But my legs feel like they’re made of concrete, and Eleanor is already walking back into the house, and I don’t know what else to do.
So I follow her.
The coffee is terrible. Eleanor apologizes, says she can never get the ratio right, that Delilah usually makes it, and I tell her it’s fine even though it tastes like burnt regret.
I sit at the same table where Delilah ate dinner last night. Before she saw the photo. Before she decided to throw away everything we were building.
The casserole dish is still on the counter. Untouched. A glass of water sits by the sink, half-empty. There’s a dish towel draped over the oven handle, folded the way Delilah always folds them, in thirds. Little signs of her everywhere. Little reminders that she was here, living in this house, sleeping in the room down the hall, and now she’s not.
“She didn’t eat,” I say.
“No. I don’t think she did.”
I stare at the empty chair across from me. The chair where she should be sitting right now, rolling her eyes at something I said, stealing the last piece of bacon, beinghere. I can picture her so clearly, the way she wraps her hands around her coffee mug and tucks one foot under her when she sits, the way she looks at me like I’m both the best and worst thing that ever happened to her.
My phone buzzes. Dean.
Jo says Eleanor called her last night. What’s going on?
I don’t answer. I don’t know how to explain any of this in a text. Hey Dean, your future sister-in-law showed my girlfriend a photo and now she’s sitting in a cemetery talking to her dead dad. How’s your morning going?
“I called Jo around midnight,” Eleanor says, reading my expression. “I didn’t know what else to do. She called Dean. I’m sorry if...”
“It’s fine.”
It’s not fine. Nothing is fine. But I don’t have the energy to explain that.
Another buzz:On my way over.
Of course he is. Dean has never been able tostay out of anything. It used to drive me crazy when we were kids, the way he always had to fix things, always had to have the answers. Now I’m grateful for it.
I set the phone face-down on the table and stare at the wood grain. There’s a scratch near the edge, and I wonder if Ruffy did that, or if it’s older. I wonder how many meals have been eaten at this table, how many conversations and tears.
“She saw a photo,” I say, mostly to myself. “Of me and Mia Monroe. It’s not what it looked like. She hugged me, I didn’t want her to, but the camera caught it at the wrong angle and now it looks like...” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter what it looks like. What matters is that Delilah saw it and didn’t even ask me about it.”
“She’s scared.”
“I’m scared too. That doesn’t mean I run.”
Eleanor is quiet for a moment. She refills her coffee mug even though it’s still half-full, nervous hands needing something to do.
“When Robert, Delilah’s father, when he and I divorced, Delilah was seven,” she says finally. “She blamed me. She thought I chose this town, this flower shop, over her. Over our family.”
I look up. Eleanorhas her hands wrapped around her coffee mug, staring at something I can’t see.
“I tried to explain. For years, I tried. The truth was more complicated than she wanted it to be. Robert and I, we weren’t happy. We hadn’t been happy for a long time. But Delilah didn’t see that. She just saw her mother choosing to stay in one place while her father took her somewhere else.” Eleanor meets my eyes. “She’s been running ever since. And every time she runs, she tells herself it’s because she’s not enough. Because the people she loves will eventually leave her anyway. So she might as well leave first.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No. It’s not. But it’s what she believes. And you can’t love someone out of their beliefs, Levi. They have to choose to let them go.”
The front door opens. Heavy footsteps in the hallway.
Dean appears in the kitchen doorway, still in his work boots, looking like he got dressed in the dark. Which he probably did.
“You look like hell,” he says to me.
“Thanks. Very helpful.”
