Chapter 6
That Fresh Start in Winter
Erin
When Callan shifted his truck into park, I flung the door open and jumped out.
Frosty air filled my lungs. Blue skies and a smudge of clouds soared above me.
I wriggled my toes in my sneakers. Familiar, solid ground was beneath my feet, and an ocean separated me from my problems. Running away wasn’t a long-term solution, but today, it was enough.
Callan’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Better?”
“I feel like it’s the first time I’ve been able to breathe in days,” I admitted.
“It gets easier.”
I reached around his back to pull him closer, resting my head on his shoulder.
Callan said the words I needed to hear. Not “You’ll be fine” or “It’ll all work out.
” He knew about trudging through hard times.
Reminding me that my lowest moment wouldn’t always weigh me down was the right place for my head to be.
Callan jerked his head back at the truck. “Duty calls.” He winked before moving past me to grab the suitcases.
“Out!” a voice huffed from the car. I peeked through the back window. Matilda wriggled in the booster seat, arching against the seatbelt. “Matilda out!” She kicked her feet.
I opened the door and bent inside. “Are you excited to see where we’re staying?”
More wriggling and kicking feet. The seatbelt clicked off. Fearless and too impatient to let me help her down, Matilda clambered out of the booster seat, soaring headfirst for the dirt.
Callan dropped a suitcase, and his arm shot out. “Whoa there!” He planted Matilda safely on the ground beside me. “Wait for your mum!”
Matilda waited for no one.
She marched ahead, belly jutting out, arms swinging, her brows scrunched together as she scanned the valley.
The mountains and scattered trees didn’t capture her attention, but when her eyes landed on the cottage, her palms clapped her cheeks.
The whitewashed stone gleamed like a pearl in the afternoon sun, and with the chimney and pitched tin roof, the quaint little box with its narrow porch looked as if it had popped out from one of her picture books.
Matilda took off down the stepping stones.
“Til!” I cried. ‘Wait!”
She jolted to a stop, only to whip around and pin me with a defiant glare. “No wait!”
Callan strode past, his arms barely straining under the weight of two oversized suitcases. “You heard her, Mum.” He grinned at me over his shoulder. “No wait!”
“Don’t encourage her,” I grumbled, carefully stepping on each stone to the front door.
By the time I reached the porch, Callan had already stuck the key in the lock, opened the door, and stepped out of Matilda’s way. He rolled the suitcases by the door but didn’t go inside.
“Bron left you plenty of towels and fresh sheets,” he said. “We stocked some essentials in the fridge and pantry. And you’ll need these.” A set of keys dangled from his finger.
“For the cottage?”
“Yup. The smaller one is for the shared laundry just down the hill. You can use the one in the homestead if you prefer, but if I’m not there, I can’t protect you from an inquisition from Mim.” He grinned. “And this one.” He jiggled a fob. “This is the spare for my truck.”
“Oh, Cal, no—”
“You need to get around until you sort out your divorce settlement, right? Take the truck anytime you want.” With a nod and a tight smile, he disappeared from the doorway and down the steps.
“Cal!”
He threw me a questioning look over his shoulder.
I fished my purse out of my bag and hopped down onto the grass. “Here.” I counted out a wad of bills. “For our first week—”
“No.” He nudged the money back at me. “I’m not taking that from you.”
“Technically, it’s from Jeremy. I stole it from our mortgage account.”
And a whole lot more.
My new—and separate—account had enough cash to cover rent, food, and a few treats for the next twelve months.
My lawyer was going to have a heart attack when I eventually admitted that I completely ignored her advice and took the money.
Did she honestly think I’d stay under the same roof as the man who’d let some other woman “ride his dick” all night while he left our daughter stranded at playgroup?
No way. The piddly bit of money I’d taken was the least Jeremy owed me until the divorce was finalized.
I expected Callan to laugh, but his smile was almost sad. “You can’t steal what’s rightfully yours, Ez.” He exhaled a slow breath. “Marriage is teamwork. It’s about sharing. Bloody hell, everything about this guy…” He shook his head. “Keep your money.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For this. For everything. The cottage… Remembering to put in a booster seat for Til…”
An unfamiliar warmth curled around my heart. I wasn’t used to someone else doing the worrying. I touched a hand to his arm and smiled up at him. It was an unspoken thanks for being there for me.
Callan understood. A hint of pink flushed his cheeks. “Anytime. I mean it. Call me for anything. Oh, except if it’s about little soaps and shit.” He grinned. “Best to call Bron for that.”
Matilda was obsessed with the cottage.
She tore from room to room, touching everything, testing every chair with a quick bounce up and down on her bottom, and opening all the drawers and cupboards to peek inside. She loved the smaller bedroom with pink sheets and fairy curtains. Her bedroom.
