Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Delaney
Would Willowbrook be my first choice to run away to? Back to, if I’m being honest. Definitely not. It would be dead last. Yet here I am, back in the small town that holds memories of the girl I used to be, the girl who believed her future was as bright and wide open as the sky.
The last time I was here, I was seventeen, na?ve, and head over heels in love with a boy who looked at me as if I was his whole world.
Now, more than a decade later, I’m broke, jaded by love, and asking my retired parents to take in both my daughter and me for the foreseeable future.
That seventeen-year-old version of me would be so disappointed in who we’ve become.
“It’s so boring here.” My seven-year-old daughter, Leia, flops onto my bed, pulling me from the mental reprimand I’ve been giving myself since my life took a plunge I wasn’t prepared for.
I kneel beside yet another moving box I’ve been ignoring for the past few weeks and stack her mountain of Hello Kitty plushies on a shelf. “Once summer kicks off, there’ll be more to do.”
Leia exhales dramatically, staring at the ceiling. “Like what?”
“Horseback riding.” I rise and flatten the empty box, trying to sound upbeat. “I’ll find a stable so you can ride again.”
Moving here with just weeks left in the school year wasn’t ideal, but when the DEA bursts into your kitchen one random morning and cuffs your pajama-clad husband, your priorities shift pretty fast. Shelter and food take precedence over friends and familiarity.
“Plain Daisy Ranch would be perfect,” Mom says, breezing in and patting Leia’s leg to give her room to sit on the mattress.
I narrow my eyes. “Eavesdropping again, Mom?”
“If you two didn’t talk so loud, I wouldn’t overhear you.” She grins, the picture of unapologetic nosiness.
She could be in the eavesdropping hall of fame. God help us all when the time comes for hearing aids, and she can slyly turn those suckers up.
Leia scoots up the mattress, clutching the Hello Kitty unicorn Sean brought home from his last “business” trip. Maybe prison has a gift shop. Hello Kitty in an orange jumpsuit. Stripes would be cuter.
“Mom, I’m not taking her to Plain Daisy. I’m leaning toward Wild Bull. They’ve expanded from what I see on their website.”
Mom waves and grabs the brush from the nightstand, then she taps Leia to get in position in her lap. When Leia just looks at her, she says, “If we don’t keep brushing it, you’re going to end up with knots.”
“It hurts though.” Leia eyes me like tell her to stop.
“You’ll be crying more when knots form. You don’t want to cut off this beautiful hair.” Leia winces and her body stiffens as Mom forces the brush through her hair. Then she eyes me over Leia’s head. “Wild Bull will cost a fortune. Levi can talk to Nash and get Leia started at Plain Daisy.”
If Willowbrook is the last place I wanted to be, Plain Daisy Ranch is the circle of hell in the center. “Levi is not calling in favors for me.”
“I miss Uncle Levi,” Leia says as Mom guides the brush through her hair. “When’s he back?”
“Tomorrow night. He’s at a big rodeo.” Leia turns her head to look at my mom, but my mom turns her back around, continuing to brush. There’s something sweet about watching your mom do for your daughter what she did for you.
“Can I ride a bull like him?” Leia asks.
Mom and I laugh in unison.
“Not yet,” I say.
A heavy silence follows. Boxes tower in the corner, keepsakes of a life that was built on lies. The police seized pretty much everything but allowed me to keep Leia’s toys, a small kindness I was grateful for. Leia’s already lost enough.
“You should go out tonight,” Mom says, braiding Leia’s hair. “I’ll spoil this little one with ice cream sundaes and a movie.” She whispers the last part to Leia, whose eyes widen.
“What would I even do?” I flop onto the bed beside them, mirroring Leia’s ceiling-stare.
“You’ve been hiding out since you got here,” Mom says gently, careful to approach the subject everyone here pretends to ignore.
“For good reason.”
She secures Leia’s braid with an elastic, then smooths a hand over her head. “Do me a favor and check on Grandpa, sweetheart.” She taps Leia’s hip.
“Why? He’s probably fishing.”
“Exactly. Fishing is fun.” Mom winks. “You’ll see. Go now.”
Leia groans but leaves the room. She knows that my mom isn’t really asking. I have the instant urge to yank my little buffer back between me and my mom’s inevitable pep talk.
“Be right back. GRANDPA!” she shouts.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t scream,” my mom calls.
Leia’s footsteps jog down the stairs, and the screen door bangs shut behind her.
I get up off the bed and unpack another box. “Go on. Let’s hear it. Say what you want to say.”
Mom joins me, reaching in and picking up items that were packed too haphazardly, since I was only given a small amount of time to move us out of our house. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Delaney. You did nothing wrong.”
