Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The house is quieter than I’ve ever heard it. The wind chime sings in the wind, but there’s not a sound to be heard inside. It’s the kind of quiet that settles into your bones. Where every creak of the floorboards, every shift of the wind, feels like a whisper in church.
Even the dust is still.
Michael is at the door, adjusting his coat and holding one of my bags. I don’t remember even packing it. Last night was a blur.
The sun is barely up, the sky still strangely gray rather than pink. Like Foxglove knows it’s losing me today, like it’s saying goodbye.
I stand by the window, looking out at the meadow as a sort of sadness washes over me. I didn’t expect it. Yesterday, I was glad to be rid of this place. Today, it feels like someone has carved a hole deep in my chest.
Maybe it’s just a trick of the light, but I swear from here, I can almost make out the place where the grass once flattened in the meadow—where I used to lie beneath the sky and dream of someday.
Back then, Foxglove felt magical. Special. It felt like home.
Now, I’ve never felt so far away. As if we’re already in the car. As if it’s nothing but a memory.
“Are you ready?” Michael’s voice breaks through my thoughts. He holds out a hand and I take it. His palm is warm, strong. He makes me feel safe in a way I never have before.
I smile at him and wonder if he understands, if he’s ever felt this quiet longing for a place that is no longer yours. A place that never can be again.
He must understand, though. He’s left his home, too. We’re going to be married. To live in the city. Away from here. Away from everything we’ve ever known.
I take a step toward him and feel something inside me, like a tug of a string being pulled in my chest. It’s always been there. The familiar weight of Foxglove’s walls. Of my mother’s expectations. They both want me to stay, but I can’t. This place is no longer meant for me.
I squeeze my eyes shut as I hear it, the steady, deliberate shuffle of footsteps behind me.
Mom.
I feel her before I see her, standing there at the end of the hall.
Her face is unreadable—too calm almost, when I know she’s anything but.
There’s a storm gathering behind her eyes.
Her hands are clasped together, and I know Michael doesn’t see the slight tremor she’s trying to hide, like she’s holding onto something too tightly.
Maybe that something is me.
“Don’t do this, Billie.” Her voice is raspy from both sleep and age, but every bit as cutting. It can still make me as nervous as it did when I was a child.
“You’ve left me no choice.”
“No choice.” She laughs under her breath. “You don’t know a thing about having no choices, girl. I promise you that.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” I release Michael’s hand, standing between them. “That you had no choice?” I can’t say the rest, can’t bring up my father and what she did to him. Can’t bring up the fact that she’s lied to me all my life about what happened, how he died.
“I told you the truth because you needed to hear it.” Her voice slows down, begging me for something I don’t understand. “Because you need to understand that even the most powerful love can change. Even the person you think you know best…can become a stranger.”
I blink, unable to point out the irony of her words. “I love him. That’s all that matters.”
“I have no doubts. You don’t know him.”
“I don’t know you.”
She huffs, her shoulders rising with a deep, drawn-out breath. “Be mad at me if you want, but Foxglove is yours. You belong here. This house, her land—it’s in your blood. The Wilde name is yours, and it means something. It’s all we have. All we’ve ever had.”
I swallow hard. “It’s just a house, Mom. Just a name.” The next words come easier than I expected them to. “And neither are mine anymore.”
“What did you say?” She looks at me as if I’ve slapped her.
“I will be taking Michael’s last name. I have to build something of my own.”
“Of his.” She spits the words as if they were venom.
I press my lips together, pushing a breath through my nose as I do my best to stay measured, calm. “I can’t be bound by the past anymore. Even if you refuse to leave it.”
Her eyes narrow, something flickering in their depths. Anger. Hurt. “The Wilde name is something more than just words on a page, and you know it. Don’t do this. Don’t throw everything away because you’re upset with me.”
I stand straighter, feeling the heat of her disapproval but unable to resist what comes next, fueled by my anger. “The Wilde name will end with you.”
She takes in the words like a blow she hadn’t braced for, flinching with a sharp intake of breath. Then her lips wrinkle with indignation.
“No.” The single word is uttered with finality, firm and absolute. A command. “Change your name if you want, but you cannot change your blood. You are Wilde. You have always been Wilde.”
Behind me, I hear Michael shift. I suspect he’s wondering whether to intervene, to speak on my behalf.
