Climbing from the car, I wandered toward the barn. Other than a handful of chickens pecking at the mud, the yard was empty. I braced my arms on the pen rail and inhaled. Beyond the familiar scent of moist earth, I smelled the musk of cattle, the sweetness of hay, the tang of manure. As a group, they worked. Bundled together, they sang of life and growth. I leaned back against the rail, closed my eyes, and took another deep breath.
When I opened my eyes again, I gasped. Edward was walking from the store toward the Jeep in the lot. Despite the mud on its side, the Jeep looked new, and didn’t that spring another memory? He had owned a Wrangler when we first met. He had loved that Wrangler. It remained his dream car before our lifestyle demanded something more.
This Wrangler might be a rental—and wouldn’t that be great, if he returned it to the Hertz stand at the airport before flying back home?
But who was I kidding? People from Boston—or Hartford or New York—didn’t fly here. They drove. They didn’t work at the Inn. They didn’t buy a house or receive boxes of bedding. Add that muddy Jeep, the barn jacket and jeans, and the red scarf that hung on either side of his collar? Edward Cooper looked to be settling in.
One arm held a large brown sack. When he reached the Jeep, he put it inside and, straightening, raised a hand to the vehicle’s roof. He took a breath, like I had done seconds before. He was smelling the same things I had. All were innocent, but suddenly not so.
***
It was fall. We always came in fall. The first time, I was pregnant. The trip was a last-minute one, just an overnight, but our eyes had met in matching desperation, unspoken agreement that we needed a break. Our parents were driving us nuts. Mine were scandalized that I was pregnant before I was married. Terrified that a bump might show when I walked down the aisle, they had rushed to make arrangements at the church, and although I was in charge of the rest, they phoned multiple times a day asking whether I had called the photographer, the caterer, the florist, the priest. Since Edward was paying for the groom’s parthimself, his parents should have just been along for the ride. But they were newly divorced, and neither one particularly wanted to see the other. His mother was trying to one-up his father by badgering Edward on where the rehearsal dinner should be held, what should be served, and who should give toasts. His father wanted to know what his mother was pushing so that he could push for the reverse.
We chose a getaway in upstate New York that, having a late cancellation, gave us a bargain rate. We had our own luxury cabin, our own butler on call, our own masseuse. The farm was a mile from the resort. We had to pass it coming and going, and Edward hadn’t been eager to stop. He had grown up on a farm and, at that moment, didn’t want a reminder of his father. Then we saw fields of pumpkins and kale, a corn maze, and cars filled with kids. There were no cows in sight, not a one. So we stopped.
That first year, we walked through the fields and bought a jug of cider at the farm store. The next year, with six-month-old Lily asleep in a BABYBJÖRN on Edward’s chest, we picked a peck of Macouns and bought another jug of cider. Lily was eighteen months the following year and wanted no part of a carrier. She sat still for a hayride, but otherwise ran wherever other children were running. At two-and-a-half, she was helping with the picking, and a year later, after declaring that she needed not one, not two, but three pumpkins so that we could carve a daddy, a mommy, and a little girl, she made her choices from high on Edward’s shoulders, one hand pointing out her choices, the other clutching his hair like it was the mane of a horse. By the time she was four-and-a-half, from the first pumpkin sighting at our supermarket, she was the one begging to visit the farm. We did it all that year—hayride, corn maze, apples, cider donuts—and it was so good.
We never got there again.
***
I returned to the present with a pain in my chest. How a memory could simultaneously be beautiful and horrific, I didn’t know, but this one tore me apart.
Thoughts are just thoughts, CALM said.Let them come and go.
It was easier said than done. The pain in my chest remained, so I put a hand there to soothe it. The movement tipped him off. His head turned, gaze shifted, realization hit.
He went still, which was only fair, since I couldn’t move, either. I didn’t know what he was thinking, whether he was back in the past of his own childhood or Lily’s, whether he felt happiness or angst, heard laughter or screams.
As he looked at me, though, memory began to break apart. Here and now, dressed down but standing tall, looking older and tired, Edward remained striking.
I don’t know what made one man my type and another not—why only Edward’s brand of tall and dark turned me on—why he had always done it when no other man could. I don’t know why my pulse raced at the sightof windblown brown hair or lean hips in jeans. I didn’t want to feel any pull at all. But there it was. I couldn’t look away.
Then he hitched his chin, inviting me closer, and the spell broke. With a single shake of my head, I turned my back on him and faced the pen. In the next frantic breath, though, I spun back around. He had taken me off guard three times now, which was three times too many. I wanted to see where he was and know if he approached. He might have some new, mysterious, even vengeful purpose in Devon. But. Devon. Was. Mine.
I was about to stalk forward and confront him, when Joyce entered my line of sight. Having emerged from the store, she was crossing the lot. Beside her was another sack-carrying man, clearly heading for his own vehicle. I heard bits of an exchange between the three—saw the swish of her hair as she turned from one to the other—and guessed from the levity of it that they had chatted inside.
She peered into her car, straightened, and looked around. When she saw me, she waved me over. Naturally, she would want to introduce me to Edward—which was a total joke, I knew and felt a moment’s panic. Did I acknowledge him or not? Would he acknowledge me or not? It would be bad enough to say we’d known each other before Devon, but if we admitted we’d been married? In no time, someone would add my first name to his last name to Boston, and my secret would be out. It was everything I’d worked so hard—so hard—to escape.
I was spared it when Edward said something to Joyce and then disappeared into the Wrangler. Seconds later, he backed out and headed off.
My relief was shallow. I had dodged the bullet, but for how long? If he was going to be here for any length of time, in the role of Inn owner no less, the link between us would come out. Sometime, somewhere, somehow it would. Our having been married and both ending up here was the kind of coincidence people loved hearing. They would think words like sweet, touching, and charming, until they got to awkward and painful, and if they ever got to wanting revenge? There’d be all hell to pay, with me being the target.
Oh yeah, Edward and I had to talk, but not with an audience around.
“He was late for a meeting with Hank Monroe,” Joyce called as I neared the Subaru. Hank Monroe was the first name under Home Renovation in the Devon directory. I might have said he was a thief, if she weren’t still talking, her voice returning to normal the closer I got. “That’s our Ned Cooper,” she informed me with a bright smile, assuming I would tie the name with the Inn. “He bought the Barnstead place. Did you know?”
“I heard,” I said, but she was already nodding into the next thought.
“Extensive renovationsthatone needs. Apparently the guy has the money for it. Money is good, Maggie. You need to meet him.”
“Money is not good,” I snapped and quickly winced an apology for the sharpness, “and anyway, we’ve already met.” Neither statement was false, I thought as I slid into the car, but I was surprised that she didn’t hear my heart. It was thudding its way into my throat and on up to my brain. Or maybe what I felt were arrhythmic little bursts of anger. Life had been calm, quiet, and easy here, but no more. Try as I might to keep the past tucked away in its own little box, events of the past few days were poking tiny holes in the bottom and letting it leak.
Joyce closed the door and buckled up. “I think he’s a little awkward meeting people who work at the resort, like he isn’t sure what kind of professional distance to keep.”
If she thought that was why he hadn’t wanted to meet me, I was fine with it. “What’s his role?” I asked with just enough curiosity. “Isn’t he representing a group?”
“I understood hewasthe group,” Joyce said and, starting the car, backed around.
