She knew me too well. “How is he?”
“I haven’t seen much of him. Peggy says he was grim when you left, like after Christine died, but Freret saw him at the bank yesterday and said he was laughing and cracking jokes.”
My heart sank. Hadn’t taken him long to get over me, apparently.
“You’ve seen Peggy? How are the girls?”
“Adorable. She brought them in last week. They were wearing the costumes from their ballet recital. And Zoey lost another tooth.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. They’re growing up so fast.”
And I was missing it. I was as crazy about those girls as I was about their father. The empty spot that had ached in my chest ever since I’d left felt like a fresh wound.
“Jillian came back for a long weekend,” Kirsten continued. “And guess what—she’s met someone in Atlanta.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Apparently it’s pretty hot and heavy. She sold her house,and he’s coming with her to the closing next month to meet Peggy and Griff and the girls.”
“Wow.” Jillian was in a relationship—and she, too, was selling a house. “Sounds like a real estate boom in Wedding Tree.”
“It is. That new software business has started moving here. Apparently the founder lived here for a few years when he was a teenager, and he’s decided to move back.”
“I remember Lauren said about a hundred employees would be moving to town.”
“Yeah. It’s not huge, but it’s big for a town the size of Wedding Tree.”
We talked some more, and then I hung up. Something inside, some gnarly little weed of emotion that I thought was dead and gone, oozed some bitter juice. It took me a moment to identify the taste. When I did, a zing of shame shot through me.
Jealousy. I was jealous.
Of Jillian?
No. Not Jillian. I was actually happy for her. It was about time she got beyond the shadow of her sister.
So who, then?
All the new people moving to Wedding Tree, I realized. I was jealous that they got to live there, while I had to live here.
“Whoa, girl,” I muttered to myself. “What’s going on?” A coworker walked by and gazed in curiously. I fiddled with my phone, pretending I was talking into it. I was losing it, talking aloud to myself. I gathered up my things, headed to my apartment, and phoned Gran.
“I just realized I’m jealous of the people moving to Wedding Tree while I’m stuck in Chicago,” I blurted.
“Who said you’re stuck in Chicago?” she asked.
“This is a wonderful opportunity that will never come my way again.”
“Sounds like you’re reciting a line from a script. How can it be wonderful if you don’t really want it?”
That made me pause. “But Ishouldwant it.”
“Shouldis the most useless word in the English language. What would you rather be doing?”
“Painting murals and living in Wedding Tree.”
“Well, then, there’s your answer.”
