Page 45 of Over the Verdant Hills
The two friends smiled, and then Claire took a breath. “I need to apologize.”
“Not to me. That’s not what I wanted to meet about.” Grace shook her head and put up a hand.
Claire took her hand and placed it over Grace’s, clutching it and holding it in her lap.
“Let me. I was unkind and unfair to you when we were in high school. And I should have apologized long before this. I gave you a hard time about Trevor. I said you stole him from me. It wasn’t the slightest bit true. Everyone, including me, knew that Trevor had a thing for you. I didn’t even really like him that much. I just…wanted there to be some kind of contention between us, because after…Yolanda died—” She had paused before saying Yolanda’s name. It still didn’t roll off her tongue very well. Grace flinched as well. But this was one of the things that she needed to get through. “—I wanted to put distance between us. Being with you reminded me of the accident. And no matter how much time went by, I still felt guilty and bad. And every time I was with you, it just made it worse. Especially during the summer when we were out by the lake.”
“I felt the same way.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize. I was just looking for an excuse not to talk to you. It was childish and dumb, but it accomplished what I wanted it to. We didn’t talk for the whole last year.”
“And then I broke up with Trevor because I missed you.”
“I’m sorry. You should have been together and gotten married.” She paused and then furrowed her brow. “You’re engaged?”
Grace smiled and nodded, obviously happy. “We are. I was stubborn. I was determined I was going to make something of myself. It’s true that I broke up with Trevor partly because of you, but it was also because I wanted to leave this town. I wanted to show everyone that I could make something of myself, and for some reason, to me, successmeant going to the city and making a lot of money. So I got a good job, married a successful man, and I had it all before I lost everything. They just repossessed my car last week. Finally.”
“Ouch. Sorry.”
“It was a blessing and a relief. I mean, BMWs are nice—I’m not gonna lie. But the load of debt that I was under was just smothering. And my husband cheated on me and made me feel like I was worthless.”
“I know the feeling,” Claire said, knowing there was something else that she and Grace could relate about.
“You were married?”
“Yes. To a lawyer, and we have two children. He cheated on me, apologized, and we went to therapy, but then he had an affair with the therapist, and that’s when I said enough.”
“Wow. He sounds like a piece of work.”
“Yeah. But he does love the children. I think, anyway. I have them one more week, and then they go to Boston for the summer. It’s going to be hard, because I’ve never been separated from them before.”
“We have to do lots of things together this summer. I would imagine that it’s even more difficult because of losing your grandma. You probably were looking forward to summer with her.”
“Yeah. This all happened so suddenly. I just found out she had leukemia, and now she’s gone. And you’re right. I thought we had the summer to get reacquainted. But…we don’t. Obviously.”
“I hear through the grapevine that there might be something between you and Josiah. Remember that kiss?” Grace grinned and dipped her head forward, knocking her shoulder against Claire’s.
“Oh goodness. You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“No. But there were a lot of people there. I’m not the only one who knows about it.”
“You’re the only one who knows how I truly felt about it.”
“That he was dreamy?”
“Don’t say that. It was a…really nice kiss, but I didn’t ever tell him that. I let him think that I didn’t enjoy it at all.”
“It was your first kiss. We talked about that for years afterward.”
“That might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but…yeah.” She grinned, remembering how they’d lain in bed at night talking about Josiah and how she hadn’t expected the kiss to be that nice, and whether or not she should try to strike up a relationship with him. They’d gone back and forth but eventually decided not to, and she couldn’t even remember why. Some stupid teenage reason, probably.
“You know, Josiah would have been a much better choice than what I did by running off and finding a big-city lawyer to get married to. I wish I could remember now why I decided that Josiah wasn’t the right guy for me, even though he was good at kissing.”
“I wonder that sometimes too. I wish Trevor and I wouldn’t have broken up, and I wish I wouldn’t have left the way I did. But don’t you think everything that we went through helped us to become the people that we are now? If we hadn’t left, if we hadn’t learned what we did, do you think we’d be talking here now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe we’d still hate each other.”
“I know that after the pain I went through, it shaped me into a much more compassionate, kind person who is interested in other people rather than just a narcissist.”
