Our Finest Hour (The Time #1)(71)

I can see her in the bakery. Carefree smile. Not an ounce of regret in those eyes. She should have sad eyes.

Just the thought of Claire starting kindergarten in August sends me into full blown ugly cry. How could she not be upset by the idea of never seeing me again?

Isaac stands in the kitchen. He’s drinking from a bottle of water, but his eyes are on me.

Just a few minutes ago, he was everything I needed. He filled me in all the ways I needed. I think, if I let him, he’d do that every day. Not just the physical part, but in the other ways. He’d slip in, occupy my heart, try to fix what’s broken.

Claire’s movie is still on. There was no hour for us today. It was fast, visceral, and raw. Just what I asked for.

“Hi,” I say softly, approaching him. My stomach feels queasy. It’s the dread. I don’t want to say the words. To tell him what, who, I saw.

“Are you ready to tell me what happened?” He tosses the empty plastic bottle onto the counter, where it rolls until it bumps into the brown bag of muffins.

The muffins that started everything.

I glance at Claire. I want to be sure she can’t hear. When I’m certain she’s engrossed in her movie, I turn back to Isaac.

“The owner of the bakery… Those glorious muffins everyone raves about.” I curl my lip at the bag. The mere sight of it is offensive. “The person who bakes those is my mother.” The last word is a whisper.

Isaac does all the things a person in shock should do. His eyes widen, his head snaps back in disbelief, and his mouth falls slack, causing his lips to part.

My stomach is sick. Just saying the words makes me feel like I’ve taken a fist to my gut.

Isaac finds his voice. “Are you…sure? It’s been a long time. Maybe you got it wrong?”

“No doubt.” My eyes close, and her image appears behind them. The slope of her shoulders as she came from the back, tray in hand. They were down, away from her ears. Not the scrunched shoulders of someone holding a dark secret. “All this time, I pictured her somewhere depressing. She was supposed to be atoning for her sin with a sad, hard life. Regretting every step she took away from me.” My cheeks are wet. “But she’s not.” I open my eyes. Isaac is closer now, his face inches from me. I see the pain in his eyes, as though he’s feeling this hurt with me. “She’s…happy.”

Isaac touches my shoulders, grips them, squeezing once. He loosens his grip, and his hands slide down my arms until he reaches the end. When my fingers weave through his, he leans his forehead on mine. I close my eyes, because the world seems nicer when I can’t see.

“She’s not happy. No matter what you saw.” His breath is warm on my face. He smells like cinnamon and nutmeg, and I want to cry in relief. He chose the spice muffin. “Nobody could ever be happy after knowing you and never seeing you again. I couldn’t. Now that I know you, I don’t want there to ever be a time when I don’t.”

I’m afraid to look at him. I don’t know how to hear these kind words. Like rubber, they bounce off me. I’m not porous. I don’t absorb love like this.

Is that what this even is? Love?

He didn’t say that word.

But I did.

It doesn’t matter, though. None of it does.

Her happiness, her ease, her content, they all form the confirmation I’ve been searching for my whole life.

She didn’t want me enough to stay.



Despite Isaac’s offer to leave, we stayed the rest of the weekend. I couldn’t let her ghost win. This was my weekend getaway with my makeshift, unconventional family, and she wasn’t going to take that from me too.

Now we’re back to real life. I’m at work, Claire is in school. I was a wreck when I dropped her off this morning. She’s wearing a sling, just for the next two weeks while she’s at school. Isaac said it’s a good reminder for her classmates, so they don’t grab her elbow. To me the sling is nothing. No barrier between her tiny bones and the thousands of things I’ve imagined her falling on. Twice already I’ve called the school.

She’s fine, Ms. Reynolds. The assurances from her teacher don’t do much to alleviate my concern. I’ll feel better when I can see her myself.

Britt wants me to join her and a few other people for lunch. I ignore her email. I don’t want to go. I want to sit at my desk and bury my nose in a pile of work, forcing the day to go by faster. Britt comes to find me.

“Teppan yaki,” she whispers into the space between my ear and my hairline. She knows it’s my favorite.

“I think I’ll just stay here.” I give her a reassuring smile. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to do.

It doesn’t work. She frowns, her eyes suspicious. “What’s going on with you today?” She comes around my chair, leaning her backside against the edge of my desk.

I haven’t told her about my mom. I’m afraid of what Britt will do. She has a protective side, and that protection extends to people she considers family. Me. If I tell her where my mother is, it’s possible Britt will jump in her car and hunt my mother down.

Not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I’d been thinking of little else since I saw her forty-eight hours ago. Dreaming up our dialogue. Or, more accurately, my cutting take-down of her actions.

“I had a bit of a rough weekend.” Lame excuse.