Page 44 of Lavender Lake
“So you ran away?” he asked. “The moment you could leave, you ran.”
“I didn’trun,” I denied. “I just wanted a chance to be something else.”
“And are you? Did you become everything you wanted to be?”
I snorted. “Still a menace. Still the same old Salem, I guess. I come back here and fall into all my old patterns.”
“Old patterns. Like letting your emotions explode uncontrollably? You’re telling me you’re not that way in New York?”
“It took me a long time to find something I love to do. I’ve left or gotten fired from every job I’ve ever had. But the one I’ve got now . . . I don’t want to lose it. So, I’m doing everything I can not to be . . . me.”
“What is it you do now?”
“I work at a marketing company. I was just given the title of creative director for a client that wants to expand into an equestrian and western line of clothing.” I let out a laugh. “It’s funny, actually . . .”
“What is?”
“I said I was trying not to be me so I could keep my job, but that’s exactly why Rudolph Lancaster wanted me. I sat in on a meeting with them and told them point blank that their creative direction lacked authenticity. I was me for a moment, and I just blurted it out. And you know what? They liked that.”
“People appreciate truth. Now more than ever, I think.”
“Yeah.” I peered up at the sky again. “It’s weird, you know? I wouldn’t be able to speak with such authority if I hadn’t grown up on a ranch in Idaho. And yet I don’t want to be here.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean why not?”
“I mean, why don’t you want to be here? Because your dad is in the hospital? Because your mom died here? Because you haven’t gotten over her death?”
“Gotten over,” I screeched. “You’ve never lost a parent, have you? It’s not something you get over. It’s something you learn how to manage.”
“From where I’m sitting, you haven’t learned how to manage it. And no. I haven’t lost a parent because I never even knew mine. I was left at a fire station when I was six days old.”
His words were a bucket of cold water that doused my anger.
He waited a moment, and then continued. “We’ve all got wounds that slice deep. It’s your choice if you cauterize them and move on after you heal, or pick at them the rest of your life.”
Bowman got up out of the chair and walked away from the fire.
Away from me.
As I sat there alone, his words hung in the spring night, heavy with truth.
The longer I sat by the fire, the worse I felt.
Bowman’s words haunted me. For several reasons.
He saw beneath the surface of who I was, cut right to the heart of the matter, and called me on my shit.
My father tried to fit me into a box he understood.
Hadley was my biggest cheerleader, but being the recovering people-pleaser that she was, she backed off when I blew up.
If I wanted the down and dirty, raw truth, I’d talk to Muddy; which was why I’d been avoiding her phone calls for months.
But at the moment, Muddy had more important things on her mind than watching over the train wreck that I was.
There was only one other person who I trusted to give it to me straight.
