Page 69 of Love Again

I go ahead and excuse myself and wander back up to the house. I have to go to the bathroom and splash some water on my face.

I walk up the little steps to the back porch, through the kitchen door, and out of the den to the guest bathroom with “WC” written in a little frame on the door. I shut it firmly behind me. I wash my face twice—thank God for fluffy towels—take a deep breath and open the door.

Claire, Chloe, and Laurel are standing there, staring at me. I start to move into the library, feeling like a mouse in a very bad maze.

“Is this an intervention?”

“No,” says Chloe. “You don’t talk about yourself, ever. I mean, I said more about what happened to me than you have, and you’ve been back much longer than I have. We told Claire that story and it’s crazy. You did this for, what, two years?”

I nod a yes.

“How many women do this?”

“Only a handful.”

“Jesus, Devon.” This is Claire. I can’t tell if she’s mad at me or what. After a moment, she suddenly sets her beer down on a coffee table and wraps her arms around me in a big hug. As she pulls away, she says, “Part of me wants to kill you for not telling us, and there’s another part of me that’s so grateful because I would have worried every single day about you. I worry now with the firefighting work you do, but that? That sounds so much more dangerous.”

“It is and it was. There are also hotshots, and I thought about joining them, but you know me and parachutes. It seemed like a good fit.”

“She was awesome,” says Luke, ducking his head in from the kitchen. He has the plastic bucket of trash in his hand and a cocked eyebrow, asking the obvious.

“Under the sink,” says Chloe.

“She had a nickname,” he says and grins.

“Don’t. Don’t you dare tell them. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

His smile broadens. “They called her Mighty Mouse because no one could believe she could pack a hundred and ten pounds on her back, drop in and be on her own for four days, and then walk back out.”

“Stop.”

“So, superhero,” he says, and then we all hear him bang out the back door.

Laurel grabs my forearm. “See that? He likes you. Don’t you want to be happy? He could be the one.”

The one. Laurel was always after the one, which is ironic because there was certainly more than one in high school. Even though, on the outside, she was always with many boys, it’s how she processed our parents’ deaths. Underneath it all, she was really secretly looking for the one. And she really believes in it too—true love.

That idea of “the one,” is what I believe in too. It’s what got me into this mess. It’s one of those things I can’t let go of, and my anger suddenly flares. In that moment of not thinking, of not keeping my cool, I lose control.

I should know better. Losing control is never a good thing.

“I am not dating Luke.” My tone changes. I’m dead serious.

My three sisters take a step back in unison.

“Okay.” Chloe’s probably terrified she’s going to sever some newly threaded bond between us. “Don’t get mad.”

“I am mad, but it’s okay. We’ll get through it.”

Claire sighs her parental sigh. She knows they’ve pushed me too hard. “Forget it. We love you. We’re just having fun.”

“Well, it’s not fun for me.”

Laurel tries one more time. “We get it. You’re not going to date him.”

“That’s right. I’m not going to date Luke because I’m married to him.”

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