Chapter 4
Sabrina walks into my shop early one morning, just after I’ve gotten there. Completely unexpected and definitely not welcomed.
I’m in the shop with the windows and door propped open because Wes pulled up the old baseboards yesterday and the dust hasn’t settled.
My hands are full of sample tiles for the back counter and I’m holding two of them up to the light, trying to decide between a warm white and a cooler one, when she walks in like she owns the place.
She looks exactly the way I expected her to look and that bothers me more than if her look surprised me.
Tall. Put together in a way that seems effortless but probably took at least an hour in reality.
The kind of woman who walks into a room and changes the energy in it, and she knows it. She likes knowing it.
“So, this is the flower shop,” she says. She looks around the way you look around a place you’ve already decided isn’t a threat. “Cute.”
I set the tiles down. “Can I help you with something?”
“I wanted to introduce myself properly.” She smiles. It’s a good smile. Practiced. “We haven’t actually met. I feel like we should, given the circumstances.”
The circumstances. She says it the way you’d talk about the weather or traffic. Something that happened to everyone equally, something nobody caused.
“We don’t need to do this,” I say.
“I think we do.” She steps further inside and runs a finger along the edge of the front counter, then looks at the dust on her fingertip. “I know this is awkward. I’m not trying to make it worse. I just think it’s better if we’re honest with each other.”
Honest. There’s that word again. Everyone in this situation wants credit for being honest. Drew owed himself honesty. Sabrina wants to be honest with me. The only honest thing any of them have done is exactly what they wanted and then called it a virtue.
“Go ahead,” I say. I cross my arms and lean against the worktable because I want something solid behind me, but I don’t want her to know that.
“Drew and I have history,” she says. “You know that, and I’m not going to apologize for coming back to town because this is my town, too.”
“I didn’t ask you to apologize.”
“No, you didn’t.” She tilts her head. Studies me. “You’re handling this well. Everyone says so. Rachel’s doing great, Rachel’s starting a new business, Rachel’s so strong.” A small pause. “I wonder if that’s true or if you’re just good at looking like it is.”
My jaw tightens. I let it. She can have that one. “Was there a point you came here to make, Sabrina? Because I have work to do.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then something shifts behind her eyes, a decision being made, and when she speaks again the polished friendliness is gone. What’s underneath it is colder and more honest than anything she’s said so far.
“I came back for him,” she says. “I want you to know that. I didn’t come back for my mother’s health or because I missed this town. I came back because I spent too many years watching from a distance while someone else had the life that was supposed to be mine, and I decided I was done watching.”
I don’t move. My arms stay crossed. My face stays still. Inside, something is rearranging itself, fast and sharp, a picture snapping into focus.
“You came back to take him,” I say.
“I came back to see if I still could.” She says it without blinking. “And I could. It only took about two weeks.”
The quiet in the shop is total. No traffic outside. No wind through the propped windows. Just the two of us and the dust and the thing she just said sitting between us.
“Why are you telling me this?”
She shrugs. One shoulder, casual, like we’re discussing where to eat lunch. “Because he’s with me, and I don’t see the point in pretending I stumbled into this by accident. You deserve to know it was a choice. My choice.”
She wants me to crumble. That’s what this visit is.
She didn’t come to introduce herself or be honest or clear the air.
She came to watch me break, because the victory isn’t complete until the loser knows she lost. She wants to see it happen.
She wants to carry that look on my face back to the house she’s sharing now with my husband and set it on the nightstand like a trophy.
I won’t give it to her.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. I’m amazed by that, actually. Grateful for it.
Her expression flickers. That wasn’t the response she rehearsed for. “That’s it?”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“That’s all you’re getting from me. You came back to take my husband, and you took him. Congratulations. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have tile to pick out.”
She stands there another second, thrown, and I watch her try to recalculate. Then she gathers herself, finds the smile again, and heads for the door. She pauses with her hand on the frame.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, “I don’t think he ever would have left on his own. He needed a push. I gave him one.”
I stand very still for a long time after she leaves. The tiles are where I left them, the warm white and the cool one, and I pick up the warm one because I need to hold something and I don’t trust my hands with anything heavier.
She told me everything. The motive, the timeline, the strategy. She told me because she thinks I’m beaten and there’s nothing I can do with the ammo she just gave me. She’s wrong about that, though. I’m not going to do anything with it, but not because I can’t. Because I don’t have to.
Drew wanted honesty. He’s about to get all of it. Just not from me.
I hold both tiles to the light again. I choose the warm white, because it’s my shop and my decision and I’m done letting other people’s choices rearrange my morning.
When Wes shows up an hour later to start on the wiring, he takes one look at me and says, “Bad day?”
“It’s trying to be,” I say. “But I won’t let it.”
He nods and gets to work. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t ask. He just starts pulling wire through the wall, steady and unhurried. the sound of someone building something fills the space where Sabrina’s voice tried so hard to tear it down.