Page 63 of Butterfly Sisters
“And I might have also told Colton that I loved him yesterday.”
Meredith smacked her forehead. “You have got to be the most confusing person on the planet. You ruin the man’s life by putting a shopping mall in his backyard and then, in the same visit, you tell him you love him? I couldn’t make this stuff up. What, did you think that would soften the blow or something?”
“It just came out.” Leigh toyed with one of the roses, a petal coming off in her hand. She rubbed the soft surface of it between her fingers. “I don’t know why I said it. I have an interview for a job back in New York next week.” She was already feeling torn just uttering those words out loud. “There’s absolutely no reason for me to have said it.”
“It makes sense that you’d go back to New York,” Meredith said. “He knows that, I’m sure. You two just have a long history together, that’s all.”
Indecision swam around inside her like a hurricane. “Should I go back?”
“Of course you should.”
“Why?” Leigh asked, surprised by her sister’s certainty.
“What else would you do? You’d be bored stiff here with nothing to keep you busy. I’ll either be in San Diego or traveling. Mama will be back at her apartment and working. And there’s nothing here at the cabin anymore. It’ll be rented out. So, it just makes sense that you go back to New York. It’s who you are.”
“Is it? Because I don’t know anymore.”
“I think you’re having some sort of breakdown or something.” Meredith put her hand to Leigh’s forehead. “Are you sick?”
“Stop it,” she said, waving Meredith’s hand away. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Meredith rolled the chip bag over and moved it out of the way, leaning forward, her face in Leigh’s personal space. “Before we got here, you were on your game, I’m sure. I’m also pretty sure that your job was everything to you.”
“It was,” she said, taking in that fact and rolling it around for size.
“And then you lost it. You don’t know who you are without your work, so you’re clinging to the old life you had here to try to figure it out. But you’re Leigh Henderson, commercial agent extraordinaire. You were the top pick in the hiring pool—I remember hearing from Mama that your boss told you that. You’re awesome at it. You just forgot for a second.”
“You could be right…” she said, still unconvinced. She set down the petal and stared at the bouquet of flowers. Maybe all that family talk was wishful thinking. The reality was that she had rent due and a job to get. But something still didn’t feel right about it. It was like trying on a shirt she was dying to buy and having it be just a smidge too small. She was tugging at her life experiences, trying to stretch them over who she was, and they just didn’t fit anymore.
She needed to stay there for a while and figure it all out because she felt really strongly that this was a turning point, a time in her life when the wrong move could change her future beyond repair. The cabin was the neutral party in all this, the one place with no questions, the spot where she felt completely at ease.
“Are you really going to renovate this place and rent it out?” she asked Meredith.
Meredith exhaled loudly and leaned her chin on her hands as if she didn’t have the energy to hold her head up after that question. “You act like change is a bad thing.”
“Sometimes it can be.”
Her sister righted herself. “The world is about change. Nothing stays the same. Our lives are fluid, like the lake outside. Keeping a shrine of Nan isn’t going to bring her back. I want to breathe new life into her home instead. It needs new energy passing through it so that the feeling when we come in islife, not death.”
“But what about celebrating Nan? Shouldn’t we honor her?” Leigh offered.
“We are, by giving it a new life.”
Leigh let it go. The two of them seemed like they were on completely different pages, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever change her sister’s mind. She thought back to the letter Mama had from Nan. From the looks of things, it might never be opened.
TWENTY-ONE
Leigh hadn’t slept well at all, tossing and turning, her mind not releasing her. Her eyes stinging from the lack of sleep, she needed the fresh spring air to clear her mind and wake her up, so she picked up the keys to her rental car, ready to put the windows down and take a morning drive through the countryside.
“Where are you going this early?” Meredith said, winding her curls into a ponytail, coming into the kitchen with Mama.
“I’m just taking a drive,” Leigh replied. “Wanna go?”
“It’s too early for me,” Mama said with a yawn. “I’m gonna go to the back porch and have my coffee. Then, when I’m awake enough, I’m going to make my famous blueberry crumble cream pie for later.”
Leigh and Meredith gave one another a wide-eyed glance. Mama’s blueberry crumble cream pie was the one unifying force in their household during their teenage years. Was Mama trying to get them to see eye to eye?
It seemed to be working, because Meredith said, “I’ll go with you… Beats sitting in the house.”
