Page 15 of The Marriage Deal (Sunset Falls #1)

MELTING POT OF WISDOM

LILAH

This road will eternally feel like hot summer days bleeding into cool evenings paired with spiced teas and Nan’s homemade jam on fresh baked bread for dinner. Even now, with my foot on the gas pedal, I can feel the dusty residue of a rich day spent running barefoot beside Dakota.

We’d play hard, weaving through fruit trees and wildflowers buzzing with honeybees. Through Nan’s kitchen that always smelled like the promise of comfort food, before ending up in the cool, clear water of the lake.

Tree lined and winding like a ribbon catching sharply in the wind, I follow the road down into the valley I’ll always associate with childhood comforts and freedom.

It’s passed the low oak assembled storefront where Nan peddles her jams, spices, herbs, and blends of specialty teas.

Tacked to the walls of the store are handcrafted blankets, woven dream catchers, and carved wood totems. The trinkets in that small shop are plentiful and magical.

I’d been able to sit in that little shop for hours, daydreaming about a realm on the cusp of our own where simple little delicacies existed in abundance.

Where life was simpler, and so much more.

It's comical how I’ve always been so enchantingly attracted to the simplicities of life. The wealth of the land and the value in a small kitchen filled with love.

Now look at me, so desperate for money that I’m marrying myself off to a man I know nothing about.

It’s been a week of dating. A week of faking devotion to a man I’m only just getting to know. Only, I don’t really feel I have a right to know him. What we’re doing isn’t real. It’s transactional. Cold.

I’m not good at cold.

I’m depressed. My life is depressing.

This is always the place I’ve come to for comfort. It’s second home.

I touch the brake with my toes as Nan’s little house comes into view, nestled tenderly into the nook of a lush, yet rocky valley.

I park my car as a text comes through. It’s Briggs.

I can’t tell if I feel excited or ill.

We’d exchanged numbers and had been texting on and off, although very little of it is personal. Again, there’s a transactional feeling to all of our communications.

Briggs: Meet me for lunch?

I let my head fall back against the headrest as a sigh spills from between my lips. The spirits that whisper through these trees where so many souls had loved and lived before are undoubtedly whispering all my secrets to Nan this very moment.

Me: Can’t. I’m meeting someone. Dinner?

Briggs: Who are you meeting?

Me: Is this you being possessive?

Briggs: I wouldn’t dare. I would dare, however, to invite myself to tag along.

I smile. Why am I smiling?

Me: Not today.

Briggs: …do I have reason to be jealous?

Me: You can’t be jealous of something that means nothing to you.

Briggs: You do mean something to me.

My heart flutters. I hate it. And love it.

What is wrong with me?

Me: I’m meeting my Nan for lunch. Just the two of us.

Briggs: I’ll take you up on dinner. Enjoy your lunch with your Nan, little lunatic.

Me: I don’t know why you call me that.

Briggs: It fits.

I roll my eyes and drop my phone into a cupholder.

Nan has never been a fan of screens, often lamenting on the old times when people knew how to connect face to face and intimately with one another and nature.

She says we’re losing something integral to our baser nature and will pay handsomely for it in the years to come.

I think she might be right. Scroll culture isn’t healthy for anyone.

It’s why I don’t have a lot of social media.

Michael used to say I’d never get anywhere if I always resisted the times.

But the only place I’ve ever wanted to ‘get’ is here.

To Sunset Falls and the lands surrounding it.

To the people who live and love with all they’ve got.

To give this town I love so much a fighting chance at surviving the deconstruction of all the small towns that once stood strong and proud against the irresistible pull of an easier, more accessible, big city life.

The reality is that we need more here in Sunset Falls. More than we have. We need an attraction. Something to appeal to some of that big city wealth. Something to keep us afloat so we can maintain the survival of this town and those who’ve always loved it.

The ancient screen door pushes open, and Nan appears with the black cat that’s been her companion for as long as I can remember. He slinks out onto the porch, shining fur glistening under the embers of sunlight that blaze through the leaves in the trees.

I kick off my sandals, leaving them on the floor of my car as I step out onto the dusty earth of Nan’s drive. The warmth of the land instantly radiates into the soles of my feet, like a balm of sweet relief to my strung-out soul.

I cross the distance that stands between us, sinking into Nan’s warm embrace as soon as I hit the wood of her porch. I can feel Nero—her cat—weaving between our legs as we hug.

“It’s been too long, my girl.”

“Mmm. It has.” I give her an extra squeeze before I let go. Then I scoop Nero for a kitty snuggle as I sink into one of the old chairs on her porch.

“I’ve been steeping for chilled tea.” Nan slips back inside the house, leaving me to snuggle Nero as I wait.

His purr is settling, like all purrs are settling. One day, I’m going to get me a little house in the trees like Nan. I’m going to have cats and dogs. But I like to be in with the action just a little more than Nan, so I won’t be as secluded.

I’ll be able to do this after everything with Briggs is said and done. Not only will my debts be paid, but I’ll be five hundred thousand dollars richer.

Nero gives a chirpy little meow before he hops down from my lap to slink his way to a sunny spot on the porch. Nan appears again with two cups of her chilled sweet tea on ice.

I take one. “Thank you.”

Nan settles in her chair, bobbing one bare foot as she sips her tea.

“Brandy was in a few days ago. Said Martin was getting low on that red currant jam he loves.” She eyes me over the rim of her glass with those unique dark blue eyes of hers.

“I think she came in to tell me about you and that man. The man who’s stirring all kinds of emotions in Sunset Falls.

” She chuckles, soft and low. “I’ve heard a bit about him. Some good, some bad.”

