Chapter 7
Seven
Amoving company was a bit over the top for twelve boxes of clothes and a stationary bike, but I like my things.
Plus, it was a crapshoot on knowing what to wear.
Fontain is far from formal, but I don’t want to be unprepared, so I brought everything.
Dress clothes, casual clothes, winter clothes should an unprecedented blizzard occur in the middle of the dog days of the North Carolina summer.
I’ll be here for fall; I need transition pieces.
And my extensive shoe collection is a given.
Once Rue and Remy left, my first matter of business was posting signs at the end of the driveway and on the front door telling people not to knock, ring, enter, or make a noise louder than a whisper.
Mom’s major symptoms before the surgery were slight memory loss—mostly names—headaches, and a somewhat severe depletion of impulse control.
Time will tell if those are fixed, but my sisters said that right now she’s extremely sensitive to loud noises and has a relentless headache. The last thing she needs is people.
Alone in the doorway of my childhood bedroom that’s now filled with boxes—I put the Peloton in Rue’s old room—my reality becomes real.
I’m in Fontain.
For three months.
Mom left our rooms the same when we moved out, but mine feels smaller than it did when I was a teenager with my whole life ahead. Like every part of who I was has been compressed in a vacuum-sealed bag, and being here lets some of the air back in, inflating the past with the present.
The walls are covered in posters of Alanis Morissette and Counting Crows along with a few snapshots of me and the friends I’ve long since fallen out of touch with.
A few of Amanda and me, my once-upon-a-time best friend.
I haven’t talked to her since my dad’s funeral a decade ago.
She was pregnant then and married to her high school sweetheart Greg like we both knew she would be.
I got the invitation to the wedding but was in the middle of a deal I couldn’t miss.
I sent a gift instead. Last I heard, she was doing hair at a local salon.
We were barely in touch up to that point, and after my dad’s funeral, any contact we had fell off.
I didn’t have time; she stopped making an effort. Not that I blame her. She had a baby and a life; I was hundreds of miles away in meetings trying to make a name for myself.
She’s probably had four kids since. I’ll look her up while I’m here. Maybe convince her to have a drink.
On the corkboard above my desk, there are a few ticket stubs from movies—Kill Bill and Mystic River—and my life’s plan checklist on a now-jaundiced piece of notebook paper.
Graduate top of class—did that.
Get a bachelor’s degree in finance—and that.
Get an MBA—and that.
Get a kick-ass job—verdict is currently out on that one.
Make enough money to retire at age thirty-five and buy any Fontain winery I want—I smile at this.
It was the only thing I wanted when I was young.
I was going to come back to Fontain after making my millions and buy a winery to settle down.
I’m five years past that vision, but I could do it if I wanted to. I’ve made the money.
But move back to Fontain?
Despite what Trish thinks about my life, everything I have is in Chicago now. My job. I don’t know what I’d do if I moved back here. Sure, I’d love being closer to my mom and sisters—I think—but I’m not sure where I’d fit.
At the next two items on the list, my smile drops. Find a perfect man to marry and have two kids.
Those twenty-three-year-old words written on lined paper shine a spotlight on missed milestones. What I haven’t done. It’s ridiculous to care about pie-in-the-sky goals written by a teenager, but I do. I put a hand to my belly as a rogue wave of loneliness crashes over me.
I was supposed to be with the perfect man and have kids by now, but here I am with neither. Here I am, finally getting to one because I was backed into a corner and forgoing the other because there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to find someone right for me. Someone who might not exist.
But at the last item on the list, my loneliness vanishes with my smile. Rub it in my sisters’ faces how rich I am.
Check.
Out the window of my room, the view from the second story looks the same as it always has, as does the little white house next door.
An older couple lived there when we were growing up, but they’ve long since passed.
When I was home a few months ago, Mom went on and on about the neighbor guy—she goes on and on about everyone—but I was too busy fixing her life to listen to her ramblings.
I was here less than two weeks and never once laid eyes on him.
He might have seven heads for all I know.
My days were spent at the antique store until I’d come home after dark to cook, clean, and research surgeons before catching up on work.
