Three weeks later

My heart races. My vision is blurry. My head feels unsteady on my shoulders.

Do I have a brain tumor? Am I experiencing a heart attack? Am I dying? Who will watch Hayden if I die?

Within a few seconds, my breathing stabilizes and I sit up and place my hand on Hayden’s back.

One, two, three. I silently count his breaths until I hit ten, and then take a deep breath of my own. Between Hayden’s hospitalization, my fight with Rachel, my fight with Patrick, preparing for my presentation which is in just a few short hours, and Coen moving, I’m struggling. I don’t know how to keep my head above water, so rather than think of all of them and working my way through each, I’ve been trying to avoid everything and focus my attention on the one thing I know how to do well—work.

I haven’t been sleeping well since I became a mother, but the past month has been exceptionally brutal, thus everyone has been receiving emails from me at all hours of the night, including Coen.

Coen has kept his promise. We’re both trying our hardest to make things work, and in some ways, life feels more familiar with his frequent absences. It’s back to Hayden and me, but now we’re missing both Rachel and him and we sometimes find ourselves struggling to fill those spots we shaped for them.

A week after Coen told me about the position opening, the three of us went to Virginia and spent the night in a small motel in the town of Haven Point. The woman at the even smaller diner that was beside the hotel served us dinner and then breakfast the next morning, and when she remembered our names, something felt uniquely right about the place. We went inside the local grocery store, and laughed when we learned there were only two restaurants for twenty miles and then laughed harder when we had to stop and listen to several songs on the radio when we came across cows in the middle of the road on the outskirts of the town which sprawled much farther than we had initially realized.

The town was having a farmers market that Hayden groaned about us stopping at until he got out and saw it was in the center of the town in a large grassy area that butted up to a field with a playground that was filled with kids of all ages beside it.

We ate locally grown fruit, homemade cookies, and fried pickles for lunch and Coen bought me a bouquet of flowers that are currently being dried in my bedroom.

Another week passed and Coen spent hours showing me houses on his phone that all had yards the size of our current neighborhood. Some had large gardens, others woods, some were near a river or lake, and all of them promised to be far away from all of my headaches. Last weekend, he put a sign up to rent his house because the new station said they needed him to come. I tried to remind myself that I would be seeing him in less than thirty-six hours, but I felt restlessness and a sense of unease that grew with each passing hour.

He came home and confirmed what we both had feared, that he was going to have to be there a lot more frequently until the station became more stabilized and smooth. What was supposed to be him coming back to stay for four days at a time turned into him coming for two nights and then leaving again.

My alarm will be going off in an hour, but now that I’m awake my presentation looms over me. I look to Hayden and think of all the times I used to sneak out of bed when he was younger, from the stages where I removed every pillow from the bed, to when he was older and I pressed them to his sides so he wouldn’t feel my absence, to when I propped them on the edges so he wouldn’t roll off. I don’t know how nine years have passed. How I’ve been a mother for so many years when I am just now beginning to recognize myself and my past.

I kiss Hayden’s forehead and slide out of bed without moving a single pillow, and head to my bathroom to shower, my phone vibrating in my hand.

I don’t know if it’s strange that neither of us asks the common pleasantries like how are you? How did you sleep? How are you feeling? But we don’t. When we call, the strands to those questions are loosened and pulled one at a time as we explore our days together, and ask questions that are much more specific. It’s one of the things I like best about him because I don’t have to put on a good face or try to be positive while fearing being honest.

I sigh on his behalf, knowing this has been a far bigger undertaking than he had known. I think he’s relishing in it in many ways. The chief has already made it clear that he wants to retire in the next five years, and wants to see what Coen can do to transform the station into his own. The possibility of making chief before he hits thirty-five would be huge, and open nearly any door that presents itself. I can’t tell him that I hate how much he’s gone. That I feel physically cold because of his absence. That I think of him all day and night, fearing he might meet someone else.

