’t remember the last time I went to visit her grave and sat there under the huge weeping willow talking to her.
“None of this would be happening if you were still here,” I say as the butterfly flutters away and the taste of salt from my tears hits my lips. “Miss you.”
I don’t know how long I sit there. Cars come and go. Customers walk in and out. I imagine what Cassie would look like now if she were to be one of the customers.
My laugh is loud and ridiculous sounding. Of course I know what she’d look like—like me. I mean, her haircut and the way she just oozed Southern style, whereas I’m more New York chic.
Would she have kids now? Be the chair of the Women’s League? Hold Sunday dinners for our family to attend that were actually fun instead of feeling like a root canal? Cassie just made everyone better—me included.
I wipe the tears from under my eyes and blow out a long, exasperated breath. How funny I came here of all places to think of Cass.
Work calls. Being the dutiful daughter calls. Being an enthusiastic bride-to-be calls.
I start my car and glance both ways before I pull out of my spot. A dark SUV on the far side of the lot catches my attention and I hesitate on my brake pedal.
It’s Holden.
He’s sitting behind the wheel and from this distance, has what looks like a pensive expression on his face with his eyes hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
What is he doing here? Following me?
The thought is fleeting because from what I can see, the man is in his own world.
Pencil Skirt.
The gorgeous woman flashes in my head and I loathe that my immediate thought is he is here waiting to meet up with her.
“Jealous, much?” I grumble to myself and the ridiculous thought.
I shouldn’t be jealous over a woman I’ve never met, but there was something about his familiarity with her that day—the way he smiled at her, the way he put his hand on her back and ushered her into his office, and the way he completely disregarded my inquiry about her—that has stuck in my memory.
Holden Knight currently occupies my bed, but make no mistake, I’m under zero impressions that he doesn’t keep secrets.
He’s the master of keeping them.
And right now as he sits in a parking lot reflecting or working or waiting, that quiet intensity that personifies him is all I see.
What drew him to sit here in the parking lot of this diner today? What drew him to it on that first night and that shared milkshake between us? What is the significance of this place to him when he’s not from here?
I put my hand on my gearshift, half tempted to put my car in park and go ask him myself, but something stops me.
The same something that just had me crying in my car over my sister. Maybe he came here for solace too.
I just wish I knew for what.