RAIN PELTS THE WINDOW, a summer storm rolling in just as I got home. Sitting on the sofa, gazing out the window, I wonder if it’s a reflection of the weather outside or if I’m just imagining what my heart looks like.
Battered. Gloomy. Branches snapping off as they’re flung back and forth.
My coffee went cold a long time ago, but I still grip the mug in my hands. It’s like a life raft at this point. Something to root me in the present so I don’t get lost in the past.
Climbing into bed earlier, his scent was all over the sheets and pillows. It would’ve been smart to get right back out. I think logical thinking was lost somewhere around two am. Curling up in the sheets, my face buried in the pillow he used, I whipped back and forth from crying to being so angry my fist hit the mattress again and again. I laid there long enough to get out of it with his cologne on my shirt.
My feet are cold against the hardwood, but I can’t bring myself to find socks. If I can just stay in this half-muted state, I’ll be better off.
There are so many decisions to be made and I ignore them all. What to do about the upcoming lease? Do I take Graham’s offer after all? Do I bother talking to Walker or do I just skip town and forget this place ever existed at all?
Coffee sloshes in the mug as a score of emotions wave over me. The smell of Carlson’s bakery, the sweet smile of the librarian, making pies with the little old ladies, and the feel of Crank in the morning all roll by, taunting me that I wasn’t part of this place as I once thought.
My phone buzzes next to me and I look down, expecting it to be Walker for the eighteenth time since I woke up and turned it on. There were too many calls and texts last night to even process and I haven’t read any of the messages or listened to the voice messages either. I reach for it and see it’s Cam.
“Hey,” I croak, putting the coffee down.
“Are you all right? Mallory called me this morning and said Graham told her you called last night.”
“Yeah.” I think back on the phone call with my brothers and squeeze my eyes shut.
“He’s married, Sienna?”
“Yeah.”
“I . . . I don’t really know what to say,” she breathes.
“Me either.”
I grab an Arrows throw blanket and press it against my cheek. The softness of the fabric just reminds me of the way Walker’s shirts feel against my skin. I toss it back on the floor.
“I wish I were there with you,” Camilla says. “I hate being so far away when things like this happen. Do you want me to come? I will.”
“I know you will,” I tell her, expecting tears but they don’t come. “But I think I’m going to come home.”
She starts to say something, but stops before she gets it out.
“I don’t know what to do, Cam,” I say, my voice shaky. “Everything I thought was wrong. Everyone here must’ve been laughing at me. Heck, I’m laughing at myself. Do you know I was thinking maybe I could fit in here? Me,” I laugh in a self-deprecating kind of way. “I was drinking the Kool-Aid with a straw.”
“Sienna, stop it. There’s nothing wrong with hoping for something.”
“Yeah, well, I think this proves you wrong.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she scoffs. “Have you talked to him?”
“Why does everyone want me to talk to him?” I say, getting to my feet. I pace the room, trying to stop my toes from freezing. “For the first time in my life, Lincoln is the only one out of you that makes sense.”
“Oh, God. You’re to the point of listening to Linc?”
“I’m not kidding,” I fire back, annoyed at the laugh in her tone. “He’s the only one who thinks Walker needs junk-punched.”
“Well, junk punch him then. No one is stopping you.” She sighs, getting her thoughts together on the other end of the line. “People aren’t perfect. Sometimes they mess up. Sometimes they make a plan for things and then things happen that skew that and they don’t know what to do. You know, maybe he was going to tell you. Maybe there’s a reason he didn’t.”
I storm down the hallway and rifle through my closet until I come up with a pair of pink slippers. Shoving my feet in them, I sit on the edge of the bed. Looking over my shoulder, I see the messy sheets and moved alarm clock and remember Walker playfully asking me to dinner just a few days ago.
Choking down the bile that’s creeping up my throat, I switch the phone in between my hands. “I do think he was going to tell me.”