I read the message twice before I dash down the stairs and into my living room to find Coen standing on the other side of the glass slider. Lifting the dowel and unlocking the catch, I throw my arms around him.

“I thought you had to work today?” My voice is muffled by his shoulder as he holds me close.

“I do,” he says.

“What are you doing here?”

His hands loosen so he can pull away enough to look at me, confusion knitting his brows. “Because this is a really big day that you’ve worked tirelessly for, and I want to be here for you.”

“You said you had to work last night.”

He shrugs and my eyes narrow.

“Does that mean you didn’t work last night?”

“I worked things out.”

My spine tingles with memories, of vague wordings that provided little answer and lots of distraction. “So you were working or you weren’t?”

“Why does it matter? I just want to see you for an hour before I have to drive back.”

“Back to work?”

“Yes!” His brown eyes are stretched with annoyance, his tone exasperated.

“I’m not in the mood to fool around,” I tell him when his hand slides lower on my waist.

He doesn’t move his hand, but nods. “Do you want to rehearse your pitch with me?”

I shake my head. “No, I just need to get ready and make sure all of Hayden’s things are set for school.”

Coen holds up a bag I hadn’t noticed before. “Well let’s eat something first.”

“I’m not that hungry.”

Coen moves his free hand from my waist to my jaw, lifting my chin so our eyes meet. “What’s wrong? What did I say? What did I do?” His tone is gentle and soft, one that has managed to unlock many secrets I’ve hidden even from myself.

I shake my head more brusquely. “Nothing. I’m just exhausted and nervous.”

Coen stares at me for several seconds, debating my sincerity. I don’t know if he realizes it’s a lost cause this morning or finds whatever he was hoping to, but he leans forward and kisses me, then lets me go.

“I learned something yesterday,” Coen says, walking toward my kitchen and setting down the bag. He proceeds to fill my coffee pot with water and takes the steps to make a fresh batch.

“What did you learn?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything more.

Coen grabs two mugs and sets them on the counter. “You know how you were telling me your blueberry bushes haven’t produced any fruit? Well, I learned you have to have both a male and female blueberry bush.”

I try to hide my scowl as I look at him, wondering why he would mention this. Since he’s moved, we spend most of our time making out or discussing which houses he’s been looking at and what it would require for Hayden and me to go.

“I was going to ask a bunch of really inappropriate questions about how plants have sex, but the guy was a diehard gardener and didn’t seem very amused.”

Him talking about my garden seems like a subtle hint for me to stay here. Why else would he be talking about my yard?

“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I know you drove a really long way to come see me, but I just need to focus and get things together for work.”

“You want me to leave?” He doesn’t sound shocked, not even hurt, almost expectant. It makes that niggling feeling in my chest grow wider and begin eating the side of trust that grows beside it.

“Hayden and I will be up this weekend like we planned.”

Coen looks at me for too long with zero emotion, and I wonder if he wants me to rescind my words and would rather us not come. “We can work out the details later this week,” he says.

I nod, and my heart beats violently within my chest. I am so torn between wanting him to leave and needing him to stay, that tears fill my eyes and I have to look away before they have the chance to betray me.

“Well … let me know how things go. I know you’re going to kick ass at your presentation, but fill me in on the details when you get some time.”

I clear my throat to get rid of the lump that’s forming. “I will.” My empty promise doesn’t make him turn around.

Coen heads to my front door and I follow him out to his truck where he turns and takes a deep breath.

“I feel like I should tell you it’s just a job, and if this account doesn’t happen that it’s okay, but I know words like that don’t make people like us feel better.”

He’s right. They don’t make me feel better and never have.

“Just know that regardless of what happens, I’m here for you and we’re going to celebrate all the hard work you’ve put in.”

His assurance makes my eyes cloud over again, but I squeeze them shut and kiss him so I don’t have to say anything. My lips are closed, making the kiss short and bordering on polite rather than romantic.

Coen gets into his truck and waves at me once before disappearing.

