Gripping her cane with one hand, she held tightly to the handle of the grocery sack with the other as she listened to her sister chatter in her ear through her Bluetooth earpiece.

“Listen,” Iris said as soon as she sensed a break in the conversation, “we need to talk about Mom and Dad’s 40th wedding anniversary party.” She was making her way down the two steps to the front door of the mother-in-law apartment and then through to her kitchen. This was her sixth load of groceries into the house; everything was slower when she had to “waste” one hand holding on to a cane and thus could only carry groceries with the other hand. She dropped the bag on the counter and then trudged back toward the open door. 

She was letting cool air in by leaving the door propped open, but she couldn’t find it in herself to give a damn. Managing a cane, a bag of groceries, and the door knob? That was a recipe for disaster if she ever heard one. She’d just have to throw on a sweater, once she’d managed to get everything inside.

“Ugh,” Ivy groaned dramatically. “Iris, I do not want to go back to Long Valley.”

“I know, but this is Mom and Dad’s big four-oh. You have to come back home for it. I bet you Tiffany and Ezzy aren’t even here in the valley anymore.”

“You just moved back yourself. Are you sure?”

“No,” Iris admitted with a small laugh. “You’re right, I’m not sure. But I am sure that we can skip sending them an invitation, so for the week or so that you’re here, you can hide out, away from them. If I have to live in Mom and Dad’s mother-in-law apartment for the foreseeable future, you can at least come stay with me for a week. It’s only fair. I’ll let you sleep on the couch.”

Iris’d made it back to the car and was eyeing the last item dubiously. She’d known even when she’d bought it that it was going to be damn awful trying to get it into the house. But grocery stores didn’t sell cat food by the cupful.

She sat down on the tailgate of her car for a moment, catching her breath. She’d never realized it was such an athletic adventure just hauling in groceries.

“Hmph. Well, speaking of old news,” Ivy said in an obvious bid to change topics, “have you run into Declan yet?”

“Ugh. Yes…?”

“Why did that sound like a question instead of an answer?” Ivy asked, laughing. “Either you’ve run into him or you haven’t.”

“Well, we only spoke for a few moments, and then Stetson needed his help. He…he asked me to dance.” 

Iris hated that her voice broke just then. Hated it with a passion. It’d been a little over a month now. She shouldn’t be upset any longer over it. Crappy things happened to good people all the time. Her lot in life was just a bit crappier than most, was all.

“Oh.” Ivy just went quiet because really, what else was there to say?

But Iris couldn’t leave it alone. Finally, someone to talk to who wasn’t her mother, pushing her to “just get back out there.”

“Somehow, the gossip chain here in Long Valley failed to pass the word on to him that his ex-girlfriend is now practically a cripple, and sure as hell can’t dance. You know, this is the same gossip chain that had Mom knowing that I’d snuck out of the house before I’d barely got my foot over the lip of the bedroom window. I don’t think I sneezed in high school without someone somewhere telling someone else about it. And yet, the one time that I wanted the knowledge to pass on, the gossips of the world went mum.”

“Iris, you are not a cripple. You are beautiful and smart and amazing and it just so happens that you fall sideways unexpectedly. And run over things that are right in front of you.”

Iris laughed at that. Painfully true, in every sense of the word.

“But the doctor said you’ll get better over time,” Ivy plowed on. “You just need to give yourself some space and forgive yourself for not being the Sawyer High School basketball star anymore.”

“Yeah, my days of dribbling up and down the court are long gone.” It seemed like so long ago that she’d been able to dribble circles around her opponents, putting the ball up and taking the shot to win a game. It was a glorious, freeing, amazing feeling.

That she’d never, ever feel again.

“Well, be that as it may, you don’t want to go on a date with Declan Miller anyway. He’s the one who chose farming over you, for God’s sake. He’s an ass. Plus, you don’t want to be stuck in podunk Idaho for the rest of your life. As soon as you’re healed up, you should move down here with me. The weather is so much better in California, I promise. No snow, no horrific winds, and not a pine tree in sight.”

“I like pine trees!” Iris said with a laugh. She pushed off the bumper of the car and turned around, eyeballing the sack of cat food again. It was time to get the thing inside since it certainly wasn’t going to get there by itself. 

Well, technically, she could wait until her father got home and he could carry it in for her – she was rather sure that was the whole idea behind them forcibly moving her into the MIL apartment – but she was sick of everyone doing everything for her. She wanted to unload groceries all by herself – was that so much to ask?

“You like pine trees? Well, everyone is entitled to be wrong,” Ivy said, laughing, and Iris just rolled her eyes, even though her younger sister couldn’t see her. When her high school graduation had rolled around, Ivy’s bags had been packed. She walked across the stage, accepted her diploma, and kept on going. She didn’t even stay for the graduation party that night. She was leaving Sawyer, Idaho, and she was never going back. 

It was no surprise that she wouldn’t think a farmer was worth dating. Iris would’ve worried that Ivy’d had a personality transplant if she’d tried to argue otherwise.

“Whether or not I should date Declan,” Iris said, “I won’t date Declan. Mostly because I won’t be seeing him again.” It’d been five days since the wedding, and she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man. Just like she’d expected, someone had finally told him the truth.

Which she was just fine with. Happy about, even.

Very happy.

It would’ve been nice to finally get some answers, and according to her friends, it was a lack of those answers that were keeping her from moving on. But she’d lived this long without them; she didn’t need them before and she didn’t need them now.

She was about halfway back to the apartment when the bag started to slip out from under her arm. She swung her other arm around wildly, trying to catch it before it went tumbling to the ground, but they all went tumbling instead. She landed with a heavy thud on top of the bag, busting the top seam open and sending cat food everywhere.

“Are you okay?” Ivy yelled in her ear, obviously hearing the ruckus. Iris rolled off the bag and stared up at the brilliant blue sky. 

“Yeah, just fine,” she said with a shaky half-laugh. “Apparently, I am no longer friends with cat food bags.”

“What?” Ivy asked, confused.

“Never mind. Listen, I gotta go. We’ll talk later this week – we need to get some planning done on this party. It’ll be here before we know it.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Iris pushed herself to her feet, surveying the damage in front of her. Cat food had gone everywhere, and there was now a busted seam that she would need to be careful not to spill more food out of. 

But, in good news, the bag was now much lighter since half of it was on the ground.

There was a silver lining to everything, it turned out.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Love ya, sis. Talk to you later.” She pressed on the bluetooth ear piece to turn it off and then swung back towards the MIL apartment. She’d need to get a bucket or bowl to pick up the spilled cat food. Time to clean up yet another one of her messes.