Page 12 of Letting Go

This is the only lie I've told her so far. At the time, I was terrified. Terrified Travis wouldn't remember me, would care to remember me, would hate me. Only twelve when I fled, he'd missed me nearly half his life. But he gave me a great big bear hug, a kiss on the cheek, and ordered me a latte. He had grown into a man. I'd missed it all.

Laurel smiles. "Well it was fine, once we all stopped crying. Jeez. Poor Travis."

We step into the kitchen and I sigh, relieved Laurel did not mention Claire. I feel as though I am on shaky ground with all of them. A few weeks is not a long time to make up for years and years of neglect and Claire is a whole other story. With Claire, I'm not sure there is even ground to walk on. Claire hugged me on her birthday when she found me in the kitchen, installed by Finn.

The gauntlet formed by Travis, Devon, and Laurel might not be enough to protect me from myself.

Laurel smiles again. "Look at you. Look at your face. You overthink stuff. Lighten up."

I leave a very messy kitchen for my sister and Cory to clean up. He was busy doing "recipes" while Laurel and I prepped. I set out little bowls of cornmeal, salt, baking soda, flour, rice, barley, and whatever else and he went and mixed it all together with cups of water. This game started with my sibs when they were little. Three days ago, we had a guest come up and say it was a waste of food to let little children play like that, and I wanted to smack her. It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. I just smiled and closed the kitchen door.

Cory is happy. That's all that matters right now. I'm sure that wench has thrown out veggies she hasn't eaten and are like rotten-soup in her fridge. I take a last peek at mother and son working side by side at the sink, and then step off the porch.

It’s time to go buy wine and take a look at cuts of meat.

As I reach down to grab the handle of the Inn's cargo van, the heavy sound of footsteps comes rushing from behind, grating in the grit of gravel and sand. My heart leaps into the back of my throat again, my temple suddenly throbs and I whip around. I know I'm jumpy, but I can’t help it. It's just Bryce, standing there, the wind in his dark, wavy hair, and at the collar of that damn green sweater.

He's showered and smells of cut limes with some kind of musky undertone. I can't tell if the pounding in my heart is from being startled or from seeing him—either way, the throbbing is reverberating in other parts of my body, lower, in my core. He takes my breath away. He's headed toward one of the Colton Security cars, a black Lexus, but stops when he sees me.

"Going into Rockland?" He seems surprised.

"Yeah. Just Saxton's Bay. I'm getting tired of the Chardonnay, it's too sweet."

"So, the wine shop." He steps toward me as I settle into the cargo van. He seems conflicted about leaving and is wrestling with something.

I ask him, "Where are you off to?"

"Meeting a client at the Jetport. With Jackson," he says, and I feel a little let down. I can't help it and realize I want him to come with me to town.

Surprising.

"Right now? I thought that was this afternoon." I'm embarrassed I know his work schedule and hope he doesn’t notice.

"It is. Right now, I'm just heading south to Cushing to pick up some tile for Finn." He juts a thumb towards the front door. "He wants to redo the downstairs backsplash with tile."

I nod. Still wishing he was coming with me.

"You be careful," he says. The incident with Owen must have really set him off. "Be safe," he adds, and he kind of taps the door with his fingers and slams me in.

I slip the key into the ignition and turn. The van starts right up, and I feel like I'm betraying the VW Squareback parked out on Main Street. It's ancient, but with German precision, and in all the times I've driven it across country, through deserts and mountains, it has never failed me. Little Blue just keeps going. Baby powder blue, with some pits in the chrome, she's still pretty and long enough you could throw down a mattress and curl up. That's where I've slept more than a handful of nights. But the van is official, with a pretty faux pen and ink drawing of The Inn on each side. And this is a business trip.

Bryce follows me all the way to Route 1. There's where we part. I make a right to head north and he makes a left to turn south. Watching the black Lexus disappear in the rearview mirror leaves me a little lonely.

The Sippy Cellar is owned by a debonair middle-aged French man who is really into Chilean, Argentine, and California wines. On his own, he moved to Maine, turning his back on his homeland with glee. Whenever Enzo sees me, he retrieves his premiere tasting glasses. Now that Echo Bay Inn was open again, he understood we could be a big client. I like to think he brings the glasses out for me and saves the plastic cups behind the counter because of my magnanimous personality, but I think it's because he sees dollar signs. This morning he greets me with a, "You are here so early!"

Enzo is liberal with the pours, and I settled on four different half cases he charges as if they were two complete. One sparkling, two flat, semi-dry, and a dry. As Ben, his young, Adam's apple-enhanced floor manager helps me load the boxes into the car, I realize maybe I should have eaten breakfast.

If there's one thing Enzo knows better than wines, it is the threshold at which people will start parting with their money. He also enjoys conversation. With a flair for the dramatic, always walking up and down the aisles of his winery as if hurrying off to an important meeting, all he wants you to do is stop and indulge him with a conversation.

It's taken me a month to figure him out. First, I was afraid he was coming on to me, and then I realized that could not possibly be. But he does have a charming air about himself I'm not even sure he's aware of. He's tall, well built, with silver hair, and a kind face. He's standing there now in front of me, offering a beautiful shot of a Chardonnay that won't pair well with the stuffed haddock. I like my wines drier. It brings out the flavor of the fish, cleanses the palate, and allows the tongue to taste the creaminess of the cheese and chives.

I don't know when I came to love food so much. Maybe it was helping my mother in the kitchen.

I always felt like the idiot in the family, not smart enough, not strong enough, not curvy enough. I never had Claire's brain. She was always so driven, top of her class at 4.3 and high school valedictorian. I barely passed and I barely got into a state school, and I barely held my head above water in terms of my grade point average. Twice, I got a D, and once I failed and had to retake the class. If I had graduated, I would have walked with a shitty 2.3-grade point average. If that.

No grad school for me. Not like Claire, who I knew was destined to follow Dad into veterinary medicine. And not like Devon the Daredevil. She could do anything. I once had a dream of her freediving from a cliff, with little bat wings. She's probably done it—freediving is totally up her alley. Later, when I found out she'd left to become a smokejumper, it made total sense.

Laurel's cultivated an inner strength I can only hope to someday achieve. Her life in high school must have been horrible, and I wasn't there for her. I never helped her. I was gone by then. Her way of dealing with Mom and Dad's death was more typical. With her gorgeous, voluptuous body, she slept around, experimented with drugs, and ended up pregnant at eighteen.