With an audible sigh, I flop back onto the twin bed covered in a tattered quilt. On the ceiling, Joshua Jackson’s incredibly young face smirks at me. What a strange obsession teenage Reese had with Pacey from Dawson’s Creek.
Minutes pass, my mind wandering. Work. What I want. How I got here. If Joshua Jackson is married.
When the thoughts begin crushing my brain, I force myself to unpack.
I make it through four boxes then pause. A noise? I tilt my head. A moan? At the next sound—water running?—I take off down the hall.
Mom, who’s supposed to be in bed and at most using a walker to go short distances supervised, is at the kitchen sink in her nightgown, filling a kettle of water.
“Jesus Christ, Mom,” I bark, running to her and snatching the kettle out of her hands. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Reese Conway.” She smiles, surprised, and hugs me. “What are you doing here? I told you not to come.”
She lets me guide her to a chair at the kitchen table.
“Good thing I didn’t listen because somebody needs to make sure you don’t kill yourself. Why are you walking? How do you feel?”
“I had brain surgery, my legs are fine.” Even groggy she still manages to pin me with an annoyed look, amplified by the bruising around one eye.
“You piss the surgeon off to earn that shiner?” I ask.
She chuckles, gingerly rubbing her fingers along the stapled ridge at her hairline that hooks behind one ear.
“How do you feel?”
The hair around her ear has been shaved, the rest pulled back in a loose braid—probably Remy’s handiwork. There’s no bandage, a good sign because it means things are healing as they should. In a week and a half, the staples will be removed.
Mom sighs. “I have a headache from hell and am more tired than I’ve ever felt but mostly annoyed you stopped me from making tea.”
We exchange looks but mine’s stronger.
She’s her—a feisty pain in the ass—but only four days post brain surgery, she’s weak and tired. A barbed knot of guilt once again ties up my throat. My mom had brain surgery, and I wasn’t here.
“I’ll make you tea. And you’re supposed to be using a walker,” I remind her. “I put a bell on your nightstand to ring if you need anything. I’m working on a schedule for us to get on starting next week. I have all the therapists lined up. And meals.”
“You’re more exhausting than the tumor.” She bats a weak hand through the air. “I’m fine.”
I give her a sweet smile over my shoulder as I put the kettle on the stove. “You will be once I’m through with you.”
We’re quiet as I work.
I haven’t lived in this house since I graduated high school.
In the twenty-some years I’ve been gone, I only come back to Fontain a couple times a year; the longest was for two weeks earlier this summer when we found out about the tumor.
The second longest was the week after my dad died.
Despite my absence, I still move through the kitchen with ease.
The mismatched mugs hang from the same rack, her tea is shoved in the same cabinet. I’ll be organizing that.
“Dandelion?” I ask.
“Chamomile if I have any.” I exchange boxes and grab the last bag. In my phone, I add a note to get more, then double-check our calendar—physical therapy and post-op appointments are both in two weeks. I open my email, annoyed to find no new messages. I refresh it; still nothing.
Trish kept her word. I haven’t gotten a single email since I told her I was leaving.
And though I’ve started thirteen different emails to Matt, I’ve refused to send a single one.
I’m humiliated I was forced into a sabbatical, but I won’t add fuel to the fire by failing at it.
To Married Matt who’s on a bowling league.
On the contrary, I plan on crushing it. And him.
And the reality is, there’s a good chance after the first day that nobody remembers I was ever there. That’s how it is in business: Emails get forwarded, org charts reorganized, and the person on top is forgotten faster than it took for them to get there. Out of sight really is out of mind.
A call of “Reese” pulls me from the entire world that once lived in my phone.
“Yeah?”
“The kettle.”
The kettle screams. Right. “Sorry.”
I put the tea bag in a mug and drown it with the hot water then set it in front of her. Hip against the butcher-block counter, I study her as she bobs the bag. She hid the tumor from us for ten years and it still blows my mind.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“Saving you from Rue and Remy.”
“Liar.” She blows the steam from her mug. “Why are you really here?” She eyes my outfit. “Dressed like a professional mourner.”
There are two types of people: those who look like hungover college kids when they fly, and those who look like they’re shareholders of the airline. I fly first class; I’ll be damned if I don’t look the part.