“Mom always did like to run her tongue to you.”

Nan chuckles, but there’s a deep sadness to the current of it where faraway memories lurk under the surface. “Got her and Willow into trouble more times than not, that’s for sure.”

Willow was Nan’s daughter, Dakota’s mother, and Mom’s soul sister. Mom and Willow were close. Sister close. Willow had been an aunt to me, even though there was no blood relation between Mom and Willow. They are family and our binds are strong.

“Used to drive Willow crazy.”

Nan’s smile is sad even as it’s filled with the joy of memories, bittersweet now as they’re tainted by death. “That it did.”

There’s a beat of silence. A moment of quiet as we remember.

A warm breeze floats over the porch, a gentle kiss of spirit, Nan would say. I take a sip of my tea. “He’s not a bad man, Nan.”

“No one is wholly good or bad.” Nan’s loose silver braid falls over her shoulder as she leans forward to give Nero a scratch. “People are a funny bunch, but I believe the majority are driven by good intentions. By cravings for connection and belonging. For purpose.”

I love Nan’s perspectives on life, a blend of cultures married long ago when her Caucasian mother fell in love with her Syilx father. I could listen to this woman speak endlessly. She’s the most beautiful person I know, inside and out. One day, I want to be just like her.

“I know bad, Nan,” I tell her quietly.

Her unique eyes lift to mine, but she says nothing as she waits.

I pull in breath, sip my tea for courage, and tell her what I’ve not told a soul. “Michael was a bad man.”

There’s a tightness to her face that tells me she knew this.

I see myself in my mind, a memory playing like a video on screen, as Nan walked me to Michael’s car after dinner with my family.

She’d pulled me in tight, her hand curling around the back of my head as it had since I was a child. She’d hugged me.

She’d whispered in my ear, “Careful with your heart, child.”

My voice lowers. “You already knew that, didn’t you?”

Nan’s eyes drift over the land, seeing what so many don’t.

“Michael felt inauthentic to me. His eyes—there was something I did not like when he looked at you. But no, I didn’t know he was bad.

At least, I didn’t know until you came home.

” Her eyes come back to mine. “Will you tell me what he did to you, my girl?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know how.”

“You just speak, child.”

It’s my turn to look away. There’s a salty burn in my eyes as I watch sunlight spill through branches, dancing in a shimmer of gold on a dusty land. “I’m so ashamed.”

Nan pulls in a deep breath that she looses on a heavy sigh.

“It’s never failed to shock me how we’ve fallen into this trap as a society.

That the wronged is the one to feel shame.

The abused the one to suffer the sting of dishonour.

The victim the one to wither under the weight of humiliation.

That is the true disgrace. That is when the wrong wins.

” Nan’s hand curls around my own. “We cannot allow the wrong to win.”

“I let him make a fool of me.”

“He took advantage of your love. You did not let him do anything to you, Lilah Bellamy.” Nan purses her lips, her smooth, warm skin wrinkling just a little.

“I was lucky to have loved my husband and be loved by him for the whole of his life. But I’ve watched more than one soul crumble to rubble under the weight of shame.

I won’t watch you crumble, Lilah, you hear?

You’re too strong. Too good to let him win. ”

“I just don’t know if I can trust again, Nan.”

There’s silence. Then Nan and her wisdom speak.

“There is pain in life, but that does not mean that life is not worth living. I have suffered the greatest pain there is to suffer in this life. I’ve suffered the loss of my child.

My beautiful baby girl and the love of her life, there and gone in a heartbeat.

And not a month later, God saw fit to take my husband, too.

He left me with a young boy to raise alone in my grief.

A boy who would leave me to live with you—”

“Nan—”

She holds up her thin hand. “He was always meant to leave me, my girl. I was not what he needed when he needed it, my grief too deep. Your family was always Kota’s family, and for that I will forever be grateful.

What I am trying to tell you, Lilah, is that life is rich with pain.

But if I could go back and choose to live a life with no pain, I would need to choose to live a life absent of love.

Do you understand what I am saying to you? ”

“You wouldn’t take back loving them all—even knowing you’d lose them.”

She smiles. “I would love them even harder. Pain is part of life. There is no living without the threat of loss. There is no loving without the risk of heartbreak. But this is what makes the living and loving sweeter, my dear girl. It’s what makes it all precious.”

“How’d you get so wise?”

Nan chuckles again around a sip of her tea. Whisps of silver hair threaded thinly with black have escaped her long braid to dance in the breeze. “Life, love, loss, and pain, my sweet Lilah. It’s the melting pot of wisdom.”

“So, you think I should forget about Michael and jump headfirst into the frying pan with Briggs?”

“We all know how you love to jump,” Nan teases gently, the shades of her blue beaded earrings reminding me of the calm of Fire Falls in the morning, before it burns in the afternoon sun.

“But no. I don’t think you should jump. I do think you should give him a chance to prove himself one way or the other.

Because remember, we’re not wholly good or wholly bad.

We’re not simply one choice we make. We cannot bear the title of a single judgement through all stages of our life.

Such a thing does not allow for growth. We’re an accumulation of the choices we make, dear girl, and I believe that this man who is playing for your heart has the right to prove himself here and now with you. ”

She gives me her eyes, so wise. “I also think that you owe it to yourself, to give yourself the opportunity to see where life takes you. If you allow fear to hold you back, if you allow pain to keep you still, you will never experience. Never grow. Never live. Never love.”

“There’s that melting pot again.” My voice quivers with thick emotion.

Nan squeezes my thigh. “Sweet girl, I love you.”

“I know.” My heart is full, and my life is richer because of her love. “I love you, too.”