“No.” Bethany shook her head. “But I love lemon. Sometimes you need the sour with the sweet to make you appreciate the taste of each.” She gestured to the patio. “Like this little haven of Erin’s back here. Who would guess she would create such a romantic and glamorous spot based on the rest of her decorating, which is so modern and kind of edgy? But back here, it’s like a pasha’s palace.”
Erin had to smile at that. “Pasha’s palace? Someone’s been hitting the romance novels again.”
Although she could appreciate the comparison. She had hung pendant lamps under the shelter of a pergola with a canopy. She had fallen in love with the lamps’ amethyst glass shades, which had the curvy appeal of a genie’s lamp. Plus, they werepurple.
“Honey, don’t knock it until you’ve been ravished in the dessert and fed figs from the pasha’s hand.” Bethany pointed an accusing finger at both of them and Nina laughed so hard she snorted.
“I’m not knocking romance,” Erin defended herself. “I’m all for seeking a thrill somewhere since there aren’t any sexy Arabian princes in my life right now.”
“You never mentioned what happened with the guy you wanted to bring down here last year. Or is the ban on that topic still being enforced six months later?” Nina had a reputation for speaking before measuring her words, a habit none of the younger Finleys possessed. With a mother whowas bipolar, they’d grown up under the shadow of tirades where she’d sharedwaymore than was appropriate.
Nina’s tendency was a lot more charming.
“Turned out he was married. With kids.” Erin had admitted it to Remy, so she sure didn’t see the point in keeping it from her sisters.
They were both so still it was like neither of them breathed for a minute.
“Thedog,” Nina said finally. “Are you kidding me? And that’s rhetorical so don’t answer that. Unbelievable.”
Bethany shook her head. “I have got to fix my marriage. I cannot go out into a dating world where men act like that.”
“Yes, well, me neither. That’s why I’ve been working with my head down for six months trying not to think about it. But I’m done feeling like the greatest of all sinners when he lied to me from start to finish.” She frowned and reached for a chunk of Manchego from a bamboo board displaying three kinds of cheeses, star fruit and grapes. Nina had labeled the cheeses with mini gardening tags on toothpicks. “And I know you’re going to fix the marriage, Bethany. Scott seems really committed to it.”
Erin had seen them together at the Harvest Dance last fall and Scott had promised their mom to fight for his wife. Erin had believed him. Scott was one of those guys who did not fail. He was a conqueror.
Had Remy been like that before he lost his wife? The thought made her ache all the more for him.
Bethany shook her head. “He’s just going through the motions. Like if he clocks enough hours seated in a counselor’s chair we’ll be given some kind of certificate that says we’ve magically been healed. He doesn’t understand it’s not enough just to show up.”
“I did that for a long time,” Nina volunteered, cutting afew slices of apple before drizzling honey on them. “Remember when I left Heartache after high school? Right after Mack’s friend Vince died in a car crash because Vince and I had argued?”
“I didn’t know you went into counseling.” Although Erin recalled that time had been hell for both Mack and Nina. The hurt from that car crash had stolen eight years from them.
“I did. But it took a lot of sessions before I was ready to do more than just show up.” Nina sliced more apple and passed around the plates. “And it’s hard to spill your guts when you’re not even sure that talking about what’s wrong is going to change a thing.”
Bethany’s shoulders sagged. “So what turned things around for you? Do you remember what made you start working with the therapist?”
Setting her drink down, Erin waited for her answer, maybe as curious as Bethany. She’d never entered counseling even though Mack had taken her aside once and told her it had helped him resolve a lot of issues he’d had with their mother. Mack had thought all of his siblings should check in with a professional since bipolar disorder ran in families. But Erin never had. Maybe part of her was scared of what she could find out. And if she did learn that she had some of the same tendencies as her mother, what would she do about it? She had always feared that—since talking about their childhood wouldn’t change it—no amount of therapy would really fix the broken parts of her.
Nina grinned. “I have a hard time staying quiet for long. Hard to believe, right? But I got fed up with not talking and figured what did I have to lose? I started telling the story about Vince’s death and my role in it…” Her smile faded. “It was awful. And it didn’t get better right away. It took months of feeling like I was scraping my insides out before I started to turn a corner.”
“But it really helped?” Erin hadn’t remained angry with her mother after a childhood that had been occasionally frightening. She just drew boundaries and figured that was healthy enough. Yet considering it had taken her months to shake loose the sense of failure about Patrick, she wondered again if she was missing out on a deeper understanding of herself by avoiding the counselor’s office.
“So much.” Nina took another sip of her Bellini. “I needed that outside perspective to help me see what was normal about what I was feeling and what…wasn’t. I wouldn’t have finished college without her help.”
While Erin tried to imagine what it would be like to unlock all her family secrets and let a therapist wander around her thoughts, Bethany quizzed Nina more on the time frame for her experience and how she measured her results. She asked so many questions, in fact, that Erin got a much clearer idea of Bethany’s commitment to the process.
When Bethany seemed to have exhausted her list of things to ask, silence fell over the group for a long moment.
“What will you do if Scott continues to just show up?” Erin asked. She’d hoped the couple had turned a corner last fall when they had agreed to see a counselor.
Bethany stared out over the fields toward the peach orchard while she thought about it.
“As long as there is still some love there, I’m going to keep trying.” Her voice wobbled a little and Nina leaned over to sling an arm around her shoulders. “I will continue fighting for as long as there is a scrap of a chance that we still have a few seeds left of what we once shared.”
Erin’s eyes burned at her sister-in-law’s heartfelt words. “Cheers to that.” She lifted her glass in a toast. “Love is worth fighting for.”
Or so she hoped. These days she wasn’t sure she really believed she’d ever experience it herself.