But, most of all, she loved the dollhouse set up in the corner.
Of all the little critters in the box, the white rabbit family was her favorite. Matilda plopped in front of the two-story house and lost herself in their tiny world. She rearranged the furniture and cooed to her new friends as I unpacked her clothes into the drawers beside her bed.
“Mummy?”
“Yeah?”
One chubby hand held up a white rabbit in a pink frock, while the other shoved a bicycle at me. “Put on.”
“What do you say?”
Matilda smiled sweetly. “Please.”
I crouched beside her and popped the rabbit onto the bicycle, adjusting its arms near the handlebars. “She’s all set,” I said, handing back her toys. “Does your rabbit have a name?”
“That mummy.”
“And this one?” I pointed to the smallest rabbit in the upstairs bedroom.
“Baby girl.”
“Is there a daddy?”
Matilda nodded and pointed to a rabbit reclining awkwardly in a chair in what I guessed was the living room. He wore a checkered shirt but was missing his trousers.
I smirked. Art imitating life…
“And who’s this?” I pointed to the new creature gripped tight in her fist. The poor fellow seemed to have become her favorite. It was a ginger bear wearing overalls.
“This Cal.” She leaned over and whispered, “He not farmer. He pirate.”
I snickered a laugh. Poor Callan. He’d never escape this now.
I was stacking Matilda’s picture books on the nightstand when my phone rang. An actual ringtone and not a vibration. Jeremy.
I grabbed my phone off the spotted comforter neatly folded on the end of the bed. “Daddy’s calling, Til. Will you be okay?”
Matilda was too engrossed in rearranging the rabbit family’s kitchen to answer me. I curled one of her wispy pigtails around my finger before ducking out of the bedroom. This wasn’t a conversation for a toddler to overhear.
I started the call with an apprehensive “Hi—”
“Hey, beautiful,” Jeremy said. “Where’s my dinner?”
I blinked at the exposed white stone lining the living room wall. “Sorry?”
I wasn’t sure if I was more confused by the “Hey, beautiful” or the fact Jeremy was asking me about dinner.
Hadn’t he noticed my engagement ring and wedding band sitting on the nightstand?
That was proof I was gone. He couldn’t have missed it…
could he? Maybe I should have left him a letter.
Something like…Thanks for the best six years of my life and the worst week of my life.
Both have made me a better person. I’ll be even better if I never see your pathetic, no-good, cheating ass again until the end of my days.
“I’ve looked for the plate you usually leave me in the fridge,” Jeremy said. “I can’t find it.”
“I haven’t left a plate for you tonight.”
I expected Jeremy to ask why, but he grunted with annoyance. “You’re lashing out at me.”
“I’m not lashing out. If you think I’d stay after what happened—”
“You’re staying with one of your girlfriends to punish me?”
“No!”
“A hotel? Is that it?”
“You broke my fucking heart, Jeremy!” Screwing my eyes shut, I forced myself to take a deep breath. Getting upset in earshot of Matilda and her picture-perfect rabbit family was the last thing I needed to do.
“I made a mistake.” The gentle edge to his voice caught me off guard, but my heart was knotted too tight for it to undo the hurt. “One colossal fucking mistake.” He sighed. “We’ll talk when you come home.”
No goodbye, only silence. He’d hung up.
I stared in disbelief at my phone. What the hell was that conversation? I rocked on the spot, unsteady and so confused. The adrenaline and anger that had powered me through the last two days drained out of me. I collapsed onto the couch.
I opened the email from my lawyer on my phone. A draft letter to Jeremy explaining the separation was attached.
Please confirm your instructions.
My thumbs hovered above the screen, ready to type, but my resolve to end my marriage was shaky.
I needed more time to think.
Maybe Jeremy would say something that would stitch my heart back together. He might tell me that Tallulah wasn’t real and he’d made her up to hurt me. Maybe that was his colossal mistake—and not his decision to sprawl on crisp hotel sheets with this faceless woman on top of him.
Who was she?
I typed her name and our city in the search engine and scrolled through the same headshots I’d already seen a hundred times.
Which one of these women was Tallulah? Did she look like me…
or nothing like me? Did she unbutton Jeremy’s shirt and drag her fingers down his bare chest when she climbed on top of him?
Did he smile when she did? He liked it when I did that…
I tossed my phone away and curled up into a tiny ball on the couch.
A pillow pressed over my face blotted out the world around me but didn’t stop the roar in my head.
Don’t go there. Those thoughts were poison.
My wedding ring had been easy to yank off, but nothing stopped my mind from inventing its own version of what happened the night Jeremy betrayed me. I couldn’t shut it off.
Maybe I never would.
That was the worst feeling of all. This woman I’d never met lived in my head, and I got no say in it.
I bet that would make her smile.