Chapter 29
Rowan sipped her tea and stared unseeing at the tree covered hillside behind her parents’ house. It reminded her a lot of the cabin in Colorado. Except she didn’t have to start a generator in order to have a hot shower.
After calling an Uber to take her to the closest car rental place, she’d called her dad to see if she could visit for a few days. He was in Knoxville for a teacher’s conference and her mom had tagged along. Rowan was disappointed and, at the same time, relieved she didn’t have to listen to her mother’s lamentations about everything going wrong in Rowan’s life.
She was well aware, thank you very much. So there she was in Flat Holler, Tennessee. Where the most exciting thing to do on a Friday night was hang out in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly and go cow tipping. At least now there was a movie theater.
How did life get so complicated?
“So, what are you running from this time?”
Rowan jumped and sloshed hot tea on her shirt. “Sugar!”
She glared at Adalynn climbing the steps to the porch and pulled the material away from her chest.
“Sorry.” Adalynn sat in the chair on the other side of the small table. “I thought you saw me.”
“No. I was spacing. What are you doing here?”
“Mama said you were hiding out but wouldn’t say why and asked me to check on you.”
“I’m not hiding out. Or running.” And even if she was, it was none of Adalynn’s business.
“Sure you are.” She picked up a handful of pretzels from the bowl on the table. “It’s what you do. Things get hard, you quit, and you run. It’s what you always do.”
“No, it’s not,” she said through clenched teeth. This was exactly why she was glad her mother wasn’t there—it’s the exact conversation they would have had.
Adalynn huffed out a laugh. “You broke up with Luke and ran to Denver. You broke up with Michael and ran to Luke. I’m guessing this has something to do with Luke as well.”
Rowan looked away from her sister and remained silent. The last person she wanted to talk to about this was her sister. Unfortunately, Adalynn wasn’t willing to let it go.
“Hell, you even quit pageants because it got hard. The only things you never quiet were softball and dental school.”
She ground her teeth together. “I didn’t quit pageants because it got hard.”
“Yeah…okay. You didn’t place one time and you quit.”
Rowan shifted toward Adalynn and glared. “I quit because after that pageant I overhead Mama tell one of the judges that she didn’t know why it was so hard with me. Thatyouhad always been so pretty and so easy and that she just prayed I’d grow into my looks so I could start winning some of that entry money back.That’swhy I quit.”
Adalynn had the grace to look shocked. “Mama wouldn’t….”
She pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows.
“But she didn’t mean….”
She emphasized her look, daring Adalynn to finish her sentence.
“Is that why you became so distant?” her sister asked quietly.
She shrugged and blinked several times. “It hurt that you and Mama were so close. It always felt like I was the ugly duckling around you. It was easier not to be compared.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. All I knew was one day my little sister didn’t want anything to do with me. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“I told Dad. A week later he took me to Little League tryouts. He told me no one was going to judge me on my hair or my smile or my sashay. All I had to do was hit, catch, and throw and those were all things I could control. I couldn’t catch very well to begin with, but I was angry enough I was a really good hitter.”
“I always wondered about that. Mama and Daddy had a big row about it when you came home that day.”
Rowan pulled her knees up and rested her head against the back of the chair, fully facing Adalynn. “I didn’t know that.”
