Don't Let Go(15)

Knowing Ruthie would be at the store before me, lighting her ever-loving candles to get the place smelling good, I texted her that I would be late. I had a stop to make, two blocks from my house.
I pushed the doorbell button twice before remembering it was broken, and then knocked on the dark blood-red door as hard as my knuckles allowed. Two stamped envelopes were clipped with a clothespin to the old metal mailbox that hung by the door, with Nana Mae’s careful print written across them.
I heard Maddy, Nana Mae’s five-hundred-pound cat, purring at the door before her owner got there. She was the one to look at me with disdain when the door opened. Nana Mae looked at me with a surprised smile.
“Well, hell, Julianna, what brings you over here?” Nana Mae said, her wrinkles morphing into different patterns with her wide-spread smile. “I was going to stop by tonight on my walk. What’s the matter—the coffeepot broke?”
“Ha ha.”
“Laugh all you want, girly, you never come by this early,” she said, waving me in and nudging Maddy over with one slippered foot. She still had on her morning attire of a magenta and white floor-length velour robe, zipped up to the neck. Her long white hair wasn’t twisted up in its usual bone clips yet, but hung loose down her back. She looked older like that, more vulnerable than the cocky put-together woman she showed the world. “Don’t you have to open the store?”
I shrugged. “Ruthie’s there. I texted her.”
Nana Mae stopped mid-turn and narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?” She let her eyes peruse me from head to toe. “You have jeans on, Julianna.”
I blew out a breath and let a chuckle out with it as I shook my head.
“I’m fine.”
“You never go in late,” she said, not moving. “Is it Becca? Something happen with Becca?”
I laughed and linked arms with her, guiding us to the living room sofa. Maddy beat us there, sprawling across a good third of it and daring me to move her. I let Nana Mae do that. I knew she wouldn’t bite her. When she got settled, I curled up on one end with a pillow to hug like I was fifteen.
“Noah Ryan is home,” I said. “Came in yesterday.”
“Ah, hell,” she said, sagging a bit. “Well, that explains a little.”
“With a woman he’s engaged to,” I added. “And they’re pregnant.”
The hand that was stroking Maddy paused mid-hover.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Well, I’ll bet the old man is beside himself.”
“He was pretty happy.”
“You were there?” she said, resuming her Maddy love.
I nodded. “Becca and I had lunch—sort of—at the diner when Noah and his new Barbie doll walked in. Johnny Mack was yelling it to the crowd.”
That got me a look but she didn’t pursue it. I knew it was being catty, but I felt I deserved a few moments of it.
“So Becca—” Nana Mae began, looking down at Maddy with a frown creasing her forehead. “Sweetie, if he’s back—the way this town talks, it’s all going to stir back up again. I know you never told her, but you need to now.”
My mouth went dry. Another fuel to my impending nervous breakdown. “Yeah.”
“Better to hear it from you than from someone else,” she said, eyeing me sharply.
Noah’s words. Again. Everything haunting me kept coming back to Noah’s words.
“I wish Mom were here to take on some of it,” I said, picking at a broken thread on the seam of my jeans. “She’d make it sound right. Logical.”
“It was logical to her back then,” Nana Mae said softly. “You know she did what she thought was right for you.”
“I know,” I said.
“But parents make mistakes, too.”


Chapter 5

Tell Becca.
Hey, baby doll, you aren’t really an only child, we have a secret kid stashed somewhere. What’s he like? Don’t know. Never met him.
That’s every family’s normal conversation, right?
I wanted to step in front of the nearest bus. If there were buses in Copper Falls. As odds go, I’d have better luck with a scooter on a hell bender. In lieu of that kind of luck, I headed to work with uncharacteristic procrastination.
I could call in sick. I never did that either, so Ruthie would think I was dying, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to take a day off.
Yes, it would. I’d sit on my couch all day and picture Noah, and think and dwell and obsess myself into a state of doom. I needed to go, I was pretty sure we had a large order coming in, and it wasn’t fair to put all of that on Ruthie. I could step outside my boundaries and park on the other side of the store instead of close to the diner like I always had. That way, I’d avoid potential encounters.
A plan in place, I turned down Main Street, approached the bookstore, and kept right on driving.
“You are such a baby,” I muttered, making the block.
But spying the bank and knowing I needed to cash an insurance check and snag a little cash for Becca’s lunches—assuming she actually stayed at school to eat—I pulled in and justified it as productive. I blew out a breath as I tugged my purse onto my shoulder and entered the lobby. I had to shake off this crap. This was crazy. Yes, I had a bucket of shit swirling around, but so did everyone else. I wasn’t special. And this was my town. I was not going to go skulking around it like a scared bird just because my particular bucket might get stirred up.
I had to learn to live with Noah back in town, like it or not. And I had to tell my daughter things about myself that went against everything I’d ever preached to her.