As she swallows hard, her face falls with a look of pure grief and heartbreak which has my own heart dropping and clenching. “When we were teenagers, Hillary was diagnosed with leukemia.” Fuck me. My palms itch to reach for her, to hold her against my chest and give her comfort. “It was a hard road, but she beat it and was in remission.”
“That’s amazing,” I keep my words gentle because my gut is screaming at me that this story doesn’t have a happy ending in regard to Hillary’s illness.
“It was,” her words are thick with sadness. “Then it wasn’t,” she whispers and I have to strain to hear her.
“What happened?”
“I got a phone call,” she starts, but her words die and morph into laughter, but the sound doesn’t hold even a hint of amusement. “Isn’t that how it always starts? A phone call.” She meets my gaze, and her green eyes are filled with so much pain and grief. “I thought it was just a regular phone call, just a check in with one of my best friends. I had basically just graduated from college and wasn’t sure what my next move was. I thought she was calling to check in and persuade me to move back to Seneca Falls.”
When I arch an eyebrow in question she presses her lips together. I’m not sure if it’s in amusement or annoyance.
“Seneca Falls is the small town where we grew up. In Nevada,” she explains.
“Were you in the desert or the mountains?”
“More mountains. The land around the town has a lot of ranches. Our other best friend, Montana, grew up on a ranch and we’d go out and help her and her family on the weekend sometimes.”
“Sounds like a beautiful place to grow up,” I offer.
Tears fill her eyes, and she swallows hard as she blinks them away. Fuck, this woman is strong. But does she know it’s okay to be vulnerable? She might not know and trust me, but my new mission in life is to make her feel safe enough to fall apart if it is what she needs.
“Hillary wasn’t calling to ask me, again, about my plans.” Her words are so small, spoken so softly, but the weight of them is undeniable. “She was calling to tell me that she was no longer in remission. It was back and she was scared.”
“I’m sorry.”
The words are inadequate. Fuck, anything and everything is inadequate. How do you take someone’s grief and hold it for them until it will no longer feel like a chain pulling them down?
“Yeah,” she looks away from me, “me too.” She twirls some of the pasta left on her plate with her fork but we both know she’s not going to eat it. “That phone call changed the course of my life. I wasn’t applying for jobs in my college town anymore. I was packing everything up and getting on the road. There was no way I was going to allow Hillary to face her illness alone.”
“She didn’t have any family?”
“She did,” Hollyn is quick to shoot the words back at me, “but that’s not the same. With her parents, she had to be strong for them. Montana was needed on her family’s ranch. I wasn’t leaving my friend to fight for her life alone.”
“It sounds like you were more than friends.”
“We were sisters,” she agrees. She sighs, “I miss her.”
“But you were there for her. That matters.”
Her eyes snap to mine, and a tear escapes her eye. She brushes it away like it personally offended her and an ache blooms in my chest.
“One of the things we did while I was sitting next to her through her treatments was talk about the road trip we wanted to take together. It was extensive,” there’s a hint of amusement in her voice and she rolls her eyes, “which was all Hillary. Being trapped in a car and driving for hours isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, but she wanted to see the country. She didn’t just want to see the big cities; she wanted to visit all the little no name places in between.”
“How long have you been on your road trip?”
“Two weeks.” She looks up at the ceiling, but another tear escapes. “She fought so hard, but…,” her words trail off, and she shakes her head before looking at me again, “we buried her three weeks ago. I put plans in place and set out.”
“Until arriving in Storyville,” I tease her, trying to add some levity to this conversation.
“Who knew that a picturesque town with an adorable name would be the one to derail me,” she sasses, relief coming off her because I’m not pushing her deeper into her feelings and am trying to lighten the conversation.
“Maybe there’s a reason you broke down here,” I offer, unsure of how she’ll take my words.
I can only hope there’s a little Christmas magic, or something, at work. If she hadn’t broken down at the edge of town, she would have driven right through.
There’s no way I would have met her if that had happened.
Her lips quirk to one side as she considers my words. “Yeah, maybe.”
