Jenny caught her breath a little bit at that.Because she was sitting at a table with a woman that a passerby might think she was related to, and she supposed that in some ways, she was.
The truth was, she had never felt more united in anything.She wasn’t sure that it was possible for her to feel closer to another human being, because what other human being could possibly understand any of this?
Patrick himself, so charming, so beautiful, and yet so empty inside.What it had been like to love him.To pour into him over and over again, and know entirely too well the difference between him when he was pouring back—and when he very distinctlywas not.
She and Peyton had crossed that barrier on the phone some time ago.She didn’t know if it made her feel better or worse to know that he’d been just as wonderful—and just as horrible—to both of them.Lately she’d been coming to accept that she might never know.
It really was a club that neither one of them wanted to be in, but here they were.
Putting aside Cat, who had found her perfect match already, they had five children on the line.It didn’t matter how grown-up those children were.To Jenny and Peyton, they were still and would always be their babies.
And it seemed they shared that same bright fire inside when it came to their babies.Jenny couldn’t help but love that about her.
“I don’t know about you,” Peyton said after a moment.“But my children are going to need a little encouragement to get their acts together.Finn, my oldest, has a responsibility obsession that led him to wasting too much of his life trying to be quote ‘good enough’ to buy some ranch land in Colorado that was sold out from under him anyway.Raleigh, my middle child, has a way with horses and a way with women, and I don’t believe he’ll ever settle down if he can help it.And that’s a shame, because he has the heart his own father never did.And Helena?”Peyton shook her head.“She has the biggest heart of them all, but I don’t think she’ll let anyone near enough to touch it.Because I’m pretty sure she needs exactly the kind of man she thinks she hates.”
“I can relate.”Jenny was nodding.“Cat, my youngest, always had her eyes on the horizon.Then it turned out that she found all the horizons she needed in a man who really is a little old for her.”She shrugged.“But between you and me, I don’t think this younger generation understands that sometimes, what a girl wants is a grown man, not a boy.”
“Hear, hear,” murmured Peyton.
“Tennessee thinks he needs to control the world as the oldest son and the so-called head of the family,” Jenny continued.“And, I have to say, he’s good at it.But still.I worry that it will all calcify in him.Meanwhile, Dallas had an early marriage while he was still in the military that somehow went awry, though he’ll never speak of it, and he’s been tilting at windmills ever since.Literally.He’s been renovating an old lighthouse—”
“I’ve heard about this lighthouse,” Peyton said with a grin.“In the middle of the Rocky Mountains with no water in sight.”
Jenny nodded.“I don’t know what he’ll do when it’s finished.I think he’s living for the project and very little else.”
“Well, I have a better project for us,” Peyton declared.“And indirectly, all of them.I think we’ll have to facilitate the first meeting.We’re probably going to have to make it clear that you and I are completely on board with the meeting and melding of the families.”She waited for Jenny to nod her agreement.“And that we want to become the best and happiest family that ever existed,specifically becausetheir father would have hated that with all that he was.”
“I’m pretty sure that will win over the whole crowd,” Jenny said.“But I want more than that.”
“So do I,” Peyton agreed.“They deserve better.”
“And they’re not going to make the kind of romantic mistakes that we did.”Jenny shook her head.“Not even close.”
“No matter what,” Peyton agreed.
And then, still gripping each other’s hands, they shook on it.
Jenny could feel it inside of her, like a vow.
And it was one she intended to keep.
Whatever it took.
*
Later that week,on a frigid Saturday that couldn’t decide between snow and freezing rain, Jenny invited the entire Patrick family into the stately old Victorian on Lisle Hill.She made sure that all three of her children were there.She told Cat to come without her husband, not because it was a secret, but because this needed to be a family-only meeting that she was welcome to tell her husband all about when she went back home to the Carey ranch in the hills beyond their tiny town.
“Good,” Cat had replied.“Because Wilder and I don’t keep secrets.”
And if Jenny had felt that there was some reproach in that statement, given the way they’d grown up, well.She couldn’t begrudge it.She was allergic to secrets herself these days.
When the Patricks arrived, Jenny gave Peyton a big, long hug that was only partially performative.She noted that it was returned in kind because they both knew what they were doing here, and they were both diving in headfirst.Then she led the other woman andherthree children into the living room.
She and Peyton sat together on one couch, another deliberate declaration of unity, and they both watched as their children looked at each other, and slowly—at least, slowly for Jenny’s kids, who clearly hadn’t recognized Helena until this moment—understood.
“Oh shit,” Dallas muttered.
Cat swallowed, hard.“Um.The symmetry is a little disturbing, isn’t it?”
