Chapter Three
Aurelie ran the English peas and leeks under the crystal clear stream from the ceramic farm sink in Paige’s kitchen.
The cool water sent shivers down her spine as she teased her fingers through the current.
It was so like the water at the edge of Paige’s property: strong and carrying life in its flow.
She gazed out the window at her friend’s land, at the river and mountains she’d come to consider her protectors.
The heart-rate monitor–like spikes and dips of the mountains illustrated that life wasn’t a straight line; it rose and fell, and in her experience, the world was richer for it.
Her world was richer for it.
She pulled out her work phone, wondering how to tell Paige everything, including the fact that her personal phone was down for the count until she could replace it.
Where would she start? Normally, she would just dive in over a glass of wine, both of them talking in the circular, patternless way that only they understood until everything on both their chests was out in the open between them.
But things had been strained lately. Well, not strained so much as tense.
Paige couldn’t just plop down on the couch with a glass of cabernet and spend the evening dissecting Aurelie’s visa delays and her father’s untimely release from prison.
Even though everything she had, everything she’d earned, was threatened by this news.
Her father was a nightmarish genius when it came to making her life hell, and Aurelie doubted that her responsibility in his prison sentence had dampened that particular talent of his.
But Paige could barely meet Aurelie for a coffee, and usually that happened at work when Paige had a break in patients and no daughter or spouse who needed her in the moment.
Aurelie shook the water off that round of veggies, set them on a plate to dry, then reached for a leek that had escaped her notice before.
She didn’t blame Paige, nor resent her for the changes in her life that led to their recent disconnect.
If anything, she envied the easy way Paige had transitioned from a globetrotting adventurer to a content partner and mom who still managed to sneak away with her husband from time to time.
She was going out that week for their anniversary.
Still, Aurelie needed to talk to her. All of them, in fact. Not about her personal issues—those were for Paige alone—but this dinner was a perfect excuse to share what had happened on the road today and with the Michaels’s property.
For starters, the actor Paige was mildly obsessed with—a kid she’d known when she was younger and had since become the one who escaped Banberry and got famous—was next door.
Looking like sin on crackers, unfortunately.
Her body had completely betrayed her by reacting so viscerally to him. He was attractive. So what?
He was also planning on buying the Michaels’s property, like he had other places in town already.
Not on her watch.
They needed to make a united front and tell this land baron to get the hell out of Banberry. And fast.
Between the guillotine hanging over her head in the form of her permanent H-1B visa, her father’s release, and the man who’d just bought the property next to Paige to top it all off, Aurelie’s thoughts spiraled.
The whole day had been like a two-story neon sign telling her she didn’t belong in Banberry, even though staying was the only thing she knew for sure she did want.
Her heart pounded against her chest, echoing that statement. Stay, it told her.
Oh, I plan on it. It just might not be my choice anymore.
But going home to Turks was equally untenable, both for personal reasons—her father’s potential for retribution, for one—and more complex ones.
Banberry was her home, and it was in trouble.
As a nurse who’d sworn to do no harm, she’d stay and help even if it meant hiding out in the barn and evading immigration officials.
“A penny for them?” Paige slid in beside Aurelie, taking the leek from her hand. “I think this one’s rinsed well enough, now,” she teased her friend. Aurelie’s cheeks burned hot. The poor vegetable looked altogether as wilted as she felt.
“Sorry,” she said. “A lot on my mind.”
“Does this have something to do with why Brad found all your work clothes strewn by the side of the road?”
Aurelie gasped, turned off the water and shook her hands dry, wiping the residual water on her pants. She’d completely forgotten about her scrubs. She was headed toward the door in full panic when Paige put her hand on Aurelie’s arm.
“It’s okay, he put them inside your front door at the bottom of the stairs. He almost sent out a search party until I told him you were here with Maddie. What happened?”
The heat from her cheeks built up behind her eyes, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.
She was fine; the car hadn’t hit her. Her purchases were safe, she’d spent the past hour cuddling with her god-child at the one Banberry event she wouldn’t miss for the world: the Connors’s family Sunday dinner.
