Chapter Fifty-Eight. Rowan
FIFTY-EIGHT
Rowan
I’ve spent the better part of the week holed up here.
Gran’s study. What now seems to be my go-to place.
Sure, I’ve ventured out to visit my dad. Polite conversations that end with him saying he’s tired and me saying I’ve got to go now, but that’s about it.
I’ve worked steadily but remotely. I oversaw a big contract with a regional distributor that secured a deal to put TinSpirits in a larger demographic of stores. And I hired a commercial real estate agent to contact the owner of the property the Sanctuary is on to see if I can negotiate.
If your own world is falling apart, you might as well try to make others’ a better place to be.
And to top it off, my desire to stick my head in the sand and remove myself from any and all things that will remind me of, make me miss, make me think of Holden, has allowed me to make such massive progress in going through Gran’s things.
It’s been my mission. And once this is clean, then I’ll force myself to go back to my reality.
The one where Holden is the liar I initially pegged him to be and my heart is still shattered.
But the chime going off when the front door opens and then closes tells me she’s here.
That didn’t take her long from text to arrival.
Neither does the clomp of her feet on the stairs as she climbs them or the dread that filters through my system over finally being alone with her and having to face the music.
I keep my head down as I sort through the endless junk Gran saved, hoping to find a few more memorable tokens of hers worth saving.
“What’s all this?” my mom asks from the doorway. I watch her walk in and take in the insanity of this room. The picture wall. The stacks Gran left behind and the ones I’ve made while sorting through it all.
“She left a mess. You know her. She was—”
“Eccentric and over-the-top and absolutely everything to you,” she says softly with a resigned nod of her head. “I loved that you had that with her.”
I slant a look her way. Never in a million years have I ever heard my mom say something like that. “I did. She understood me when no one else did.”
She didn’t come here to talk about Gran, though. I’m not naive enough to think that.
“She did.” She nods and moves around the room, trailing her fingertips over the hutch, pausing to look at framed photos, and stopping when she gets to the jars of collectibles.
“What’s up, Mom?” Heart-to-heart conversations aren’t exactly our forte and yet I have a feeling that’s what’s coming.
And it’s the last thing I want right now.
My emotions are being held together by broken strings. One sharp tug on them and the whole basket will break and everything will spill out.
“I don’t know.” She sighs.
She knows. She most definitely knows.
“Dad’s okay?”
She smiles softly. “Yes. He loves being back at home even if that means we are constantly fighting over me telling him he has to stay in bed and rest. You know how stubborn he can be.” She picks up a paperweight I made Gran in the fourth grade, studies it, and then sets it back down.
“He has a long road to recovery. Zero to little stress needed as they are worried about his heart and the toll this whole accident has put on it. I swear Cassie’s death broke it all those years ago and he never recovered from it.
It was always you kids and the business that mattered the most to him. Rhett and his twin girls.”
But it’s right here on the printout. The blood type. That means he can’t be …
I don’t know where the memory comes from or why the nurse’s words come back right now. But they do, and they sit, and they hold weight.
I shake the crazy thoughts away. I must have heard it wrong. I must have misunderstood what they were talking about.
“He’s going to make a full recovery, Mom.”
“Yes.” She nods and keeps moving. “And you and Rhett? You’re good.”
“We’ve never really been good, but we manage.”
“I hate that. Just simply hate that,” she says as she smiles at a picture of my dad as a young boy. “And you and Chad? Have you had a moment to sit and talk and reconcile?”
My sigh stops her. It’s loud and obtuse and on purpose. “Say what you want to say, Mom.”
“We haven’t talked since … everything happened.” She waves a hand in irrelevance. “But I think it’s time we do.”
Fucking awesome. I’m here to avoid this discussion, and now she’s forcing me into it.
“I’m going to be blunt,” she starts. “You chose the wrong man. Yes, both are handsome in their own right, but one is kind and forgiving and right for you. The other is … is using you.”
How right she is on that one.
“I chalk Mr. Knight up to being a dalliance. A need to sow your wild oats before settling down with the man you plan to spend the rest of your life with. You sowed them, but I think you accidentally let your heart get in the way, didn’t you?
Now it’s broken—now he broke it—and you don’t know how to find your way back. ”
I stare at her with tears in my eyes. Yep, my heart is broken all right, but nothing else she says is true.
At least on my end of it.
“So I’m going to start. I’m going to show you how to find the way back.
I’m not mad at you, Rowan. We all make mistakes.
The mistakes only serve to show us the light and what path we should take instead.
No one is mad at you. We all just want the best for you.
We all love you and we all just want you to make this right. ”
I hiccup over the sob that happens. I hate that it does, but it does, and she’s at my side in a second. She sits on her knees before me, looking up at me with my hands in hers.
“I didn’t cancel anything yet. I mean, I was going to.
The deposits were already lost so there was no rush, but I had planned on it, and then Dad got hurt and I simply—maybe conveniently forgot to.
” She squeezes my hands. “You can still do this, Rowan. You sowed your oats, now let Chad mend your broken heart. He’s a good man.
He’s an even better friend. No one will think twice over you wanting this. ”
The woman is actually crazy. I cheat on my fiancé, things are called off, and she forgets to cancel the wedding? Like … oh my god.
“Mom. I don’t want this.”
“Yes. You do. You want this and it’s just fear pushing you to act out. A lifetime commitment is a scary thing but in time you’ll see what we’ve always known, that Chad is the best person suited for you.”
“Mom,” I say sternly.
“The guests will come at a moment’s notice,” she says right over me. “They love our two families so much and can’t wait to help celebrate with us. For you.”
I close my eyes and wish her away.
Unfortunately, when I open them, she’s still there.
It didn’t work.
“Call Chad. Talk to him. Reconcile with him. It’s really for the best.”
I know there is nothing I can say right now that will make her stop. Nothing. So I say the only thing I know that will get her to leave.
“I’ll consider it. But I need time. Space. Quiet.”
There’s nothing I gain by marrying him. Not anymore. Not for two years at least.
But she doesn’t know that, and the way her face lights up when I say I’ll consider it means her work is done and she’ll leave me be so I can chart my own course.
She reins her hope back in. “Yes. Sure. Of course.”
And as I watch her pull out of the driveway with hope plastered on her face, all I feel is despair.