Chapter 3
Mama thinks I’ve taken leave of my senses. Why would I marry a man all the way out west when I wouldn’t consider any of the men here? It’s because I can’t stand the thought of being a wife in Boston, in a town house, married to a banker, being stuck in this city. I want adventure.
T he truth was, she’d considered calling Stephen. Just thinking about it made her feel guilty, because she would only be going out with him because she was mad at Carson, and that wasn’t fair. Stephen was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve to be put in the middle of her issues with her best friend.
If he was even her best friend anymore.
She curled up into a tight ball on her couch, and for a moment, she let herself just feel miserable.
Of course he was still her best friend.
You couldn’t know somebody as long as she’d known Carson, you couldn’t care for someone in the ways that she had, and just stop being friends over one fight.
But it was quite a fight. The worst one she could remember, and given the amount of time they’d known each other, that was saying something.
Well, what had she expected really?
She had said some pretty strong things to him. And it wasn’t really a shock that he was mad. Her announcement had come out maybe a little bit more harshly than she had intended.
Which wasn’t really fair. The decision to leave Rustler Mountain was about her. It wasn’t about him. Well, it was kind of about him. But it was complicated.
She’d gone through some of her grandmother’s things recently, and she’d found Mae Tanner’s diary.
In the last few weeks, she’d read the diary religiously, following Mae’s first six months in Oregon. It always made her sad there were no entries after that.
Mae had gone west to marry Jedediah Tanner, a widower with two small daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth.
It had been a hard experience and a harder relationship. He was remote and distant, attached to the ghost of a woman long gone (Perry related to that more than she would like), and Mae had fought to get him to forge a relationship with his children.
Perry wondered how things were between husband and mail-order bride.
All she had to go on were sepia-toned portraits in which everyone looked serious and formal.
Only the diary showed her another side of Mae. The brave, plucky part of her that Perry wanted to emulate.
Perry didn’t feel brave, honestly.
She felt soft and cautious, and oftentimes sad.
When she heard the sound of tires and a truck engine pulling up close to her house, she immediately turned and looked out the window.
There was Carson’s truck. And the man himself.
He got out of his truck and paused. She looked at him through the slats of the blinds, and she wasn’t entirely sure whether he could see her.
She watched as he paused, looked up at the sky, and seemed to curse a little bit before walking toward her front door.
Her heart twisted in her chest. Because of course he had come to apologize.
She knew that. She could see guilt written all over his face.
She scrambled up off the couch and went to the door.
And waited. She didn’t know how long it was going to take Carson to actually make his way over to her.
She thought she would give it a good chunk of time.
And then he knocked. She opened the door before he could get a second round in.
“What are you doing here?”
“You know what I’m doing here,” he grumbled, walking inside.
Her house was a large Victorian she’d inherited from her grandmother—on her mom’s side—and selling it was one of the hardest parts of her decision to leave.
That was a lie—there were so many hard parts. Her beautiful little shop on Main Street, with its cheery red bricks and beautiful hand-painted wooden sign that Carson had made for her. Carson himself.
But her home held a substantial part of her heart, along with memories of the most functional adult in Perry’s life.
She’d spent a lot of time with her grandma when she was young, up until her death when Perry was nineteen.
By then the house had been showing signs of wear, and at this point it was bordering on ramshackle.
There were rooms Perry didn’t even go in because spots in the floor were too soft and the wallpaper was bubbling from water damage. She used the kitchen, the sitting room, the bathroom nearest the kitchen, and her bedroom. The end.
The house needed an overhaul but Perry didn’t have the money. On the bright side, if she sold it, whatever she got would be money in her pocket since her grandma had owned the place outright.
She was a little sad she’d never be able to restore the house to its former glory.
When Lydia Tanner had left the rambling old house to Perry, she’d been very clear. It was to be a home or a financial asset, but never a millstone.
I don’t want you to keep it forever if it’s holding you back. Remember, Mae Tanner would never have let the flowers grow beneath her feet. She went off and planted her own.
