Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Reed
The gravel drive announces every inch of my arrival.
It crackles under the tires of the rental car, sharp and loud in the morning quiet, and by the time I cut the engine, I already understand I look wrong here.
The wool coat I put on in Stanhope House belongs beside marble stairs and valet stands.
My shoes are made for polished floors, not red dirt dusting the edges of Lanie Montgomery's yard.
Even the car looks temporary, too clean and too anonymous beside porch steps bowed from years of actual use.
I sit for one second with both hands on the wheel.
Five minutes. That's what I told myself all the way from Knoxville.
I'll ask for five minutes. I'll explain the kiss.
I'll tell Annie what I know now, what I understand now, and what I can change.
She asked for space, but this is different.
This is me trying. This is me showing up.
The front door opens before I make it halfway across the yard.
Lanie steps onto the porch in jeans, a faded cardigan, and worn house slippers.
Her gray hair is braided over one shoulder.
In every memory I have of this woman, she is warm before anything else: warm kitchen, warm hands, warm voice calling me hon the first time Annie brought me here and watched my reaction like she expected the house itself to test me.
Today, Lanie looks at me like I'm something tracked in on the bottom of a shoe.
"Reed."
"Morning, Lanie."
She stays where she is, one hand on the porch post. “It’s morning. That’s correct.”
I stop at the bottom step. Not because she tells me to, but because she doesn't move aside. "Is Annie here?"
"She's out.”
My chest tightens, stupidly, as if I expected her to be sitting in the window waiting for me. "Do you know when she'll be back?"
"No."
"Can I wait?"
Lanie looks me over, from the dust already dulling my shoes to the coat that suddenly feels ridiculous on my shoulders. "I'm not sure she wants to see you," she says, "and right now I'm not particularly fond of you either."
The words cut. There’s no polite edge, no velvet covering. I take it.
"I understand."
"I'm not asking if you understand."
“No. I guess you’re not.” I put my hands in my pockets because I don't know what else to do with them. “I know you’re angry with me, and I don’t blame you.
I just want a chance to talk to her. I won't ask you to convince her.
I won't ask you to take my side. I'll wait out here if that's what you want. "
Lanie studies me long enough that the back of my neck heats, then she turns and goes inside. For one wild second, I think that's the end of it. Then the screen door creaks again, and she comes back with a glass of sweet tea beading cold in her hand.
"Don't read anything generous into this," she says.
"I won't." I take it anyway.
She props herself against the porch rail. I stay put on the step, not daring to assume too much familiarity with the place, even though I have memories of Annie and I in her childhood bedroom while Lanie was off at church.
"The kiss was a mistake," I say, because the silence gets too heavy and I'm still foolish enough to think the right order of facts might matter. "Lexi dressed like Annie. Same dress, same mask, same hair. I didn't know who I was kissing until it was already happening."
Lanie's face doesn't change.
“I found out where the leak started,” I continue. “It traces back to me telling Glen. Tara heard some of it, and Glen filled in the rest. I still don’t know exactly how it reached my mother, but it started with me.”
"Did you tell Annie you’d broken her trust?" The question is quiet.
I look down at the tea in my hand. "No."
Lanie's mouth goes flat. It’s not an answer, but it’s really all I need.
"I failed her," I say. "I know that. Things were happening around her that I didn't see, and I'm going to fix them."
Lanie shoots me a look that nearly knocks me off the step. "Annie isn't a busted hinge you can fix with a screwdriver."
The heat in my neck climbs to my face. "That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant. I also know you."
I grip the glass harder. "I mean, I can change things at Stanhope. I can deal with my mother. Lexi won't be welcome around Annie again. I can make sure she never has to tolerate any of this another day."
Lanie listens, her face tightening a little more with each word I throw out.
"I didn't know Catherine had been treating her that way," I say.
“I don’t see how you couldn’t have.”
I remember my mother's voice in the morning room: Annie, dear. Have you been working? I remember Annie going quiet, and me pretending it was poise because that was easier to believe.
"I didn't," I say, but it sounds thinner now.
