Letters to Molly (Maysen Jar, #2)(20)

Finn had stopped hiking after Jamie had been killed. Instead, he’d spent his free time at Poppy’s house, coaxing her out of bed or into the shower. Even after she’d worked her way out of her depression, he hadn’t hiked much. He’d worked.

It wasn’t until we’d been divorced for a year that he got into it again. On the mornings when he didn’t have the kids, he went hiking for an hour. The man would climb to the top of a ridge, then jog down. In the winter, he went snowshoeing instead because he loved to get outdoors.

“Do you think Finn’s happy?” Poppy asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I hope so.”

“I want you both to be happy. I don’t—” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

“What?”

Her blue eyes glistened with tears as she looked at me. “Sometimes I feel like if I had handled Jamie’s death better, if I hadn’t been such a wreck, you and Finn wouldn’t have gotten divorced.”

“Poppy,” I whispered. “No.”

She blinked a few times, clearing the tears. “May always makes me think.”

May. There were too many anniversaries in May. It was the month she and Jamie had married. It was the month he’d been murdered, right before their one-year wedding anniversary. She’d spent five Mays wondering why he’d been taken. Wondering why his cold-blooded killer had gone free.

It wasn’t until Cole came along and solved Jamie’s murder that she was able to put those questions to rest.

Poppy hadn’t been depressed, she’d been destroyed. Her heart had been shattered, and she’d become a shell of a person, walking around like a corpse.

For months, Finn had gone to her house first thing in the morning. He made sure she was okay for work. He made sure she was alive. All those mornings, I kept my phone close, because I never knew what he’d find when he got there.

She’d been on the verge of dying from a broken heart.

“Please don’t think that, Poppy. What happened with Finn and me doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“I want to believe that. I really do. But the thing is, he held me together. You both did. Completely. If it wasn’t for you two, I don’t know if I would have survived.”

“You would have been fine.” Tears welled in my eyes. “I can’t bear to think of this world without you.”

“Those first few months are a blur.” She folded her hands in her lap, looking down. “But I know how bad it was. I know the stress it put on Finn to watch out for me. And you.”

“But that was years before we started having trouble.”

She shrugged.

“Poppy, look at me,” I ordered, waiting for her blue eyes to find mine. “You are not the reason we divorced. We fell apart because we forgot to watch out for one another. Not because we were watching out for you.”

“Promise?”

I stole her gesture and crossed my heart. “On my life.”

A tear dripped down her cheek and she brushed it away, then forced a smile. “Sorry. That got really heavy. But I’ve been thinking about it because—”

“It’s May.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Cole knows it’s been on my mind. He told me to ask you because you’d be honest. I love my brother, but I don’t think he’d tell me the truth. He still thinks he has to protect my feelings.”

Finn had always looked out for his younger sister, even before Jamie had died. But she was right. If Finn thought Jamie’s death had impacted our marriage in any way, he’d never tell Poppy. “He loves you.”

“I love him too.” She stood up and took her salad jar to the industrial dishwasher, spraying it out and putting it in the rack.

I followed, doing the same with mine while she plucked her special apron off its hook and tied it around her waist.

“I’m going to work the counter for a while,” I said, “roll some silverware for the dinner rush. Do you need anything?”

“No. I’m going to make a batch of banana bread. We went through a lot of those this morning.”

Banana bread in a jar, sprinkled with chocolate chips. Behind her daily quiche, it was our number-one breakfast seller. It never ceased to amaze me the things Poppy came up with to make in a jar.

“Okay. Holler if you need me.”

“Molly?” She stopped me before I pushed through the swinging door. “Love you.”

I smiled. “Love you too.”

I didn’t care what she said. I didn’t need new friends.

Not when I had her.





“What’s Dad’s truck doing here?” Max asked as we pulled into the cul-de-sac.

“Uh, I’m not sure.”

I’d left the restaurant at four thirty to pick up the kids from their after-school program. Then we’d stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few items to make BLTs for dinner—it was Kali’s choice tonight.

In all the hours since he’d left the restaurant this morning, I hadn’t heard from him. So why was he back at my house?

I parked the Jeep in the garage, and the kids barreled out before I even shut it off. I hurried to catch up and was just stepping into the front yard when Finn rounded the far side of the house pushing a wheelbarrow and wearing different clothes than he’d had on at the restaurant this morning.