Page 53 of Butterfly Sisters
“I didn’t do any such thing,” Leigh said. “I simply mentioned our disagreement. But you’re right. I shouldn’t have brought Colton into it. I’m sorry.”
“I know how you work,” Meredith snapped, ignoring her apology. “Nan left the cabin tome, and it’s up to me to decide what to do with it.”
“May I say something?” Colton asked.
Meredith let out a heavy breath and then relented, listening, her bare feet swinging above the water, her arms folded.
“What would your nan want you to do with it if she was still here?” he asked.
Meredith sucked in a breath as if to fire off an answer, but she was stumped. Then, she pulled her feet up and twisted around on the dock, standing up. “If Nan had had a particular opinion about what to do with it, wouldn’t she have said in my letter?”
Colton pulled away from Leigh and stood to face Meredith, shaking his head calmly. “Maybe not. Could she have assumed you’d know?”
Visibly flustered, Meredith turned away from them and stormed up the dock and inside, the screen door smacking shut behind her.
Colton sat back down. “Give her time. She’ll make the right decision for all of you.”
The problem was that Meredith had had a lifetime, and she’d barely come around in the last few days. What would a little more time do?
“You look tense,” he said, bringing Leigh back to his gorgeous face.
She shrugged it off, trying to look as if it wasn’t all too much for her. The thought of removing any last shred of Nan in the cabin tore at her.
“Wanna get out of here?” He took her by the hands and pulled her up.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he held her hand, leading her along the dock and through the yard.
“You’ll see.”
They passed Colton’s parents and Mama, waving to them.
“Just like old times,” Mama teased as they went by.
When they got to the kitchen, Colton grabbed a bottle of wine by the neck and the blanket off the arm of Nan’s sofa, taking both with them. He opened the door to the Silverado and she climbed in.
Then, they were off.
Under the stars, the crickets chirped through the open truck windows, the cool spring air giving her a chill as they headed away from the cabin, toward town. She pulled Nan’s blanket from between them and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“You don’t want to tell me where we’re going?” she asked.
“It’s a place I always wanted to take you but never did,” he replied.
The white light from the moon cast a stripe down his chiseled cheekbones, the rest of his face in shadow. “I was here every summer,” she said. “How come you never took me?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you later,” he said, flashing her an affectionate glance that sent her stomach into a whirlwind. His strong hands held the steering wheel loosely, his toned muscles showing beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt, and his legs now filled out his jeans. He’d become a man in the time they’d been apart, and suddenly the years away seemed like a tragedy.
He pulled to a stop along a dirt road, grabbed the wine, and ran around to open Leigh’s door.
Leigh hitched up the blanket and held it together with one hand while she took Colton’s with the other. They’d stopped at a park with a playground and a horse ring that she remembered going to a few times with Nan. He led her up a grassy hill. She could barely get to the top of it with her flip-flops on, requiring Colton’s firm grip on her hand to keep her steady on the incline. Her breathing increased with her pulse as they hiked the long walk to the very top. Halfway up, she took off the blanket and folded it, draping it over her arm before grabbing Colton’s bicep to keep her balance.
“Turn around,” he said after they’d reached the summit.
When she did, she gasped. “You can see the whole world from here,” she said. The lake stretched out in front of her as far as she could see, the trees meeting the sky in almost an arc, a bowl of black ink and shiny stars above them. Far off in the distance, she could even see the bright lights of Nashville. “This is incredible.”
Colton had taken the blanket from her and spread it over the grass. Then he pulled the cork out of the wine. She sat down on the blanket as he offered her the bottle.
Leigh tipped it up to her lips and took a sweet, flowery drink of it, handing it back.
