Chapter 5 #2
“Wait, are you actually asking me when I last had sex?” She watched as he went straight.
His face twitched as if his nose had literally gone out of joint.
She had never seen anything like it. She decided to push him.
“I know that’s not what you said, but I get the feeling that’s actually what you’re asking. ”
He looked perturbed by that. “It is not what I’m asking.”
“Because I remember when that was,” she said, feeling ornery.
“I don’t need you to break your diary out, Per.”
“I could, though.”
“I’m good . It was more a hypothetical question.”
“I wouldn’t need to get my diary out, Carson. It hasn’t been that long.”
She was a liar. But she didn’t care. Because it wasn’t his business. He wanted nothing to do with her sex life. Not a single thing. So why should she give him any information at all? Any.
“Good for you,” he said.
But he didn’t sound as if he thought it was very good. She didn’t care. They’d known each other long enough that no subject was taboo, but there were certain things they didn’t discuss in a lot of detail, that was for sure.
“Anyway. There’s your truck.”
“I’ll just follow you over to your place.”
“Okay,” she said.
He got out of the car, and she tightened her hands around the steering wheel. Before he even climbed into his truck, she took off. He knew how to get to her place, after all. It wasn’t like she had to lead the way.
Dating .
Carson was going to download dating apps.
That was fine. She ought to go on a date with Stephen Lee. But then, she could also download apps. She could date some men in Medford. That made more sense. She shouldn’t get involved with anyone who lived here, because she was leaving. She needed to actually commit to her plan.
She pulled into her driveway and got out of the car. She was in the process of unlocking the front door when Carson parked his truck behind her.
He got out, and for one long moment she lost herself. She watched him as he put his cowboy hat firmly on his head. As he brushed his hands across his battered jeans.
And then walked toward her, a strange sort of intensity in his blue eyes.
She cleared her throat, finished unlocking the door, and pushed it open.
He followed her in.
“So,” she said. “Dating apps. To what end, Carson?”
“I don’t know. But that’s the goal: to not consider the end. I’ve never tried that before.”
Well. There was some truth to that. He was always just a little bit too serious.
He was always trying to do something to redeem his family’s reputation.
To make himself into something of a hero.
“I want to focus on what’s right here in front of me. Because when I look too far into the future, I feel defeated. I feel … you have no idea what it’s like, Perry. To feel as if everything you do means nothing.”
Well. He was wrong there. Sometimes she really did feel the things she did were akin to dumping a Dixie cup of water into an ocean. When it came to him, when it came to … everything.
She wasn’t persuasive enough to inspire her mother to leave her father. She wasn’t the kind of daughter who transformed an abusive father into a loving one.
She just felt insignificant sometimes. And of course that feeling had intensified when Carson married someone else. It was unavoidable. Even if she should be over it by now, even if she should grow up and stop taking it so personally. She couldn’t.
“Right,” she said.
She wasn’t getting into it right now.
“I think maybe I want too much. Maybe if I can just focus on today, I’ll find something. Something that makes me feel …”
“What are you looking for?”
“Maybe I don’t need to matter. Maybe I don’t need to singlehandedly redeem the Wilder family—Austin has done a good enough job of that anyway. I’m not going to let life knock me on my ass and keep me there, Per. I’ve never been that man. I’m not my father. I refuse to be.”
There was a near religious fervor in his eyes as he said that. She knew, better than most, how important it was to Carson to rise above his name.
He hadn’t always been that way. Being his friend when they were younger was like being on a roller coaster ride. He’d always been good to her, but he’d been wild. Impetuous. He’d gone speeding around on his motorcycle raising hell.
She’d asked him one time if she could ride on the back, and he’d said no. She’d asked why and he’d said it wasn’t safe.
So then why do you do it?
He’d had no answer for her. Later, he’d said: It’s just my job to protect you.
She’d found the declaration sweet at the time. Over the years she’d started to wonder more and more why he thought he had to protect her.
It didn’t seem like an equal friendship to her.
Just the same, she should be a good friend, not a jealous shrew. She was about to cut the cord. Sever this thing with him.
Not their friendship. Not entirely. But their relationship would cool with distance.
She wouldn’t hang on to it as she had when he’d been deployed. She wouldn’t write four-page letters by hand, telling him her every thought and feeling.
They would gradually start seeing each other less and less, and that would make phone calls and texts less frequent. Eventually, maybe they would go out on each other’s birthdays. If she found a boyfriend, maybe they wouldn’t go out at all.
It felt sad right now. Just thinking about it made her ache.
But it wouldn’t always feel sad. She would get used to it.
When her grandmother had died, she’d thought she would never smile again.
She’d felt as if she’d lost absolutely everything.
And it was like that when Carson was deployed, living halfway across the world.
That had felt awful. But she’d had to pick herself up by her bootstraps and be enough for herself.
Her mother had been too fragile to support her.
Carson had been as supportive as he could be from another time zone.
She knew from firsthand experience that she could be more independent than she was now.
They had slipped into this codependence over the last two years.
They could make their relationship into something different.
And it wouldn’t kill her. Whatever she might think right now.
“So you aren’t looking to get married again.”
“Hell no,” he said.
He said it so definitively. And it was stupid for her to be upset. She felt like a small, terrible person for feeling jealous of a dead woman. Alyssa deserved to be loved this much. Perry wanted to cry. But for a variety of reasons, and that was the complicated part.
