Page 11 of Left of Forever

“I can’t, I can’t!”she cried out, biting off a curse. I buried my nose in her honey-scented hair and swiped faster.

“Yes, you can. You need it. I need it. Take it, Wren.”

A horn blares as a car speeds around me, and I look down and realize I’m going 25 mph on the freeway. I’m wheezing and throbbing in my jeans, and I have to pull over again. I barely get myself in hand before I’m coming in rough spurts and gasping, sweat dripping down my temples.

I flip off the heater and quickly start to clean up my mess, awash in something equal parts shame and panic. I let out a mildly hysterical sound when I look at the clock and see that I’ve only been driving an hour, if that. It took me less than sixty minutes to open up whatever this Pandora’s box in my brain is and for memories and longing to come spiraling free.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve got a seventeen-hour drive.

Miles and miles of serpentine road, one long sunset and a whole damn sunrise, plus a lifetime’s worth of memories.

And I spend every second of it coming to accept that I’m still in love with my wife.

CHAPTER 5

WREN

Gray. Gray. Gray. Autumn in Spunes is nothing but wet and gray, and I love it. It’s like everything is brighter in contrast. I look forward to my days off in fall, since, aside from a few days in June for my birthday, I hardly get any when the summer tourist season rolls around. I dedicate these days to doing as little busywork as possible, and only doing anything at a very mild pace.

I wake up slowly, taking in the misty view out the window into my modest backyard, tendrils of fog stretching across the lawn and coiling around the windswept trees. I’d like to loiter in my blanket cloud, but the smell of coffee and the sound of Sam shuffling around the kitchen both beckon, so I throw on a thick robe and stuff the bottoms of my pajamas into warm socks before I pad out there to assemble us some breakfast. I find him already nose deep in a bowl of cereal and sigh.

“Was going to ask if you wanted an omelet?” I say.

“Yes, please,” he says brightly around a mouthful. “But”—heswallows a bite—“only if it’s quick. I told Indy I’d give her a ride.”

“You happy she’s back?” I ask, aiming for nonchalant.

He cuts me a knowing look. “We’re just friends.”

I chuckle and start cracking the eggs, dropping it for the time being. “You get your last application in?”

“Sure did.” He starts washing his bowl.

“Proud of you,” I tell him, trying to temper my earnestness so I don’t embarrass either of us this early in the morning.

“I know,” he says, bashfully studying his spoon.

“We should celebrate. Bet Auntie Sage could get Fisher to make us something fancy?” I slide an omelet onto a plate and pass it over his way, the table within arm’s reach here in my tiny kitchen.

“Yeah, I’d be into that,” he says. Abuthangs silently in the air. “I’m gonna go to Dad’s this weekend, though. I haven’t seen him in two weeks.”

“Really?” I’m a little shocked by this. Our custody arrangement has always been a free-ranging sort of thing with Sam, but even when he stays here more, he and Ellis make a point to see each other all the time, especially since Sam got his license.

“Internet’s better here, and I was doing all the apps.” He shrugs, polishing off his omelet with an enormous bite. “All right, gotta go. Love you.” He pecks my cheek, steals an apple streusel muffin from under the cloche on the counter, and then leaps to the door, my laughing “Love you” chasing at his heels.

I leisurely get myself ready for the rest of the day after he leaves, half my mind on the task at hand and the rest on my strange, developing pen pal situation. Whatever this is, I think it’s good for me. The last letter I wrote felt like pressing on a bruise or deeply stretching a muscle—that odd mix of pain andrelief. And even though it’s quite literally a two-dimensional relationship, I realize that it’s the thread of connection that tugs at some long-dormant hope in me.

Yes, I love my bakery and I know my mom will be officially retiring in the next few years and I’ll take it over as my own, and my heart’s so full for Sam and everything he’s bound to go off and do that I’m surprised I don’t swell up like that blueberry girl in the Wonka factory, but… I guess, for the first time in years, I feel like there’s something out there that I might still look forward to, just for myself.

I also have full—if unexplainable—faith that this guy will find out about the pair of horses for me. And thank god for it, too, because no amount of entertaining gossip from the neighborhood Facebook groups could make up for the gut-wrenching sadness to be found in the displaced animals page. Jesus, if Sage ever saw that page, Spunes would end up being overrun by wayward pets.

Thinking of my friend and her affinity for taking in a variety of creatures inspires a plan for my day, so I give up on trying to tame my wild hair, and tug a beanie down over it before I drive out to her quaint slice of Spunes.

Sage’s gargantuan Irish wolfhound lopes down from her porch when I pull onto her driveway twenty minutes later. I spot the tip of a gray tail twitching through the meadow to the right, and gather that her three-legged cat is off on the hunt.

I toss a tree branch posing as a stick for the dog, but just before I start toward the barn, a movement in one of the upstairs windows of the house catches my eye. When I look again, I think I can make out the top of a head.

Strange… it’s a weekday, so Sage is off teaching at the high school. I look across the meadow to the neighboring house thatFisher rents and see his truck still there, so maybe he’s in her house. But why would he try to hide from me? I know he had some reservations about small towns and busybodies and all that, but I figured the guy was cured since he willingly relocated.