CHAPTER ONE ~ ABBY ~ NOW
To-do list for today:
-Figure out what to wear to mystery dinner with Drew, Brodie, and Fern
-Scour job listings. Again.
-Stop bed rotting and go for a walk. It’s spring! You love spring, remember??
-Renew anxiety meds
-Avoid spiralling into an existential crisis
“Because who has time for that?” I mutter as I underline the last item on the list.
Tossing my pen aside, I glance around the room and wonder for the hundredth time how I got here.
Not literally here, in this magazine-worthy bedroom in a Victorian-era home in Kingston, Ontario.
No, here in the figurative sense: about to turn thirty-five, unemployed, and living in my best friend’s spare bedroom.
And single. Can’t forget that.
A familiar rat-a-tat-tat knock sounds at the door, and I call for Drew to come in. As she breezes into the room, I’m tempted to tuck my pathetic list out of view, but there’s no hiding anything from Drew MacKinlay.
I move my legs out of the way a second before she hops on the bed. “Have I told you lately how freaking happy I am to have you just down the hall again after all these years?” she asks as she sprawls out beside me. “It feels like we’ve gone back in time to our university days.”
“Except back then, you and your icicle feet ended up in bed with me half the time,” I say.
“Aww, I can get in bed with you tonight if you want,” she says, nuzzling my shoulder. “Give Brodie a break from my cold feet. I don’t have nightmares anymore, so I probably won’t even kick you.”
“I’m not sure I’m willing to bet on ‘probably’,” I say. “Let’s not forget the summer I couldn’t wear shorts because of the bruises on my legs.”
Drew laughs and shifts on the bed, the movement catching my list and crinkling it under her arm. “What’s this?”
With a groan, I flick a hand toward the paper, signalling for her to read it. I watch her face, arching an eyebrow when she lets out a quiet hum.
“Good call on that last one,” she says. “Who has time for an existential crisis these days?”
It’s good to know four years of living in different cities hasn’t changed the best friend telepathy we developed in our teens.
“To be fair, I have nothing but time these days.” I take the pad from her and flip it upside down on the bed. “I don’t know why I even bother making lists anymore. It’s not like they’ve done me any good over the last few years.”
“Oh, goodie, it’s time for a pity party.
We haven’t had one of those in a while.” Drew’s tone is even and her face is devoid of expression, but the gleam in her hazel eyes gives her away.
I know what she’s going to say next before she opens her mouth again.
“Should we go digging around in the past too? That always makes for an extra fun pity party. I’ll start: your parents abandoned you, the beautiful life you had with your grandmother was fleeting, you were in and out of foster homes until you turned eighteen... your turn.”
I flop facedown into my pillow, letting the plush material swallow the sound of my laughter.
If anyone else heard what Drew just said, they’d likely think she was heartless.
The fact is, when we met in foster care twenty years ago, our similar traumatic experiences bonded us for life.
Making light of it became a coping mechanism.
While it’s off limits to everyone else, we can joke about it the way I imagine many siblings from dysfunctional families do, as people who have been through different battles but the same war.
“You’re awful, you know that?” I say, my voice muffled by the pillow.
“I think you mean awfully amazing.”
A rush of love courses through me, making my eyes tingle despite the levity of her statement. Drew is awfully amazing; she’s my best friend, my soul sister, and right now, the person who’s saving me from descending into the aforementioned existential crisis.
Not wanting to be accused of getting mushy on top of feeling sorry for myself, I sit up and place a noisy kiss on her cheek. “Can’t argue with that.”
She gives me an affectionate smile and picks up the list once more. “You’re entitled to the occasional pity party, by the way. Your whole life basically fell apart in the span of six months.”
She’s not exaggerating. It started with my long-term relationship ending last autumn.
Rodger and I met through a mutual friend three years ago at a birthday party, and hit it off immediately.
We seemed like a perfect match, and we were happy together...
until we weren’t. Our undoing came down to one insurmountable issue: Rodger decided that after a lifetime of not wanting children, he did, in fact, want to be a parent.
The problem? Having kids is a hard no for me.
Normally, I’m all about compromise, but in the case of having a baby, there was no meeting halfway without one or both of us ending up miserable and resenting the other.
We tried to make things work for a while, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was keeping him from finding the right person and the life he truly wanted.
The break-up was very civil and amicable; there was no big battle, no cheating, and we didn’t even fall out of love with each other. We were just no longer compatible.
That didn’t stop my heart from breaking, though.
Six months later, I’m still haunted by the pain in Rodger’s eyes as he watched me pack my belongings—all of which fit into two suitcases, since living in foster homes for seven years taught me not to accumulate much—and left our condo.
A strange part of me wishes there’d been a blow-up of some sort, a reason to hate him that would have forced me to get over him more quickly.
The way things ended tugged at my childhood abandonment wounds—the ones that made me feel like I was never enough, never worth keeping.
I knew that wasn’t the truth, and it was far more complicated and nuanced than that, but it still hurt like hell.
That was the first in a series of events that led me back here, to a city that’s full of happy memories and most of my favourite people.
