Page 16 of When I Should’ve Stayed (Red Bridge #2)

Josie

I take another sip of tea and scroll through the article in the Red Bridge Newsleader one more time. Local Bar, The Country Club, Takes on Extended Hours

You’d think, after almost five years have passed by, I wouldn’t feel anything from reading it. Wouldn’t have a twinge of pain inside my chest at the mere sight of his bar’s name. But as always, it’s a special form of torture to read about Clay and imagine all the things we could have been.

Eileen spotlights how well he’s doing and what led him to make the decision to open a few hours earlier in the afternoons. And for as much as it stings, I still love to see him succeed.

I’ve barely had time to sit and relax lately, but just like always, that’s for the best. The more I sit still, the more I think, and I’d rather be busying my hands than trapped in the messy web of thoughts in my mind.

I closed CAFFEINE down for the day about an hour ago, and now it’s time to get moving on other things.

I rinse out my mug and set it in the sink and then head down the hallway to my bedroom to put on a pair of cutoff shorts and a tank top so I can do a little work in the garden beds outside.

It’s ungodly hot out, but Grandma Rose would chew me a new one if she saw the slightly unkempt state I’ve let them get to.

She called her flower beds the windows to another universe and bordered them with fairy statues and gnomes and frogs to drive the point home.

I tie up my curls in a loose and messy bun and grab my gardening gloves from the top of my stonewashed oak dresser before heading back down the hall toward the front of the house.

I snag a bottle of water from the fridge, my AirPods from the counter, and am just about to force myself to get to work when three harsh knocks sound off through the pink front door.

I roll my eyes to myself as I think of just about the only possibility of who it could be. Randy Hanson, no doubt, trying to get me to sell Grandma Rose’s house yet again for way too little money.

I swear, I spend half my time off telling him to blow a goat these days.

Setting my water bottle and earbuds back down on the counter, I charge through the living room and yank open the door, ready to rumble with Randy. But the person standing there isn’t Randy at all.

No. It’s my sister.

“Norah?” I ask, my heart in my throat at the sight of her. I haven’t laid eyes on her light brown curls or sweet brown eyes in half a decade. I haven’t laid eyes on her since the day we put Grandma Rose in the ground.

She’s nervous. That much is obvious in the way her voice shakes as she says, “Hi, sis.”

But she’d be stupid not to be after the way we left things five years ago.

The way she sided with our mother, even after Eleanor had said downright vile things to me, is hard to get over.

It’s not an easy pill to swallow when your own mother wants to think the worst of you.

And it’s even harder having your sister stand there and not have your back at all.

I was Norah’s everything when we were kids. We were everything to each other .

“Uh…” She pauses, her eyes flitting from her shoes to my still-shocked gaze several times. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by and see how you’re doing.”

“In the neighborhood?” I scoff, narrowing my eyes. “Red Bridge is nine hours away from New York.”

She’s fancy personified, down to her black boots, designer jeans, swanky shirt, and Louis Vuitton suitcase, though there’s a coating of dust on it all nearly a quarter of an inch thick. She looks like a city princess who took one hell of a wrong turn.

“Okay, so I wasn’t exactly in the neighborhood, but I…wanted to see you.”

“You came all the way to Red Bridge because, suddenly, after five years of no contact, you wanted to see me?” I ask, my skepticism at an all-time high. “You really expect me to believe that?”

“I did. I do want to see you. Five years is too long for anyone, and it’s definitely too long for us,” she says, clearly romanticizing our past for dramatic effect.

I appreciate the effort, but the suitcase in her hand and the sweat covering her face tell a completely different story.

“And…I kind of…sort of…need a place to stay for a little while.”

Consider me absolutely gobsmacked at the level of her audacity.

“You want to stay here? With me?” I question, and I don’t hide the outright indignation in my voice.

A year ago, she probably wouldn’t have likened me to anything better than a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of her designer shoe.

But now that she needs something, we’re the best of friends?

I don’t buy it for a second. “And you didn’t think it was a good idea to give me a heads-up? ”

“I tried to call you,” she lies, pissing me off even more. I have no missed calls on my phone, and she doesn’t even have my number. Eleanor made damn sure after I left New York that the two of us never had direct contact without her in the middle.

“Bullshit.”

“Okay, so I didn’t try to call you because I had a feeling you’d strongly discourage my presence.”

I can’t help but laugh at her. The rift in our relationship wasn’t some one-sided mystery.

She was there at Grandma Rose’s funeral.

She knows exactly why things are the way they are and all the reasons why I wouldn’t want her here in the first place.

Though, I can’t deny I’m definitely wondering what happened to make her think it was worth coming anyway. “Very perceptive of you.”

“So…can I come in, or…?”

Can she come in? Ha. At this stage in our relationship, we may as well be strangers. I know zip about her fancy life in New York, and she doesn’t know shit about mine either.