“You do?”
“He was going to go out of town,” I say slowly. “I wonder if it had something to do with her.”
“You’ll never know if you don’t ask.”
“But does it matter?” I ask. “Can I even look his family in the eye again and know that they let him play me and didn’t say a word?”
Her irritation sweeps through the line. “Think about this, okay? And it might not be apples-to-apples, so don’t start arguing that it’s not the same. I don’t know the facts. I’m just making a point.”
“Fine.”
“Let’s say Ford had gotten married when he was young, before he went into the Marines. Let’s say the Marines sent him overseas and she left him and he came home preoccupied or something and never got around to finding her. Then let’s say he met Ellie and brought her around and we all know he’s still married to mystery woman, all right? Do we tell Ellie?”
“No,” I say immediately. “It’s not our place.”
“Exactly. And we love Ellie. We don’t want to push her away. She’s great for Ford, right?”
Flopping back onto the bed, the stress of this whole thing too much to take, the lack of sleep and throbbing temples too much to work through, I close my eyes. “I need to go, Camilla.”
“Are you going to go find him?” she asks, a hint of hope in her voice.
“Nope,” I say, barely able to get the words by the dryness in my throat. “Going to sleep. Turning my phone off, so don’t panic when I don’t answer,” I yawn. “I’ll call you later.”
“Call me if you need anything at all.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Bye, Sienna.”
THE RAIN HAMMERS THE metal roof of Crank. It’s been a consistent downpour since I pulled up around five this morning. I drove around town and over to Merom and couldn’t find her. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t stand the house for another damn minute, so I came here. Peck showed up around six. On his day off. Fucker.
He’s kept busy all morning in the shop, tying up a few loose ends and getting shit organized. He’s not supposed to be here today and none of the stuff he’s doing is urgent. I want to send him home, but I’m afraid if I open my mouth, I’m gonna lash out, and I’m smart enough to recognize that and that Peck doesn’t deserve it. I just can’t find out how to kick my own ass.
Maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s the feeling of helplessness that’s shoved me into a hole. Whatever it is, Crank feels remarkably quiet.
I try to work on a few things, but I can’t focus on anything unless the phone rings. That’s the only thing that spurs me in to action. As I type in a part number, the ringer goes off and my hopes rise and then fall when I see it’s Blaire.
“Hey,” I say, bracing myself.
“Good morning. Imagine my surprise when my secretary brings me in signed divorce papers from you at seven this morning.”
“Why are you in the office on a Saturday morning?”
“When you have plans to take over the world, Walker, there are things to be done. Now, let’s get back to my original point. I’m assuming you saw Tabby.”
“She strolled into Crave last night,” I report, flipping an ink pen between two fingers. “Nice of her, huh?”
“I’m not hearing much in your voice that leads me to believe that went over well.”
“You’re talking to your brother,” I remind her, tossing the pen on the desk. “No need to pretend you ever felt neutral about Tabby.”
“You’re right. There’s never been a neutral bone in my body about that useless excuse for a woman. I loathe her. Seeing her signature on those papers this morning ultimately made my month.”
“So glad I could help ya out.”
“Do I get details? Because I’ve waited on this since you said, ‘I do.’”
Watching Peck push a broom across the floor of the shop, I roll my eyes. It feels like a fucking funeral in here today and I just want to snap everyone out of it and go back to the way it was. Peck’s stupid dancing. Sienna’s reorganizing shit. Tractors that piss me off and muffins on the counter.
“Well, in typical Tabby fashion,” I say, feeling my teeth grit, “she managed to do it at the absolute worst time.”
“She came back for a divorce. Let’s not get picky on timing.”
“She came back because someone told her I’ve been with another woman more than a night or two. I’m figuring someone was at the restaurant I took her to.”
“You did? You’ve been really seeing this girl? Why did no one tell me?”
“Lance probably couldn’t work it in between all the dating texts you sent him.”
