Page 113 of Could Have Been Us
“A bear wanted to eat me,” Stella tells Kinsley.
“What?” she yells. “There are bears here?”
Oh God. “There are no bears here. Well, there are bears in the woods, but they’re not here.”
Stella raises her brows and smirks. “See, I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to be eaten.”
“We are not going to be eaten by a bear.”
She moves closer to Kinsley. “If we see one, we throw Jack in front. If he’s going to risk our lives, he should be mauled first.”
“I would jump in front anyway.”
“Such a gallant hero you are,” Stella jokes.
Kinsley starts to laugh and then bites her lip.
“Let’s go see the inside,” I suggest with a smile.
On our way there, Stella explains some of what she wants. “My hope is that we’ll cater to families and a lot of weddings. I want us to have everything so that no one ever wants to leave.”
I have never doubted that the Parkerson siblings could do this, but listening to her talk, the way her eyes light up, the smile on her lips, and the lift in her voice tells me so much more. She’s going to excel at this.
“It sounds amazing,” Kinsley says after Stella tells her about adding a barn toward the back for the horses. And another building she wants where they can offer different outdoor activities.
“Would it be somewhere you’d want to visit?” Stella asks. “I mean, twelve years old is a hard age to sell a kid on going on a family vacation to the mountains of North Carolina. We want this place to be something for everyone to enjoy.”
Kinsley shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not normal. I like numbers and math camp. This wouldn’t be something we would’ve done. Mom liked going to see places where there was education involved.”
“Like where?”
“For my tenth birthday, we went to Washington D.C. because I was really into history. We spent days in the museums.”
Stella smiles. “And coming to the quiet of the woods wouldn’t really be educational.”
I laugh. “I teach survival skills, remember?”
Kinsley shakes her head. “Not like that.”
“Well, maybe we can find some weird artifacts when we start the build and turn it into something.”
“Like fossils?” Stella asks with her brow raised.
“Maybe. You never know.”
“Great, I was worried about bears, and now we can add on dinosaurs.”
This woman is going to drive me insane. I see it now, years of sarcasm and smiles, wearing me down.
The sad part is, I want it all.
I want a life with Stella and . . .
I stop myself. There is no life with Kinsley. She’s not ours, and in a few weeks, we will have to give her back.
Anger starts to simmer, at myself more than anything. I have to keep perspective. Yes, I may want to soak up what time I have, but I need to remember that there’s an expiration date looming. Kinsley will go back to her father. She’ll have a life that isn’t here in Willow Creek Valley.
And then, as if to punctuate what I was thinking, Kinsley turns to me. “All of this is cool, but my dad and I like the beach, so I don’t know if I’ll ever come back to the mountains. But you guys can send me photos so I can see it when it’s all done.”
