Page 54

My stomach rolled around inside of me. I suddenly understood exactly what she meant when she said her readers were invested in her personal life. They were as bad as teenage daughters. Worse maybe, presuming they were all adults.

Last time I’d read her blog, back at Roasters, it had been a brief scan. This time, without her here, I scrolled back through several of her earlier posts, needing to see what they said about the rest of her life. If they were that eager about other people who appeared in her photos.

But somehow, my fingers hit a button that took me all the way to the beginning of the blog.

“Shit,” I said out loud.

I went to scroll ahead but paused. These early posts were years old. The way she’d structured them was different—it was more like a personal diary than a cooking blog, though food was still a big part of it. My breath caught in my throat as I took in the photos of a younger Michelle leaning on the arm of someone else. She was still young now, but here she couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or three.

Jealousy spiked through me, followed quickly by burning shame. How could I be jealous of her husband? The man was dead, for god’s sake. I flipped to some later photos and my jaw nearly dropped when I saw Hank with his arm looped around Joe’s shoulders.

I knew Michelle’s husband had been my brother’s best friend in New York. That they had met in firefighter training and had ended up at the same station together. I knew that was how Hank knew Michelle. But it was somehow shocking to see the two of them together. I thought of where I was around that time—here, in Barkley Falls, in the happier early days of my marriage, maybe, when the girls were young.

Hank looked kind of hollow-eyed in the photo, and I realized it must have been around the time he and Casey had split originally. Hank had confessed to me this summer, over more than a few beers, that even though he’d been devastated over his relationship with Casey—his first relationship with her, years ago—it was his fault they’d separated. He realized he’d been trying to prove himself to Dad. It was the whole reason he’d wanted to be a firefighter so badly—to make Dad proud.

I lowered the phone, shame rippling through me. Dad was in a care home now, not because he was elderly and frail—he was only in his late sixties but because he had such bad respiratory problems he needed around-the-clock care.

An argument I’d had on the phone with Stella only a couple of months ago ran through my mind.Think of what he’s been through!Stella had said. She’d called me when she’d heard I hadn’t been keeping up with the weekly visits to see him in the care home since she moved.

I knew about Dad’s tragic past; that when he was a child, his family had perished in a house fire, and he’d been the only survivor. I’d only found out about it when Mom told me as a teenager. Mom said she told me because she thought it would make me sympathetic to him. But I’d been devastated that he’d lied. That he hadn’t trusted me—his eldest son—enough to tell the truth.

At the time, I thought it explained so much. His stiffness. How he kept himself distant from his feelings. How he never wanted to talk about his past. How he hacked up a lung anytime he got a cold.

There was a time my heart hurt for him, but his bullheaded insistence that I live my life the way he wanted me to—no matter what I wanted—and all the fights that had brought out between us, had hardened me. As time went on, I knew it wasn’t Dad’s past that made him the way he was. It was him.

When Hank had been reconciling with Casey, I knew he’d wanted to resolve his issues with Dad. At the time, I’d told him trying to make Dad proud of him was a waste of time. I’d given up on Dad years ago. But the two of them seemed to be on good terms now.

I stared at the photo of Hank and Joe. Hank had been messed up about Joe’s death. How could he not be? But he’d battled his demons and won. He’d figured things out with Dad, and he and Casey were happy too. I thought of that family photo again, that one Michelle had stopped at. The one with Mom and her glowing face. My heart twisted painfully. My eyes went to Dad. Was he the asshole, or was I?

For some foolish reason, Michelle’s face flashed before my eyes, her scent swirling in my nostrils as if she were right beside me. And for the briefest moment, I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like being with her. Having the kind of relationship I thought I’d had with Jill. The challenging but rewarding days of being a family together. Sitting on a bench together looking out into the sunset in our old age.

But that kind of life wasn’t possible. Some lucky people got it, but they sure as hell weren’t me. I’d tried—for twenty years I’d tried with Jill. But I hadn’t been able to hide the truth. I was just like my father.

My desk phone buzzed.

Morgan was here.

I closed the blog.

Morgan was a sweet, pretty, woman with clay under her nails and a slightly stressed-out air about her at the moment. After we made introductions and I’d shown her to the space the fair would be happening, she became intently focused on her work, pulling out a serious-looking camera and snapping photos of the space.

I wondered if Morgan was married—if she was someone who’d managed to figure out how to make a relationship work, or if she was messed up like me?

God, maybe I needed to spend more time with people who were actually happy. Hank and Casey. Graydon and Lucy. The thought buoyed me, and I pulled out the phone to text one of them. Or maybe both.

But when I unlocked my screen, I did a double take. I had one missed call from Michelle Franco.

14

Michelle

It was my landlord who made me call Will, breaking not only our unspoken texting-only rule, but the silence that followed after Thanksgiving.

That and the pizza.

My landlord, an elderly man who lived in the farmhouse up the hill, had hobbled down to our cottage in person this week, hat in hand. “I’m sorry Michelle, but with the three of you here, the water’s been going up, and the electricity too. I gave you a discount when you first got here but…” He petered out. I knew he didn’t have much money.

It was going to be an extra hundred and fifty dollars a month. Not the worst, but when I was barely scraping by as it was, it would hurt.