Chapter 14 #2
“I’m leaving too,” Sera says while shouldering her bag.
“I have a before-school meeting with Scarlett’s principal, so I have to be up and wearing something other than pajama pants when I take her to school in the morning.
” Stooping to pick my bag up from where I dumped it next to the couch, Sera walks it to me. “We can walk out together.”
Her tone is so thick with challenge that the sound of it pushes River up from her seat. “Oh,” she says, clearly alarmed by the prospect of the two of us walking anywhere together, unsupervised. “Then we’ll all leave. Sloane was saying earlier that she’s?—”
“I’m headed into the hospital early tomorrow morning,” Sloane say while she folds up her color swatches. “I’m assisting Dr. Ragnar in a 9AM surgery.”
Riggs.
I don’t even have to wonder.
I just know.
“No.” Flicking a quick look at River, I shake my head. “You stay—Sera and I will be fine on our own.” Pulling my bag from Sera’s grip while River sinks slowly back into her seat, I meet her challenge head on. “After you.”
Giving me a ghost of a smile, Sera says her goodbyes to both Sloane and River, along with a promise to text when she arrives home safely—a holdover from Ethan’s reign of terror last summer. “You too,” River calls after me as I follow Sera out the door.
Neither of us says anything while we walk, single file, down the hall and navigate the stairs to the first floor.
When Colt catches sight of us walking across the bar, one after the other, he leans his pool cue against the table while Cade stands from his stool.
“Where are you two headed off to?” He sounds as nervous as River looked when Sera announced her intentions to leave, right after I did.
“Home,” Sera answers without bothering to look at either of them. “And don’t you two even think about following us.”
“Sera I don’t?—”
“We’re fine,” I call out over my shoulder as I follow Sera out the door. “See y’all on Thursday.”
As soon as the Mill’s heavy front door slams closed behind us, Sera stops in her tracks and turns around to look at me. “Foster care.”
“I’m sorry.” Completely confused because after over a decade of not speaking to each other, those were the last words I expected to come out of her mouth. “What?”
“River—she grew up in foster care,” Sera says, arms crossed defensively over her chest while she shifts from one foot the other.
“Her parents died in a car accident when she was a kid. She grew up in foster care. Ended up a full-blown drug addict by the time she was sixteen. Jensen caught her and her junkie boyfriend in the middle of robbing this place a few years back. The boyfriend ditched her—took off. Instead of calling my dad, Jen took her in,” she tells me—a reminder that before her older brother, Sera’s father was the sheriff.
“Gave her a job and told her if she wanted to keep it, she had to get clean. Riv’s been sober ever since.
” The corner of her mouth lifts in a smirk.
“Jen’s got a habit of picking up strays. ”
I make a neutral sound in the back of my throat, trying to decide if I’m supposed to be insulted. Giving up, I lift my shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t think you followed me out here to tell me River’s origin story, so…”
“No.” When I say it, the curve of Sera’s mouth falls flat. “I followed you out here to say thank you. For what you did for Scarlett today.” Tightening her arms around her chest, she shakes her head. “I didn’t know?—”
“You didn’t know your daughter was being bullied by someone who used to be her friend?” I finish for her, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of my tone.
Managing to look contrite, Sera shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Gemma … for everything. Everything I did. All the things I said. I know that doesn’t really mean anything, but I am.”
“You mean you’re sorry now that it’s happening to your daughter?” I ask, that bitterness taking root.
“No…” Her forehead crumples when I say it.
“Things just spiraled out of control so fast… I’ve always been sorry, for as long as I can remember—I’ve just been too mule-headed to say it.
” Sera rolls her lips between her teeth and gives me another head shake before popping them out on a defeated sigh.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t expect us to be friends.
I just want you to know that the things I did and said back then…
you might find this surprising, given my status as Barrett’s very own Hester Prynne, but there isn’t much in my life that I regret.
I regret the way I treated you. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that I wish I could take back. ”
I stare at her for a moment, trying to find the bitterness that has sustained me and my years long vendetta against the Montgomerys. I can’t find it. All I can find in its place is a vague sense of sadness for the girls we used to be.
“Sera Montgomery…” I shake my head on a weary laugh. “Did you name your daughter after The Scarlet Letter?”
When I ask, Sera lets out a laugh of her own, the sound of it half relieved, the other half almost as sad as I feel.
“I did… but I figured no one around here has read it so the joke’s on them.
” Suddenly defensive again, her fingers dig into her elbows while she shakes her head.
“And no matter what you might have heard, I know who her father is.”
I’ve heard plenty over the years about Sera—whispered bits of gossip, floating around this town about who Scarlett’s father is. Where he is—but I never repeated it and I never believed it either.
I roll my eyes at her like it was a silly thing for her to say. “I know that.”
A stretch of awkward silence grows between us because while we still aren’t friends, we aren’t exactly enemies anymore either and neither of us know what to do about it.
“Okay…” Giving me another nervous laugh, Sera starts to back herself down the stairs. “Anyway, thank you for standing up for my daughter and I’m sorry you lost your job over it,” she says before turning around to bound down the stairs. She gets halfway to her car before I call out to her.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why I did it?”
“I don’t have to ask.” Reaching her car, Sera pulls the driver’s side door open before she aims a look at me over the top of it.
“You did it because you’re a good person.
You’ve always been a good person.” She flashes me one of those sad, regretful smiles.
“A helluva lot better than me,” she says, before she climbs into her car and drives away.