Chapter 21 Brynn
I had been the one to leave. Right? I had been the one to hitchhike to Denver in the back of a PT Cruiser, alongside an extremely non -hypoallergenic pug named Gypsy Rose Lee, before spending twenty-three hours on a bus to Los Angeles, during which time sleeping
was impossible for a multitude of reasons—the Neil Diamond impersonator we’d picked up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Reno passenger
“Ed the Egg Salad Sandwich Guy,” as I’d dubbed him, just to name a couple. Those were pretty vivid memories, but the way Laila
kept apologizing to me, I couldn’t help but be a little confused. Confused enough that I spent a quick nanosecond wondering
if I’d been brainwashed or incepted. (Incepted? Is that what it’s called when Leonardo DiCaprio makes his way into your dreams?
If so, I had been incepted a lot through the years.)
As we settled in at the Bean Franklin—where Andi Franklin née Gardner, back when she babysat us, greeted me with a “Hey,” as if we’d seen each other every day for the last twenty years—I finally got a chance to make my big confession and explain why Laila had nothing to apologize for.
“It wasn’t that you guys couldn’t track me down. Or that you didn’t try hard enough.” I took a deep breath. “A couple months
after I left, mail from Addie found its way to me. Right into my hands. And I was so desperate to avoid coming back to this
place, I changed my name.” Laila tilted her head in confusion. “Well, I changed the spelling of my name.”
All because I felt the need to escape. All because I was too scared to trust anyone. After all, if I couldn’t trust my own
mother, how was I supposed to trust anyone else? Wasn’t she supposed to be the one person who would do whatever it took to
keep me safe? And wasn’t she the one person who had continually put me in harm’s way? How was a little girl ever supposed
to trust anyone when she grew up with that as her reality?
But when I slept over at Addie’s house, or Laila’s, I didn’t have nightmares.
When I was at school with Mrs. Stoddard, I wasn’t so afraid to say or do the wrong thing that I didn’t allow myself to say
or do anything.
When Andi was in charge of us, I didn’t flinch at every loud noise or sudden movement.
Even when I was working in the stockroom at Cassidy’s with Old Man Kimball, I wasn’t afraid to turn my back.
Wasn’t that trust? Wasn’t that love? Wasn’t that maybe even what family was supposed to be like? Somehow that little girl
had been fortunate enough to be loved by an entire town of people she could trust, and in the name of self-preservation, she’d
written them off alongside the evil she shared a name and home with.
“I’m sorry, Laila.”
I didn’t know how many more apologies were going to be necessary before the week was through, but if the way my tense muscles were abruptly relaxing was any indication—not really in a relaxing way at all but more like when you crack the Belgian chocolate at the top of a tub of Magnum ice cream into jagged little pieces to reveal the creaminess that awaits you—this one was a good place to start.
Lester Holt had once told me I used too many metaphors in my reporting. I clearly needed to work on that. Regardless, tears
were streaming down my cheeks and my spoon was ready to dig deep into the creamy goodness.
“I’m so sorry, Laila,” I repeated and buried my face in my hands and propped my elbows on my knees.
Within seconds her arms were around me again. She crouched beside me and rested her head on my shoulder and rubbed my back
soothingly as she whispered, “Shh... It’s okay. Let it out.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. The dam holding back my tears collapsed. Or the ice cream melted. Whatever.
Suck it, Lester Holt.
A few minutes later, once that round of tears had dried, she sat back down across from me and said, “That envelope? It was
probably a wedding announcement.”
I had been as impenetrable as Teflon for twenty years, but now guilt was forming an increasingly grimy layer on my heart,
and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to scour it away. My hands covered my mouth and then crossed over my heart. “Where did
she and Wes end up? Are they still here?”
She began chewing on her bottom lip, and my stomach dropped. What had I missed? “Laila?”
“Wes skipped town. The morning of their wedding. His dad showed up, after his mom died—”
“As in the dad he’d never met?”
She nodded. “Yeah. That morning, he and his dad were just... gone.”
I’d already encountered several things I had not seen coming.
I never would have believed Doc Atwater and Mrs. Stoddard would seem younger than they had twenty years ago.
Never ever in a million years would I have believed that Old Man Kimball would sit in my presence without bringing up the $6.
42 I owed him for whiskey glasses I had broken in 2001.
But those were just surprises. I never could have been prepared for the shock of Addie Atwater and Wes Hobbes not living happily ever after together.
