An Invincible Summer (Wyndham Beach #1)(51)

Maggie turned and faced Brett. “Oh, I guess you heard that from your wife. I ran into her at the art center on Sunday.”

“Yeah, she told me.” Brett took her by the arm and tried to lead her a few steps away from the counter, but she didn’t budge. “You look great, Maggie.”

“Thanks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to . . .” She started to turn back to the counter to pick up her package, but he took her arm a second time. His touch was light, and no pressure was exerted, but his hand on her arm felt like a vise. “Let go, Brett.”

He dropped his hand.

“Maggie, I need to talk to you.” He lowered his voice. “It’s important.”

“I doubt it.” She didn’t want to hear his declaration of love, didn’t want to hear from his lips that he’d always loved her, only her. It had been hard enough hearing it from Kayla.

“You don’t understand,” he insisted quietly.

“I understand plenty, thank you. I need to go.” The last thing she needed was to deal with Brett, coming on the heels of witnessing what she considered a desecration of her family’s ancestral home and the emotions that had been stirred up—her sister’s death, her parents’ divorce, her father’s abandonment of her and her mother. Brett was part of everything that had been churned up in her life that morning. She already knew what he was going to say—Thanks, Kayla—and she couldn’t bear it. Her heart couldn’t take one more look back right at that moment.

“There’s something you need to know, Mags.”

“I’m going to say this one more time.” She looked into his eyes and ignored that she saw anything that would make the past disappear. “I don’t have anything to say to you, and I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Now—”

“Maggie, please.”

She grabbed her box of pastries off the counter and headed for the door as an elderly gentleman was preparing to open it to come in. He held the door for her, and she smiled a thank-you.

Maggie checked traffic both ways, then crossed to the parking lot, refusing to look back at the shop. She could feel Brett’s eyes on her as she walked to her car on shaking legs. She’d been thrown off-kilter by what she was certain would have been Brett’s declaration of undying love. She’d wanted to cover her ears rather than hear that from him now, after they’d been apart for so long and she’d taught herself to live with the aftermath of their relationship. She’d had more than she could handle already that morning, and she couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

She sighed with relief when she reached Route 6, determined to put as many miles behind her as quickly as she could. But the farther she drove, the closer she felt the ghosts that had watched her from the shadows in the house on Cottage Street. She had the feeling they’d followed her and were crowded shoulder to shoulder in the back seat. The more she glanced into the rearview mirror, the larger the past loomed, the good and the bad.

Kayla’s words were in her head. Seeing Brett, walking the floors of her childhood home, had taken her back to the time when she’d believed she knew where her life was headed. College in September. After graduation, she’d marry Brett and they’d live together in whichever city’s football team drafted him—there was never a doubt in anyone’s mind, least of all hers, that he’d play professionally. She’d teach for two years—three at the most—and then they’d start their family. After football, they’d move back to Wyndham Beach, and they would assuredly live happily ever after.

It had never occurred to her that anything could happen that would change what she’d been so sure of, that there could be forces in the universe that could misdirect everything in the blink of an eye.

She’d moved to Seattle with Brett after college graduation, but she’d been unable to shake off the pain of a life-changing decision she’d been forced to make, the stress of keeping a secret that was eating her alive. She was unable to forgive him for not understanding her grief, unable to go through with a wedding to a man who’d seemed to close his eyes to her devastation. In the end, the only thing she could do was leave Brett and the dreams they’d shared to find her own way.

Her solitary journey had taken her to Philadelphia and a man who’d loved her and who’d offered her a life, a family, a home. She’d loved Art in her own way, maybe not with the passion she’d felt for Brett but with a steadiness and a resolve to never let him know he’d been second in her heart. She’d taken one last look over her shoulder at the life she could have had before she moved on and said I do.

Sad ties you to a place as sure as happy.

“Amen, Nana,” she said aloud. “Amen.”

As sure as happy. She had to admit there’d been equal measures of both, and it was the happy that sat on the shoulders of the ghosts in the back seat, begging her to take a good long look—and she’d do that. But not today. Today had been about nostalgia and feeling the losses that had marked her life. There would be other days to remember the joy and the laughter that house—that family—had once known. There was much to remember. But not today.





Chapter Ten


GRACE

Grace read the online news article for the third time before getting up from her desk to close her office door.