Chapter 12 #3
Come to think of it, who was paying for all those pizzas? Certainly not Cody. She had a sneaking suspicion who bankrolled
those operations that kept the poor kids, namely her and Cody, fed. Someone whose rugged good looks she hadn’t noticed until
he showed up at Juniper unexpectedly. Time had been good to him.
Kissing him had been surprising. Thora was a late bloomer, and Cody had been her first everything. She only knew how to kiss
him, how to fuck him. And it turned out, Cody’s restraint was holding Thora back as well.
People could say what they wanted about Bryony Brooks novels, but the characters in them knew how to get off.
The more Thora worked on them, the more she knew she was missing out.
Bryony’s plotlines were bonkers, but the explosive sensuality was utterly believable.
The heat of Lee’s mouth on hers had confirmed that Bryony Brooks was right about how transcendent a kiss could feel.
Mack sat next to her on the moss-covered log. She set down her walking stick and began tapping on the cap of a mushroom growing
where the rotting wood met the dark, damp earth.
“This one has a nice boing to it,” she said. “Boi-oi-oi-oing.”
This was her way of letting Thora know she wasn’t trying to push her. Mack was great that way. She was stubborn, but she knew
when to hold back.
Thora needed the push. She’d push herself.
“He showed up shortly after I did, and I couldn’t ask him to leave at first. Now I like having him around. Not just because
it’s less scary with him around. He has a calming presence. He knows how to do things.”
“And his best friend is your ex-husband.”
“I know,” she said, dragging it out into a whine. “Cody came by before you did because he left his passport in my Jeep, and
Lee told him something happened between us.”
“Come on. Was he the asshole who told the teacher they forgot to assign homework?”
No, that was Cody. “Cody had a suspicion and he asked. I don’t want to ruin their friendship.”
Mack picked up some pine needles from the forest floor and began plucking the bundles into individual needles. “From the way
Lee talks about it, Cody isn’t always the greatest friend. Maybe Cody keeps Lee around because it makes him feel important.”
Initially, Thora didn’t want to believe that.
Cody shouldn’t be so insecure as to need people to prop him up.
And she didn’t want to think of her ex-husband as intentionally exploitative.
But casting himself in the role of devoted husband was another way he felt important.
Perhaps both she and Lee acted as shoulders he could step on.
“Oof,” she said.
“I think their friendship runs so deep that they’ve reached the stage where it’s possible to love each other but not like
each other much.”
Thora chuckled bitterly. “‘Found family,’ but derogatory.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t feel bad about potentially coming between them?”
Mack twirled the pine needles between her fingers. “I didn’t say that. Lee acknowledges Cody’s under a lot of pressure to
be this great scientist, and maybe once he reaches some level of achievement, he will mellow out.”
“I don’t think pressure tends to decrease as one rises in the professional ranks. Lee is going to allow himself to be shat
on in the meantime?” Thora asked. Not that she was one to judge after doing her own version of the waiting game with Cody.
“Leroy can stand up for himself.”
“How do you know him so well?”
“He loves Juniper and Woodhill House both. He has some great ideas for how I could restore the house and turn it into a proper
inn.”
Thora found herself embarrassed that she had spent several days with Lee and asked him practically nothing about his life.
This man, whom she’d been pressed against mere hours ago, was little more than a stranger to her, in truth.
She got up and kept walking up the path, thinking about how she contributed to the negativity between Cody and Lee. She always egged Cody on whenever he mildly talked shit about Lee, to feed her own unquenchable guilt. She selfishly never thought about how it might be affecting Cody or Lee.
Thora scuffed her feet against the trail. “I’ve been busy assuming the worst of Lee for a long time.”
Mack giggled. “And yet you fooled around with him. Messy. I love it.”
It was messy, but Thora did not love it. “Ugh, let’s keep hiking. Maybe the Moonrise rock will share her wisdom with me.”
Thora made them stop a bunch of times to look at different trees and lichens, and then she pulled out her phone to identify
what little birdsong there still was this time of year, coming from the birds who overwintered in the mountains.
It reminded her of when they were girls, collecting pinecones of all different sizes and interesting rocks they found on the
shore of Woodhill Pond. Thora appreciated that both Mack and the Adirondacks brought out her curious and youthful nature.
Once Lee had left and Juniper calmed down a bit, she would embrace that in her writing. Maybe she wanted to write for children
to discover her past self as much as speak to others like her.
The two summited the mountain and scrabbled up the final boulder, which had a nicely flat top, allowing them to sit and hang
their feet over the edge.
George told them it was a glacial erratic, left by a river of ice ages ago. Despite the lore about watching the moon rise
from atop this rock, the Williamson kids spun tales of the rock as an altar for human sacrifice.
They could see Lake Woodhill in the far distance, then more mountain peaks beyond. Thora had neglected to feed her soul by giving it this view for years. To give everything she had to Bryony. And Cody had been collateral damage.
Despite all of that, she was sure that her divorce was the right thing. Cody deserved someone whose love for him would grow
with passing years instead of diminish.
And what did she deserve?
That was not a question that would go anywhere productive.
“Come to Juniper for dinner tonight,” she told Mack. “Maybe the house will do something weird for you.”
“Can’t. My little lady is helping host a fundraiser dinner for the high school show choir to see a Broadway show. Spaghetti
dinner at the Farmers’. Want to come?”
The Farmers’ was the shortened version of the restaurant’s name, Farmers’ Savings and Loan Restaurant. Located in a former
bank, the owners thought it would be a fun name and save money on signage.
“Sounds like a blast.”
“Let’s invite Lee, too.”