Flowers were a theme in her family. Her grandmother had grown the most beautiful flowers in town. She’d been Rustler Mountain’s unofficial florist for years, offering up her personal garden for weddings and baby showers.
Her mother had always liked flowers.
Perry’s name was, in fact, short for Periwinkle.
You’re the only flower your father ever gave me.
That statement made Perry so sad. It had then, it still did.
Her parents were still together, living off in Wolf Creek, more than an hour away. Her mother continued to live with her cold, abusive father, and Perry was out of breath from telling her she needed to leave.
She just didn’t talk to her mom much anymore. She didn’t talk to her dad at all.
She could not understand why her mother’s affinity for flowers had suggested the name Periwinkle; there were any number of names she could have been given that wouldn’t have been half so unconventional. But flowers had become special to Perry over time.
She’d lived in a home with a man who had been so controlling.
So spiteful in so many ways. And there had been a real lack of control in most of her life.
One thing that had always fascinated her was nature.
The way it persisted even as people imposed themselves upon it.
A field of wildflowers, so beautiful and resilient, had always felt like a metaphor for the kind of person she wanted to become.
She had considered a lot of different jobs in different naturalist fields, but she’d kept on coming back to flowers.
So she’d majored in business with a minor in horticulture.
She had always thought horticulture was a lot of work when flowers themselves just decided to grow on the sides of highways, byways, and mountaintops. Those flowers were also a metaphor. Because people could do the same. You can grow where you are planted . She had spent a lifetime doing that.
But if you really wanted to thrive … you had to do more than just grow where you were planted. You had to fight to grow sometimes. And you had to learn to lean on yourself, instead of surrendering your power.
In that way, her mom had given her a gift.
“Let’s hear it,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What I said was way harsher than was merited.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ve taken a hell of a lot more from you than I’ve given over the last couple of years. And I’m sorry. I … I want to help you. I didn’t really listen to you when you came over—I just got mad. Because I took your decision personally.”
Well. It had been personal. There was no getting away from that.
She didn’t voice her thought, though. Because he was here saying nice things and she didn’t want to be churlish.
Because she didn’t want Carson out of her life. She just needed to change their arrangement. And she wasn’t expecting to leave immediately; the last thing she wanted was to get into a situation where they weren’t speaking.
She was just trying to …
Get enough distance that she could actually accomplish the things she really wanted to. Actually start creating the life she needed.
“Thank you.”
“Aren’t you going to apologize to me?”
“No. You were mean.”
“Okay. But some of what you said felt a little bit mean too,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be mean. How about that?” she asked.
“I accept. What do you need to do to get your move in order?”
“What?”
“I hear you, Perry. You want more for your life. And you don’t feel you’re going to get it here. You’re right. I can understand that. I had to leave to join the military. To meet Alyssa.”
She felt as if he had just stabbed her. Which was fine. She was used to it. It was also pointless and petty to be this upset about his marrying Alyssa when the woman was dead.
She had been a nice woman too. That was the worst part.
Perry had hated that Alyssa was nice. That Carson had met someone who had been amazing enough for him to change his whole life. That he’d met someone he wanted to make vows to, vows about forever, when he’d been hers forever before that.
And no, she and Carson had never been romantic, not once. Not even close. But how could he give his heart to somebody else when he’d had hers from the beginning?
Before he met Alyssa, they’d been writing letters. And she’d been convinced that special corner of Carson was reserved only for her. That maybe when he came home, things would be different.
They were different. Just not the way she’d hoped.
When that last letter she’d written returned, unopened and undeliverable because Carson had left the barracks already, when he’d come home with Alyssa on his arm, Perry had wanted to burn the world down.
She had spent sleepless nights grappling with the right thing to do. Alyssa loved Carson; Carson loved Alyssa. And what it came right down to was: how could she resent the love he’d found?
She could. In the quiet of her own heart. But she couldn’t resent him .
He was more than her unrequited feelings for him.