Chapter 2
Bella
“What screws up most folks is the picture in their head of what life’s ‘supposed’ to be.”
~ Papa Duke
“To ring or not to ring, that is the question,” I whispered to myself as I ran my thumb along the back of the gold band of the diamond solitaire staring up at me from the ring finger of my left hand.
I knew the right thing to do, the honest thing to do would be to take it off. Wearing it would be like false advertisement. But, hey, if Red Bull could claim to “give you wings” I could wear a piece of jewelry that claimed I was married, right? The divorce papers were signed but wouldn’t be finalized for another four weeks. So technically…
The truth of it was, two months ago, I’d taken my ring off and planned on never wearing it again. But, life has a funny way of changing your plans. My current location was proof of that.
Lifting my head, my eyes scanned the crowded parking lot filled with trucks, mini vans, and SUVs, and even though I could see with my own eyes where I was…I still couldn’t believe I was here.
I had to admit that over the years I’d fantasized about coming back here, coming home, but I didn’t ever think I’d actually set foot in the city limits. And I certainly hadn’t imagined that I’d be here attending Colton’s little sister’s wedding.
Twelve years ago, on a freezing December day, I got on a bus headed to Seattle. On that two day bus ride I remember swearing to myself a thousand-plus times that I was never coming back to my hometown. Yet, here I was, wearing the ring I’d never planned on putting back on in the town I never planned on returning to.
Apparently, I was a really bad planner.
Because here I was. Diamond on my left hand. Sitting in my hybrid car. In the parking lot of the old Town Hall building. Stalling. And panicked.
Grabbing my phone, I went to recent calls and pressed the name at the top and as soon as it started ringing I muttered, “Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up.”
Deep breaths. I had to remember to take deep, even breaths. In the past couple of months I’d developed a super-fun new habit of hyperventilating. It wasn’t a cute look. Certainly not the image that I wanted to project when I saw Colton for the first time in over a decade. The last time I saw him I was sobbing because he broke my heart into a million pieces. Not exactly the bookend impressions I wanted to have.
I needed to show him that I was fine. Better than fine. Even though neither of those things were technically true. I was in survival-auto-pilot-fake-it-till-you-make-it mode. When things were spinning out of control I’d found the best way to handle them was to act like you were the one setting them in motion.
My knee bounced impatiently and my heel tapped on the floorboard as the ringing continued. “Just pick up,” I demanded.
When I’d received an envelope addressed to Miss Isabella Connor a couple of weeks ago, I’d known that it must be from someone from my past. My last name was Thomas now and had been for eight years. Once I discovered it was Cara McCord’s wedding invitation, my gut reaction had been to throw it away. To burn it. Not because I didn’t like Cara, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I loved Cara. I’d always thought of her as the sister I never had. My knee-jerk response had been because seeing her, coming here, would be too painful after everything that had happened and the pain that I would forever associate with this town.
Thankfully, because of my love for Cara, I hadn’t been able to toss it in the garbage or use it as kindling because it dawned on me that since things had taken a drastic turn in my life attending this wedding, or I guess now, reception, was exactly what I needed to do. I’d been at a loss of what I was going to do next since the day I was referring to as “Double D Day.” The day my husband informed me that he wanted a divorce because he was in love with a woman named Debbie. The invitation gave me clarity.
I needed to go home.
If it was just me, I wouldn’t have come back here. I’d rather live in my car than step foot in this town. But it wasn’t just me. So, whether I liked it or not, I was moving home, temporarily. My paternal grandpa, Papa Duke had passed away years ago and left me his farm. I’d been shocked at the time. I’d always gotten along with him. He was hilarious and had great one-liners, but I was his granddaughter and he had two sons that were still alive.
Other than hiring a property manager, I’d basically tried to put it out of my mind. If I’d done more I would’ve had to face the fact that he was really gone and not just at the nursing home he’d been in since I was fourteen. But now I was going to stay there and use it as a place to regroup. Even if being here made me want to throw up, which it did. I needed to save up some money, so I’d transferred my cosmetology license to Texas and was hoping for the best.
My stomach felt like a volcano that was about to erupt. There was one thing and one thing only that could calm the hurricane-force nerves raging inside me. One thing that could center me. One thing that could put everything into perspective.
Finally, big blue eyes framed by long blonde hair illuminated the screen and my world righted itself instantly. “Hey, Mama.”
Seeing my baby girl’s face. Not that she was really a baby anymore. Her birthday was coming up and she was about to turn twelve and all I could think about was that in one year she would be a teenager, dun dun duuuun. It was like I blinked and she grew up. It felt like just yesterday I was rocking her to sleep.
“Hey, ladybug.” I knew that that nickname was on borrowed time. I was preparing myself for its forced retirement once she hit high school. But I planned on getting as much mileage out of it as I could until then because no matter how old Sadie was, she would always be my ladybug. “Are you having fun there?”
“Yeah. Grandma let me help with dinner, she taught me how to make lasagna. And Grandpa showed me how to shoot a bow and arrow. I didn’t hit the bullseye, or the red circle around it, but I hit the blue circle twice.”
“That’s awesome! Did you remember to take your medicine?”
