Chapter 18
My fictional characters are seconds away from leaning in for their first kiss when my mom comes scurrying into the back room of the convenience store.
I’m sitting on an upside-down crate, laptop open to the manuscript I’ve been writing since the funeral, with zero sense of how long I’ve been lost in my fictional world.
Long enough to feel my butt bones tingle with numbness from digging into the plastic-waffle gridding of the crate.
“Honey.” She shuffles toward me with a smile on her face, and I slam my laptop shut. “Look what I just found.” She stretches out her hand, revealing a film photo small enough to fit in your back pocket.
I hold it up for inspection. It’s a grainy image of Lottie, twenty years younger, and a small girl standing by her side in front of a house. My mom circles behind me, peeking over my shoulder at the photo.
“Recognize anything?” she questions, with the obvious implication that I should.
“Is it…” I bring the photo up for closer investigation. “Oh, that’s me! And… is that the cottage?” I point to the terra-cotta pot that’s taller than I am in the photo.
“Yep! You have been to the house. Even if you don’t remember it,” my mom practically squeals.
The cream-colored arched doorway was difficult to recognize in its pristine condition. Now, it was almost completely overtaken by the lavender bushes that seemed larger than the house itself.
It didn’t seem possible, but perhaps the wave of déjà vu I felt entering the house for what I thought was the first time, was my body’s memory of it.
“Well, anyways,” my mom sings, “just thought you’d like to have that. What a full-circle moment now that it’s yours, huh?”
“Yeah, no, definitely, that’s… that’s wild.” I try to sound cheerful despite the agonizing swirl of “should I live there, should I not” stirring in my stomach. “So full circle.”
A phone starts ringing on the desk that used to be Lottie’s. She scurries over to it, platform sandals squeaking as she goes. I notice the way her face shrinks in consternation the way it always has.
“Hello,” she says, voice wary.
She listens to the person on the other end, eyebrows crunching and lips thinning into a hard line. I could cross-stitch that expression on her face from memory.
“Yes, I hear you. Okay, yes, um,” she says, fumbling to put the phone between her ear and shoulder while she searches for her pocketbook calendar.
“I’m so sorry. It looks like I got one of the locations mixed up and…
” She pauses to listen. “Yes, once again, I am so sorry. It won’t happen again. Okay, bye.”
She sets the phone down slowly, like she’s in a daze, and starts picking at her hair. It’s a stress response I’ve watched her resort to my entire life. As if her thoughts were connected to the strands of her hair, tugging at them like the movement might bypass her skull and untangle her thoughts.
“Mom?” I call. “Everything alright?”
“Yes! Oh, yes, all good!” she says in her fake peppy voice, turning her back to me to avoid meeting my eyes.
Okay, so… definitely not “all good.”
“Do you need help with anything? I don’t have overtime hours tonight.”
She pauses for a long moment with her hands on the desk.
I expect my efforts to offer help to be brushed past like they have been my entire life, but all of a sudden, her silence is interrupted by a stiff gasp for air.
Like she can’t breathe. Oh, gosh. Something is happening to her.
My first instinct is to wonder how she’s choking when she wasn’t eating anything.
But then her shoulders erupt into tiny spasms as she covers her mouth, and I realize she’s crying.
And trying with all her power not to. It was such an unprecedented event, I thought choking more probable than tears.
“Mom?” I ask, rushing to her side.
“Sorry,” she mumbles through a sob, keeping her head bowed.
“Are you okay?”
She manages a nod, but her eyebrows crumple beneath another wave of tears.
“Mom, come here.”
Her head is buried in her hands, but I pull her tiny frame to my body regardless.
My mom is crying, my brain narrates to itself, unable to believe it. I’ve never seen my mother cry. And I discover that she does so very silently, other than the jolt of an inhale punctuating the space every now and then.
“Don’t resist the tears, Mom. It’ll be worse if you’re all tense. Just let it out.”
Her body relaxes in my arms slightly. Which from her, feels like progress.
“I’m sorry, con.” She wipes at her eyes and pulls away from me. “It’s just been a lot with the convenience stores now that Lottie is…” She trails off.
“Gone?” I offer.
She nods quickly.
“I’ve overlapped or forgotten to schedule multiple employees for their usual hours and every time it feels like I’ve just messed up their entire livelihoods, and I feel so bad. I didn’t think managing seven locations would be easy, but this is—”
She shakes her head. In the silence, I’m aware that this is where I’m at risk of losing her. What she’s admitted in the past two minutes surpasses anything she’s ever communicated in the past twenty-two years.
“Mom, let me help you,” I blurt, before evaluating the logistics of that offer.
Especially after last night, I’m even more confused about the house and where I stand with Declan.
But my mom was priority above all those feelings.
Making myself uncomfortable so that she wouldn’t have to be was easy after a lifetime of seeing her give up everything for my happiness.
“No, no, no, no. I’m sorry for burdening you with this, con. I should have never done that in the first place.” She waves at the space she was crying in as if it’ll push the memory away like a cloud of smoke. “I’ll figure it out, it’s okay.”
All her effort trying not to burden me worked when I was a child and didn’t have the full context to understand. But now, I saw everything, and I felt burdened by her inability to accept help.
She starts to head back to the front of the convenience store, and I realize if I want her to accept my help, I can’t just offer it.
“Hey, Mom?” I call to her retreating form.
She pauses. “Yes, sweetie?”
“Email me the log-in for the master schedule. I’ll be in charge of it from now on.”
“Sweetie—”
“Nope,” I interject, walking up to her and grabbing her shoulders. “Don’t you dare bother with trying to convince me otherwise. I want to do this. So, please. Do me a favor and let me.”
