Page 56 of Butterfly Sisters
A plume of frustration erupted within Leigh. “I understand that he likes things to stay simple and unspoiled, but this is down the lake, in an area that would be able to support the extra boat traffic. He won’t be impacted at all.”
“Apparently, he doesn’t think so.”
“Who doesn’t think what?” Meredith asked, coming into the kitchen.
Leigh filled her in on what had happened. “And he said I’m exactly who he thought I was,” she told her sister. “What doesthatmean?”
“Easy,” Meredith said. “He means you’re putting your working life over him, because that’s what you’ve always done.”
Leigh’s stomach churned at the thought.
Meredith rooted around in the pantry, grabbing a family-size bag of chips and digging in. “You knew he wasn’t happy with that level of growth in this area and you did it anyway.”
“That’s not true,” she replied. “I didn’t know his thoughts on the matter at all until he told me, but by then I’d already begun securing the clients.”
Mama dropped down into a chair at the table, rubbing her foot. “Maybe you should tell him that.”
“He said he can’t even look at me. How am I supposed to explain things if he won’t listen?”
“Stand outside his house and yell it through a window if you have to,” Meredith said. “Come on, be creative and let him know that you care about what he thinks.”
“But what if I disagree with what he thinks?” Leigh countered.
“Then you hope he’ll eventually get over it,” Mama replied. “But you can’t just let it go.”
“The way he looked just now, I don’t think he will get over it…” Her heart plummeted in her stomach. Had she ruined everything?
“I’m making spiced cider,” Mama said, her face pensive, offering a blanket to Leigh to combat the cool evening air sending a chill through the porch. “Want some?”
Leigh understood the gesture perfectly, her cheeks warming with the unease that she’d only added to Mama’s distress and now she was trying to cover it up with cider. She lifted her laptop and draped the blanket over her legs, fearing that if she didn’t let her mother busy herself, she’d slip into her thoughts, and worry herself to pieces. “That sounds really good.”
Mama went back into the kitchen, leaving Leigh to her emails. She opened the new one from Rycroft Enterprises, asking for an initial phone interview. They loved her experience with Greystone and wanted to talk next week to hear the specifics of the project and which retailers she’d secured.
She should have been thrilled, but all she could think about was the fact that Colton hadn’t returned her calls. She’d called him twice, left a message, and texted once.
“Let me have some of the blanket,” Meredith said, coming in and plopping down on the sofa with two mugs of cider—probably her way of trying to make amends for the earlier blowup over the Airbnb idea. She handed one of the mugs to Leigh before tugging the blanket over her own legs.
Leigh rearranged herself to fit under the new portion and closed her laptop, setting it on the coffee table.
“You look like you’ve lost your best friend,” Meredith said.
“I kind ofhave,” she said, the weight of Colton’s anger still sitting on her chest, overwhelming her other problems. She sipped the warm cider, the sweet spice of the cinnamon and cloves doing nothing to console her.
“What’s going on, Leigh?”
So much was going on that Leigh wasn’t sure of her sister’s angle. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been different. You’re not as sure about things as you used to be. You’ve sort of drawn into yourself.” Meredith seemed genuinely curious about Leigh. Her sister was looking at her, head cocked to the side, concern on her face.
“I lost my job,” she blurted, before she could think through whether she wanted Meredith to know it or not.
“Oh, that’s all it is? Well, get another one.” Meredith took a drink from her mug as if it was the easiest thing in the world to switch jobs.
“It’s not that I lost my job,” Leigh explained. “I thought I was great at it and I was replaced by someone they thought was better. I’ve never come in second before.”
Meredith pursed her lips as if contemplating this idea. “I believe that we’re put places to impact others and when we can no longer impact them, we should get out. It’s the universe’s way of moving you on to something better. You just have to listen to find what it is that you need to do next. So, if they’re going in a different direction, that’s your cue to keep going inyourdirection. Someone else needs you.”
“You have a point,” she said, holding the mug with both hands to keep warm as the breeze blew in off the lake. “I thought I was going in the right direction with the Greystone property. But Colton’s really upset about it, which makes me feel like I’m not on the right path when I thought I was. I’m second-guessing myself. I don’t usually do that.”
