Chapter 19
Cort stepped onto the porch. “I never understood why you didn’t go to the senior spring dance that year. I looked for you. That’s why I came out here. I wanted to ask you about it.”
Rebecca opened her mouth to continue the lie—but she didn’t want to lie to him about this. It had been more than a decade. And they were friends now.
“I was there,” she said quietly. “But then I left.”
“Why did you leave?” His voice was husky, his expression intense. He wasn’t going to let this go, and she knew it. “Why didn’t you come find me?”
She looked up at him. “Really, Cort? Do you really want to know?”
A flicker of something in his eyes now, a chink in his armor. She was determined he wasn’t going to be able to Cort Adams his way out of this one. Even after all this time, it somehow felt raw. Which was why she hadn’t wanted to bring it up. But he had.
“I was eighteen, and I thought I was in love with you, okay?” At this, she was sure he flinched. But it was too late to take it back. She pressed ahead. “You and Mel broke up for a bit, do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” he said, his voice rough. He looked like he was about to say more, but she kept talking.
“You brought up the dance when we were studying for our finals. I remember you asked me if I’d be there.
You made it seem like…I don’t know, like you were asking me.
” Now she closed her eyes. “It’s so stupid, I know.
It’s my fault, I guess, for misunderstanding.
No guy ever asked me to a dance in high school, so I guess I didn’t get it.
But at the time, I believed what I believed.
I went to the dance thinking you’d be waiting for me.
Instead, I saw you. Dancing with Melanie. ”
“You thought you were…” Cort trailed off, didn’t repeat the confession she had just made—and for that she was grateful. “I didn’t realize,” he said softly. His expression turned anguished. “God. I was such a shit.”
“It’s fine. I misunderstood things between us, that’s all. It was a long time ago. We didn’t know what we were doing.”
But still, Cort continued to look agonized. He raked a calloused hand through his hair, the picture of handsome and tortured, exactly as she remembered him. “I’ve always felt so damn guilty about it, Becca. About everything. About how much I wanted—”
“Please, don’t,” she interrupted him. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” he said. “It’s not like that.”
“We’re past this. It’s been years.”
“It has, but still, I never stopped thinking about it. About you. We got really close, and you meant something to me. But it all just ended so badly. I hated that. Through the years, I wished that we could have stayed close. I wanted you in my life. I do want you in my life.” To her surprise, his voice broke over the intensity of his words.
She believed him, she had no choice—even if she didn’t know what these words being true changed about anything that had happened in the past. It still ached; it still burned.
Rebecca gave a wobbly laugh to try to lighten the mood and noticed her hand was shaking as she brushed a strand of hair from her face. “We are in each other’s life,” she said. “And we hit the reset button. Remember?”
He didn’t smile. “Right,” he said. “We did and we are. But still.”
“No, no ‘but stills.’ We’re fine. No hard feelings about this. No worrying about whether I was or was not at the spring dance, in our senior year, forever ago. No worrying about if you asked me, or didn’t ask me, or I made it all up in my head.”
He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t.
He just nodded. “No hard feelings. No thinking about dances that happened a long time ago.” They stood still in the hush of twilight, the sky streaked in deep, dark watercolors before them.
“So, speaking of dances, since you’re home, are you going to go to the Autumn Gala this year? ”
She laughed. “I doubt it. I didn’t bring a dress.”
He nodded, bit his lip. “The thing is, Rebecca, I—”
But behind them, there was the sound of the farmhouse’s screen door opening again.
“There you two are,” Marion said. “Dessert is being served, and Sabrina is doing some sort of flambé thing with the ice cream and maple liqueur. I think it had better not be missed, if only to have an extra pair of hands available when a fire extinguisher is called for.”
Inside, warm light and conversation wrapped around the group again and Rebecca tried to soak it in, to let it ease some of the tension she was feeling.
The flambé was a success, and soon Marion was cutting generous slices of Sabrina’s signature apple pie—redolent with cinnamon, sweet with maple syrup, the merest hint of vanilla—while James topped each one with a scoop of now-brandy-infused homemade vanilla ice cream and Sabrina talked about how maybe the next thing the orchard needed was its own line of ice cream, to go with the pies in the market.
Plates in hand, they all moved into the living room.
But Sabrina put down her plate and crossed to a blanket box in the corner of the living room. “Those old photo albums from when we were younger gave me an idea. Mom, Dad, don’t we have more photo albums in here? From when you were younger? Becca, what if we have some pictures of your mom in here?”
“I haven’t looked in there in ages,” Marion murmured, and stood to join her daughter. “You’re right, there are some in here.”
Rebecca’s pulse ticked faster as Marion sat beside her and opened a thick black velvet-bound album.
Sabrina had come to sit on the other side, and together they flipped through photos of Marion as a teen, with friends, or with James.
And then there was a group shot, maybe from a school dance.
Evie was in it, her dark hair swept high, her red dress like a beacon.
James was close to her, holding her elbow. Marion wasn’t in the picture.
“Let me see that!” Sabrina said, pulling the album closer. She examined it for a long moment, then looked up at her dad. “Did you and Evie ever date? I thought it was just Mom who was close with her, but, Dad, you and Evie look like an item here!”
“Sabrina!” Rebecca gasped. It was easy for Sabrina to just blurt something like that out, when meanwhile, Rebecca had been carrying it around for days, poring over it in her mind and her heart.
“It’s all right, Becca. Ancient history,” Marion said lightly—but too lightly. Like she was forcing it.
Rebecca thought she caught a look passing between Marion and her husband then.
Her mind started spinning and soon she was caught in a spiral.
How ridiculous it was, walking around town thinking anyone could be her father—like that little bird in Are You My Mother?
, a book Rebecca remembered reading as a child.
She could not go down this road, not with such an important group of people.
Her only people, now that Lenore was gone.
It was too much. She had to get out of this somehow.
She stood abruptly, and the others looked up in surprise.
“I’ve got a lot to do,” she said—which was true, but it wasn’t like she was going to go back to the diner and continue her packing job, not tonight.
Still, she had said it. It was too late to take it back. “Thank you so much for the dinner.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Sabrina asked.
“Crispin’s clock is ticking. We all know it. I can’t waste any more time. I’m sorry. I need to go.” And she rushed out of the room without waiting for a response.
But Cort followed, found her pulling on her shoes at the side door.
“Let me walk you, make sure you get home safely.”
“Thanks, but I just need to be alone.”
“Rebecca, you don’t have to be alone. Let someone be there for you. Let me.”
She paused with one hand on the doorknob, caught by the intensity of his gray eyes, the way he looked at her as if he could read her like a book, the way being close to him made her want to fall into his arms and pretend he had something to offer other than a friendly embrace.
Her heart fluttered like a trapped bird.
But she couldn’t go to him. She wouldn’t.
She was working too hard to fight against this.
And, right now, it felt like she was at risk of losing so much. She felt lost, panicked.
So she bolted, let the door slam behind her, hoped he would get the message and not try to follow her—while also hoping, wishing, dreaming, as she raced through the starry autumn night, that he would.