Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
CORINNE WILDE - PRESENT DAY
Unlike our old home’s front door, with a large glass pane and windows on either side of it, Foxglove’s door is solid wood.
Practical out here, affordable when it was built, but now, standing at the door with someone knocking on the other side and no way to look and see who it might be, I’m regretting it.
It will be one of the first things I change as soon as I can manage it.
I cross the room into the kitchen and peer out the closest window, but I’m too far down the cabin’s wall to see who’s standing there. If they drove, I’d be able to see their car parked behind ours, which it’s not. Whoever it is has walked here.
The neighbor.
The answer comes to me at once. This must be the neighbor checking in on us. Surely Mom has told him we’re moving in by now.
With a deep breath, I hurry past Taylor again. Whoever it is hasn’t knocked again.
“Who’s there?” I call, my voice shaking.
It takes several seconds to get a response, but when I do, a chill runs over my spine.
In a deep, gravelly voice, the person responds, “Your worst nightmare.”
My body stills, and I scowl. “Oh, you asshole.”
I swing the door open and stare at my best friend. Her friendly face—copper hair cut short above her shoulders and the warmest brown eyes—shines back at me in the dim porch light.
Her arms are full of bags and boxes, so I can’t hug her as I step back, trying to take things from her as she moves into the house.
“What are you doing here?”
She hands me a package of paper towels and a grocery bag, and I peer inside. It’s full of snacks, and it looks like the one in her hand is filled with cleaning supplies.
“I wanted to surprise my girls.” She drops the rest of her things on the floor and hugs Taylor, then draws me into a longer embrace, holding eye contact as she pulls away. “How are you?” She’s asking more than those few words, and we both know it.
I nod. “I’m great. You didn’t need to come all the way here. Don’t you have showings this weekend?”
“Rebecca’s covering for me.” Carrying the bags across the room, she places them on the kitchen counters. “I figured you guys could use some help getting settled in and…” Her eyes travel the room. “Cleaning.”
“It’s been a while since anyone was here,” I admit. “I’m surprised Mom didn’t sell this place years ago.”
“Well, be thankful she didn’t. You’re sitting on a gold mine at this point.” Her gaze flicks up over the wall. “The land, anyway. When you’re ready, you could sell it and make enough to buy a house in cash somewhere else. Somewhere closer to me.” She bats her eyelashes at me playfully.
Taylor bounces up on her toes with hope. “Yes. Yes. Let’s do that.” She claps her hands together.
“You know we can’t sell this place.” The cabin seems to droop with relief, as if it were holding its breath waiting for an answer, like it’s grateful to know where I stand. This place has always felt otherworldly to me.
Despite the dust and disrepair, I can still see the nail holes my grandparents and their grandparents once put into the walls. I can feel the worn spots on the floor, where someone down the line paced up and down the hall worrying about a problem that has long since been forgotten.
There are decades of height marks written in shaky, fading ink on the wooden doorframe of the broom closet.
Most have vanished with age, but I can still make out a few: Lyddie, I think.
Hannah, Josephine. Katherine. Martha. The baseboard in my bedroom has the letter H for Hazel carved into its wood.
There’s our last name on the mantel and the words WILDE WOMEN carved into a board and nailed above the living room window.
This house is a memory box, not just for me, but for every Wilde woman who came before me.
And I am now the keeper of the memories, even if most of them aren’t mine to begin with.
This home breathes my family’s air. It holds every piece of our past and our legacy.
This land may be worth much more than the house ever was at this point, but it’s not just a cabin.
It’s not even just a home. It’s a piece of our family.
A piece of the blood, sweat, and tears generations of Wildes put into it.
To walk away from it now—to say goodbye to it for good—feels wrong.
As far as I know, I’m only the second Wilde woman not to raise my daughter here, though that was more about practicality than tradition.
Foxglove was too far from civilization for Lewis and me to commute to work, or for Taylor to go to a decent school.
The guilt of staying away when we knew this was here, of abandoning the piece of the world always intended for me, has been heavier than I realized until I returned.
Despite what I know selling it would mean for my life currently, it would be a betrayal of everything my ancestors did for our future—not just me, but my daughter, and any generations that come after us.
I can only hope that staying here, living here, even if only for a while, will help Taylor understand why I feel so strongly about this place. Why I feel we must protect it.
“Your mom’s right.” Greta comes to my rescue, bumping Taylor’s hip with hers as she unpacks the bags on the counter.
“I wish my family had something like this to pass down through generations, rather than just high cholesterol, good hair, and that weird gene where cilantro tastes like soap.” She sticks her tongue through her smiling teeth as Taylor rolls her eyes.
