Page 26 of Return To You

I squeeze her hand back. “He is spectacular, and he doesn’t care about me. You see? Nothing new. It’s like it always was.”

She pulls me against her, but our eyes stay glued to the screen where commercials are now running. “Oh, honey, I don’t believe for one second that he doesn’t care about you.”

I close my eyes to try and keep it all in, but tears spill over. I brush them off with the back of my hand. Mom doesn’t notice, or if she does, she stays silent as the TV cuts back to the now happy couple skating in Central Park.

“Where’d you go, honey?” Mom brings me back to the present.

“Thinking about my lease.”

She sees right through my lie. “You used to be an open book. Talk to me.”

“I still am, Mom.”

She plays with the ties of her hoodie. “When you came back from Texas…” she starts, then takes a shaky breath. “I thought I was going to lose you. I thought you might die of heartbreak.”

I snuggle against her. “Oh, Mom, don’t,” I whisper. “Please.” I don’t want to go back there. To revisit those days.

“But it took you weeks to tell me how you felt. It took you weeks to open up again. You weren’t talking to me about it, and I didn’t know how to help you. Please don’t do this again. Talk to me.”

I peck her cheek. I’m going to have to work on suppressing the flow of memories that surged when I saw Ethan again. But that’s a normal reaction. And not one I need to worry Mom about.

“It was… a surprise to see him," I say. "I’m not gonna lie. But it was so long ago, Mom. We were kids. I’m a different person now, and so is he. We’ve each been through a lot. We came out on the other side of it totally changed. We’ve got nothing in common now.”

Only memories. I have mine, and I cherish them. I don’t know what his are like. It’s irrelevant. As far as I know, none of his memories involve me.

I was always a child to him, and when I wasn’t anymore?

I was a mistake.

That’s what he’d said. His final words to me. “This was a mistake.”

seven

Ethan

Imanage to stop asking questions about Grace. Mainly because it turns out, Mom and Dad have become quite social since I last lived in Emerald Creek, and now, they host Sunday dinners. I’d heard of those. I didn’t know what it meant.

What it means, is that once a month, everyone they know—and they know almost everyone—has an open invitation to the King farm.

And like Haley told me, this includes Grace.

Which was also explicitly confirmed when Mom called her best friend, in front of me, to confirm that she and Dennis and Grace and maybe even Colton were coming.

I acted like I wasn’t listening. I focused on keeping my breathing even. On pretending this didn’t mean anything to me.

Now I’m outside with a beer and offer to take over the barbecue since Justin called to say he “couldn’t make it,” and it seems that this is his primary function at Sunday dinner. Manning the barbecue.

I don’t have his cooking expertise, and I don’t care. I just need a vantage point from which to observe the dynamics. Specifically, what the hell is going on with Grace.

She’s wearing a white summer dress that shows her shoulders and cascades down to her calves on one side, a little higher on the other. Her hair is pulled back loosely, with a bright pink flower pinned in it. She moves around with ease, smiling at everyone, holding a little girl’s hand. She looks like she could be her daughter, though, so I pay double attention. And what if she had a child? God the kid is cute. I get all soft at the thought of Grace having a daughter who would look just like her.

Lucky father.

But she calls her Grace, and weirdly enough, I breathe easier.

She’s Skye, her cousin Chris’s daughter.

She and Haley sit next to each other at the end of a long trestle table. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I see Haley pointing from her plate to me. Grace’s gaze follows and gets lost somewhere over my head, like she couldn’t be less interested.

---