14. Abbie #2
Jake grins. “Yes, I can actually. The version with Emma Thompson?”
“Yes.”
“Solid choice,” he says with approval.
I watch Jake as he drives, noting how attentive he is.
He’s a good driver and he knows his car.
He turns on some music, maybe so I don’t feel obliged to talk, and I just look out the window.
I arrived in the evening, so I couldn’t see the changes to the area, and Merrie talked the whole way back.
There are a lot more windmills and greenhouses than I remember, but still the familiar sight of rows of corn rippling in the wind.
“Miss it?” Jake asks before we get to the highway.
“Sometimes I miss the space. The city can feel crowded.” I raise a hand. “I miss all this sky.”
He snorts. “You sound like you’re from the Prairies.”
“Why?”
“They’re always talking about sky.”
I turn to look at him. He’s avoiding my gaze, I think. “Who did you know from the Prairies?”
“A woman I dated once.”
“Didn’t work out?”
“Obviously not.” He shrugs, not very interested in possibilities that are clearly not to be. “Do you have any inclination to come back to Empire?”
“Not particularly. Why?”
“Luke had this idea. I guess he’s trying to fix the world right now, or at least a corner of it.”
I smile. “Seems like it. What idea?”
“He thinks you might want to come back to Empire now.” He doesn’t say why but I think of Dad’s death and blink back tears.
I look out the window again. My father infuriated me and we argued about his need to control my choices, but I still can wish he wasn’t dead.
“But you’d need a place to live to do that.
He came to ask me if he could buy Grandma Margaret’s house for you. ”
That gets my attention. “What?”
“Evidently, he tried to buy it from our father, but he wouldn’t sell.”
“But why? Why would Luke do that?”
“I guess he likes you.” Jake tosses me a smile. “I guess he wants you to be happy.”
“He never said a word.”
“Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise. But before I even try to make it happen, I need to know whether you’re even interested.”
“Yes.” I don’t have to think about it. I love that house.
I love the idea of being close to my friends, like Daphne.
I love the idea of leaving Vancouver and the possibility of being my own boss.
I don’t even know what I’d do or how I’d do it, but I could be happy just taking care of Grandma’s house.
“Take off your rose-tinted glasses, Abbie. It’s been empty a while and will need a lot of work. It’ll cost money even if Luke pays for the property.”
“I have some savings. Not enough to buy a house, but I could take care of one.”
Especially that one.
“Okay.” Jake nods. “Don’t quit your day job just yet, but let me see what I can do.”
I frown, remembering a detail Luke mentioned. “I thought there was no money.”
“There isn’t. Everything’s leveraged to the hilt.”
“Then how can you do this? How can you make sure it’s fair to everyone?”
“Well, that’s the tricky bit, but I have an idea. I need to do some research and organize the details, but I’ll try, Abbie. I’ll try.”
“Thank you, Jake.”
“Thank me when it works.”
“No,” I say and I see his surprise. “I’m going to thank you now for even trying to make it work.”
“Don’t go telling anybody about this,” he warns. “Last thing I want is for everyone to think I’m a pushover.”
I laugh then, because there’s no one on the planet who is less of a pushover than my oldest brother. He grins as he merges onto the highway, and I sit back to daydream about Grandma’s house. Would I restore it just as it was? No, I’d update it and make it my own, but keep some of the key details.
The garden. The garden used to be amazing. I wonder how many of those perennial flowers are still there under the weeds. I’m composing lists of what I remember being there, more excited about the future than I’ve been in a while.
Me back in Empire. Who would have guessed?
And if I come back to stay, I might have the nerve to knock on the door of the Grand Hotel until Cole Henderson opens up. I stopped by once on this trip, but either he wasn’t in the hotel he inherited, the one that is empty except for him, or he didn’t want to talk to me.
The thing is that I want to talk to Cole.
I want to finish what we started, for once and for all.
It won’t be easy and it won’t be neat, but it’s time to either follow that path or destroy it forever.
I know he’s not the guy I knew. I know war changed him – really, what kind of person wouldn’t be changed by a tour of duty in Afghanistan?
But I think the Cole I loved is still there, and I want to talk to him, even if it’s for the last time.
Yes, I will come back to Empire, to restore Grandma’s house and have that conversation. I have a feeling it’s the only way both Cole and I will be able to continue our lives.
By the time we come down the mountain and get to Milton, the traffic is much worse. The highway is also much wider and it seems to me that the cars are moving even faster. We could be in a game, and I’m glad Jake is driving and not me.
He seems at ease with it, which is also a good thing. I keep my mouth shut, though, not wanting to distract him.
Suddenly, his phone rings and I jump. He taps something on the dash without even looking at what he’s doing. He’s done that a thousand times, I manage to think, before a woman’s furious voice fills the car.
Is that Mackenzie?
But how could that be?