Page 97 of My Promise To Keep

What do you want to be when you grow up: Luke and I want to buy a house and have two kids, so I’ll be a mom and a wife.

Age: 17.

What do you want to be when you grow up: I don’t know.

I gasp and inhale. I stopped dreaming.

‘Grandma,’ I call out as panic hits me. ‘I stopped,’ I cry as her arms wrap around me. ‘I stopped dreaming for me.’

‘Yes, sweetheart, you did.’

She holds me as I cry, and when I calm down, we sit on the porch, letting the morning sun burn the fall chill from our skin.

‘You always wanted to travel,’ she says softly as I silently accept the truth I had blocked out. ‘Even as a little kid.’ She chuckles at a memory. ‘The other little girls were putting on tiaras and having pretend weddings to their prince charming, and you were putting on a deerstalker and hiding in the bushes with a nature discovery kit. Bree was making the boys pretend to commit crimes so she could chase and arrest them.’

Grandma laughs, and I can’t help but do the same. Bree always wanted to be a cop, never strayed from that dream, and made it her reality.

‘Not many five-year-olds grow up to be what they wanted to be,’ I say softly.

‘No, well, you stopped being so bothered about finding undiscovered species of bug and more interested in seeing the world. You remember when you asked me to buy you a world map for your wall?’ I nod. I do. ‘You would sit and read books about all these different countries, sticking a pin in the map every time you read about somewhere you wanted to visit.’

I remember the map on my wall. I can’t remember taking it down.

‘Luke came from a different world to you.’

I swallow hard. I knew we’d get to Luke. I just don’t know if I want to hear it.

‘He needed stability, Zoe. Buck and Leo offered him a real home, Forest Falls offered him safety, and he held onto that with both hands. He wanted the safe, stable, small-town life because where he’d come from was the total opposite of that. He fell in love with you, and you fell in love right back, and, well, young hearts do strange things. Trust me, I was married at eighteen, too, so I get it.’

‘I really loved him, Grandma. It wasn’t just puppy love.’

‘I know, honey, but here’s the thing about you. You live to take care of people and make them feel better. You take care of Bowie, your mama, and you look out for Doug and Bree, Cara too now. You take care of that whole damn town any time they’ll let you. Luke needed love, stability, and safety, so you gave up what you wanted to give him that. He wanted to get married, so you got married. He wanted to buy a house, so you saved to buy a house. He wanted kids, and you started trying to have a baby before you were ready. You always wanted to be a mother, Zoe, but you wanted adventure, you wanted to see the world, you put all that aside to apease Luke.’

‘Are you saying that I just wanted to take care of him?’

‘Notjust, but you wanted to give him what he needed, even at the cost of what you needed. I loved Luke, Zoe. He was a good man who adored you, but when he died, I hoped eventually you would realize how much of you had been pushed aside.’

‘Grandma.’

‘Growing old in Forest Falls was never your dream, baby. The perfect little small town life, the house with the the neat yard and picket fence — that was never your dream — those things were Luke’s dream. The bar was never your dream — that was your dad’s dream. You loved them and mourned them so deeply that you refused to let their dreams die with them. So you took those dreams and you made them yours, but what about your dreams, Zoe?’ I inhale shakily as she reaches for my hand. ‘What happened to that little girl who wanted to see the world?’

‘I don’t know, Grandma. I don’t know if she’s still in there.’

‘Leo does,’ I snap my gaze to her, and she smiles softly. ‘He always did, sweetheart. That boy would walk to the ends of the earth if he thought it would put a smile on your face.’

‘Why did nobody tell me?’ I ask softly. ‘You, Bree, Mama even. You all seemed to know how he felt, but nobody told me.’

‘Would it have made a difference if you’d known? You were with Luke from such a young age. It just would have made things complicated. We let him have his secret, for all your sakes.’

‘I love him, Grandma.’

‘I know, baby.’

‘I loved Luke.’

‘I know that too.’

I take a deep breath and blow it out.

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