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes. “I always remember to take my medicine.”
“Not always.”
“One time!” She held up her finger. “I forgot one time when I was nine.”
She said nine like it was twenty years ago, not two.
“I know, just humor me.”
I tried not to hover and be overprotective. I didn’t want to make her feel any different than the other kids just because of her health issues. And not to toot my own horn but—toot toot—I had done a pretty good job. At least I had up until now. This was the first time I’d ever been away from her and I was a mess. For the next six weeks she’d be with her grandparents while I got things settled here and figured out our next move. Six weeks felt like an eternity to be away from her.
“I miss you.” I smiled and hoped she didn’t hear the crack in my voice.
“Mom.” Sadie rolled her eyes again. “You just left yesterday.”
“I know.” I replied unapologetically. “I’m your mom and I love you and miss you. Deal with it.”
She smiled, which in pre-teen terms translated to her telling me that she loved me, too. Or at least that’s what I told myself.
The screen bounced as she set the phone down so it was propped up on something and she dropped out of frame. When she came back into view I saw that she’d scooped up Anderson Pooper, one of my in-laws’—or I guess ex-in-laws’, I wasn’t sure how that worked after divorce—wiener dogs. They had another dachshund named Bark Wahlberg and a gorgeous calico cat named Sofia Purrgara.
I’d always gotten along with Owen’s parents. Even though Owen was Sadie’s step-father, Thea and Bernard were so kind and they always treated Sadie and me like we were their own.
Sadie gave Anderson kisses on the top of his head before asking, “How was the wedding?”
“I didn’t go.”
Sadie scrunched her face. I’d been seeing that expression more and more often the closer she got to her teen years. That and the eye rolling and sighing were now on full rotation in her reaction repertoire which I’d lovingly named, The Preteen Trifecta. “Why not?”
Because I am a big, fat chicken. “The timing didn’t work out.”
It wasn’t a total lie. If a person sits at the kitchen table and watches the minutes tick by until past the time the ceremony is happening, the timing doesn’t work out for attending.
“What about the dress!?” Sadie exclaimed in horror.
In a tween’s life, missing an opportunity to wear a pretty dress is a tragedy. Actually…I ran my hands down the soft material covering my torso, maybe it still was a tragedy in an adult’s life. But, I hadn’t completely lost my window.
As I admired the fit I wondered again if red was appropriate for a wedding, although technically I was only attending the reception. I wasn’t sure if that was a loophole or not. I also wondered if subconsciously I’d chosen it because it had always been Colton’s favorite color.
Whether it was or not, there was no time to change so…
“I’m wearing the dress.” I imitated her emphasis.
“You are?” She twisted her face like she’d just bit a sour lemon. The tween scrunch was back. “Why?”
“Because, I’m at the reception.”
Sort of. I was in my car sitting outside the reception.
“Wait…why are you talking to me if you’re at the reception?”
Again, because I’m a big, fat chicken. “Because I missed you.”
Cue eye roll.
After her eyes were back from their half circle journey from left to right, my sweet, loving daughter sighed in exasperation and the trifecta was complete. “Mom, go be with your friends. Call me tomorrow.”
“Okay, don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
“Goodbye, Mom,” she said dramatically.
“Bye, ladybug. I love you.”
“I love you too.” She held up Anderson Pooper and pretended it was him talking as she said in a deep voice, “Now go have fun!”
The call ended and I clicked over to my screensaver. It was, surprise, another picture of Sadie. In it she had a virtual crown of flowers on her head. It was a screenshot of a filter she’d used on Snapchat. She looked older than she was in it, which I hadn’t ever experienced with her before.
She was born two and a half months premature with several health problems including a congenital heart defect. She’d only weighed three pounds and for most of her life she’d been significantly smaller than other kids her age. But in this picture, because of the filter, she looked like she could easily be fourteen or fifteen. It gave me a glimpse of what was to come.
Sadie had always been pretty, but in the past year or so, she’d really matured. She was stunning. When she was a baby people used to stop me and tell me that she should be the Gerber baby. When she was a toddler, strangers would tell me she should be in pageants. Then, when she started school, the other parents and teachers would say she should be in commercials. Now the consensus of the general public was that she should be a model and that I should get a shotgun.
I had no plans of doing either of those things but I knew that boys were going to be lining up sooner rather than later and I had no idea how I was going to handle that. I tried to talk to her, to explain how one night could change your whole life and that even if you love someone, you have to be ready to deal with the consequences of your actions. But, like most kids her age, she thought she knew everything. I was just her mom, what did I know?
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the large, wooden double doors of the hall opening and my entire body froze. It wasn’t until I saw that it wasn’t Colton coming out of them that I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding.
It was one of the Turner triplets, but I couldn’t say which one. When I’d lived here before I had been one of the few people that could tell them apart, but after being gone so long, I had no idea.
A guy followed right behind her and if I had to guess, I would say that it was either Brady or Bentley Calhoun. Whichever brother it was, he was the spitting image of his father, Owen Calhoun.
