Chapter 16
Arielle and Nora made it to Vermont in three hours and thirty-two minutes, according to the app her mother was tracking her on.
She rolled her eyes when her mother told her to call when they reached the border of the Green Mountain State.
She wished she had enough guts to just delete the stupid app, but that would just add to the problems she already faced with Crissy.
According to her aunt, her mother was beyond mad, which said a lot.
Her aunt usually leaned towards the less dramatic side of things when she consoled her about her stupid decisions and helped her deal with Cristina Gagnon.
Her mother and grandparents tended to be overly dramatic about everything, especially her choices.
She didn’t know what they wanted from her other than complete loyalty to their ideas and opinions of what they thought she should do with her life.
She’d never wanted to work in a restaurant or live in Nora Ryland’s house, but she’d had no choice in the matter.
And she’d never wanted to fall for a guy like Jason, even if her mother had thought the opposite.
She didn’t think the bad boy thing was cute.
She hated the motorcycle because it always ruined her hair.
He worked all the time with her mother and didn’t understand why she didn’t want to be there.
No one understood why she’d want to leave the island, but the idea of staying there made her skin crawl by the time she reached the ferry with Nora.
“Welcome back,” Lois said as she held out her arms to both of them.
Nora ran right into them, comfortable and carefree about her relationship. Once again, Nora had a strange privilege that made Arielle jealous, then immediately feel guilty. Nora had lived through the horrible tragedy of losing her father to a drunk driver. Her life wasn’t easy.
Except, it was easier than Arielle’s, but she was never allowed to compare.
Arielle had a father in prison. She would never admit it, but the thought of her father being dead would be easier for her.
Nora gained immediate sympathy. Arielle gained suspicion.
Most of her friends had stood by her through the trial, but after a while, when the rumors had twisted and turned into dark tales, people hadn’t known what to believe.
She didn’t blame her friends’ families for not inviting her to any of the graduation parties.
She didn’t blame her friends for not telling their parents they were wrong about her.
According to half the gossip traveling around school, she’d been helping her father steal from kids in the high school.
Some of the things she had actually heard through Nora had turned her into some secret mafia capo that was next in line to her father in their crime family.
Nora had been a great friend; Arielle couldn’t deny that.
The kind of friend Arielle had always wanted—loyal, selfless, and understanding.
Arielle probably wouldn’t have been as cool about the whole thing with Jason had the situation been the other way around.
Looking back, she couldn’t believe she’d chased after a guy who Nora had confessed to liking.
What kind of friend did that? The kind of person Arielle had been before her father’s arrest, before her life had fallen apart, and before she’d known what it meant to be a friend.
A year ago, she had chased a guy Nora had liked, almost as a game. The thrill of getting a boy’s attention away from the beautiful and smart Nora Ryland had excited her. She had been a totally different person than the one getting off the bus.
She grabbed Nora’s hand as they walked behind Lois to her old station wagon with wood paneling. “I’m so sorry I was a crappy friend.”
Nora’s eyebrows wrinkled together in confusion. “Stop, you’ve been the best friend.”
But she had no idea. She didn’t know about the secret conversations she had behind Nora’s back with Jason, or the flirtation with him, or the fact that she’d had no interest in him until Nora had shared her feelings about him.
She was a horrible human being.
Now she’s broken Jason’s heart, her mother’s, Brady’s, Sophia’s, and Patrick’s, and if she had a guess—her aunt’s vague answers and cold response meant she was upset with her as well.
Nora was all she had left.
“Well, you’ll want to sit in back.” Lois opened the rear hatch, and Nora started to climb in.
“Seriously?” Arielle had heard of people putting the kids in the back of the station wagon but had thought that had been in the olden days and terribly unsafe. “Are there seat belts back here?”
Nora and Lois started to laugh together. Climbing out of the back, Nora put her arm around Arielle’s waist and squeezed.
“We’re just kidding around,” she said.
Arielle put a smile on her face, hoping the kidding around would stop. Even though they meant well, she didn’t feel as though she deserved all this kindness, especially not from Nora, who had left her mother’s wedding events.
