Chapter 12
“Why didn’t you tell me that all this was going on?” Rowan stared at Caleb as they stood face-to-face in the yard. “I could have helped or offered moral support or . . . I could have done something.”
Caleb hesitated then shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. You had your own life. I didn’t want to interrupt it.”
The words were gentle, but that didn’t stop them from landing the way they did.
Your own life.
Rowan did have her own life. She’d built it carefully and deliberately, piece by piece, always moving forward and looking toward the next project or advancement.
Virginia had been the place she was from, not the place she was going.
It had been the place that would hold her back, not the place that would advance her.
Maybe she’d gotten the order reversed, however.
She raised her chin. “I should have been here.”
“You’re here now.” Caleb’s tone didn’t carry any accusation, which somehow made it harder to hear.
Rowan looked at the road.
She thought about the last time she’d stood on this property. Sarah’s funeral had been a gray, cold day in late October. The ground had been hard beneath her heels—an uncomfortable reminder of her grief.
She’d stayed four days. When it was over, she’d hugged her family and told them to call if they needed anything.
They’d all talked, but they’d kept her in the dark about this.
She hadn’t pushed.
Somewhere in the space between California and Virginia, she’d let herself believe that not hearing about any problems meant everything was fine.
It wasn’t fine. It hadn’t been fine, and she hadn’t been here to see it. Wasn’t that what family was supposed to do—help carry each other’s burdens?
Guilt pounded her. She’d been so wrapped up in herself that she hadn’t seen it.
She cleared her throat. “Is there anything I can do now?”
Caleb frowned as he considered her question. “Right now? No. Micah knows about what’s happening, and we’ve got a lawyer—Kori, actually—who handles the filings when they come in. It’s managed.”
Not resolved. Not over. Just managed.
Rowan’s gaze shot across the property—from the house to the kennels to the open land. Her family had turned this property into a place that mattered, a haven that helped the most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, Rowan had spent ten years trying to prove she could be somebody.
Here, her family had quietly been doing exactly that—while someone worked just as quietly to take it from them.
She wasn’t going to let that happen. She didn’t know how she’d stop it, but somehow, she would.
Rowan had been trying to occupy herself since she’d come inside. Too much time on her hands meant too much time to think.
Then Naomi stepped into the room, Grace against one shoulder and a purse and diaper bag slung over the other. “I need to run into town for a few things for the baby. Formula, diapers . . . all the glamorous stuff.”
Rowan perked. “Mind if I come with you?”
Naomi paused and gave her a look. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because half the country probably knows your face.”
A knot tightened low in Rowan’s stomach. Fair point.
She didn’t have superstar status or anything, but she’d been in enough movies and shows that some people paused when they saw her. They tried to place her. On occasion, she ran into a superfan who got starstruck.
Naomi nodded toward the side door. “Blue Ridge Hollow may be small, but people still watch entertainment news and movies.”
Rowan glanced at the row of hooks mounted beside the door. An old navy baseball cap hung from one of them.
A slow smile tugged at her mouth. “I have a plan for that.”
She crossed the room, grabbed the cap, and pulled it low over her hair before reaching into her purse for her oversized sunglasses.
Naomi blinked once. “That’s your big plan?”
Rowan slid the sunglasses into place. “You underestimate the power of avoiding eye contact.”
Naomi laughed as Rowan glanced at the mirror near the door.
The hat shadowed most of her face, and the dark lenses hid the rest.
It wasn’t perfect, but the disguise was enough.
“You’d know best,” Naomi finally said. “Let’s go.”
A few moments later, she, Naomi, and Grace stepped outside. Rowan settled into the passenger seat as Naomi buckled Grace into the car seat behind them.
The drive into town took twenty minutes. Rowan watched the mountains through the passenger window as Naomi drove, the ridgelines cutting clean against the sky.
She hadn’t let herself think about how much she’d missed this landscape. It was easier from California to pretend she hadn’t.
Then the town of Blue Ridge Hollow came into view.
She’d forgotten how it looked—or maybe she’d just stopped letting herself remember.
The brick storefronts lining Main Street looked as they had when she’d last been here, like the town had quietly decided sometime around 1955 that it had everything it needed and saw no reason to change.
A handful of cars sat parked along the curb, and a few people strolled along the sidewalk with an unhurried pace that would have driven her crazy at one time.
Now it made her chest ache.
Los Angeles never stopped moving. There was always somewhere to be, something to prove, someone watching to see whether you were still relevant. She’d spent the last decade matching that pace, convinced it meant something.
Standing still had always felt like falling behind.
She wasn’t sure she believed that anymore.
Naomi found a parking spot down the street from the pharmacy and loaded Grace into the carrier against her chest with practiced ease.
Rowan climbed out and pulled the brim of the cap down.
As the saying went, Here goes nothing.