Lanie turns her face toward the ridge beyond the yard.
The morning light catches the fine lines around her mouth.
"One Christmas, years back, Annie called me from your place.
You were off somewhere with your brother, I think.
Your mama had asked her whether her circumstances left her without some of the social advantages most women around you grew up with. "
I freeze.
Lanie keeps her eyes on the trees. "Then she said Annie sounded very Southern when she was tired. Like she was giving helpful advice."
"When?"
"Years ago, I said."
"What exactly did she say?"
Lanie looks back at me. “I don’t remember the exact words. All I remember is your mama managed to get her dead mother, the daddy who didn't raise her, and the way she talks into one conversation and still make it sound like she was offering advice."
The porch feels unsteady under me. "Why didn't Annie tell me?"
Lanie's laugh has no humor in it. "She was already fighting to belong. Maybe she was scared you'd hear it and realize she didn't."
"I wouldn't have."
“Are you sure?”
This is the answer I know. I turn toward Lanie. “I’ve loved that woman like air since the day I saw her holding a camera on a football field.”
Lanie gives me a curt nod but no more. I’m not sure whether to be satisfied with that or worried.
A truck turns into the drive before Lanie can say more.
It comes up the gravel as if it belongs there, dust kicking low behind the tires.
The man who gets out is tall, broad through the shoulders, wearing work pants, boots, and a canvas jacket broken in at the elbows.
He has a roll of papers tucked under one arm and the kind of easy balance that makes the ground look steadier under him.
"Morning, Lanie," he calls. "Annie back yet?”
"Not yet," Lanie says.
He comes closer, then sees me. His eyes flick over my coat, my shoes, and the rental car. Not impressed. Not dismissive. Just noticing.
"I brought the preliminary numbers," he says, lifting the papers and then tapping them against his thigh. "County notes, what I could find on ownership, and a rough structural read from the road. Tell Annie it's not gospel until I get inside, but it'll give her somewhere to start."
"Crane House?" Lanie asks.
"Yes, ma'am."
I snap to attention.
Lanie sighs, as if introductions are a chore she resents having to do. "Jackson Boone, this is Reed Dillon. Reed, Jackson restores old houses people with good sense would leave alone."
Jackson holds out a hand. "Good to meet you."
His handshake is firm, calloused, and brief. Polite, nothing more.
"You too," I say.
He leaves the papers with Lanie and tips his chin toward the ridge. "I'll be at the Blankenship place if she needs me. Tell her not to go past that porch line by herself."
"I'll tell her."
Jackson heads for his truck. I watch him go, and with every step, I feel smaller. I see what Annie might see: steady hands, the kind of competence that doesn't need to be announced, a way of looking at people that doesn't flinch. He belongs here. I look like I wandered in from a museum tour.
The truck disappears down the road.
"How long has Annie known him?"
Lanie's head turns slowly.
I hear myself. Showing up uninvited, then grilling her aunt about the first man who knows Annie's name. Real smooth.
"Never mind," I say.
She shakes her head.
I look toward the bend in the drive. He’s irrelevant, I tell myself. I wish I believed it.
Annie comes back twenty minutes later. Her car turns in too fast, then slows when she sees mine. Through the windshield, I watch her face close. No dramatic flinch. No hand to the mouth. Just a tired, guarded stillness that makes me stand before I remember deciding to.
She gets out with a paper bag in one hand.
Her hair is down, still damp at the ends, and she's wearing jeans tucked into boots, the soles muddy.
No Stanhope polish. No careful version of herself made for my family.
She looks like she belongs to the house behind her, the ridge beyond it, and the morning itself.
She’s beautiful.
"Annie."
She looks at me, then at Lanie.
Lanie looks between the two of us. "I can go inside, or I can tell him to clear out. Your call."
Annie doesn't smile. "I'll talk to him."
"Yell if you change your mind." Lanie takes the bag from her and goes inside, leaving the door cracked.
I step down into the yard. "I just needed to see you.”
"Why?"
The question is so plain it knocks loose every rehearsed sentence in my head, but they spill out anyway.
