He didn’t disagree, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to do anything more than shrug. “Are we surprised by that?”
Meredith gave him a watery smile. “Not even a little. Now, go to sleep. And don’t be mad at me when I come up and check on you before I go to work.”
He gave her another quick hug. “Go. Sleep. Let tomorrow take care of itself.”
She chuckled at one of Granny Quinn’s famous sayings. The fact that it came straight out of Scripture made it hard to argue with. Not that he hadn’t tried a few times.
“Back at ya.” She left her house and jogged over to his. Mo waited until she was safely inside before he turned out the lights and headed up to bed.
They’d built Meredith’s home with a double staircase. One side went to the small loft where she’d made a guest room. The other went to her bedroom, which was a cozy nook that suited her personality. The stairs met on a small, raised landing a few feet from the main floor. Mo had one foot on the landing when he heard Bronwyn’s voice.
“Mo?” she whispered the word into the near darkness.
He turned on his cell phone light and found her. Bronwyn sat at the top of the stairs to Meredith’s bedroom, leaning against the wall. Her hair was a mess. No makeup. Eyes down.
Mo considered joining her, but instead, he climbed the stairs on his side and took a position mirroring hers. Then he turned off the light on his phone.
“Hi there. What are you doing, sitting in the dark?”
“I should have spoken to you sooner.”
“Bronwyn—”
“No. I need to say this now. I won’t keep you. You need to sleep. So do I. But if I don’t say it now—” Her voice broke and Mo realized she’d been crying.
Bronwyn took a deep breath. “I never apologized. Not really.”
“You tried.”
“I made a mess out of that one, didn’t I? You were right. I was still working through a lot of stuff, and I’d deluded myself into thinking you would welcome me back with open arms. It was selfish and small of me.”
“We were young, Bronwyn.”
She made a scoffing sound. “Young enough to be stupid, old enough to regret it.”
“We’ve both made mistakes. If I could go back to that day,I’d stand there and listen. I’d take you out for dinner and coffee and I’d let you tell me everything. And I would have told you everything. How it felt when I came homeand you were”—Mo cleared his throat and fought against the sudden moisture in his eyes—“gone. How furious I was with your family for not making you come back. And how I wanted you to be okay. I wanted you to be happy. And if that was far away from here, then that would be okay. But not withhim.”
“Yes. Him.” Bronwyn’s voice quavered. “We can’t have this conversation now, but I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving without saying goodbye. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for treating you like someone who would always come to my beck and call.”
Mo didn’t know what to say. What could he say?
Bronwyn continued, “But I’m not sorry for going no contact after that last episode. I was not okay, and I couldn’t be around you for a while. I needed the distance.”
“Can I say that I’m so sorry for that?” Mo shook his head. “I have no excuse. But again, I wish I’d listened to you. I wish I’d asked you why you were at the hospital and what was going on in your life. I didn’t. And I deserved your wrath.”
“Well, you sure got it. And for a little while, maybe you deserved it. But not for the past year or so. I should have shown up here one day and said, ‘Mo, we need to talk.’ But I didn’t. I was ... embarrassed? Afraid? Stubborn?”
“Waiting for me to do something else to prove that you’d made the right choice the first time?” Mo suggested.
He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but he heard what might have been a shrug. “Maybe. But mostly it was stubborn pride. You hurt me and you were sorry. But I wanted to punish you for it, anyway. And that was where I went too far.”
“I think it’s safe to say we both screwed up. Big time and on repeat.”
They sat in silence for so long, Mo wondered if she’d fallen asleep on the stairs.
“Mo?”
“Yeah?”
