Devon didn’t need to pay those guys any attention at all, didn’t even look at them. He just needed to focus on school and keeping his nose clean. Just like Memaw always said.
Today would be a good day. He’d make sure of that.
CHAPTER 3
Rebecca
A suitcase in each hand, Rebecca stood there on Granny’s white-painted porch, the sharp click of the key turning in the lock matching the thrum of her heart.
I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.
No. Not always. Memory hit her hard and fast—the neat pile of pills, the bitter taste as they slid down her throat, catching on her tongue until she forced them all straight down. One at a time, then five at a time, into the pit. Her pulse pounded in her ears, her throat, so fast and thick she thought for a moment Granny could hear it, standing there next to her.
She’d never be fine. Never be all right again.
“There!” Granny said, and the world slid back to Dahlia as the front door opened wide and Rebecca felt herself and her suitcases ushered inside, the feel of Granny’s hand steady and almost too warm on her back. “Home sweet home. Welcome back, sweet girl.”
A loud thwack made Rebecca jump as the screen door swung shut behind them, her neck prickling even as she reminded herself: It was a sound straight from her childhood. The sound of summertime.
Get it together, Rebecca. It had been four weeks. Surely she was getting a little better. Coping. Wasn’t she? She’d nailed the interview, even. Gotten the job in Dahlia like it’d been meant to be. It was a far cry from New York, but it was something.
Granny bustled ahead, flicking on small lamps, her low heels clicking over the hardwood floors and thin rugs, then the linoleum in the kitchen.
Swallowing hard, Rebecca set her two heavy suitcases down in the foyer and let her oversized handbag sink onto the bench by the door. The floorboards creaked as she did, and Rebecca peered around in spite of herself, gasped.
“Granny, it’s almost as I remembered it.”
Rebecca stepped to the old-fashioned settee, pressed down on the brocade, ran a hand over the smooth wooden armrest. Her lips felt tight against her teeth, and she realized she was smiling.
Granny laughed, called from the kitchen, “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”
“Oh, it’s good.”
Rebecca scanned the living room, taking it all in afresh—the crown molding and antique rose wallpaper, the smattering of lamps and doilies interspersed with Gramps’s old leather recliner. Even though Gramps had been gone years now, died when Rebecca was in her twenties, she still thought of it as “his” recliner, just like she still thought of it as “his” office or “his” tool shed. Closing her eyes, she breathed in, imagined she could still catch the faint scent of his pipe, hear the low murmur of the television in the background.
A lump settled in her throat, the tight-teeth smile gone. She swallowed past the burn.
“Is Gramps’s tool shed still out back?”
She forced sunshine into her voice, stepped into the living room fully now. One of the lamps, the peacock one with all the blues and greens, still had the crack in the corner from where she’d oncetossed a marble by mistake. Granny had said then that the crack added character. Looking at it now, Rebecca felt badly about it, about how cavalier she’d once been. She’d been cavalier about a lot of things.
“Sure is.” Granny reappeared, this time with a faded blue dishtowel in her hands. “You probably still have your old tool bench and apron out there. Remember the summer he tried to teach you woodturning?”
“Talk about a disaster.” Rebecca remembered the way he’d patiently showed her how to hold the wood and use the lathe, and how desperate she’d been to get the lesson over and done with so she could run off and go fishing. Funny how now she’d give anything to do those years over again, stand in the musty shed shoulder-to-shoulder with Gramps as he guided her hands, pointed out the difference between wormy chestnut and teak, oak, and pine.
A quiet settled over her, the gloom hard like a rock in her stomach.
Her parents had sent her from Washington to Dahlia every summer, hoping to instill some small-town morality in their too-big-for-her-britches city kid, especially after she’d discovered boys and a rebellious streak. She’d hated it at first, hated Dahlia and the heat and the lessons, hated being in the middle of nowhere away from her friends. But the lessons stuck, and by the end of the summer she’d completed a few pieces. One she still had, a pretty little mahogany box, used it to keep her rings.
Her chest tightened. Rings.
Was everything going to remind her of Peter? She didn’t think she could bear it.
Rebecca willed herself not to think of him. To think instead of Sarah, and the spring wedding her friend was planning. No. She wouldn’t spend her life pining over him. This was supposed to be her fresh start. Wasn’t it?
The memory of the pills came again, the ugly dome of tiny white ovals against the smooth oak of her computer desk. All the pain. All she’d done.
“He did love teaching you.” Granny’s voice sounded almost too light, and she felt rather than saw Granny studying her.
