Chapter 55 Ash
ASH
“YOU READY?” WADE ASKS. He’s sitting on the small couch in Ash’s Airstream, scrolling through his phone. Checking on work, he told her. She hears a faint chime. Something on the screen makes him smile.
“Almost.” Ash doesn’t know what she was hoping would happen.
That she’d get to the bottom of the hike and see Wade and they’d throw their arms around each other and…
what? Make out in the parking lot of Seraph’s Perch like teenagers?
Say how much they missed each other and that they were sorry and that things were going to be different?
It had felt epic, standing up on Seraph’s Perch and making the choice she did.
It had felt important and symbolic, leaving Caro behind and hurrying down on her own.
But both Wade and his brother Derek had been waiting for her in the parking lot.
“I hate leaving when we don’t know where Hope is,” she’d told Wade, and he’d said, “You can’t do anything from here.
You should be home with me and the girls.
” Then they drove back to Sonnet, and Derek went to get food while Wade came back with Ash to the Airstream.
So here she is disappointed again, and again, what was she thinking? That Wade was secretly hoping to ravish her before they left? He did give her a quick kiss when they got inside the trailer, but then he sat down on the sofa and began scrolling through his phone while he waited for her to pack.
“How much longer do you need?” he asks now. Ash is standing at the Airstream’s tiny sink and making sure the lids on all her toiletries are screwed on tight so that they won’t leak. The impatience in Wade’s voice and the words themselves remind her of a night this past December.
Ash had been feeling accomplished. She’d gotten through a long day of holiday orders at work, and everything was still on track for her to make it to the annual party that Wade and his partner held for their dental practice.
They’d have enough time for Wade to change, and then they’d turn around and head back into Portland.
She found a sitter (Emily, the girls’ favorite) weeks ago for Kit and Claire (Maggie had her own events and life that didn’t always line up with babysitting the others).
Ash had made dinner (yes, it was in the slow cooker, but it was chicken taco soup; the girls always ate that) around work, running back to the house from the shed at the point when she needed to shred the chicken and return it to the slow cooker and when she needed to bake the rolls that had been rising all morning.
She set the table and made a salad before she went to her room to change and get ready.
Ash was wearing a black leather pencil skirt and a black sweater (her goal for those kinds of occasions was to look classy and not farm-y, nice but not flashy) and her favorite earrings.
Her hair actually looked—well, kind of fantastic.
She’d blow-dried it straight instead of letting it do its natural waves, and for once in its life Portland wasn’t humid enough to make her hair curl immediately.
“You ready?” Wade had called out to her the minute he’d come in the door.
“Yes!” she’d said, hurrying out to the kitchen to meet him.
“Emily’s on her way. We can leave whenever you’re ready.
The girls know they might have to look out for themselves for a few minutes.
” She grinned at Wade, who was looking very handsome.
She’d done it. She’d gotten everything finished in time. They were going to have a night out.
“Come on, Ash,” Wade said. “Give me five seconds before you start bossing me around.” He threw his coat over a kitchen chair, loosened his tie, and strode toward their bedroom.
Ash was taken aback. Did she sound bossy? She probably did. She certainly hadn’t hurried over and open-mouthed kissed him the way she used to do, even two kids into their marriage.
Although, maybe later… after they’d had dinner and a chance to be out for a while, and if they got home late enough that the younger girls were in bed…
She wandered back to their room to hang out with Wade while he changed clothes. “How was work today?”
“Fine.” He was looking through their newly organized closet, trying to figure out which shoes to wear.
She had a suggestion but bit her tongue.
Maybe she really was bossy. He chose a pair, put them on, reached for a jacket.
He looked up and caught her eye. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for him, smiling.
She stood up right when he said, “How was work for you?”
“Good!” she said. “Actually, great! Someone sent a bouquet to Samantha Saunders, and she found me on LikeMe and messaged me saying how much she loved them.” Hope’s endorsement had been another game-changer, ricocheting through the celebrity community and adding to Ash’s client list even more.
And Wade was a sports fiend—they both were, actually, that’s part of what they had in common.
They both loved Samantha Saunders, the former Olympic swimmer—she’d been Wade’s high school crush—and Ash had been dying to tell him all day. “Isn’t that wild?”