“So it’s just …”
He shrugged. “Making some connections. Having a little bit of fun.”
Perry wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know that I would call dating around fun.”
“I used to share that opinion.”
She liked him even more for saying that. For not making some flippant, lewd comment about hookups. That just wasn’t Carson’s way.
“But my life has changed,” he said. “It’s going to change even more.” His voice got gruff. “I’m going to have to change with it. If you don’t evolve you die.”
“Or at least flounder around.”
“True, and neither of us is a fish. Well, show me around the place. I never walk around the whole house.”
“Neither do I,” she said. She was happy to get onto the subject of the house. “Because it’s kind of a disaster. It needs so many repairs, and I don’t know where to begin.”
“I know there are certain things you’re not allowed to change because it’s on a historic registry.”
“Yes. Since this is a historic district.”
“Right. Okay. I can work with that. I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject.”
“Has Austin infected you with his library bug?”
“I’m not anywhere near as well-read as Austin is, but I fell down a huge rabbit hole when I restored the cabin that you’re going to live in.
I’ve always been interested in history. The places that people live, their furniture, their vehicles, like the Conestoga wagon, all those things say so much about a time and a place.
About the way people relate to each other.
You know, there’s an interesting theory that people were more social before technology.
I’m not sure I agree. They may have been in some ways, but look at the way that houses have been built now for quite a while. With all these big common rooms.”
“Right,” she said.
Carson walked from the entryway into the sitting room.
He flicked the lights on, and Perry grimaced as she looked at one of the loose pieces of wallpaper.
“With these houses,” he said, “there were lots of small rooms. And that was so families could get away from each other. They could sit and read in different rooms. The women could cross-stitch in one space, while the men talked in the other. People always did want their privacy. It just says a lot.”
“That is interesting,” said Perry.
“Yeah. I think so. I like looking at the things personal possessions tell you. Hope chests, for example, used to be really important. Women would travel with them, even though they were large and heavy. For hundreds of miles.”
“Mae Tanner had a hope chest,” Perry said.
Mae had been the original owner of this house, along with her husband, Jedediah Tanner. When Mae had come out west from Boston, the hope chest was essentially the only thing she had brought.
It had been her hope for a better life.
“Do you have it still?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s in one of the guest rooms. It’s cracked on the top and faded. I wish it had been kept in better condition, but it was sitting in the sun for years, and the wood got damaged.”
“I can probably do something with it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, if you don’t mind me replacing some of the wood. But I’m pretty good at stain matching and all of that.”
“That would be amazing. I mean, I would love to have the chest. To keep it.”
“It could be the hope chest that you take with you to your new life, Perry. A gift from me.”
“You’re already giving me a lot of gifts.”
“Well, you deserve them. You really do.”
“You’re so good to me.” She meant that. In spite of the tension between them recently, she wanted him to know that. She wanted him to feel it. “Carson, I really do appreciate your doing this.”
“Well. It’s going to be a pretty big job. We are definitely going to have to take the drywall off in this room. There are companies that sell wallpaper reproductions. We should be able to get some period-appropriate stuff. A lot of this trim looks great, it just needs to be restained.”
She was impressed by Carson’s expertise. She supposed these topics didn’t come up in conversation and she’d never known the depth of his knowledge. She felt a little bit in awe.
He had a plan for everything—for the banister, the stairs, the floor. The way he talked about the house painted a beautiful picture for her.
“I think this probably used to be a deeper cherry color,” he said, his hands moving along the banister, and an answering heat began to burn in the center of her body.
His hands.
She could remember very vividly the first time she’d wished he would touch her with those hands.
She tried to push that thought away now.
“I love it. I … I really feel like this is too much.”
He clasped her shoulders. She swallowed hard, her throat getting tight. Where he touched her burned. She felt as if she was on fire with his hands resting on her.
“Thank you,” she said, moving away from him.
“I love you, Perry.”
She closed her eyes. He said it so easily.
“Thank you.”
“I feel like I haven’t done a very good job of showing it.”
“No. Don’t. Please don’t take this all on yourself. You’re way too comfortable with that.”
“What’s wrong with taking responsibility?”
“It’s not being a hero, it’s being a martyr. Burning yourself at the stake isn’t valuable to me.”
He chuckled. “I guess not.”
“So,” he continued. “When do you want to start?”
“I guess that depends on when I can move into the cabin.”
“Any time.”
“I rented a storage unit down in Medford. I figure I’m going to need it, and it makes sense to bring the stuff down there.”
“Great,” he said.
“So, I can start moving things down there.”
“I assume you’ll need my truck.”
“Oh, I need more than your truck. I need your truck and trailer, and your muscles.”
“My muscles are yours,” he said.
She fought against the slight bit of discomfort that statement created within her.
Maybe discomfort was the wrong word. Maybe it was …
She was such a tragic case.
“I will accept any and all help.”
“Do you actually have the storage unit set up?”
“Yes.”
“We can do it all Monday, since the florist shop is closed.”
“Okay. That sounds good.”
“Then it’s settled. We move on Monday.”
“Yeah.”
Carson stayed for a few more minutes after that, and then he left.
And Perry was left with nothing more than the strange sensation that she had seen a boulder sitting at the top of a hill and had pushed it without fully thinking through the consequences.
Now it was rolling, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. “It’s for the best,” she said out loud. “Because I don’t need to stop it. I need to see this through.”
She could only hope that was true.