Chapter 17
GILLIAN
I turned down Doc’s street with Diego’s words still echoing in my head.
Then what was this? Nostalgia? Goodbye?
They’d been rattling around in my skull since I walked out his door with a knot in my throat I couldn’t swallow.
The more I replayed it, the more it bled into older memories—another version of me on this same road, four years younger, a suitcase in the backseat and the kind of brittle determination it took to drive away from someone you love because everyone you’ve ever trusted told you it was the smart thing to do.
Why the hell was I still listening to them? Wasn’t it time I finally made the choice for myself?
Headlights washed over the white painted brick of Doc’s place, the familiar horseshoe pattern in the porch rail, the ferns drooping from their hooks in the thick summer heat. And there, right in the driveway, was my parents’ silver Lexus. No mistaking it.
The sight hit low, somewhere under my ribs. They didn’t come to Huckleberry Creek for casual drop-ins, and they hadn’t told me they were coming. If they were here, it meant an agenda.
The porch light threw a warm spill over the stoop, moths flickering in and out of the glow.
Through the screen door, I caught the rise and fall of voices.
Not shouting, but sharp enough to set my pulse ticking faster.
I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew the cadence.
Business-meeting clipped. Judgment baked into every syllable.
Inside, the living room looked exactly like it had my whole life—Doc’s recliner angled toward the TV, the same braided rug underfoot, framed photos of fishing trips and old baseball teams on the paneled walls.
But now my parents were here, sitting on the sofa like they’d claimed the high ground.
My father’s suit jacket lay neatly folded over the armrest, his tie still knotted; my mother’s dress didn’t have a wrinkle in sight.
Doc was in his recliner, not kicked back but leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight. He looked…cornered.
“We were talking with your grandfather about what’s best for him.” My mother’s tone was smooth as glass.
Her perfume reached me a beat later—floral with a sharp edge, the same fragrance she’d been buying since I was ten. It hit my stomach like muscle memory, part nostalgia, part warning.
My father reached for the leather briefcase propped against his shin and pulled out a slim folder. He set it on the coffee table as if it were evidence in a case he was about to win.
“An offer.” He nudged it toward Doc with two fingers. “In writing. They’re ready to close before summer’s out.”
The room felt smaller. The folder sat there as if it were humming.
Doc didn’t pick it up. Only gave one of those half-shrugs that barely moved his shoulders and kept his eyes on a spot somewhere near the rug. That was worse than if he’d argued. It was the look of someone already halfway talked into something they didn’t really want.
I would know.
“It’s a generous number,” my father continued, smooth as a closing statement. “And it would free you from… all of this.” He made a vague gesture at the bar keys on the end table, like they were shackles. “You could travel, spend time with friends. Ensure your retirement is comfortable.”
“And,” my mother added, turning her attention to me like I’d been called to the stand, “you could take that promotion you’ve been offered and get back to your real life.”
That last part landed harder than the folder on the table. My real life. As if the last two weeks were a dress rehearsal. As if what I wanted didn’t count unless it came with billable hours and a skyline view.
I didn’t answer right away.
Doc’s words from this afternoon surfaced—quiet, matter-of-fact—about why he’d walked away from medicine.
About how sometimes keeping your title cost too much.
My own body chimed in with its testimony: the knots that lived in my shoulders, the coffee-for-dinner nights, the hollow feeling after winning cases that didn’t matter to anyone except the partners’ bottom line.
I looked between the three of them—Doc, who’d traded the weight of a title for peace, and my parents, who saw that peace as failure. And for a second, the only sound was the hum of the AC trying to push back the July heat.
“No.”
The word came out before I’d fully formed the thought, but once it was in the air, I couldn’t take it back. Didn’t want to.
“I’m not going to let you bully him just because you don’t understand his choices.” My voice was steadier than I expected. “There are more important things in life than achievement.”
My mother stiffened like I’d dropped an f-bomb in the middle of Sunday service.
