Chapter 41
“It’s just practice?” Winnie asks from across the counter.
“Yes, just practice. The actual wedding is tomorrow.”
“Then we are going home?” She doesn’t meet my eyes, just keeps staring at the fish swimming in its bowl.
“We will stay for the weekend, but then yes, we will go home after.”
She sighs and rests her chin onto her folded arms.
Today was her last day at camp and she nearly clung to the door frame as we left.
She hugged her friends who didn’t really understand that she wasn’t coming back.
She wore her purple YMCA T-shirt and handed each friend little drawings she colored from her drawstring bag.
All tears were saved though for once we got in the car afterwards.
She was hysterical until about five minutes ago when I said we could have a popsicle at home before we headed over to Lauren’s for the rehearsal.
The popsicle is sitting in the bowl in front of her. Melted.
For nearly three weeks, we have done nothing but plan the wedding and prepare the nursery at Lauren’s house.
I avoid the parking lot out back at all costs now.
I try to keep Winnie inside on pizza nights rather than on the balcony because the few times we have seen Tanner out there, it nearly doubles me over in pain.
He doesn’t come by, Winnie asks why and I tell her he’s busy getting the flowers ready for the wedding and that we too, need to be ready for the wedding.
So many sleepless nights I have sat in his flannel, hovering my thumb over the send button or the call button.
But I never press either. I can’t bring myself to go unanswered again.
“Are we going back to Grampy and Nan’s house when we go home?” Winnie asks.
“For a little while. Maybe we can find a little house for ourselves. Maybe something with a yard?”
I expect this to get a bit of a smile out of her, or at least a touch of interest. She just shrugs.
“Why can’t we just stay?” Her bottom lip pops out.
I haven’t told her about Ethan wanting visitation, or that I accepted a secretary job with Paul’s company back in Illinois. I decided that we needed to just get through the wedding before I throw all of that at her too. Leaving will be difficult enough.
“Because this was just a vacation,” I tell her.
“But we will come back, right? And visit?”
“Of course. Aunt Laurey will still be here, and we will come back and see her and Uncle Rhett. And then eventually the baby.”
“And Tan?”
Pulling in my lips, I nod. “Of course. You will need to come back to check on the sheep and that cow.”
Suddenly the apartment feels fleeting and nostalgic.
I miss it despite my clothes still sitting in the dresser drawers and my shampoo still on the shower ledge.
Winnie’s shoes are by the door inside of mine, where she likes to keep them, and my heart is hung up on the walls with all the frames filled with the photos of the people I love.
I get Winnie and I both into our rehearsal dresses and meet everyone over at the cabin.
“There you guys are!” Lauren waves us over as we duck inside and out of the humid August air.
“Sorry. It was her last day at camp.” I grimace and Lauren wraps Winnie in a giant hug.
I see Tanner across the way, already staring. It feels wrong to not be under his arm or at his side. He sits at the kitchen table with his sister and I stay by Gwen and a couple of Lauren’s friends from the city, Cal and Elyse.
They’re talking about taking some time away from the city and figuring out what their next adventure might be.
Specifically, out of Chicago and to a beach.
Then Gwen adds how she fell in love with a boy named Andy at Lac Dunes Beach when she was younger.
She thinks the dunes could probably use a bookstore.
We run through the ceremony a few times and I try to keep my eyes off of Tanner. I avoid him almost as good as he’s avoiding me. Once Lauren feels good about everything, we all head toward the diner for the rehearsal dinner. It has been transformed with flowers and white table clothes and candles.
Winnie and I stand near the photo table Mayben and Gwen have set up when Tanner approaches. He looks devastating in his black slacks and button up.
“How are my sheep?” Winnie asks him, almost looking shy.
“Great. No baby yet.”
Winnie sighs. “When will the baby come?”
“This fall I think.”
Winnie looks up at me. “Can we come back when the baby sheep is born?”
Tanner gives me a soft questioning smile.
“Sure,” I tell her. “As long as Tanner doesn’t mind.”
“I’m the grandma,” she says. “He isn’t allowed to mind.”
“You can even name the baby,” Tanner tells her.
“I already know a name,” she says and doesn’t go into any other details.
Tanner opens his mouth to say something, but then Myranda, Lauren’s agent, claps her hands to gather us for dinner.
By the time we finish, the high school aged staff comes in and starts clearing the dishes.
“Oh, you’re Hannah,” one kid says and runs a hand through his mullet. “I’m Bailey. I help take care of the cow named after you.”
“Another Hamilton brother,” I confirm. “Nice to meet you.”
“Tanner was right.” He clears my empty glass.
“Right about what?”
He shrugs. “That you’re hot.”
“I did not say hot.” Tanner swoops in and gives the teenage boy a decent swat upside the head.
“Oh right. What did you say? The love of your life? The one that got away?” Bailey shrugs and walks away like a baby giraffe unable to move his legs in a cohesive line. The smirk on his pimpled face as he glances over his shoulder tells me he knew exactly what he was doing.
“Tanner—" I stand, but he’s already walking away.
“Hannah and Winnie, you’re staying with me at the cabin tonight, right?” Lauren catches up to me. I hadn’t even realized I had followed Tanner a few steps.
