She nods and comes to sit in a cushioned chair next to the couch. “So what’s the trouble, dear? Too long at The Cowherd Whiskey? The ghosts getting to you?”
“Ghosts?” I try to stand up, but Liza gently presses on my shoulder until I relax back on the comfy pillows. “As in plural? Because I think my life is being destroyed by one ghost.”
“The spirit of Ms. Jane Austen.” Liza’s voice is hushed. “Ah, yes. She’s a powerful one.”
I put my hands over my eyes. ““Whether or not that’s true, the ghost is only an issue because of a man and how he’s being propped up into a goddamn hero by this fantasy-obsessed town we live in. I thought I was doing well with all the changes going on this summer. But it’s starting to feel like one too many weddings.”
“And you’re involved in all of them?”
I can hear her shuffling a deck of cards, and I take my hands away from my face and look over. Three cards lie face up on a side table, and Liza’s shaking her head as she looks at them.
“The spirits are telling me that there’s one marriage in particular you need to bow out of, my dear. I think you know which one.”
“But why should I bow out of Logan and Gigi’s wedding?” I ask her in frustration. “Gigi asked for my help with an engagement gift, and I said yes. I didn’t want to say yes, but I don’t know exactly why that is. I mean...”
“That’s not the marriage I’m talking about,” Liza says. “I’m talking about your own.”
My cheeks flush with heat. “Look, Logan’s eyes are dull now. Ever since he came back from that dumb trip. And, I don’t know, I feel like maybe by not signing the papers…”
“You can save him from doing something he’ll regret?”
Doesn’t sound so smart when I hear the words out loud.
“Honey.” Liza holds the third card up for me to see. “By not signing those papers, you’re delaying the inevitable and sitting in Purgatory. You’re stuck playing that unenviable game of ‘I don’t want him, but I don’t want anyone else to have him either.’ No?”
I sit up straight and nod. “Right. I know. I’ll do it today.”
As I’m walking out the door, I throw over my shoulder, “But dull eyes don’t look good on Logan. I’m just saying.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided I’m being too harsh. Maybe dull eyes are a good thing,” I say to Ginny the next day.
We’re walking along the old railroad tracks into town, and we’ve spent the better part of the walk discussing the signed divorce papers I have in my purse. The moment I signed them, I knew I needed to get rid of them.
When I couldn’t reach Logan on his cell, I called Wild Ranch, and his mother told me he and Reid were both bringing their trucks to the auto shop in town for tune-ups later today. Not wanting to wait another second, I called Ginny. After we stopped by the bridal salon to look at bridesmaid dress alternatives, she offered to escort me to the auto shop.
“But how can having dull eyes be a good thing?” Ginny says.
I’m not sure, so I don’t answer her.
“Have you considered telling Logan what you had been considering before you heard about his engagement? You know, how you wanted to try dating…” Ginny stops talking, but I dive in with a firm denial anyway.
“Of course not! That horse has ridden into the sunset. I’m not going to bring it up. It will just make things uncomfortable for Logan, and I wouldn’t do that to him.” I kick at the rocks in the dusty dirt path just as we pass the fishing hole off the edge of the creek.
Logan’s fishing hole. He’s not here now. But I feel like I can see him anyway—pole in hand, baseball cap on backwards, blue jeans fitting his ass perfectly like they always do.
“He and Dave were fishing all morning,” Ginny says like she’s reading my mind. “I don’t know where Gigi was. You’d think he’d be spending all his time with her. She doesn’t know anybody in town.”
“Logan always fishes when he has something on his mind that he doesn’t want to process.” I turn back and retrace my steps on the railroad tracks. “Let’s head out onto Main through the empty lot up ahead.”
We walk across the burnt-out grass of the abandoned lot in silence. But once we’ve reached the street, Ginny says, “You must miss him.”
I look over at her. “Looking at him with another woman shouldn’t be difficult, right? Just like all the other times he and I dated other people.”
“I suppose. But I don’t think you ever thought any of those women would last.” She goes quiet for a moment before asking, “You said you finally opened your diary. Starting at the beginning must be kind of hard, isn’t it?”
I don’t want to say how hard. “It’s not the easiest thing. I feel like I poured my heart out once a year into this little secret journal and then locked it up again until the next year. But I never went back and looked at what my heart was saying, you know?”
