Page 28 of Shake the Habit

“What happened to you?” Caleb asked when I got out of my car. He and Sir were in the front yard and one of them was closely watching a squirrel who was nosing at something on the ground and who didn’t seem to realize that he was taking his life into his little paws.

“I got a call from my two best friends. Cassidy’s getting married! In Hawaii!” She had asked us not to share the baby news yet, but I was practically bursting with it. I’d tell Sir later.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yes,” I answered immediately.

“Then why do you look like you’ve been crying?”

“What?” I bent and checked my face in my side mirror and spotted snot, swollen eyes, and a red nose. I’d been quietly blotting my face as I drove but you couldn’t hide everything, not even things that you might want to keep from yourself. There were always traces, like my chapped lips that had overdried as I wiped tears off them. “It was an emotional call. Cass has had a hard time over the last few years.” I gave him the bare-bones description of the trauma of her life as we went inside the Woodson family home, which was also my new home.

Despite the neglect of the last few decades, it was still a very nice place. A big front hall, one that had enough room for the rug that Aunt Paula had forced on me, opened to a living room, dining room, office, and library. They were all spacious, too, and theyall had lovely wood moldings that Marc would have admired a lot. He hadn’t been a guest yet, but he’d be checking this out soon enough. Things were busy at the barn…

Anyway, there was also a powder room and a very large kitchen with a seating area attached. Upstairs, there were five bedrooms and bathrooms to go along with them and yes, it was a big house for a single woman and her dog, even if he was over a hundred pounds now. It was big and empty, because my tiny kitchen table, little couch, and bed frame didn’t fill much of it.

And yes, it was also run-down. The tenants who’d been living here for twenty-odd years had gone along without doing many (if any) repairs, and it appeared that, unlike her son, Lara-Lee Woodson had been a very hands-off landlord. When Caleb and I had first come up to check out the place, we found that the electricity wasn’t working in all the rooms, the pillars on the porch were definitely rotting, and the water that emerged from the bathroom and kitchen faucets was a scary color of orange. It seemed ok to use for showers and it did come out with force, unlike the taps at his farm which only trickled, but I wasn’t drinking it and neither was Sir. We had bottled.

In spite of those things, I felt extremely lucky to have this place for the two of us. It was in a lovely neighborhood and Aunt Paula was thrilled that more McCourts had joined her on the mountain. In fact, I was lucky in many areas of my life, because now there was Cassidy’s wedding, too. That was going to be one of my new affirmations tomorrow morning: you’re so fortunate.

“Hawaii is beautiful,” Caleb commented after I’d wrapped up Cassidy’s story.

“You’ve been there?”

“We never went anywhere when I was a kid because there was so much to do on the farm, but I did some traveling once I had the money,” he said. “I didn’t go very much.”

“Because you’ve been busy,” I filled in. Too busy to travel, too busy to find love.

“I used to read about all these places, just like how you watch the documentaries about them. Unfortunately, the books caused my expectations to be a little dated. My mother didn’t believe in modern literature.”

“Like, you thought the citizens of Rome would wear togas?” Sir and I had been watching a ten-part series on ancient peoples of Europe.

He smiled. “Not that bad. I also didn’t really think I’d find horse-drawn carriages in the mews in London or a queen in Hawaii.”

“There was a queen?”

We looked up more information about the islands and Cassidy sent a flurry of texts and emails, too, telling Aria and me what we should pack, where we would stay, and what we would be doing once we got there. It was going to be a short trip, since Jack (her soon-to-be husband) would have to return to his music tour. In answer to my question: yes, she had already found a dress, and she sent pictures. She told us that we should wear whatever we wanted, whatever made us happy.

“I’m so happy too!!!” she wrote, and she’d never been a multiple-exclamation point kind of girl.

“Kayleigh?” Caleb asked. I realized that I’d been lost in thought. “Are you hungry for dinner?”

“I am,” I agreed. “We have the stuff that my mom dropped off.” Concerned that I wasn’t eating well without any post-church leftovers to prop up my diet, she’d come by the office with a huge cooler of food, and a toy for Sir. They were making up, I supposed. I’d managed to keep Marc out of the containers but that was mostly because he was working a lot at the barn project. A real lot. I’d asked him if he felt like he was over his head and he said no, but he’d been so upset by my question. He had asked me why I would doubt him and I’d felt terrible and had said that of course I didn’t! But I was worried.

“The reason I ask,” Caleb said, breaking into my thoughts again, “is that you’re crying more. I thought maybe it was low blood sugar?”

“Probably,” I said as I wiped my cheeks. “Also, I’m overwhelmed about Cassidy. I knew it was going to happen, because Jack loves her so much and she feels the same way about him. At every one of his concerts, he mentions her. He has this group of fans named the Call Girls, and they keep track of everything he says because they think it’s so sweet. It really is, too.”

“What did you just say about his fans? Their group is named…”

“He’s JackCalder, so they’re the Call Girls. They add the extra L because they love him so much.”

Caleb looked as if he’d smelled something unpleasant, such as Sir’s odor before his first ten or so baths.

“Anyway, he can’t linger in Hawaii because he has to get back to all those fans who spent a lot of money on their tickets,” I continued, “but Cass says it’s really all about the merch.” And as someone so well-versed in economics, I bet Caleb knew that already.

But he seemed confused. “Uh, I’m not sure…what are we talking about?”

“You wanted dinner,” I reminded him.

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