I remember when I met my soon-to-be ex-husband and he’d told me his name was Owen, I had immediately felt safe because Owen Calhoun was such a pillar in the community. Of course I knew that sharing a name didn’t mean you had anything in common, but I’d been grasping at straws because the first time I’d met my ex was when Sadie was going in for her first open-heart surgery and he was her surgeon.
Whichever Turner and Calhoun combo it was, neither of them appeared to be happy. The two were engaged in an extremely heated discussion and I felt a little odd sitting in a darkened parking lot watching them, like I was spying or something. I may be a lot of things: single mom, unemployed, a soon-to-be divorcée, but I was not about to add creepy voyeur to the list.
This was it. The time had come to face my past. The last grain of sand had slipped through the hourglass.
I pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror one last time. Growing up, I’d never been one of those girls that loved makeup. But after marrying Owen, I’d found myself attending galas and fundraisers where all the women looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue. To try and keep up, I’d started doing YouTube tutorials and found out I had talent for it. That in turn had led to me enrolling in Cosmetology school.
I preferred doing other people’s makeup, but sometimes, when the occasion called for it, I would do my own. This occasion definitely called for it. Since this was Wishing Well and not the Met, I’d opted for simple basics. I’d given myself a smoky eye, several coats of mascara, was wearing lipstick a shade lighter than my dress, applied highlighter to accentuate my cheekbones and had even gone to the trouble of straightening my naturally wavy hair. None of those were a part of my daily beauty regimen that consisted of face lotion and ChapStick, but coming back here was a personal battle for me and I needed war paint. And armor, I thought as I touched my ring again.
I knew I was being ridiculous. I wasn’t in combat heading into enemy territory. So, why did I feel like I was going to die the second I laid eyes on Colton? He wasn’t Medusa, I wasn’t going to be turned to stone from a stare.
My fear of our reunion was why I was forcing myself to show up to the reception. Since I was going to be in Wishing Well for the foreseeable future, I knew that I would inevitably run into Colton. I couldn’t leave it to fate.
This was my chance to have some control.
There were a lot of things that had happened in my life that I hadn’t had any control over. I had no control over my dad’s death when I was fourteen. Or my mom drowning her sorrows in drugs and alcohol afterwards. Or being sent to live with an aunt I’d barely known at fifteen. Or the love of my life breaking my heart. Or my aunt developing dementia within months of my arrival. Or my child being born with health issues. Or my husband leaving me for a newer model.
But this was one thing I could control. I wasn’t sure if Colton knew that I was coming because the RSVP card only had a yes or no box and a line to write a number of guests attending. A lot of people that got married in Wishing Well didn’t bother with seating charts, opting instead for a buffet and open seating.
“You can do this,” I breathed to myself as I got out of my car. “You have to do this.”
Just put one foot in front of the other. I instructed myself as I stood beside my driver’s side door and stared at the walkway that led to what felt like my execution.
I managed to get some forward momentum, but my legs were shaking more and more with each step that I took. Each step that carried me closer to the moment that I’d been both dreading and anticipating for over a decade. The moment I wasn’t sure I’d ever experience.
The doors opened again and I went full statue. I didn’t breathe, twitch or blink until I saw that it wasn’t him. It was a pretty, young woman that I didn’t recognize. Which didn’t mean anything because I hadn’t been here in so many years, but it did feel a little odd.
Growing up here, everyone knew everyone. There wasn’t a stranger in town. If a new person moved in or visited they might as well have had a neon sign pointing at them that blinked outsider. They stuck out like a sore thumb.
Now I’m the outsider, I thought as I used the woman as an excuse to prolong the inevitable. She was on the phone with her back to me, and therefore unaware that she completely blocked my entrance. I didn’t want to be rude.
Sadly, my reprieve was short-lived. The call didn’t last long and as soon as she hung up she rushed back inside.
This time when the door opened I could hear the music playing and I saw the people inside dancing, talking, and laughing. I recognized the couple by the door as Sheriff Reed and his wife. They were talking to a man whose back was to me and the second my eyes fell on his broad shoulders, I gasped in recognition. The door shut just as he started walking away from them, revealing his profile.
Tears immediately sprang to my eyes. It was Colton.
My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at the wooden door. I’d seen him and survived. Sure, it had only been his back and the side of his jaw, but that was enough for me to know that it wasn’t going to kill me. And, I’d been able to get the waterworks out of the way in private.
Bella: 1 Colton: 0
Yeah, I was totally keeping score.
I tilted my head up, hoping to trap the moisture in my lower lid before it escaped down my cheek and ruined my make-up. Stars dotted the night’s dark backdrop and I grew hyperaware that this was my first night under the blanket of the Texas sky in over a decade. I inhaled and let the clean, fresh Texas air fill my lungs. I wasn’t breathing to calm down or stave off hyperventilation. I was doing it to remember this moment because it hit me, for better or worse, I was home.
This was the town I was born and raised in. The town that I lost my first tooth in. The town that I had my first beer in. The town that I had my first love in.
The bad memories shouldn’t erase the good, and I could use a little good in my life right now.
I straightened my shoulders, wiped beneath my eyes and sucked in my gut, for good measure. Then, riding my newly acquired wave of confidence, I put one foot in front of the other and joined the party.