She gives me a soft smile, and the way her shoulders melt under my hands bolsters my decision even further. This time, she’s the one to pull me in for a hug, and it feels like the sun warming my skin on a chilly day.
I lose track of time holding her, bodies intertwined in the back room of a convenience store that once belonged to Lottie, surrounded by cardboard boxes of candy and soda.
Without her saying it, I know that my mother feels like she’s failed me.
Believes it was weak to let her daughter catch her in a moment of pain.
But she doesn’t know how relieved I feel seeing her cry.
She was the only other person who’d felt the cataclysmic shift of life before and after Lottie. I felt isolated in those memories, and it was eating me from the inside out. But seeing that I wasn’t alone after all made it seem bearable.
We were both carrying the same weight up the same mountain. Both refusing to share the burden, thinking that shouldering it alone would spare the other. And yet, it only made it heavier for both of us.
I look at the photo over her shoulder, staring at Lottie’s smiling face and the tiny version of me clinging to her leg, and let it cement the decision churning inside me. New York City was about helping my mom, but staying in Seabrook could be too.
“Blair?” My mom swings open the door to the back room of the convenience store two hours later. I’m still on the same red crate, in the flow of writing my romance novel, with a new tab open to the convenience stores’ master schedule sheet.
“Yeah?” I shout.
“Someone is here for you.” She nods toward the front of the store.
My eyebrows furrow in suspicion, and I awkwardly stand to follow her.
A few customers are milling about the small store. The cash register is left useless without my mom running it. My eyes scan the aisles, but I don’t see anyone.
“Who is it—” I start to ask, but my mom raises her eyebrows and flicks her eyes behind me. I spin around.
Declan is standing by the ice cream freezer, wearing a tan Carhartt jacket and a small smile.
“Hey, Blair,” he says gently.
In a panic, I look back at my mom, only to find a poorly hidden grin on her face. She drops it in an instant and scurries back to the cash register.
“I’ll leave you two to it. And don’t worry. My ears are closed!” she shouts with her hands over her ears like a child.
“Oh my gosh.” I drag a hand over my face, feeling like a teenager again.
“You don’t need to close your ears, Mom.
We’re… we’re just friends.” The words feel like sandpaper coming out of my mouth.
But I do my best to neutralize my expression and turn back around to face Declan.
“Do you want to…” I jerk my head indiscreetly at the front door.
He nods with his lips pressed together like he’s holding back laughter and follows me to the metal bench in front of the store. I situate myself on the cold metal and try not to let the confusion show on my face.
He relaxes beside me like he’s been lounging for hours and digs into his jacket pocket.
“I know this is abrupt, but…” He reveals a folded piece of paper and stretches it toward me.
Gingerly, I take it, conscious not to let our hands brush.
“Last night I was sketching renovations for the coffee shop, and then I got to thinking about the layout of the house Lottie left you. And—I can only imagine how difficult it’s been to process her death and the fact that she left you a house here, especially when you thought you’d be in New York City right now, so I thought sketching some of the potential improvements you could make to the cottage might”—he shrugs his shoulders—“might help bring the vision to life, let you picture yourself in there more. But no pressure either way. I just like sketching stuff in my free time, so don’t feel like you have to—”
I laugh. I interrupt the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard with a laugh because I’ve never seen Declan so flustered before.
“I’m gonna shut up now.” He looks down with a grin on his face.
I’ve never seen him even slightly self-conscious, and the sight makes me flustered. “Sh—should I open it now?”
He nods generously. “Yeah. Oh, yeah.”
Peeks of sketches flash until the paper is fully unfolded to reveal a perfect, hand-drawn blueprint of the cottage.
My eyes dart around the sketch. He’s drawn the layout of the house in pencil, and his ideas for what could be changed or added are written in pen.
Little arrows jut out to the text, and for some reason, it’s picturing him drawing those little arrows that sends me over the edge.
“Declan, this is—” A lump forms in my throat. “This is gorgeous. And so thoughtful. I don’t know what to say. Thank you doesn’t even begin to cut it.”
“Nothing to cut,” he replies in a delicate voice. And then, in a surlier tone: “Except, maybe some walls in that tiny house. Cut those doors off the laundry section there and free up some space. Sounds difficult, but it’s all easier than it looks.”
I chuckle at his insouciance, and we let our eyes meet. They hold for a beat. Two. My smile fades, but our eyes remain locked, and the tingle that shoots down my spine feels much too intimate for the moment. I rip my eyes away.
“Okay, well.” He pushes off his thighs to stand up. “I’ll let you get back to…” He waves his hand at the convenience store.
“Writing,” I blurt for a reason unbeknownst to me.
He falters in his retreat, eyes lighting up with surprise. “Writing?”
I nod, sheepish.
“You’re writing again?” His entire face brightens. “What are you writing about?”
You, my mind screams like a juvenile.
But out loud, I shrug and say, “I’m trying to write a romance novel. And I’m forcing myself to finish it this time.”
I’m shocked at the confession. I haven’t told anyone else yet. Lately, I’ve been having more conversations with Declan than my actual friends.
His smile fades, and I stare at his lips, the ones that always look like they’ve just eaten fresh cherries.
I think about the way I’ve kissed him a thousand times through the pages of my book.
His eyes press into mine so hard I’m surprised they don’t pin me to the convenience store wall.
“That’s good, Blair,” he says, voice suddenly strained. “That’s really good.”
I’d never heard a statement sound so much like “I’m proud of you” without saying the words.
I offer him a grateful smile. He nods repeatedly and walks backward, raising his hand to say a wordless goodbye.
And then I’m left in front of the convenience store I was raised in, with a blueprint of Lottie’s cottage in my hands, the matured form of my first love walking away.