“I look good in black, so I’ll take that last bit as a compliment,” I say. “And I’m here to help, believe it or not.”
She quirks a brow. “And?”
Mom always knows. I’m far from emotional and lean toward what some—like every man I’ve dated—might—and do—call guarded. I don’t need to talk about everything I’m thinking or feeling. While me saying I’m here to help would be accepted by most people, Iris Conway knows there’s more.
I once liked a boy named Jeff Mullings in high school.
I never told a soul, not even Amanda. One day, he asked another girl out.
I was devastated in that teenage way where my heart crumbled inside my chest and I was convinced I was going to die, but on the outside, I aced a test, went to work at the diner, then came home and ate dinner with my family and did homework.
It was the exact same routine I followed every other day as I said the exact same snarky things I always said. I kept my hurt hidden.
When my mom came in to say good night that night, she sat at the foot of my bed and said, “He’s an idiot.”
The reasons are different but the ache in my chest is the same, and she senses it. Like the blood of hers that runs in me makes her privy to all my secret struggles. I’ll get it one day when I have a kid of my own, but for now, it’s simply a mystical power that I’m at the mercy of.
“Work sent me.”
Her brows raise, letting me know that’s not good enough.
I trace a grain line of the countertop with my index finger.
“Work said I work too much and—” I blow out a breath.
“That I need a break.” I brave a look at her.
No need telling her about the baby I volunteered to create.
“Among other things. So—” I wiggle my fingers.
“Here I am. Doing what they told me to and saving you from my incompetent sisters so I can go back to work.”
If my mother weren’t days post surgery, she’d huff and throw an exasperated “I told you that you work too damn much,” but today, she’s quiet, taking another sip of her tea. “Well, I’m glad you’re here.”
“I—”
The loud roar of a mower blasts through the air.
Out the kitchen window, my gaze snaps to the end of Mom’s driveway—right next to my no loud noises or unexpected guests sign—where a man stands on the back of a lawnmower, zipping down the short driveway then barreling through the yard.
He flies toward the house, mower so loud he might as well be in the middle of the kitchen. I’m annoyed, but the way Mom winces lets me know it’s worse for her.
I smack the glass of the window to get his attention. “Hey!”
He doesn’t see me.
“It’s fine, Reese,” Mom says. “It’s Gavin. He won’t take long.”
“I don’t care if it’s the fucking pope,” I bark at her. “He shouldn’t be doing that right now.”
“Reese, just—”
“No.”
I march outside to the middle of the yard to stand in the direct path of the mower.
There’s a sign.
In my flight attire of a black blouse, pencil skirt, and pumps, I’m impossible to miss standing in the grass with my hip cocked and arms folded over my chest. He plows straight toward me, and for a split second I wonder if he’s going to stop.
I don’t budge—I refuse. I’ll sue his ass if he runs me over.
Just inches shy of the black pointed toes of my Jimmy Choos, he stops, cuts the engine, and lifts his chin. With a smile. Wearing a sweat-stained white T-shirt, worn jeans, and boots that look like they’re three steps shy of falling apart, he strolls toward me, peeling his gloves off as he moves.
I would bet all the money in my bank account he’s never had a professional haircut in his life or used a mirror while trimming his shaggy-ass beard.
His eyes fasten onto mine, but his expression trips, somewhere between amused and confused as he sizes me up, darting his tongue across his bottom lip. When I think he’s going to talk—God forbid apologize—he spits something out of his mouth.
Spits—like a Neanderthal—then smirks.
“You spit.” I don’t hide my disgust.
Who does that?
“Seeds,” he explains. At my look, he wills another one up from somewhere in the pit of his mouth, displays it between his shockingly white front teeth then spits it out. “Sunflower seeds. I like the salt. Spitz are my favorite.”
As he repeats the appalling process, I make a too-easy assessment.
He’s the epitome of a Fontain blue collar—probably eats pizza from a gas station and drinks cheap beer from a can.
He was probably born and raised in Fontain and has no knowledge the rest of the world exists. Might even think it’s flat.
Seemingly out of seeds, he smiles. “Reese Conway, right?”
My eyes narrow. I have never seen this guy in my life.
“And who the hell are you?”