But so much had shifted in her world, she felt off-balance.
And apparently more emotional as she’d ever been. This was impacting her more than she thought.
“I’m fine, but we do need to talk. I just… Some of it I need to do alone with you and the rest I need everyone here for.”
Paige grew serious, and Aurelie saw a hint of their old connection buried in her hard stare. She’d need that when it came to formulating a plan for the jerk who’d bought the old Michaels’s property. They’d need to be on the same team to make that particular problem go away.
“Are you okay, Aury?”
Aurelie nodded. “More or less.”
“Here, sit,” Paige said, pulling out a stool from behind the breakfast bar for Aurelie.
She nodded, following her friend’s gentle guiding hand to the hardwood stool Owen had made at Paige’s request when they’d renovated his outdated kitchen to her cooking tastes.
He was a craftsman of the best kind; he could translate something from his wife’s description and bring it to fruition.
Aurelie envied his artistic skills that she, too, had called upon a time or two to help make a customized piece for her small space.
“Tell me everything,” Paige said, rubbing soft circles on Aurelie’s back. For the millionth time that day, Aurelie thought of her mother, the loss as acute now as it was three years prior.
Aurelie opened her mouth to share her concerns over losing her work visa and, therefore, her home in Montana, but froze when Owen walked in, a squirming Maddie in his arms.
“This little one is clean and dry and hungry as a bear,” he said, adding a roar for his daughter’s benefit. Maddie squealed with delight, her small, delicate hands popping in and out of the floral blanket she was wrapped in.
Aurelie smiled broadly, her tears drying before they even fell.
It never mattered how rough her day was; seeing Maddie always made her troubles float away on the tide.
It also brought into stark relief the problems facing Aurelie.
She needed to get a handle on them, and soon, if she didn’t want to risk never seeing this sweet smile again.
“Come here, my little bean,” Paige said, her arms open for her daughter.
She unstrapped a clip at the top of her bra and lifted her shirt.
Aurelie smiled down, placed her pointer finger in Maddie’s open, outstretched hand, no longer reticent about being around for the intimate moments Paige shared with her daughter.
When Aurelie had left the room for Paige and Maddie’s first feeding out of the hospital, finding an excuse to tidy the nursery that wasn’t even being used yet, Paige had sought her out not minutes later.
With the infant still suckling at her breast, Paige informed Aurelie she was not only welcome at feedings but needed.
There would be plenty of times Aurelie wouldn’t be around, so she could bond with her baby then.
What she really needed was someone to talk to that would talk back, Paige had teased.
Aurelie was well aware that this offer was on the table because Paige considered her family, and she never wanted to take that for granted.
Yes, if Aurelie looked close enough, their connection was still as strong as ever. It just looked different.
“This can wait until after dinner,” Aurelie whispered, squeezing Paige’s shoulder.
Paige nodded, contentment washing over her features as she fed her daughter.
Aurelie went back to finish her vegetables.
They were hosting the family dinners at Paige and Owen’s for the time being, so the couple could put Maddie to bed and still linger over their glasses of wine or rum with the rest of the clan.
Brad and Sophie seemed happy to relinquish the hosting responsibility, since they’d announced they were trying for a child of their own.
Aurelie’s family was growing day by day.
If she wasn’t diligent, she’d miss it.
Owen popped up beside Aurelie, grabbed some of the leeks that were rinsed, and started chopping them.
It was this wordless synchronicity that Aurelie truly valued.
The three of them—five if she included Brad and Sophie—were so close that they would often finish each other’s sentences, or not even need to speak at all to know where the others stood on an issue.
“How’d the little girl with asthma work out?” he asked Aurelie.
“She’ll be okay. She actually joined Paige’s practice as a new patient, so I know she’s in good hands.
” Owen looked at his wife in a way that flushed Aurelie’s cheeks with heat.
Nothing made her feel as lonely, as without, as those gestures of intimacy shared between her friends.
At the same time, it surrounded her with love and peace.
Life was funny in what it provided and withheld.