“Wow,” he said. “Sounds like that Hope Hanover magic you’re always talking about happened again. Can you believe how lucky you’ve been?”
Hope had actually given Ash words to use in a situation like this, to reframe the way she thought of her business.
Whenever Ash said, “Oh my gosh, I’m so lucky to be your friend, thank you so much for recommending Three Sisters,” Hope would say, “Ash, remember. You did the work. Luck doesn’t happen if the work isn’t being done in the first place. ”
Hope told Ash this was true for her—Hope—too.
Yes, luck happened in that she was born with the kinds of looks that get attention, yes, luck happened in that she finally got noticed being an extra in a really crappy movie, but if she hadn’t been out there trying, the lightning couldn’t have found her.
“Plus,” Hope reminded Ash, “you were doing pretty damn well before we even met.”
Ash decided to try out this new response on Wade before she said it to anyone at the party (it would inevitably come up and be said in ways that somehow made her feel smaller).
“That’s true,” Ash said. “But luck doesn’t happen if you’re not doing the work in the first place.”
“Right,” Wade said noncommittally. Ash pulled out her phone to show him the photo of Samantha Saunders with her flowers. “See?” she said. “Fun, right?”
“Right,” he said. He gave the photo the most cursory of glances.
“She looks so good,” Ash said. “I swear she hasn’t aged.”
Wade had finished tying his tie and headed out of the bedroom toward the kitchen. Ash put the phone in her bag and hurried after him. She wished he’d had more of a reaction.
“Okay,” Ash said as he picked up his keys from the counter. “We’ll be back by ten or eleven, right? That’s what I told Emily.”
“We’re not going,” Wade said. He didn’t turn to look at her.
“Wait,” Ash said. “Why not?” The obvious answer. “Shoot. Did Emily cancel?” Although, she realized as she asked it—did Wade even have Emily’s number?
“No,” Wade said. “But I realized I’m exhausted. You’re on me nonstop. You’ve taken all of the enjoyment out of this.”
Ash was stunned. She tried to think back over the last few minutes.
She could see how she’d been too much. Too talkative and overexcited.
“I’m sorry. I was trying—you’re right. I’m so sorry.
Can we still go?” She was annoying. She was bossy.
She could feel it. She felt it all the time, how she had become wrong.
“But what about Emily?” Ash said, picking exactly the wrong thing to focus on. Who cared about Emily? The problem was that Ash kept screwing up.
“Text her,” Wade said. “Cancel.”
“But she’s on her way,” Ash said, again focusing on the thing that didn’t matter.
Having to cancel Emily was nothing. The thing that mattered was the way Wade was looking at her with those eyes that she knew so well.
He wasn’t looking at her the way he had for years.
When they had sex for the first time (they’d both been each other’s first, delighted and enchanted by the other).
When he got into dental school, when their kids were born, when they both found something funny at the same time that no one else in the room seemed to catch.
Wade was looking at her as if he hated her.
Ash stopped talking.
“I’ll go on my own,” Wade said.
And he did.
Ash looks up at the Airstream’s mirror. She has been bringing Wade bits of her day like a cat with a mouse, a dog with a bone, for years. “Look at what I did!” she can practically hear herself saying.
It wasn’t always like this.
She wasn’t always like this.
He wasn’t always like this.
Her phone chimes. She looks down to see a notification from Kelly, the secretary of the nonprofit charity she runs, Second Bloom. Can you call me when you get a chance? the message says. We have a problem.
Ash glances at Wade. He’s still on his phone, but she doesn’t want to make him mad by calling Kelly back.
Can text but not talk, Ash says. Can you tell me what happened? I’m worried now.
Okay, but call when you can, Kelly says. Really sorry to drop this on you on your vacation. But I went to pay the fees to reserve the caterer for the Second Bloom Gala and the funds aren’t there.
Wait, Ash texts. What do you mean the funds aren’t there?
The account only has $500 in it, Kelly texts. I don’t see any withdrawals I don’t recognize, but nothing has come in in months.
Only three people have access to the nonprofit’s account. Ash, Kelly, and Wade. Wade is the treasurer for the charity. He has been since the beginning, when Ash came up with the idea as a way to spend more time together.