I quirk a defiant eyebrow at her. “How about you tell me why you’re here first, and then I’ll decide.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” I challenge, crossing my arms and leaning into the doorjamb. I level her with a look and study the very real fear in her eyes as a million thoughts flit through her mind.

“I just needed a break.”

“You left New York because you needed a break?” I ask, pressing her to be bold enough to lie to me a little more.

She clearly thinks I was born yesterday, and I don’t know if that’s all Eleanor’s influence or if she’s truly just that na?ve.

“And why do you need a break, exactly? Life getting a little hard in the penthouse?” I laugh.

“Or maybe you’re low on maids and overwhelmed at doing your own laundry?

Or, I know , maybe you’re distraught because Hermès won’t let you buy the latest bag? ”

Her cheeks pinken, and her face turns stony as anger stirs her backbone.

“I know it’s probably bringing you great enjoyment to find me on your front porch like a stray cat, but I just took a nine-hour Greyhound bus ride and got dropped off in the middle of nowhere and had to hitchhike another ride from a complete stranger who also happened to be the world’s grouchiest man, which ended in me walking here from the center of town, and I’d really like to just sit down,” she rattles off with her head held high and her mouth moving a mile a minute.

“And maybe…you know…drink some water to stave off a hospital stay for dehydration.”

There’s a glimmer of the sister I used to know somewhere inside there, and I take a little bit of pride in watching her stand up for herself.

“Could you find it somewhere in your apparently cold, dead heart to let me come inside first before we get into all the tragic details of the current state of my life?”

I consider her closely, wondering if she’s had enough of Eleanor Ellis and the phony, money-driven life she wants for Norah back in New York to truly listen to me when I talk or if she’s still puppetting all the things our mother has spent years teaching her.

I consider, if I let her stay, whether it’ll end in a truly healed sisterhood or if it’ll be just another mistake I’ve made.

I don’t need to add another to the list.

“Please?” she begs then, a single tear finally freeing itself from her eye and falling slowly down her cheek. “Show your sister some mercy?”

“It’s not bringing me enjoyment to see you cry,” I assure her, trying to maintain the strength I need to protect myself without being unfairly cruel to her.

“Not at all, but it’s been five years, Norah, and it’s not like you were the nicest person to me the last time I saw you.

Actually, you were a total bitch.” She stood there and watched our mother destroy me. And she didn’t say a word.

“Josie, you have to admit that you weren’t being nice either. You told Mom to ‘get the fuck out’ in the middle of a funeral. Actually, you screamed it. In front of everyone. It was quite the scene, if I recall.”

All the pain I was feeling that day crawls into my chest and reminds me it’ll never be gone completely. Norah doesn’t know…she has no fucking clue, and it’s ridiculous that she’d pretend that she does. “It’s not my fault that Eleanor decided to show up somewhere she was definitely not welcome.”

“Josie.” Her eyes are wide and her voice pleading. “It was Grandma Rose’s funeral. Pretty sure that wasn’t the time or place to go off on our mother.”

“I think it was the perfect time,” I refute, holding my ground. “After Dad died, Mom treated Grandma Rose like shit. For years . The last person she would’ve wanted at her funeral was Eleanor. You and I both know that. Not to mention all the other evil shit she’s done.”

After our father passed away from a brain tumor that took his life within six months of diagnosis, our mother didn’t even shed a single fucking tear.

If anything, she started planning her exit from Red Bridge the instant he took his last breath.

It was so sick and calculated and emotionless that I often wonder if she’s a true sociopath.

Grandma Rose tried to convince her to stay in Red Bridge; she even tried to fight for custody of Norah and me, but Eleanor was determined to take us with her. Only a few weeks after my dad passed away, we left Red Bridge and headed to New York like thieves in the night.

Norah finally breaks down, multiple tears falling and her whole body starting to shake.

“Josie, I know we have a lot to talk through. I know there are a lot of unsaid things that need to be said and apologies to be made. But I’ve just had the worst week of my life, and I have nowhere else to go.

Do you think you could find it in you to show me some temporary compassion and let me come inside? ”

My whole body locks on what it might mean to let her in—all the ways that it’ll turn my carefully crafted life upside down.

“You know if Grandma Rose were still alive, she’d let me come in.”

“You play dirty,” I admit on a sigh, even knowing that Grandma Rose would have fucking loved Norah’s ruthless, self-serving move. “Fine.”

Relief floods her face. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, rolling my eyes and stepping back from the door.

And I thought Randy was going to be a pain in my ass.

He would’ve been a hell of a lot easier than this.

“You can stay here, but don’t think I’m agreeing to this being some kind of permanent roommate situation,” I say, heading down the hall and back toward the kitchen.

She drags her dusty suitcase up over the threshold and follows me inside, and I get down to protecting myself again.

She may be here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t ignore her.

Ignoring the people I love is what I do best.