I should remind her I don’t know how we’re going to pay for brain surgery in ten weeks, but there’s an unexpected crushing feeling on my chest when I see a timeline in black and white. It’s the right thing to do and it’s terrifying. Brain surgery. For my mother.
Reese plays tough, but I know she feels what I do. Instead of making this harder on either of us, I respond with:Guessing the same way it feels to be the bitch of the family.
She replies with a picture of her middle finger.
I click around the phone until Jonathan’s name is pulled up. I should call him—I know I should. Other than texting him when I got to the marina, we haven’t spoken. This day was awful and the last thing I want to hear is his calm, cool, and collected version of an I told you so. It’s not uncommon for us to go a day or two without talking, especially when we’re busy. He knows I’m here, I know he’s there. I know he thinks this plan is dumb, and right now it feels like it might be.
I start to set my phone down when it rings from a number I don’t recognize. I answer, but before I can gethelloout, the wail of a harmonica blasts through the speaker.
“You forgot to mention how good I’ve gotten on this thing.”
I screw my eyes shut, annoyed, but my exhale comes with a hint of a laugh. “Because you’re somehow worse. What do you want, Nash?”
“I’m calling you,” he says, like it’s the most obvious answer.
I swirl my hand not holding the phone through the soapy water. “And?”
“And you said I never did.” Pause. “I thought maybe that meant you wanted me to.”
Once upon a time . . .
“Ha!” I spin the faucet with my toes. “I also told you to sign the divorce papers. You clearly haven’t learned to give a woman what she wants.”
His laugh trickles through the phone and into my ear. “Guess not.”
The quiet that follows is chock-full of what-ifs in the way it only can between two people who have a history that doesn’t work out.
“Anything else?”
“Nah,” he says. “Just wanted to see what it would be like if you answered, I guess.”
“And?” I should hang up. “What’s it like?”
There’s a silence so long I think he might not answer, and I’m so still there’s not a single ripple on the surface of the water.
“Just like I imagined,” he says. “I’ll send you my address.”
It’s hard to swallow around how those words lodge themselves in my throat. “Okay.”
“See you in the morning, Rue Conway.”
I end the call, toss the phone on a stack of towels, then hold my breath and slip under the water.
Nineteen
“Nice place,” Cap says through a cough. His chest hair and gold chain are in full force as we stand in front of a house.
Nash’s house, according to the address.
That is the picture of domestic maturity with a mailbox, a garden hose, and a cheeky No Soliciting sign.
I glance up and down the live oak-lined street. Warm morning light leaks through strands of Spanish moss like a scene stolen from a Nicholas Sparks book. It’s revoltingly perfect.
Even though the house is small, with its white siding, black trim, and big porch surrounded by bushy azaleas, it’s gorgeous. And the complete opposite of the tree house I imagined him living in. This looks ... grown-up. Like a place you’d plant roots.
Nash’s truck is in the driveway along with a bright blue sedan. It strikes me that he might not live alone.
Maybe that’s why he was ready togive me up—he’s ready to move on. Get remarried.