While showering, I convince myself it’s best that he left, and again while I dress, and while I pack up my things, and while I drink my coffee while Hayden eats his cereal, and while I drive Hayden to school, and then I don’t have to try so hard because the moment I step into my office building an entirely new set of nerves swarms over me as I wait to lead my presentation.

Fresh pastries from a local bakery have been brought in along with cookies and fruits, and hot coffee and tea is set up beside them. Each seat at the large conference table has a notepad with our company’s name and logo on it along with a matching pen. Some elect to do lots of special effects and graphics or to decorate the room further when making a pitch to a client, but I prefer to keep it minimal so as to prevent distractions.

I run through the slides of my presentation one final time, ensuring they’re paced correctly and that everything is where I need it to be, then head to the front lobby and wait for Weile’s corporate team to arrive.

As soon as I see the first black SUV pull into our small parking lot, my heart quickens. They always pull up in black SUVs, as though they’re a part of their ensemble.

I exchange firm handshakes, full smiles, and pleasantries with each of them along with Mr. Hakes, and then we lead them to the conference room to begin the biggest moment of my career.

While charts, graphs, and the numbers portion of my presentation are what I generally spend the most time on creating, they strangely aren’t what I show the most during a presentation. I focus on the hook, remind them of their return on the investment, repeat the main figures I know are going to be the most persuasive, and then I show them what it will look like. How customers will react. How successful they will be. How we will continue to build them and their projections for the next year, three years, five, ten and more. By the end, I can see it in most of their faces. They can already see it in motion, like my plan and design has already been established and they’re waiting to reap the benefits and learn more of my ideas. And when they look to each other and smile when I ask if they have any questions, my heart begins doing cartwheels.

I distribute another copy of the schedule to each of them, reminding them of how quickly things can go into motion once the contracts are signed, and then my part in the presentation is over, and Mr. Hakes and Mr. Le, our COO, complete their portion of the close while I head back to my office.

No one pops out of their offices to find out how things went or hear about the presentation, but I pretend that doesn’t bother me.

There’s a large bouquet of multi-colored roses sitting on my desk when I arrive, and on the card is a note that reads:

Grabbing my phone, I enter a quick text:

I smile, my chest feeling lighter.

I sit back in my chair and breathe as I make plans for Hayden and me to spend the night doing nothing but vegging out and relaxing, and swearing I won’t check my emails once tonight.

Twenty minutes pass before Mr. Hakes enters my office, rubbing his palms together, his eyes bright. “That was quite the presentation. You should be celebrating.”

I smile and a small laugh follows. “I plan to tonight.”

He nods. “You should. They loved you.”

“Did they indicate when they’ll sign?”

“Already done.”

I lean forward, my eyes stretched with surprise. “You’re kidding?”

Mr. Hakes’ smile grows and he shakes his head. “They said you knew exactly what they didn’t know they wanted.”

I laugh again, this time louder. “That’s hilarious.”

He smiles and steps into my office, taking a seat in one of the two chairs that sits across from my desk.

“How are you doing, Ella?” he asks.

Flustered. Exhausted. Confused.

“I’ve been great. How have you been?”

His gaze drops to his hands. “You’ve always been a work horse. Always striving to be the best, even working to outdo yourself.” Mr. Hakes’ eyes are shining with pride, but I can see the reservation of something else there as well, making my palms sweat with nerves. “Ella, I want you to take some time off.”

I take a deep breath and try to remain calm, though I know my widened eyes are betraying me. “I don’t understand.”

“Ella, when I was your age, my third child was born, and I wasn’t there to see it happen. In fact, of my four children, can you guess how many of their births I was present for?”

My defensiveness builds with the question. Is he insinuating I’m not there for Hayden? That I’m not a good mother?

“None,” Mr. Hakes continues. “I missed each of their births, their birthdays, tucking them into bed, chasing out the monsters—I missed a lot. Too much. And while the extra work got me here, I can’t help but wonder what not missing it would have done. The richness of the memories I’d have instead of the few.

