The Stillwater Girls(45)

“I worked at an art gallery,” I say, taking a seat on the floor next to the coffee table. “He was a photographer—up and coming at the time—and he came in to ask my boss if he’d feature his work . . . which was pretty gutsy, especially in New York. But he was good, and he was tired of waiting around to be discovered. Anyway, I’m rambling. He came into the gallery, met with my boss, and when he came out of that meeting, he asked me for my phone number, and we met later that week for drinks.”

All this time, I’ve been worried about how the girls are going to react when they meet him, when really I should be worrying about how they might feel if they like him—as everyone always does—and I end up kicking him out.

I’d hate for them to hand over their trust to a seemingly good man, only to learn that he’s a liar and a cheat. I’m not sure how traumatic that would be for them given the fact that their first experience around an adult man was less than ideal.

I remind myself to take things one step at a time, to cross these bridges as they come.

“What does that mean—meet for drinks?” Wren asks, slicing through one of Brant’s old dress shirts with a pair of heavy sewing shears. This morning over breakfast, she insisted on sewing Sage a new doll to replace the one they had to leave behind. She says she’s going to sew one for Evie, too, to give to her when she sees her again.

“It’s when two grown-ups go to a bar and drink grown-up drinks—alcohol—and get to know each other,” I say, watching intently as she licks the end of a thread and points it through the head of a needle.

She’s going to sew it all by hand, every last stitch.

“What’s alcohol?” Sage asks.

“It’s a drink that makes you feel funny,” I say, drawing my knees against my chest as I settle in for girl talk. “Like . . . relaxed. But it can also make you do things you might not otherwise do, so you have to be extremely careful.”

Sage flicks to the next page in the album, running her palm along the glossy pages and tracing Brant’s face.

“He’s pretty,” she says.

“Handsome,” I correct her with a forgiving half smile. “And yes, he is.”

Wren pokes the needle through two pieces of Brant’s shirt and glances up. “How long have you been with him?”

“A long time,” I say. “Years. Married ten. Together thirteen. Something like that.”

“Why don’t you have kids?” she asks.

My response catches in my throat. No one’s ever had to ask me that before because everyone in my little circle has always known about my hysterectomy.

“We wanted to,” I say, speaking slowly. “About ten years ago, I had a medical emergency. After that, I wasn’t able to have children.”

Saying it out loud after all these years doesn’t make it sting any less than it did a decade ago.

“Anyway,” I say, clapping my palms on my thighs and smiling through the tears that threaten to come, “they say everything happens for a reason.”

“Who says that?” Sage asks.

“It’s an expression,” I say.

Sage turns to a new page, feasting her dark eyes on a selfie of Brant and myself in front of the pyramid of Giza several autumns ago. Her small fingertips trace the lines on his face. “He looks like a nice person, Nicolette.”

Wren looks at me before she meets Sage’s gaze, and her expression is blank, unreadable. While I have nothing but admiration for that brave little soul, I’m finding it a bit hard to connect. She rarely speaks unless she has to, but she always looks like she has something to say; I’m hopeful that with time, she’ll be able to open up to me.

Rising, I head to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, stopping in my tracks when I see two xenon headlights pointed through the front windows. The metallic clunk of a car trunk slamming follows next.

He’s home.





CHAPTER 29

WREN

Nicolette wrings her hands as she stares toward the front door. Glancing out the windows that frame the entrance, I spot the outline of a dark figure pulling something behind them. The sun went down hours ago, so it’s hard to make out any details, but for a fraction of a second, my muscles seize, convinced it’s the stranger coming back for us.

“Brant’s home,” Nicolette says, but I don’t believe the excitement in her tone because her eyes winced and she hasn’t moved an inch.

The door swings open a second later, and a man comes into view. He looks exactly like his photos, maybe better. Sandy-blond hair with a slight wave, a square jawline with full, blush-colored lips, and piercing yet soft green eyes just like Evie’s.

He’s tall but not nearly as tall as the stranger who broke into our cabin. And even with his black woolen jacket, I can tell he’s strong but not in a monstrous sort of way. Nothing about him seems threatening, and his smile seals the deal.

Still, I keep myself at a safe distance. I don’t know him, but I want to like him because I want to stay here.

I like it here.

Everything’s warm and soft and pretty and nice . . . and safe.

“You must be Wren?” Brant asks, releasing the handle of his bag. Shrugging out of his jacket, he folds it over his arm. He doesn’t come toward me, doesn’t extend his hand toward me like the sales associate did at the boutique. He keeps back. “Brant. Nice to meet you.”