“Numbers on the paper. I suggest you get cracking. My attorneys are requesting a lot of information. Oh, and I know all about Stirling Stone trying to buy these places. Maybe I sell to him once I get my half.”
Archie stood up, shook his head at Hope, and left her sitting at the table with the lawyer’s forms and the bill for lunch.
* * *
Hope felt defeated again. She tried not to feel betrayed by her girls, who probably did just think they were helping, in some misguided way, to get their parents back together.
She was paralyzed with indecision on what to do next. Could Archie take this too? Could he force her to be a partner with him? Was everything that was hers also his? Worse, could he sabotage Libby’s drive to keep Stirling Stone out of Irish Hills?
After meeting with him, she drove back to the cottage. Doubt, worry, fear, and frustration warred for a place in her head.
She crawled into bed and had a cry. It felt like she was in the same place she’d been in over and over again in their marriage, a crossroads where Archie would force the direction to take.
What were her options? Opening a restaurant was hard enough without having this drama, this roadblock in her way.
She ignored her phone buzzing. She had no doubt that word of her humiliating scene on the sidewalk had spread to her friends. She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want them all to know what a mess she’d made of things, or face anyone’s pity.
When Greg knocked on her door, she lied, told him she was fine and that she just needed to be alone.
There seemed to be no way around dealing with Archie. She couldn’t just throw that part of her life away. Archie, her marriage, their history, they were like tenacles dragging her down in pieces.
If she wanted to open the restaurant of her dreams, she needed to be free of him. She needed to do it on her own terms. She paced, for hours, and had no idea what time it was when the knocking started again.
This time the knocking penetrated the blanket cocoon she’d been hiding in since her confrontation with Archie.
Hope heard J.J. and Libby calling out. They let her know they were coming in whether she wanted them to or not.
“I’m okay, I promise.” She said as she let her two friends in.
“Well, fine, we just needed to check,” J.J. said. “We heard there was a scene on the sidewalk, and Greg said you were holed up in here. Sorry, chic. No one gets to turtle out of Sandbar Sisters ever again.”
Sandbar Sisters.
Hope had thought that being a Sandbar Sister was in the past, a fun memory from her youth and not something that could turn her life around today.
But here they were.
And as much as she didn’t want to let them down, as much as she wanted to be a part of bringing Irish Hills back to life, she couldn’t.
Not yet. Archie was still entangled with her. She had to truly be free of him before she could make the restaurant work. She’d raced forward, she’d believed Libby’s optimism, but she hadn’t really cleaned up the mess that she and Archie had made of their marriage.
She said as much to her friends.
“I really want this to work, this restaurant, living here, but I have jumped the gun.”
“What? Are going back to Archie?” J.J. said.
“NO, no, but I’m not sure I can pull this off, get the restaurant open by the Fourth of July and fend offthis.” She walked across the room to the table and waved the paperwork Archie had served to her.
Libby picked it up and started to read.
“Wow, he’s suing you for divorce, what a jerk?” J.J. said.
“He doesn’t really want a divorce. It’s blackmail. He wants the restaurant. He sees dollar signs here. He wants me to do the work and him to get the reward.”
“He’s right, this could be huge, the restaurant, Irish Hills, if we do things fast and right,” said Libby.
Hope didn’t expect her friends to understand Archie. It had taken her decades to really see. “Look, I need to divorce him, get clear of that, and then open the restaurant. And maybe not here…maybe you find someone better, without such a messy personal life to deal with. I mean, maybe I bit off more than I can chew before I’m ready. Surely dozens of chefs would jump at this chance. Chefs, not housewives with baggage.”
