30
Dillon spent the next hour serving as one of several messengers. He and Berto and Charlie and Emilia and Porter and Maud and Ryan circled through the crowd, inviting people to bring their unused Christmas lights and help decorate the cottage. The drumming generators added soft emphasis to their request. He met any number of people who claimed to have known him, though most of the faces were unfamiliar. Now and then he glanced at the town hall’s front porch, where Bailey remained deep in serious conversations. Elena was seated in one of the porch chairs, long legs sprawled in pre-teen ease, working her phone. There was no need for Dillon to hurry back.
Besides which, he was having fun.
He had never felt as close to the people of Miramar as he did now. Most faces remained creased with the weary remnants of everything they and their hometown had endured. But now, two days before Christmas, there was a renewed illumination to many gazes. A grand reason to smile, to enjoy the hour and the season. At long last.
As he circulated and repeated the message, Dillon felt like he was being released from the cage of his past few months. He was still bruised, of course. Just like these locals. But he also shared their determination to wrest what happiness he could from this rare moment.
He looked up in time to see Bailey gesture to her daughter, lifting Elena from the chair. The two of them glanced his way, then vanished inside.
Dillon gave it a moment, then started over. As he climbed the front stairs, he was filled with a sense of momentous change.
The two women watched Dillon’s approach through a window occupying the door’s upper half. The mayor’s office was set behind the empty front office. Something about their somber expressions had his heart racing. Dillon took their silent watchfulness as the only invitation he was probably going to get. He opened the door, stepped inside, and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Have a seat.”
Elena occupied the mayor’s office chair, her legs tucked up so her chin could rest on her knees. If anything, her expression was bleaker than Bailey’s. Dillon replied, “I’m okay standing.”
“If you wish.” She crossed in front of him, locked the door, and pulled down the blind. “I have to ask you something.”
“All right.”
Bailey took up station in the middle of the office, arms crossed, and demanded, “When are you leaving Miramar?”
The way Bailey phrased it caused her daughter real pain. And Bailey knew it. But she did it anyway. Not if. When. Offering Dillon the open door.
He chose his words very carefully. “I left. I’ve come back. End of story.”
“Is it, Dillon? Really?”
“I had to go. It was the only way I could ever return.”
“To leave again,” Bailey said. “Once you’ve recovered.”
The words hung there in the space between them. “I’ll never go back to what I once had. That door is closed. Permanently.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Dillon remained silent.
Bailey continued, “What happens when some lure is dangled in front of your face? Another perfect reason to escape. That’s what I want to know.”
Dillon thought his voice sounded exactly like hers. Soft, toneless, almost drone-like. The emotions were too potent to be expressed in any other way. “Things have changed.”
“Have they.”
“Yes.”
“In what way?”
The questions he had carried since his return crystallized into a memory he had not thought of in years. “My grandad was quiet by nature. We could spend an entire day together, me chattering away, him not saying a word. The day before I left for business school, I worked the vineyard with him. That was my way of saying good-bye. As we walked back, he told me I needed to find a good woman who would point the way ahead. Which was a shock on many levels. My grandparents never mentioned Olivia. Of course they saw the results of our arguments. But they never spoke about us or her. Not once. And here was my grandad, the quietest man on earth. Talking about my needing a woman to help me find my compass heading. I didn’t ask if he was talking about Olivia because I didn’t need to.”
Talking through the experience crystallized the recollection. Dillon recalled how tired he’d been, standing in the home’s rear yard, sweat-stained and filthy, his pruning shears resting on one shoulder. At that moment, Dillon realized his grandfather’s attention had been captured by his wife. Dillon’s grandmother was washing vegetables she’d just taken from their garden in the outdoor sink. Dillon was so involved in the recollection it took him a moment to find his voice and continue. “He said there would probably come a time when I needed to change my life’s course. And I would only do that when I had learned to trust the right woman. Whether I liked it or not, whether I agreed or not. I would do what she told me, out of love.”
Bailey’s only response was to cross the room and stand behind her desk. She settled her hand on Elena’s shoulder. Her daughter responded by taking a firm hold on Bailey’s hand.
What Dillon saw in those two faces filled him with a rock-solid certainty. “Over the past few months I felt like my world was torn apart. Now I know that’s only small component of the truth. Because my life has always been fractured. I’ve spent my life running. Trying to escape the cage of my early years. It’s only now, looking at the two of you, that I feel a very real hope of healing.”
Elena used her free hand to cover her eyes. Heaved a broken breath. Swallowed hard. Bailey looked down at her daughter, then back to Dillon. “What happens when you do heal?”
Dillon nodded, not so much at the question but at what Bailey was not asking. “I can’t tell you what the future holds. All I know is, I love you both. And I never want to even think about having a day where we’re not together. It’s all so new, my world is so uncertain. . .”
That was as far as Bailey let him go. She rushed around, gripped his face with both her hands, pulled him down, kissed him. Hard.
The endless, blissful moment was interrupted by another warm form slipping in beside them, and a young voice whispering, “Group hug.”
