Page 77 of The Autumn We Fell in Love

He’s not wrong. As a lead writer for a popular website about single motherhood, I have the freedom to work remotely.

Tristan’s not finished. “So this makes me think — if life doesn’t keep you away, it’s got to be us. Or because you are just that damned selfish.”

The way he talks makes me want to throw my bottle in the sink, watching it smash into satisfying shards before grabbing Guin and driving the hell out of here.

But I can’t, because that’s apparently what everyone’s afraid of — because they think they made me leave before.

Even though it wasn’t them. Not by a long shot.

Even though my family are the only people worth staying in Edgewood for.

And Ash, too. Ash, the only person not of blood relation who continued to smile at me in high school after I got knocked up. The only one who sat with me at lunch, who walked to class by my side, who wasn’t ever embarrassed to be seen with what everyone else called the class slut.

The one who became more supportive of my family than I’ve ever been.

Memories gather thick in the kitchen, forming what feels like an almost physical entity, keeping me grim company.

I try to scare it off with a stomp on the floor, but all I get for my trouble is ribbons of pain rippling up my leg from the heel, and an eye roll from Tristan.

“You don’t know what my life here was like,” I rasp at him before stalking from the kitchen. I pause in the front hall to stuff my feet into my waiting boots. Then I thunder from the house, slamming the door behind me.

I head for the forest, hoping to both find and lose myself among the trees, like I used to do as a teenager. I suspect it won’t be quite as easy to do these days, but that won’t stop me from trying.

Ash

Tristan slams back onto the patio, startling his dozing mother awake and telling me everything I need to know about what transpired in the kitchen. His face is dark with anger, but I catch a question in my friend’s eyes.

Taking a deep breath, I put my palms to my knees and push up to standing. “I think I’ll take a walk in the woods. Want to join me?”

He hesitates, gaze flicking to his parents. Mrs. Ingersole has fallen back into her evening nap as quickly as she’d been startled out of it, head slumping onto her husband’s shoulder.

“You go ahead, son,” Mr. Ingersole says. Tristan and I both can’t quite suppress the twin winces we make at the reedy exhaustion in his voice.

Tristan shakes his head, stepping to my side and slapping me amiably on the shoulder. “No, you go on with out me, Ash. I’ll help Mom up to bed.”

“It’s fine, son,” Mr. Ingersole protests, but Tristan cuts him off with a decisive horizontal shake of his chin.

“Dad, I’ve got this. You take a break, okay?”

I find the gentleness I hear in my friend’s words both beautiful and heartbreaking. Beautiful because there was a time when he was nowhere near this empathetic and it’s amazing to witness how far he’s come since we were young fools together. Heartbreaking, of course, because of the reason. But I suppose true growth never did come through much else but pain.

“Would you like to walk with me?” I ask Mr. Ingersole. I wouldn’t mind a wander in the woods with the man who’s been a second father to me.

He smiles, but it’s thin and wavering. “I think Bev’s got the right idea,” he says, nodding to his wife. “Bed is calling and I must go to it.”

“Fair enough,” I say to both the elder and younger male Ingersoles. “You’ve both got my number in case you change your mind, or need anything.”

Mrs. Ingersole stirs. Bleary eyes open and, after a moment, focus on me. “Oh,” she says, voice creaking, “you’re a good boy.”

I choose to believe that she knows it’s me, Ash, that she’s speaking to. Stepping to her side, I take her hands in mine and give them a squeeze. Her fingers are cool and soft as paper. The feel of them against my skin is steadying. “You helped make me good. Did you know that?”

Her eyebrows raise and her laughter is welcome music in the gathering dark. “Oh, you.” Mrs. Ingersole swats at me. “Always so sweet.” The hand I’m holding squeezes tight. “Make sure you turn that sweetness on Isla, you hear? She needs it more than any of us.”

I struggle to do anything other than gape at the older woman, and fail. What can I say to that? She’s talking about Isla, the one I’ve always cared for — but cared for enough to keep my distance — and I don’t know how to wrap my head around this.

A smart man would dismiss these words as a symptom of Mrs. Ingersole’s disease, inconsequential. But there’s a stubborn, stupid, beautifully optimistic part of me that soars at what amounts to the matriarch giving her blessing to pursue her daughter like I’ve always longed to.

I’m not sure I’m all that smart.

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