Page 46 of A Whisper of Summer Magic

“Welcome back home to Belmont, Jackson. You may not remember me. I was a senior when you were… hmmm let me think.”

“I’ve never forgotten you or your sister Trudy, Trina,” Jackson said, his usual smile missing, and his expression grave.

“See you around, babe,” Jackson said, his grin firmly in place. He took a sip of his coffee. “Thanks for the snack, but girl, you know I want the full entrée.”

“Whatever does that mean?” Trina asked as Jackson sauntered away toward the fire station, with his coffee and the entire bag of pastries. “Sorry for interrupting your tête-à-tête.” Trina smirked. “Or were you finished?”

“Actually…” Meghan watched the way Jackson walked—a rolling, sexy, confident walk that made her tummy flip like she was some sort of starstruck teenager. “We were… we are just getting started.”

She left Trina standing on the sidewalk looking shocked, and Meghan felt finally she’d scored a point this morning after being irritated by Trina and aroused and confused and tempted by Jackson, but her swagger was short-lived because as she waited for the light to cross and head up the block toward the law offices, Jennifer Rose, the receptionist, texted her.

You have some new clients waiting. Your parents.

*

They’d only returnedfrom their cruise last night—at least she thought so. Meghan would have preferred more time to prepare for a visit from her parents. Though, to think that sounded ridiculous. She’d always been close to her father. She’d admired his cunning, vision, and ambition. She hadn’t made the mistake Jessica had—hiding her plans and ducking Sunday dinners until their parents heard through the local gossips that Jessica was starting a nursery. But with Chloe’s engagement party that her parents had refused to attend, Grandma Millie’s death, their impromptu cruise, and then Jessica’s open house, Meghan hadn’t drawn up a strategy to face her parents.

“Hi?” She hugged her mom and bussed both of her cheeks as her mother liked to do. “Welcome home. All of us can’t wait to have dinner and hear about your trip.” She gushed like she was channeling Jessica. “Coffee? Tea? Sparkling water?” she asked and hugged her father a second time, trying to ignore his stiff demeanor.

“Nothing, thank you. Do you have an office or just a cubicle?”

“Office,” Meghan said brightly, aware that seeing the small office with a window that looked out over the street and Nell’s Restaurant wouldn’t impress them nearly as much as her office on the twentieth floor she’d had for several years in downtown Charlotte.

“I’m still mostly familiarizing myself with family law and wrapping up my work at the firm—handing over clients and finishing the last few negotiations so I’m not completely here but no longer there, yet I don’t want to work remotely. I want to learn the rhythm of the firm and clients—get up to speed.”

Her father didn’t sit so neither did she. He looked around the office. Not much to see. She had inherited the desk and file cabinet, though she’d yet to use it. She’d added the bookcase that had a few family law tomes but again—she used her computer to access information—and she had several plants that she’d bought from Jessica, including a succulent garden she and Chloe had made during the open house to help Jessica’s demonstration.

She’d had a picture of Grandma Millie and the four of them as kids running wild and disheveled in the garden and then another one of them all grown up having tea in the farmhouse breakfast nook with G. Millie while discussing Chloe’s party that Grandma Millie hadn’t lived long enough to enjoy.

To brighten the walls, she’d painted them a warm linen color and had converted some of her favorite pictures from Jessica’s garden, Chloe and Rustin at the party, along with a few from her many travels into canvases of various sizes, and she’d hung them like one of her walls was a photo gallery, embracing the splashes of color, personality, and memories and because going to a lawyer’s office could be intimidating for a lot of people, and Meghan didn’t need to intimidate anyone anymore. At least she hoped not.

Her mom sat in one of the two upright guest chairs, clutching her Kate Spade purse as if someone not yet present lurked, planning to steal it.

“What do you think?” Meghan asked into the expectant silence, trying not to wince, because she wasn’t clueless enough to imagine her parents were pleased by her new digs, and yet, really, they should be pleased.

She was happy. She was closer to her sisters and to them so that they could do more family things together once this… this awkwardness finally faded.

“It’s so… small.” Her mom finally spoke while her dad stared at the bookcase with more plants on it—courtesy of Jessica—than books, as if it were a puzzle to be solved.

“Did you also get fired?”

“No, I resigned.”

“I don’t understand.” Her mom was a little pale and her periwinkle blue eyes blinked, suspiciously glossy. “You worked so hard. You traveled so much. You lived for your job and then poof.”

Her father turned toward her now, his green gaze, so like Grandma Millie’s, searching.

“Not poof,” she denied and sank down into her chair. “I… I loved my job, but…” How to explain this in terms they’d understand and not be upset by? They had after all paid for the part of her law school that hadn’t been covered by her scholarships.

“I wasn’t as excited by it as I had been. I felt ground down. I didn’t have time for family or friends or hobbies.”

“Your mother and I didn’t raise the three of you girls to be quitters,” her father said succinctly.

Meghan’s spine snapped straight. Four girls. Four. She had three sisters though her mother and father had barely acknowledged Chloe, who’d been adopted by G. Millie when Chloe had been an infant, abandoned on G. Millie’s porch. G. Millie had raised Chloe, but never once had Meghan not felt that Chloe—so different from them in appearance and spirit—wasn’t her true sister.

“I didn’t quit,” Meghan said carefully although technically she had. “And I am still doing contract work for them, but I have changed direction,” she clarified. “I wanted to have more of a personal life, travel for fun not only work and not always gunning for a position,” she admitted. “I wanted a change.”

“A family,” her mother interjected, a faint smile blooming. “A simple job here will make it easier for you to keep your hand in your profession as I did but still be a full-time mother.”

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