“So why are you sittin’ on my steps?”
“Farrah broke up with me again.”
“She did not.” Ben’s hushed tone conveyed more disbelief than Darren thought possible. “But I thought things were going well. She told Rae things were going well.”
“She did?”
“At bunko night.”
“That was over a week ago.”
“So what? What happened?”
“Nothing.” And Darren honestly couldn’t think of a single thing. They’d spent time together. Talked. Texted. She’d come out to Steeple Ridge and told him about her father, about her inheritance. She was talking about buying horses, for crying out loud.
“Did she say why?”
“Said it wasn’t my turn.”
“What does that even mean?”
Darren didn’t want to get into it. Number one, he respected Farrah’s privacy, and it wasn’t his place to tell Ben anything. “It means she came home with a lot of baggage, and she needs time to unpack it.”
As he spoke, a calm, comforting feeling flowed over him with the gentleness of spring rain water. And he knew in that moment that he’d get Farrah back. She just needed time. Possibly a lot of it.
Help me be patient, he pleaded as Ben stood and said, “Well, you want coffee or anything? Rae brought home some of that dark roast from Montpelier.”
“Yeah, I’ll be in soon.”
Ben left, and Darren contemplated the stars again. He found it amazing that someone had looked up and noticed patterns, found constellations, and named them. The sky just looked like a jumbled mess of lights to him. He desperately wanted God to show him the path to take—the one that would lead him back to Farrah for good.
But all he saw were stars.
“Thank you for the stars,” he muttered as he stood. They were beautiful, and Darren did need to focus on being more thankful for what he did have, especially if he were to have the patience to endure what he didn’t.
chapter
eighteen
A week passed.Then two. Somehow a month went by, and Farrah only knew it because she opened her door one afternoon to find three children dressed in costumes. She had no idea it was Halloween, or where October had gone.
She went to work at the botanical boutique early in the morning, because she couldn’t sleep. So she left earlier in the day. She told herself it wasn’t because she didn’t want to run into Darren, but she knew it was a lie.
And she hated that she was lying to herself. Knew that without being one-hundred percent truthful, she wouldn’t be able to make the recovery necessary. Her mistakes in LA had taught her that much, at least.
She’d gotten the yard ready for winter, so when the first freezing rains and then snows descended on Island Park, she had nothing to do but watch the precipitation sluice down the windows.
Work on the farm happened. The sun rose. It set. Life seemed to go on around her, and Farrah didn’t know how to grasp onto it, make it stop so she could get on.
She went to see her parents, and those visits provided bright pops of color in her otherwise drab existence. Thoughts ofcalling Darren circled incessantly, and she could never banish them completely.
Still, she didn’t call him. He didn’t call her either, and as winter really took its hold on the landscape, Farrah wondered if this was her new life.
But it’s not really living, she thought. Dr. Kenna had asked her to focus on herself. Really get things worked out, fixed, and aligned in herself before adding Darren to the mix. But Farrah hadn’t seen the therapist once since she’d broken up with Darren.
She arrived at the boutique on Friday morning, her breath steaming in front of her as she made her way from the parking lot to the door. Inside, it would be warm and humid, and she increased her pace as a stiff wind kicked up.
Behind her, the growl of a big truck sounded. Curious, she turned to see what was going on. A moving truck inched down the road, passing behind some trees that had lost their leaves at some point. Farrah hadn’t even seen when. True remorse pulled through her, because she loved autumn in Vermont, and she’d completely missed it.