Her spine went rigid against the sofa cushions, her perfectly manicured fingers tightening around her clutch.
My father’s brows slammed down, creating that deep furrow between them that used to make me scramble to apologize, to backtrack, to smooth things over.
Not tonight.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” His voice dropped low, controlled—the courtroom voice, the one designed to make witnesses second-guess themselves. The one that used to make me fold like a bad poker hand.
But something had shifted in me. Maybe it was watching Doc shrink into his chair.
Maybe it was the memory of Diego’s hands on my skin, asking me what I really wanted.
Maybe it was exhaustion from carrying everyone else’s expectations for so long that my own had gotten lost somewhere along the interstate between here and Chicago.
I pushed myself up from the arm of Doc’s recliner, my hands hanging loose at my sides. No fists. No defensive crossing of arms. Just me, standing in my grandfather’s living room in rumpled jeans and a tank top, probably looking every bit as ravished as I had been, and not one bit ashamed of it.
“I know exactly what I’m saying.” Each word dropped clear and deliberate into the space between us. “I hate law.”
My mother’s intake of breath was sharp enough to cut.
“I hated law school. I’ve hated every single thing I’ve done to try to make you happy, and I’m done living my life for you.”
The confession tasted like copper and freedom. Like the first breath after being underwater too long. My father’s jaw worked, but for once, Edgar Holliday, Esquire, seemed to have no immediate rebuttal.
“That’s ridiculous,” my mother finally managed. “After everything we’ve invested—”
“Invested.” I let the word sit there, ugly and transactional. “That’s all it’s ever been to you, isn’t it? An investment. Not my happiness. Not what I want. Just the return on your investment.”
Doc shifted in his chair, and I caught the ghost of something in his expression—recognition, perhaps. Understanding. The look of someone who’d stood at this same crossroads and chosen the path my parents couldn’t comprehend.
“I love Huckleberry Creek.” The truth of it spread warm through my chest. “And I don’t want to leave.”
The silence that followed felt like the pause between lightning and thunder. My mother’s mouth opened and closed twice before she found words.
“You’re throwing away everything. Your education, your career, your future—”
“My future?” I almost laughed. “You mean your future. The one you mapped out before I could even spell ‘jurisprudence.’ The one where I bill eighty hours a week and die at my desk before I’m fifty, all so you can tell your country club friends about your daughter the partner at Hadley-Ross?”
My father stood, straightening his tie with mechanical precision. “We’ll discuss this when you’ve had time to think more clearly. You’re obviously overwhelmed by your grandfather’s situation—”
“Don’t.” The sharpness in my voice surprised even me. “Don’t you dare use Doc’s health as an excuse for why I’m finally telling you the truth.”
They gathered their things in brittle silence, my mother clutching her purse like armor, my father sliding the folder back into his briefcase with the careful movements of someone handling live explosives.
At the door, my father turned back, his hand on the brass knob Doc had installed thirty years ago. The porch light carved shadows under his eyes, making him appear older than his fifty-two years.
“I hope you understand what you’re doing, Gillian.
” His voice carried the particular weight of disappointment he’d perfected over decades of practice.
“Throwing away everything we’ve worked for, everything you’ve accomplished, for what?
To waste your life in this—” He paused, searching for the word that would cut deepest. “—dive?”
The word hung in the air like a physical thing.
Not merely an insult to four walls and a liquor license, but to every night Doc had stayed late to listen to someone’s troubles, every celebration he’d hosted, every life that had intersected within those walls.
To the place where half this town had their first legal drink, where marriage proposals happened on random Tuesdays, where people came not only for beer but for belonging.
My mother’s heels clicked against the hardwood as she moved to stand beside him, their united front as practiced as a synchronized swim routine.
“Your grandfather’s choices were his own mistakes to make.” Each of her words was precise as a scalpel. “But you still have time to—”
“Stop.” The word came out raw, scraping past the tightness in my throat. I moved between them and Doc, my feet quiet on the worn boards. “Just stop.”