She laughs, her chair squeaking in the background. “I always figured it would be Machlan who would need my legal defense first. I’m beginning to think it’s Lance.”
“It might be me if I don’t figure out how to stop wanting to smash something this morning.”
I pick up a stack of papers Sienna stuck on the corner and bounce them on the desk. My skin crawls with the need to move, to do, to fix this shit that I can’t sit still.
“I’m less interested in Tabby, more interested in the new woman.”
“Well, since Tabby ruined that last night, I’m pretty sure she’s the old woman now.”
“You didn’t tell her you were married?”
“Blaire . . .”
“You fucking idiot.”
The door chimes and I don’t even look up. “I gotta go. Someone came in.”
“Call me later. We have to discuss this.”
“Love ya.”
“Love you, Walker. Call me.”
I end the call and look up to see old man Dave standing in the lobby. His hair is dripping wet, his clothes soaked. I spring off the chair and rush around to him.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
He seems physically uninjured, yet sopping. But it becomes increasingly obvious that an injury is there. I just can’t see it.
Grabbing the chair, I work it around to the front. “I need to just get a chair for out here, huh?”
He tries to smile as he sits. “My wife passed this morning.”
“Oh, Dave.” I rest a hand on his shoulder, not sure what to say. “I’m so sorry.”
“She went peacefully. The nurses called really late last night and I headed up there to sit with her. I held her hand,” he says, his gaze settled on something in the distance, “told her stories. Reminded her of all the things we’d done in our lives and how much I loved her.”
I squeeze his frail shoulder, a loss for words.
“The rain started around five o’clock,” he says, his voice so hollow it’s painful for me to even hear. “I was in the middle of a story about a Thanksgiving turkey she cooked one year when she turned her head and looked at me. It was her again . . .” His voice breaks and he coughs into his hand, taking a minute to regain his composure. “Her eyes were blue and bright and she said, ‘Well, hello, David.’”
He bends over and cries, catching his tears in his hands. I feel so helpless. Rubbing his back, I try to figure out what to say. This is a devastation I don’t know, one I can’t imagine. I know the pain of losing my parents, but I can’t imagine spending my entire life with someone and not having her there. The emptiness of not having Sienna already kills me.
“She’s not struggling anymore,” he says, sitting up and looking at me through cloudy eyes. “I don’t know what I’ll do for breakfast now and don’t know why I’ll get out of bed. But I suppose this is a part of life and I’ll manage. At least I had her back for a few minutes before she passed.”
“If there’s anything I can do, please tell me.”
He pats my arm. “Thank you, Walker. I wanted to see if Sienna was around today.”
Biting back a lump in my throat, I shake my head. “She’s not.”
Despite his grief, even though he just lost his wife, Dave looks beyond the surface. “You two have a falling out?”
“That’s nothing you need to be worried about.”
“She reminds me of my wife. As kind as she is pretty. Wanting to fix everything,” he says, a small smile slipping across his lips. “Take it from me, do whatever it takes to keep her around.”
“I think I messed up pretty good on this one.”
“Well, we all do that from time to time. Nothing is bad enough it can’t be fixed.” He stands, swaying a little on his feet. “If you see Sienna, please tell her I said thank you for the breakfasts from Carlson’s this past week.”
“What?”
“She had something brought over to the nursing home every morning this week,” he admits, shaking his head. “It . . . It was appreciated.”
A clap of thunder hits outside and I run to the back and grab an old coat of my father’s. “Here,” I say to Dave, throwing it over his shoulders. “Let’s try to keep you warm.”
He starts in on a story about my dad and this jacket as I open the door and help him to his car. He gets settled in, the rain pelting my back. “If you’re lucky enough to get a shot at love, Walker, it’s worth whatever you have to do to keep it.”
I watch him pull away. Standing in the middle of the parking lot, getting drenched, I know he’s right. I just don’t know if it matters.