Nobody else was the same.
Apparently I didn’t need dinner to lose my heart again. All it took was a look.
CHAPTER 18
Abby
Even without looking at her name, I would have known the text was from Amy.Out to dinner! Don’t wait up, followed by a string of emojis—a smiley face, a kissy face, a heart.
Big on signs of affection, short on details, that was my Amy.
When the girls were growing up, Meg was the rule-follower and Beth the peacekeeper. Jo never got into the kind of trouble a mother could protect her from. But Amy... She was so eager to be popular, so determined to grow up as quickly as possible. Amy had been a challenge.
I gave a stir to the chili simmering on the stove. I should let it go. Let her go.
My nest had been so empty. It wasn’t only the girls I missed, but Meg’s clothes on the floor and Jo’s scraps of paper, Beth’s music and Amy’s messes, the arguments over who sat in the front seat or spent more time in the bathroom. I missed who I was when they lived at home, when they still needed me.
My chicks might be back in the nest, but their comings and goingswere no longer my business. Still, habit—or concern—made me wipe my hands and reach for the phone.
Time?I typed.
Three dots wavered on the screen. Amy, replying.Late. Love you!
Like that was reassuring.
Honestly, I’d been looking forward to dinner with my girls again, Amy, my baby, and Beth, the last to leave home.
At least they were together. I hoped they were having fun.
Make good choices, I typed, and she texted back emojis for laughing hard and fingers crossed.
My girls weren’t teenagers anymore. It was no longer my job to worry about their safety or wonder whether their behavior was appropriate for the Reverend March’s daughters. But old habits were hard to break.
The scales were slowly tipping in our relationship. Now they worried about me.How’s your back, Momma? How’s the farm? How are you doing with Daddy gone?
My phone rang. Beth, this time, apologizing for being late. “I wanted to stay with Mr. Laurence.”
I gave the chili another stir. “Where’s Amy?”
“With Trey.”
My mom antennae quivered.Late. Don’t wait up. But this was Trey, I reminded myself. He used to chauffeur the girls all the time. And he’d always had a soft spot for Amy.
I lowered the heat under the pot. “Need me to come get you?”
Like she was a ten-year-old calling from school with a stomachache.
“I’m good. Dad’s bringing me home.”
Oh. “That’s nice of him.”
Ash had never shared car pool duties when the girls were young. I didn’t expect he would develop a deeper relationship with our daughter simply because he drove her home this one time. But who knew? Being stuck in the car had always made the kids chatty. Anyway, it wasgood Ash and Beth were spending time together. Girls needed their fathers.
We ended the call. I felt a sudden longing for my own dad, a comforting memory of whiskers and tobacco. My father was a farmer who spoke mostly in grunts or not at all, who believed girls should be married and wives should be good cooks. But he taught me to fish when I was five, sitting beside me for hours in the johnboat, baiting my hook with chicken livers, untangling my line, grabbing my rod when I almost fell in. He taught me to drive a truck, barreling across the fields and back roads in his battered pickup, smoking Camels and listening to George Strait on the radio. And the day he walked me down the aisle to marry Ash, he stopped at the back of the church and offered me the car keys, and never mind that Ash was the catch of the county and I was already pregnant with Meg.
“You’re a strong woman, Abigail May,” he’d said, patting my hand on his arm.“You don’t want to marry this boy, you’ll be just fine on your own.”
And I was. Fine on my own, I mean, now that my parents had passed and Ash had moved out and the girls were grown and gone.