Something shifted in my chest, hot and bright as a struck match. All those years of swallowing their judgments, their casual dismissals of this place, of Doc’s life—it all crystallized into perfect clarity.
“That bar isn’t a dive. It’s not a mistake or a step down or whatever other poison you want to dress it up as.
” My voice gained strength with each word, pulling from some well I didn’t know I had.
“It’s a cornerstone of this community. It’s where people celebrate and grieve and connect. Where they matter to someone.”
I thought of Diego behind that bar last night, laughing with customers we’d known since high school. Of Lucy bringing Liam in for lunch after T-ball practice. Of the widower who came every Thursday for one beer and stayed for three hours of conversation.
“This isn’t a failure.” The words came clear and certain now, rising from somewhere deeper than thought. “This is a life. A real one. With real people who actually give a damn about each other. And I won’t let you belittle it—or him—anymore.”
The silence that followed felt like the moment after glass breaks, when everyone’s waiting to see if anyone got cut. Even the crickets outside seemed to hold their breath. The air in the living room went thick and brittle, like it might shatter if anyone moved too fast.
My mother’s face had gone pale beneath her perfect makeup, two spots of color high on her cheekbones the only sign she’d heard me at all. My father’s jaw worked, the muscle jumping beneath skin that had gone tight with controlled fury.
He closed the folder with deliberate precision, sliding it into his briefcase with the kind of careful movements reserved for handling evidence in a losing case. Each motion calculated, contained, giving away nothing except in the white of his knuckles against the leather handle.
“We’ll discuss this again when you’re calmer.” His tone had gone flat, professional—the voice he used for difficult clients. “When you’ve had time to think rationally about what you’re giving up.”
They left without another word, the door closing with a soft click that somehow sounded more final than any slam could have. Through the window, I watched the Lexus reverse out of the driveway, taillights disappearing into the dark like periods at the end of a sentence I’d finally finished writing.
The red glow of taillights faded into nothing, leaving the moths dancing in the porch light and the steady hum of crickets filling the space where accusations had hung moments before.
Doc pushed himself up from his recliner, and before I could think about it, I was in his arms. He smelled like Old Spice and peppermints, the same as he had when I was seven and scared of thunderstorms. His flannel shirt was soft against my cheek, and for a moment I let myself be that kid again—the one who believed her grandfather could fix anything with a hug and a root beer float.
“How you feeling, kiddo?” His voice rumbled through his chest, warm and steady.
I pulled back enough to peer up at him, trying to sort through the tangle of emotions knotted beneath my ribs. My hands were shaking, but not from fear. Not exactly.
“I’m not entirely sure.” The honesty of it surprised me. “But I think... relieved?”
The word came out like a question, but as soon as I said it, I knew it was right. Like I’d been holding my breath for years and finally remembered how to exhale.
Doc’s weathered face crinkled into something that wasn’t quite a smile but held more warmth than one. His hands settled on my shoulders, solid and grounding.
“I’m proud of you.” He squeezed gently and tilted his head in that way he had when he was about to call someone on their BS. “Though I’m guessing your parents aren’t the only ones who needed to hear all that.”
Heat crept up my neck. Of course he knew.
This was Huckleberry Creek—everyone knew everything, and Doc had probably known about Diego and me before we’d even figured it out ourselves.
He’d certainly been there to pick up the pieces four years ago when I’d made my grand exit, though he’d never said a word against my choice. Not then, not now.
“There someone else you need to talk to?” The knowing look in his eyes held no judgment, only that gentle push he’d perfected over decades of nudging people toward their own truths.
I thought about Diego’s face when I’d told him about the promotion. The hurt that had flashed across it before he’d shuttered it away. The way he’d said, ‘When you figure out where I fall in all that, let me know,’ like he was already bracing for goodbye.
“Yeah.” My voice came out rough. “Yeah, there is. But there’s something I need to do first.”
Doc patted my shoulder once more and headed for the kitchen, leaving me standing in the living room with my truth finally spoken and one more conversation waiting in the dark.