“This place is special, you know? You’ll see. ”
“Well, I’ll have nothing to do but see if Mom doesn’t get the Wi-Fi hooked up soon.
” She drops her phone on the counter and clasps her hands together, begging.
“Can’t I please just come back with you?
I’m not meant for the wilderness. I need civilization.
I need Starbucks. I swear I’ll be the best roommate ever. ”
Greta eyes Taylor with a look of pity. “Sorry, you can’t, because I already had the best roommate ever.
Twice.” She wrinkles her nose at me playfully.
“Okay, now, we’re officially having a sleepover, so someone go set up the TV and pick out a movie, and someone else tell me which of these delicious snacks we’re going to pig out on first.”
“Tay, why don’t you pick the movie,” I offer. “We’ll get the snacks ready.”
Without a word, she drags her feet across the room and begins sorting through the boxes, searching for the one with all our old DVDs inside it.
Moving closer to Greta and lowering my voice, I say, “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“I knew if I did, you’d tell me you were fine. And I knew that would be a lie, but I also knew if I pointed it out, you’d say it wasn’t, and…” She huffs out a breath. “It was just easier if I surprised you.”
“You mean if you left me no choice.”
“Tomato, to-mah-to,” she teases, booping my nose with her finger. She looks over my shoulder. “How’s she doing?”
“About like you’ve seen,” I say, my voice even lower than before. “She hates me. Hates us both, I guess, but I’m the one she’s stuck with.”
She presses her lips together, nodding. “Have you heard from him?”
“Not since we signed the papers. He wasn’t at the house when the movers came by. I guess he assumed I didn’t want to see him.”
“What do you know? Miracles happen every day.” She rolls her eyes. “I still can’t believe you let him keep the house. It should’ve been sold and split. I could’ve gotten you both enough to start over.”
“Yeah, Mom said the same thing about EJ.”
Greta’s eyes search mine as she fights against an angry smile. “It’s not enough her new boy toy is trying to steal her away, now he’s going after my business, too?”
“It’s not like we would’ve used him. You’re the family realtor.”
“Well, I would be if you sold anything.” She tears open a bag of mini oatmeal cookies, popping one into her mouth. “You guys are like a realtor’s nightmare. You know, most people move houses every three to five years.”
“We can’t sell the house, and you know it.”
“Yeah, yeah…” She wags her hand, pretending it’s talking as she mumbles, “Sentimental stuff and important memories and good parents and yada yada yaaaeeeech…” She pretends to gag, pointing a finger toward the back of her throat.
I wave her away, slipping past to grab bowls from the cabinet. “It’s the house we brought Taylor home from the hospital into, you monster. I couldn’t let him sell it.”
“Yeah, but now it’s his.”
“If I pushed the issue, he would’ve never given in and let me keep it. He had nowhere to go. Selling would be the only option, and that would’ve killed me. At least this way, Taylor can visit him there. Her children can see it. It’s still hers.”
Her expression goes skeptical, and I know she wants to point out that I can no longer force Lewis to keep the house, but it was the only sort of power I had, and I leveraged it. I don’t want to believe he’d screw me over.
“So, want to hear something weird?”
“Are you just trying to change the subject?” She pops another cookie into her mouth and holds out the bag for me. I take one and tear open the bag of M&M’s, splitting them between our bowls before adding popcorn and mixing them.
“Maybe,” I admit. “But I think someone might’ve been coming into the cabin. We found trash in the bedroom.”
“Ew, what?”
“Weird, right?”
“Probably some local teenagers. Lord knows we used to find random houses to get drunk in back in the day.” She gives me a pointed stare, then her gaze travels the room again, and I know she’s right. “This place is perfect for that.”
I laugh, reaching next to her to pull a bottle of wine from one of her boxes. “You’re probably right.”
“Did you figure out how they were getting in? Surely the door wasn’t unlocked. The place is dusty, but it’s not destroyed. Did they break a window?”
“No, not that I saw. I ordered a new lock for the door, just in case. Maybe the neighbor lost the key…or maybe his son steals it or something.”
“Does he have a son?”
“No idea.”
“Does anyone else have access? Besides the neighbor.”
“Mom. But other than that, just me and Lewis. And he never cared about this place one way or another. I can’t exactly see him sneaking off out here.”
She takes in a deep breath, thinking. “Well, when does the lock get here?”
“Two days. We’ll be fine until then.”
“Of course you will. But I’ll stay until it’s changed, just to be safe.”
Most days I have no idea how I got so lucky to have her. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know, but I’m the best, so…” She takes her bowl, shoveling a handful of popcorn into her mouth as she calls out to Taylor, “What are we watching?”