My pulse races as I meet Mom’s gaze. She’s getting older; her eyes are tired. But she still has fire left in her, plenty for this fight in particular.
It’s her pride. Her name.
Her beloved home.
But it’s just a house.
“I don’t belong here anymore. I love you, Mama. I always will. But I can’t stay. We are leaving. Today.”
Her breath hitches, and for a long, painful moment, I’m sure she’s going to yell at me—something she’s never done, not even as our world collapsed in on itself over and over again. My father. My sister. My aunt.
I cannot stay. I know the truth in my heart. I cannot live with her knowing what she’s done, who she is.
In the end, she doesn’t yell, though. She just stares at me, fire in her eyes, and gives a sharp nod. “Then go. To your city. To your new name.” Her eyes flick to Michael, then back to me. “I hope it brings you whatever it is you’re looking for.”
Tears sting my eyes, but I fight them back. “This isn’t goodbye. I’ll come back to visit. I’ll call when I can.”
She isn’t listening, though. She turns away from me, her soft frame disappearing down the shadowy hall.
I turn to Michael, ready to break, and he holds out a hand. We step onto the porch, and I refuse to look back. When the door shuts behind me with a soft thud, it sounds a lot like goodbye.
I suck in a deep breath, blinking away tears. It’s done. I’m free. I knew goodbye would hurt, but it’s over. There’s no going back.
Even as I think it, as I force the thought into my mind, etching it across my brain matter, something in me fights against it. This all feels too heavy for me to bear, and I find myself wanting to turn around, to run to my mother and fling myself into her arms. To stay.
But I don’t.
I let Michael lead me to the car, his kind, worried eyes trained on my face. We pull away from Foxglove in silence, and I know, once I leave, there’s truly no coming back.
I’ve chosen this new life. It’s what I want. But still, I feel as if I’m losing something.
I give in and look back over my shoulder just once as we pull down the gravel road. And Foxglove—the house that has been home to so many Wilde women before me—stays behind, watching and waiting as the last Wilde woman drives away.
Later - 2024
My favorite little bookshop on Jefferson is booming today, filled with customers excited for their big sale.
All around me, people shove books into baskets, stocking up on adventures.
I’m a browser. I can’t grab based on covers alone.
I take my time with each story, read the back cover, then the first few pages. I feel the weight of it in my hand.
Each story is a commitment, and I want to feel drawn to it. Like I can’t possibly read anything else.
On the endcap, my daughter’s novel sits, and I stick one in my basket without thought. I think I have about fifty copies now. She’d be embarrassed if she knew, but I can’t help it. I’m so proud of her. Of whom she’s become. The life she’s built.
I stop at the next shelf, lost in thought.
“You’re eyeing that Atwood like she owes you money.” A voice slips behind me, warm and casual, as if we’re old friends.
I turn, expecting to see someone I know, but instead I find an unfamiliar face. He’s tall. Forty-something, maybe. That smile—that boyish little grin—confuses me at first, then charms me.
Normally, a man who looks like that staring at me might make me blush, but I don’t. Maybe I’ve grown out of it, too old for girlish habits.
Still, I find myself standing a little taller. A little straighter.
“She might. I own two copies already, but not this cover.” I tap it with my finger. “I think I need it.”
He chuckles and grabs two copies, placing them into his basket. I blink at him. “One for you, one for me.”
And that’s how it starts. A conversation in the fiction aisle. A gifted book. A coffee after, across the street. A walk back to my car that seems to last both forever and not nearly long enough. Then a dinner invitation.
Which leads to another.
And another.
EJ doesn’t ask how old I am, not at dinner, nor when he comes back to my house a month in.
I don’t volunteer it, but I figure he can tell.
He traces his finger across the lines on my face, the silver in my hair.
He makes me feel beautiful because of them, not in spite of them.
He doesn’t judge or get annoyed when I forget words mid-sentence and have to pause.
He looks at me like he really sees me, like he wants to.
I forget how much I missed that, how good it feels.
Michael and I had a messy divorce, but I loved him dearly. Sometimes I wonder if we might’ve fixed things, reconciled someday. If we could’ve had one of those post-divorce rekindling moments they make such a fuss about in all the rom-coms.
But we never got the chance. He’s been gone nearly a decade now. Some days I still wake up reaching for him.