“Only for a few days.”
“Ash, I haven’t taken a day off in twenty years. I can’t drop everything because you want me to tag along to a meeting.”
“We can work around your schedule. And the trip would be for you, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a place there. Hillwood. It’s a big house with a bigger garden and a really large collection of eighteenth-century French art and furniture. It’s not the Loire Valley,” he said stiffly. “But I thought you might... like it. It’s only three days.”
I gaped. He hadlistened. He was trying.
I couldn’t remember the last time Ash had given me a gift I hadn’t picked out for myself. Something I hadn’t asked for or shopped for. Something I didn’t need. Didn’t even know I wanted.
But oh, how I wanted this. Wanted to hope again.
Which made me a fool, I reckoned. “A trip isn’t going to fix us, Ash.”
“I know.”
I snorted. “You could at least try arguing with me.”
He smiled a little. “Do you want me to?”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “Maybe if we’d argued more, we’d still be together. Maybe if I’d told you what I wanted...”
“You tried. I didn’t listen.”
Denial hadn’t worked. Maybe it was time for honesty. “You were too focused on what you felt called to do. And I was too busy picking up the pieces.”
He regarded me for a long moment. “Whatdoyou want, Abby?”
“I want you to go to counseling.”
“With you.” It wasn’t a question.
I stiffened.Iwasn’t the one who needed help dealing with my emotions. Or maybe I didn’t want to accept responsibility for my part in what had gone wrong. I nodded.
“All right,” he said slowly.
My chest lightened, a rush of buoyancy like... Well. Like hope. “And I want to go with you to D.C.,” I said.
CHAPTER 29
Beth
Jo took me to the beach. Because, she said, the ocean makes everything better.
I hadn’t been to the beach in years. I really didn’t want my sister—or anybody—to see me in a bathing suit. But Jo hadn’t given up on the idea of fixing me. She needed my help with Robbie, she said, and Alec was bored, and Eric was busy with the restaurant.
Besides, I was practicing saying yes.
So we went, a day trip on a Tuesday, when it wouldn’t interfere with my three-times-a-week outpatient therapy. Jo, her boys, and me.
Alec lowered his window as we crossed the bridge, letting in a warm blast of salt air and car exhaust. A white crane hunted the weeds below. My heart lifted, soaring like a gull over the blazing water.
Jo turned right onto the island, past shops painted passion fruit pink and Bahama blue, past the boardwalk with its rickety rides and racks of tie-dyed shirts. The scent of coconut sunscreen and fried doughnuts wafted through the car windows. The sidewalks werecrowded with boys in board shorts and ball caps and girls with flat stomachs in tiny string bikinis.
I shrank inside my sweatshirt, dreading their bright, judgmental eyes. It was July, the height of the season, when most rentals would be full and the beaches would be crowded.