“Now, I know you’re a good mom, Ella. That’s not what I came in here to say. You always put your son first, but you’ve put yourself last in the process.” He raises a hand and points to me. “You’re going to crack or burn out, and I don’t know which one is going to come first. If you want to continue in this industry, you’re going to have to put in extra hours, there’s no getting around that. This will never be a forty-hour-a-week job, regardless of which firm you work for, but you have to stop checking your emails in the middle of the night and devoting entire weekends to working. And,” he leans forward on his seat, “you need to be factoring time in for yourself.”

We stare at one another, my fears erupting with emotions that are betraying me with the yearning to be acknowledged further.

“Your job isn’t going anywhere, Ella. I’m not putting you on probation or asking you to take some time to consider if this is the right career for you. The Weile account is yours, though I’m going to have Jordan be your backup while you’re out for the next week in case they have any questions. I highly doubt they will, considering they now likely think my entire staff works on their account since you’ve managed to expedite each process.”

“All week?”

“Starting now,” he says. “Consider it a sabbatical. You’ve been with me for three years now as a full-time employee and three more before when you interned for me. I think you’ve earned it. And I want you to leave your work here.” The friendliness that showed in his long face even when he told me of his previous regrets vanishes, aging him. “This is your time, Ella. Focus on that as much as you do your work.”

My throat is too swollen with emotions to reply so I simply nod in response.

With a tight-lipped smile, Mr. Hakes nods and then disappears.

I quickly swipe a renegade tear away and then slump down in my chair, feeling far less like an adult, let alone a successful one. Having my personal failures be pointed out to me by my boss of all people seems to capitalize how big of a loner I am. I have no idea what I’m going to do for an entire week, especially with Hayden being in school and Coen living hours away.

While Mr. Hakes has instructed me to leave my work here, I still pack up my laptop and several files because I know I won’t be able to fully unplug. It will make me go far crazier to do so.

I feel eyes on me as I make my way to the front of the office, and I wonder if they think I’ve been fired or rewarded.

My stomach grumbles the reminder I’m running low on groceries, and so before going home to change into my sweats, I head to the grocery store to stock up.

I’m dropping apples into a bag when someone calls my name. The act is so uncommon I nearly drop the produce before turning to see Tony coming toward me pushing a shopping cart.

“Hey, how’s Hayden?” he asks.

I never see Tony and though I felt we had a good relationship when he and Rachel were married, talking to him now feels extraordinarily awkward. “He’s well. It took a while for him to fully recover, but he’s back to himself now, thankfully.”

Tony smiles. “He’s such a good kid. I’m really sorry you experienced that. I’m sure it was traumatic.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

He shakes his head. “You’re a better person than I am. I don’t know how you’re so forgiving.”

“It takes too much energy to hate people.” I’m lying because I wish I could hate plenty of people.

“Rachel should be lucky you’re her friend. I could never get over it. I just felt like she cheated on both of us.”

“Tony, I know she got crazy and was investing a ton of time into the store, and that had to have been so hard, but I really don’t think she was trying to hurt you.”

“You never want to believe he does anything bad, do you?”

My brows furrow. “What?”

“Patrick,” he says. “You’ve always held out hope that he’s not as big of an asshole as he seems, but he is.”

“How does this involve Patrick?”

Tony’s eyes grow wide. “Ella…” he says, staring at me.

I wait, my head inclined as though I might miss what he says.

“Never mind.”

I grab his cart before he can move it away. “What do you mean never mind? What are you talking about? What does Patrick have anything to do with Rachel?” I can’t think of a single time I’ve used their names together in a sentence and everything about it sounds so wrong.

“You should ask her.”

“Well, I might if she were talking to me, but because she hates me now, that really isn’t an option.”

“Ella.” Tony’s voice is hushed as he leans closer to me. “I don’t want to be the one who tells you this.”

“Do you think anyone else in this town is going to?” My own voice is too loud, making the few around us turn to look.