“I married him.” I set Leia’s pink piggy bank on the dresser.
Sean used to slip hundreds into it after bedtime on the rare nights he was there to tuck her in and kiss her good night.
Which wasn’t as often as I would have preferred, but I stupidly believed he was off building our future. “I should have known.”
“You loved him,” Mom replies, stacking Leia’s books on the bookshelf that used to be filled with my own mementos.
There’re more than a couple of secrets she doesn’t know, but they can wait. One storm at a time if I want to make it through.
“If everyone quit going out in public over embarrassment, the town square would be a ghost town.” She strokes my hair. “You have to move forward, for Leia and for yourself.”
I stare out the window. This wasn’t my childhood bedroom. My parents left Willowbrook right before my senior year of high school and only moved back six months ago to retire. Of course they couldn’t pick Florida. They had to return to the one town I swore I’d never return to.
A buttercream yellow Jeep dotted with oversized white daisies turns onto the gravel drive.
I shoot my mom a look. “You called Poppy?”
She shrugs. “She’s your friend.”
“Her cousin’s wedding reception is today.”
“It’s just a reception. Lottie’s already married to Brooks,” Mom says with a too-bright smile. “Maybe Bennett will be there.”
Goes to show how much she doesn’t know. He’s a good part of the reason I’ve been hiding.
I’m not sure how our reunion will go, but from the few times my mom has talked about Bennett since returning to Willowbrook, he’s really leaning heavy on the whole widower thing—how much he loved Kristie and how her death gutted him.
I’m probably just jealous and don’t want to know he was really truly happy with someone else.
I wanted him to be thinking of me late at night and going through the what-if scenarios like I do.
He probably is, just for Kristie, not me.
Which is the way it should be. She was his wife, and I was… well not.
“Stop it,” my mom says before kissing my temple. “Lottie will be thrilled to see you.”
“I’m not crashing a wedding, Mom.”
A knock sounds downstairs. “Hello, Richardses!”
“We’re up here,” Mom calls, then murmurs, “Sue me for wanting to see you smile again.”
Poppy breezes through the doorway, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her blond hair hanging just below her shoulders in tight waves and not looking all that different from the last time I saw her. Time has been good to her.
She hugs my mom. “I can’t believe you’re a grandma now! Where’s the munchkin?”
“Outside with Grandpa,” Mom says. “I need to check that they’re not wading in the pond.
Lord knows, if Leia asked, he’d probably say yes.
You two have fun.” She walks out, leaving me with Poppy’s raised brows aimed in my direction.
“And remember, I’ve got Leia for the night,” she calls from the hall.
Poppy purses her lips with her back to my mom. I really wish she wouldn’t have felt obligated to come because of my mom.
“Soo… we’re going to ignore the fact you’ve been back for weeks and haven’t bothered to reach out, because I’m in desperate need of a floral designer,” Poppy says, plopping onto Leia’s bed. “Know anyone?”
“C’mon, Poppy, let’s drop the act. My mom bribed you to be here.”
“Bribed? No.”
“You have Lottie and Brooks’s wedding reception.”
“I do, but the wrong flowers came in for the reception, and I’m panicking.”
I laugh. “I’m sure your cousin Bennett, the landscape architect, would be helpful with that.”
“Bennett’s good with greenery, but you’re the flower whisperer.” She winks.
Do I want to see Bennett? Hell yeah, from a distance maybe. But to ambush him at his sister’s reception? It’s not how I thought he’d find out about me being back in town.
“Do you want me to beg?” She brings her hands in front of her in prayer pose.
“I’m not crashing a wedding.”
“Just help with the flowers then.” She grins, tugging me to my feet.
I sigh. I wouldn’t mind having my fingers in the dirt again. The only garden I’ve mastered lately was my own, and that’s probably either being auctioned off to the highest bidder or bulldozed back in California right now.
“Come on.”
“I’m not going to the reception.” I give her a stern expression.
“Okkkaaayyy.” She shrugs. Her smirk says she’s going to try to convince me, but on this, I’m going to be stubborn.
I thought returning to Willowbrook would be a quick three-month pit stop to earn some cash and regroup, figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my life now that it’s imploded.
I’d get Leia and me out of here before anyone discovered my biggest secret that only two people in the whole world know.
Visiting Plain Daisy Ranch risks making it many more.
I should be slamming my heels into the ground and acting like Leia does when she doesn’t get her way, but I allow Poppy to lead me to her Jeep and drive us to The Perfect Petal, the flower shop Bennett started with Poppy.
I’m sure it will be fine. Maybe he won’t even remember me.
I’m as delusional as my mother.