"I understand more now. I know I didn't see things I should have seen.
I didn't know my mother had been saying things to you for years.
I didn't notice the way you changed your voice around my family.
Not enough. I didn't understand what Lexi's constant presence felt like.
I didn't see that there was no real place for your work in the house, not where anyone could see it. "
Annie crosses her arms, shutting herself off.
"I can change that," I say. "I can confront my mother. I can make sure Lexi is gone. I can change the house. Stanhope can be yours too. I can fix what I missed if you'll come home and let me." The last words come out too fast.
Annie waits until I run out of breath. "I'm not ready to come back."
"I know you're hurt."
"No, Reed." Her voice stays quiet. "That house feels like a place that was always going to push me out. It was just a question of when."
My fingers twitch at my side.
"Do you really think you can ban Lexi in a way that won't make Catherine resent me more and take it out on me the next time you're not in the room?
" she asks. "What happens if two more years pass and there's still no baby?
Do you think your mother gets kinder? Do you think the sideways comments stop because you give an order? "
"Annie."
"If you came here to collect me like a misplaced belonging, you still don't understand why I left."
The word collect hits its mark. "That's not what this is.”
“Then what is it, Reed?”
I look past her for half a second, toward Lanie's porch, the peeling paint, and the papers Jackson left on the rail. My mouth is dry. “What's Crane House?"
Something shutters behind her eyes. "Something I'm looking into."
"And Jackson?"
"He's a restoration carpenter helping me understand whether it can be saved."
I nod once. I should stop there, but I don't. "How long have you known him?"
Regret grabs the words before they're even out, but it's too late.
Annie stares at me, cold and unimpressed. "Just long enough for him to give me an estimate on an old Victorian house."
"I didn't mean anything by it."
"Don't worry," she says. "The chances of you walking into a room unprepared and seeing me kiss Jackson are pretty much zero."
The sting is immediate. My throat works. “Annie.”
"You arrived at my aunt's house uninvited after I told you I needed space. Within minutes, you're asking about the first man you see speaking to me."
"I know." I force the words out. "You're right. I know."
Embarrassment knocks me sideways. Jealousy grinds under my skin. I grab for the only thing that feels solid, which just makes it worse. "What did you mean last night when you said, 'If you only knew'?"
Annie's face changes.
"Lanie told me one thing Catherine said years ago," I say.
Her gaze cuts to the porch.
Through the screen door, Lanie says, "I don't apologize for it.”
Annie looks back at me. "What exactly do you want to know?"
"All of it." My voice comes out rougher than I expect. "What my mother said. What Lexi did. What I missed. Why you felt like you had to change yourself to survive my family. I want to know everything."
She looks at me for so long panic starts to crawl up my throat. "I just want to understand so I can fix?—"
"No."
I stop.
"I'll explain it," she says. "Once. I'll tell you exactly what the last several years looked like from where I was standing. But there's a condition."
"What?"
"You don't argue. You don't explain what Catherine probably meant.
You don't tell me what Lexi is really like or how she’s been around the family forever.
You don't defend yourself by saying you weren't in the room.
You don't tell me I should have come to you sooner and hand the blame back to me.
You don't interrupt every detail with a solution.
And you do not use the conversation to persuade me to come home. "
I open my mouth. She lifts one hand, and I close it.
"You asked what you didn't see," she says. "I'll tell you exactly once. But you have to shut up and listen."
For a second, I see how little I've really offered her: money, trips, plans, orders, rooms I can rearrange, people I can send away. This is the first thing she's asked for that doesn't cost any of that.
"Okay," I say.
Annie looks toward Lanie's house, then back at me, deciding where she's willing to open this part of our marriage. Then she turns and walks up the porch steps.
I trail her into the kitchen. Warm, the table scratched, the light buzzing, the fridge plastered with proof Annie belonged here long before I ever showed up. I keep my hands to myself. I keep quiet. For once, what's needed from me isn't fixing, defending, explaining, or promising.
It's to hear what happened while I was busy believing nothing was wrong.