“It’s all going to work out,” Drew says, bringing me back to the present. She’s always had a knack for that. “I’m sure it’s hard to believe right now, but it will.” When my only response is a dubious grunt of acknowledgement, she adds, “What would Fern tell you in a moment like this?”
My lips twitch, and Drew’s do the same. She’s the first to break, and her lighthearted giggle is music to my ears.
In the seventeen years we’ve known Fern Anderson, she’s gone through many phases, with varied interests, jobs, and hobbies.
She’s always been into spirituality and the metaphysical, and often speaks in terms of manifestation and neuroscience.
Despite some occasional good-natured ribbing from us, Drew and I can admit we’ve learned a lot from Fern over the years.
We’ve often joked about getting shirts made that read, ‘WWFS?’—What Would Fern Say? ’
“Wait, I know!” Drew says suddenly, her voice vibrating with the tail end of her laughter. “Ready? ‘Sometimes things have to fall apart in order for something better to fall into place.’”
I eye her skeptically. “So basically, my life fell apart so I can rebuild it?”
“Yes! I mean, you were in love with Rodger, but in your heart, you knew you weren’t meant to be. You admitted you were worried about keeping him from his destiny or whatever.”
I sputter out a laugh, but she waves me off and continues. “You weren’t happy in Toronto. You’d grown to hate your job.” She ticks these off on her fingers as she speaks. “And then there was the worst thing of all: being three hours away from me.”
Once again, she’s not wrong. I had friends in Toronto, but my connections with other people always paled in comparison to the bond I have with Drew.
She’s also right about growing to dislike both the city and my job.
When I moved in with a coworker who was renting her spare bedroom, my attempt to apartment hunt was half-hearted at best. It was as if I instinctively knew my time in Toronto had run its course.
The city felt too big, too noisy, too much, especially after the breakup.
As for my job, until four years ago, I had a fulfilling career as an editor for a boutique publisher that specialized in women’s fiction, romance, and romantic suspense.
I loved how I got to be a vital part of helping authors’ dreams come true.
Unfortunately, with constant shifts in publishing and the economy, the owners ran into financial problems, and their solution was to allow a well-known publishing house to acquire them.
We went from producing quality novels, usually by lesser-known writers, to churning out books that were sure to be bestsellers.
And I went from believing my work mattered to feeling like a cog in a machine whose only goal was speed and output.
I spent years saying I was going to find a job somewhere else, but I never did.
By the time rumours started circulating about redundancies, I found myself hoping I would be one of the people asked to pack up their desk.
I got my wish a few weeks later, and made arrangements that night to return to Kingston to live with Drew and her husband.
“So you’re saying some cosmic force caused me to lose my boyfriend, my condo, and my job all so I’d end up back here?”
“Yes, Abigail, that is exactly what I’m saying,” Drew says in an airy tone that has me suppressing another laugh. “The universe knew you were unhappy, so it brought you to me, the same way it did all those years ago when we ended up in the same group home.”
Fern must be rubbing off on me more than I realized because I can’t help believing in what Drew just said. And despite her light tone and the gleam that’s returned to her eyes, I think she believes it too.
My phone lights up with a notification. Before I can reach for it, Drew scoops it up and examines the screen with a strange, unreadable expression.
“What?” I ask. “Who is it?”
“Hmm?” A trace of a wistful smile tugs at her lips. “Oh, it’s an email notification from one of the job-hunting sites you’re subscribed to. I was looking at your wallpaper, though. I love this picture.”
I shift closer so I can see the screen. I have my wallpaper set to rotate between about a dozen photos, mostly favourites of Drew and me, plus some of us with Brodie and Fern, or ‘The Crew’ as we’ve called ourselves since university.
After Rodger and I broke up, I replaced the photos of us with a few older favourites.
The image on screen now is one of me at the top of the Vennel Steps in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In a sea of grey—the surrounding buildings, with Edinburgh Castle in the background and steely clouds hanging heavy in the sky—my red jacket is the only pop of colour.
That’s what would likely draw most people’s eye, but what I see is a version of myself I’ve nearly forgotten existed: eyes bright, smile wide, posture relaxed.
As the photographer of our friend group, I’m most comfortable behind the camera, and often end up looking and feeling awkward in photos.
This one, though...despite being genuinely happy in that moment, I think my open expression and body language had as much to do with the man behind the camera as anything else.
“Want some help picking your outfit for tonight?” Drew asks, completely unaware of where my thoughts have strayed. At my absent nod, she hops off the bed and crosses the room to my closet.
I half-listen as she goes through my meagre wardrobe, talking mostly to herself as she proposes potential outfits. My eyes are glued to my phone, and my mind is travelling back to when the photo was taken.
I’ve never admitted it out loud and I rarely allow myself to acknowledge it privately, but the four weeks I spent in Scotland were the happiest I’ve ever been.
I’ve spent the last fourteen years chasing that feeling.
After a lifetime of living with a heavy weight pressing on my chest, I finally took my first-ever deep breath when we arrived in Edinburgh.
The notions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ were only ever something I’d experienced with my grandmother and then Drew, but I felt at home in Edinburgh. I felt like I belonged there.
And then I went and fucked it all up.