“Is your mom going to kill you?” Arielle asked when they got in the backseat and Lois drove out of the bus station. “Or me?”
Nora shook her head. “I think they understand. Plus, Lois and I will leave tomorrow. You’ll have the whole place to yourself.”
“Except for the workers,” Lois called from the front seat. “There’s going to be about a dozen or so workers taking care of the tree farm.”
“Will I need to do anything?” Arielle asked.
Lois shook her head. “You just take care of the house pets.”
Arielle couldn’t remember how many pets that meant, but she remembered Lois had a few barn cats, a couple dogs, and if she wasn’t mistaken, a pet pig who liked to sleep in the kitchen.
“Is Wilbur staying in the house still?” she asked, hoping that wasn’t the case.
“Oh, he sure is,” Lois sang out. “And he is looking forward to having a guest.”
Arielle held back a sarcastic remark. Lois was helping her, after all.
How could she give this woman, who had opened her home to her, a hard time?
She’d have to get rid of all the old parts of herself.
The spoiled parts, the selfish parts, and the parts that only believed in the world that she knew.
Everything else—the lies, suffering, and truth hid buried in the sand—she didn’t even bother uncovering.
She’d love that pig with everything she had. “Don’t worry, Lois. I’ll take really good care of him.”
As they pulled off the main highway and onto a two-lane road, Arielle’s whole body started to slow down like the car.
The green rolling pastures looked like a nature quilt on the mountains.
It really couldn’t be explained how green everything was.
Even the sky held a green tint in the air.
When they arrived at Lois’s apple farm, she rolled down the windows as she slowly drove up the drive to the white colonial.
“It’s my favorite part,” Lois said as she closed her eyes for just a split second, taking in a deep inhalation. “You can smell the apples.”
Arielle closed her eyes, holding back her tears of relief. She had made it. She didn’t smell apples or anything other than pure, clean air. No more tangy, fishy stench rotting everything. Just freshness and liberation. She would never forget this moment for the rest of her life.
After the car screeched into park, they all got out and followed Lois into the grand colonial that sat at the base of a valley of rows of apple trees.
With the long-extended barn attached and a glistening pond and stream flowing in the background, Hallmark would be hard-pressed to find a better location.
The farm even had the black-and-white cows meandering in the pasture.
It was simply the most beautiful place Arielle had ever been.
Who needed a flat sea that looked the same 365 days a year when you could look out at a valley of lush green mountains that changed every time the clouds moved?
“Come on in,” Lois said, but before anyone could make their way through the door, the two dogs poured out of the house.
The dogs wiggled their large golden retriever bodies in between Arielle and Nora, play biting each other.
“Don’t mind them,” Lois said, walking into the house. “They’re trying to show off. Even boy dogs act like idiots around beautiful women.”
Arielle watched the dogs gnawing at each other, their jaws locked together loosely. She had never been referred to as a woman before, and it felt strange.
A woman would stop the incessant mind tricks of spinning all the negative things about Crissy and get on with it.
Arielle needed to start acting like a woman.
She’d made her decision to leave; she didn’t need to further justify leaving by creating a villain inside her head.
Her mother had done the best she could do with what she’d had.
So she’d wanted her daughter to learn to take care of herself after what had happened.
So she’d wanted her daughter to learn to save money and use it wisely.
So she’d wanted her daughter to take advantage of her blessings.
Why did Arielle have to give Crissy such a hard time?
She’d stop that now. She may not be aligned with her mother in her thinking or her actions, but she wouldn’t hate her.
She’d save that hate for Scott.
Her mind wandered to what he was doing in jail. She had no idea what her father’s life looked like now. Did he have friends in jail? Did he have a job like she’d seen in movies? Were guards walking around with big guns? Was he in danger?
She didn’t know because he never tried to reach out to her.
Not even once. She had been the one that told him not to contact her, but she had thought he would have tried, at least once.
Nowadays, there were so many ways to try to contact her, to apologize, to let her know she was still his favorite little girl, but there were no calls, no emails, no letters, nothing.