Tony smiles politely, waiting for our audience to move on, then turns to me. “She told me you knew, but that you were sensitive about it all and said we shouldn’t bring it up.”

“Oh my God, Tony. I’m trying not to scream and shake you, but you’re killing me. Tell me what happened?” My skin feels uncomfortably hot, and my clothes too tight and restrictive.

“Rachel had an affair with Patrick. I thought it was over before we got married, but it wasn’t. I found them last year…” Anger flashes in his eyes. “In our house.”

I rip through every memory where the two were present, trying to recall a single hint that would have told me the two were in any way connected.

She mocked him.

He ignored her.

They avoided each other.

They hate each other.

She calls him the devil.

“Ella.” Tony places his hand on my arm. “I thought you knew. She swore you did.”

I shake my head slowly, wondering how much of what she has said to me over the years has been a lie. How much of what she did was a lie.

“Ella,” he says my name again, but I’ve already turned my back and am headed out of the store, my empty fridge forgotten.

I get in my car and drive directly to Rachel’s store, hoping she’s at the new location because I’m not sure I can hold this in long enough to drive back to the old one. I slam my car door shut when I see her car, and still wearing a pair of heels and a dress, I march across the parking lot and into the store, not seeing the racks or customers or new details or anything else in my path as I approach where she’s folding jeans.

“You hypocrite!” I cry.

Rachel turns to me and her blue eyes are wide with apprehension.

“You slept with Patrick!” My face screws up with disgust as flashes of my history with him are replaced with her face and body rather than mine.

Rachel looks around, a fake laugh breaking through her lips as she tries to usher me toward the back break room.

I shake my head and stop moving. “I moved here because I thought I loved him. Because I had a baby with him, and you befriended me. You said you wanted to help me. You told me I could trust you!” More sentences that begin with “you” and end with lies are lining up and waiting for me to throw them back in her face. “And you kept sleeping with him? You knew he’d had an affair and that he was married, and how much I struggled to get over him, and you still continued to sleep with him even after you got married!”

Rachel tries to speak, but I don’t let her. I don’t want to hear what kind of excuses she has to offer.

“Do you understand how many people you hurt? From Lindsay, to Tony, to me, to Hayden, and then you want to hate me because I fell for a guy. A really good guy who actually liked me, and you couldn’t get over yourself enough to be happy for me?”

“I didn’t even know you!” she screams, surprising me. “When I met Patrick, I had no idea who you were. Then you came to town with this sad puppy-dog look and this little baby and all these big ideas, and I hated you. I hated you so much I thought I could make your life miserable and then you’d leave. And the more time I spent with you, the more I liked you. I hated you, but I cared about you. Do you understand how difficult that was for me? I didn’t want to hurt you, I just wanted you to stop liking him, to hate him so he would stop caring about you.”

Through tears I see that Rachel’s eyes are red and spilling tears as well. “You’re the one?” I whisper. “You’re who started all the rumors?”

“I figured he’d hate you. That he’d forget all about you or get the town to chase you out. I loved him and I thought he loved me.”

Every cruel word that I’ve heard whispered behind my back originated from the person I’ve trusted the most. The one I’ve cried to over the whispers and lies that she spread.

“I loved him,” she says again.

“So why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I couldn’t. You loved him too, and I’m pretty sure he’s always loved you, and I was so jealous.”

“He didn’t love me, Rachel. He’s never loved me!”

She shakes her head. “He’s always loved you. Why do you think no one dates you? He’s made it so no one in this town goes near you.”

“That’s not love! That’s control! How can you not see that?”

She’s crying harder, her breaths now gasps, and nine years of friendship have me wanting to comfort her and tell her we can get past this and everything will be okay, understanding how hard it is to love someone even when you don’t want to. But my arms won’t rise and my feet won’t move. The rumors she spread are being whispered in my ear louder and faster, building a resentment that is too large to overcome, at least for now.

I turn on my heel and shove the door open hard enough to get out some of my anger, and stop when I nearly run into Patrick and Coen.