“I should have been here,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I should have been here, Laila. I should have...” What? What could I have done? “I should have been here for her.”
“No. You shouldn’t have been.”
“But—”
“You shouldn’t have been here, Brynn.” She lowered her head to meet my eyes. “Yes... you should have let us know where
you were. You should have trusted us enough to know Elaine would never get any information out of us. Never. Not from anyone in this town. It makes me really sad that you didn’t know that.” Her
chin tightened. “But you had to go. You had to figure things out and figure out a life away from this place. That’s nothing
to be ashamed of.” She got up and grabbed a box of tissues from behind the counter and then sat back down in the seat next
to me. We each grabbed a tissue and blew our noses. Laila grabbed my hands. “You know, Wes lost his mom senior year, and then
within months, we lost you. Then we lost Wes.” She sniffed and, never letting go of my hands, raised her forearm and brushed
it across her eyes. “Then, for a while, Addie lost herself... and then she left. So, yeah... it was a rough few years. And it just felt wrong—it was wrong—that you weren’t part of our lives anymore. But you’re back now—”
“Laila, I’m not staying here.”
“Oh, I know. I don’t mean in Adelaide Springs. I just mean . . . you’re back .” Her front teeth dug into her bottom lip and she pulled her eyes away from mine. “You are back. Aren’t you?”
What did that even mean? I would be leaving on Friday. Returning to New York. Returning, I had to believe, to Sunup . Working a schedule that was unrelenting and unforgiving. I’d go back to reading cue cards. And though the spelling distinction
was small, who I had been as B-R-E-N and who I had become as B-R-Y-N-N weren’t compatible.
As if sensing my uneasiness, Laila changed the subject, and I couldn’t have asked for a more effective distraction.
“Addie’s in the CIA.”
“What?!” My jaw dropped. “Addie? Addie Atwater? Our Addie?”
She raised her hands in the air and then did the “cross my heart, hope to die” gesture in front of her chest. “And that was
after the air force. She’s like a full-on monster, in the best way.”
“ Wow. ” Addie Atwater. What in the world was happening?
“Her husband is apparently even higher up than she is.” She looked around to make sure Andi wasn’t within earshot, and then
she leaned in and whispered, “We don’t talk to Wes anymore, of course, but he’s a senator in Connecticut or somewhere and
married to Wray Gardner.”
The jaw drops just kept on coming. “Andi’s little sister?” I mouthed, and Laila nodded slowly with her lips sealed shut.
We sat in silence a few more seconds, and I played all of that over in my mind until she stood from her chair and walked over
to the counter. “Want something to drink?”
I jumped up and joined her. “Just some water would be great.” I took the glass of ice she handed me and looked around the
storage area and then in the refrigerator.
“What do you need?”
“Water?”
Laila rolled her eyes. “The tap, Brynn. Water comes out of the tap.”
Oh. Yeah. I’d forgotten what it was like to be somewhere where the water from the tap was safe to drink and didn’t feature
that coppery flavor enhancement we New Yorkers paid extra for.
I helped myself to water from the sink and took a sip. The cold, clear liquid trickled down my throat, slowly at first, and
then faster as I guzzled it. By the time I pulled my lips away, my glass was empty and I was winded from the rapid swallowing.
“Heavenly days, I’d forgotten how good that is.” I refilled my cup.
“So tell me what I’ve missed with you,” Laila said as we sat back down.
I shrugged. “Not much, really. I think I inadvertently committed to nationally televised coverage of Township Days, and I
tried climbing the Fieldings’ Ponderosa pine again.” Nothing much other than that. Basically, I’m just doing a horrible job with what I came here to do and staying busy avoiding
texts and calls from my agent and my executive producer. Oh, and Sebastian Sudworth’s been a bit of a distraction...
“Yeah, heard about all that.”
“Even the tree? It just happened.”
“You have been gone a while if you’ve forgotten how fast news travels. But I mean what have I missed in your life?”
“Since when?”
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Since you left, obviously.”
I chortled. “Since I left here? You mean, since I left twenty years ago?”
“Yes. Do you want me to go first?”
I sat back in the chair and crossed my arms, smirking all the while. “Sure.”
“Okay, let’s see. My cat died, like, two weeks after graduation.”
If that delicious water from the tap had been in my mouth right then, it would have spewed all over her. “Laila! We cannot
go through every detail of our lives from the last twenty years!” My smile faded, and I sat up straight again. “Hang on. Edward
Scissorhands?”