“Laur,” Rhett cuts in. “We already live together, what difference makes it if we see each other the morning of the wedding?”
“We are about to spend two weeks in a beach house. I think we will make up for lost time. You can stay at Tanner’s tonight.”
“Okay.” I put my hands over Winnie’s ears. “Children are listening.”
“Make up what?” she asks far too loudly.
“Add that to the grown-up conversation list, okay?”
“How long is that list getting?” Rhett asks, pulling Lauren into his side and kissing her cheek.
“Because of you two? Impressively long.”
“Make out?” Winnie asks, well, yells. Her voice is loud enough to compensate for the fact that my hands are still covering her ears. “Is that what they are going to do? Like you and Tanner make out?”
Everyone in the room freezes and wide eyes land on us. I almost sense a flash of a smile in Tanner’s eyes across the way, but it’s gone as quickly as it appears.
The one that got away. That’s what he’s telling his farm hand. He’s talking to the farm hand, but not to me.
“You,” I push her gently, “may go get in the car. We have to pack a bag to stay at Aunt Laurey’s tonight.”
She happily leads me out to the van and yanks at the handle until I unlock it and let her in.
“Hannah.” Tanner comes out just as I close Winnie’s door, and whatever words he was going to say falter on his lips.
“We were still friends,” I snap at him quietly, so Winnie doesn’t hear.
The sting of the loss of his friendships has been sitting deep in my gut.
I feel it all the time. When I’m not sleeping or when my eyes linger a little too long across the parking lot.
“In these rooms where we should have been at each other’s side, I’ve had to fight to get you to even speak to me.
” The sting is laced in my words. “I warned you. I told you this was why I couldn’t get close, because you would change your mind and I would lose you. ”
“You’re the one leaving, Hannah!” I don’t think I have ever heard his voice at this volume. Or at this level of desperation.
I can’t help but laugh. Not a funny laugh. There’s nothing funny about this.
“And look how hard you’re fighting me on that.” I shake my head. “I’m not pregnant by the way. So, you’re in the clear. You’re getting the clean break you wanted.”
I turn and slide into my car and steal one glance back at him. Beg for me, I think, I will it in my heart. Instead, he stands there, slack-jawed and watching me drive away.
When my period came, I shocked myself with how disappointed I was.
Things were already over with Tanner and there I was, crying because I wasn’t pregnant.
It felt like when I got that positive pregnancy test back in college.
But this time, that deep-gut disappointment was because it was negative.
And somehow it was so much more heartbreaking.
Lauren, Winnie and I are sitting on Lauren’s couch, each with a spoon in hand, eating straight out of a carton of ice cream.
“I am so nervous for tomorrow,” Lauren admits.
“Don’t be nervous,” Winnie says with her mouth full of ice cream. “At least you don’t have to walk and throw flowers. Grampy basically walks you all the way.”
Lauren’s eyes widen and then she bursts into laughter. “You’re absolutely right.”
“Does the baby like ice cream?” Winnie asks.
“I think so. Because the baby makes me want ice cream pretty much all the time now.”
“Then I must have a baby in my belly, because my belly makes me want ice cream too.”
A knock on the door makes us all freeze from our laughter.
It’s before midnight, only barely, but Lauren swings open the door, and Rhett is standing there.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” she snaps at him.
“I meant to give you this,” he says, handing her something small. “And I just wanted to see you one more time.”
He kisses her and Winnie sticks her tongue out quietly to me before Lauren finally pushes him away and waves him out the door.
“Bye Tanner!” she calls out to the truck I see through the front window.
“Why didn’t Tan come say hi?” Winnie asks and I bite my cheek.
“He couldn’t stay long,” I tell her. “Besides it’s your bath and bedtime. We have a very big day ahead of us tomorrow.”
She grumbles up the steps and grumbles when it’s time to get out of the bath. But there are no grumbles when she gets to crawl into Lauren’s bed.
“What did he give you?” I ask when I join Lauren back on the couch downstairs. It’s a moment before I realize she’s crying.
“What’s wrong?”
She hands me the folded handkerchief and the note within it.
L—
When my mom got engaged, she learned to cross stitch.
She put J.A. for Joanna Atwood. After, she realized she did the J backwards.
So, it was L.A. She thought it was funny and used it anyway on her wedding day.
Or maybe she knew I would find you and make you an Atwood one day.
I love you. Can’t wait to spend the rest of my life showing you how much.
—R
Then we are both crying on the couch because damn, does she finally deserve a love like this.
Lauren and I crawl into her bed later and Winnie happily snuggles between us, clinging to Tanner Sheep who barely survived the dry cycle.
I hear my phone buzz on the side table and I almost ignore it, thinking maybe it’s Mom asking another question about the wedding.
When I peek, I see it’s a text from Tanner.
Tanner: goodnight Han.
I stare at the screen. I check to see if he actually sent it or if it’s an old message.
But he did send it. He did send it and I can’t get myself to respond.
I wipe the tear away and try to pretend to be asleep while Winnie and Lauren giggle in the dark about Winnie doing a spin down the aisle tomorrow.
I try to pretend half of my heart isn’t miles away in a little white house on the top of a hill.