Page 11 of When I Fall In Love

“That’s what we have airplanes for. And leave. I’ll even sign it off under compassionate leave since you didn’t take all those days when your mom passed. I had a look; you booked all your leave as annual at the time.”

I blow my nose and she winces, which coaxes a woebegone smile from me. “But my work—”

“Won’t get done when you’re institutionalized for a mental breakdown either.”

It’s a bad joke, but I chuckle all the same.

“You’ve proven yourself to the firm again and again, Beth. You’ve worked like mad since your mom died on this competition bureau case. You need to take time out.”

I nod with a deep sigh that rattles through my body and makes me shiver. “Okay.”

“Right. Talk about uphill battles. Now, is this Hunter Logan, CEO, by any chance the man in the white button-down with the glacier blue eyes that took my breath away in the corridor?”

“Yes,” I say in a small voice.

“I’m only telling you because he mentioned to me that you were upset and could I please check in on you. It didn’t help that you were ignoring me even as I waved at you like a lunatic.”

“Sorry. I was blinded by…” I point at my face and the fresh push of tears that threatens to surface. That Hunter can still read me like a book after all these years is somewhat infuriating.

“Well, to think such a handsome guy could elicit such a response. Come on, let’s get you out of here and home.” Jana unlocks the stall’s door. “I bet you still haven’t eaten anything.”

“No.” And Hunter invited me for lunch because he probably thinks I can squeeze it in only during the workday. Because I’m married with one point nine children at home and a husband who cares to come home to at night. A husband who cares so much and knows me so well that he’d know when I’m upset.

Jana holds my phone and Hunter’s business card out to me, and we walk down the corridor to our respective offices. “A pity a single woman can’t go on a single date with a single man. Who happens to be from Vermont. Are they all that good-looking over there?”

Don’t get me started on the Logan Looks. “How do you know he’s single?”

“He was checking out your ass all the way as you hightailed it on those heels to the ladies’.” She wriggles her left-hand fingers at me, where an engagement rock the size of an elephant molar catches the light. Yep, not only did Jana divorce her first husband, but she also upped her game tenfold when she started dating again. “Plus, no wedding band.”

I shoot her a glance that screams weirdo.

Jana laughs. “Sorry, photographic memory.”

“Thank you for checking in on me.” I stop outside my office’s door.

“No problem. I’m waiting for your leave application. Do it now and call it a day?”

“Will do.” I say with a nod, not yet a hundred percent committed to taking time off. I’m exhausted. Not from my emotional outburst, not from seeing Hunter out of the blue, but from a life that has filled me with so much heartache it no longer fits into the box I keep squeezing it into. I’m spilling over and Jana is right. Closure. It was time to toss out the old to make room for the new.

I sit down at my desk and tap the mouse to light up my desktop’s screen. I put my phone to the side, but Hunter’s business card falls into my lap in the process.

I pick it up and stare at it properly for the first time. So this is what he’s built over the years. Not for a minute do I doubt that Hunter isn’t also the owner of Ashleigh Lake Organic Ice Cream and Dairy. He might never mention it, because he isn’t wired that way, but I know it in my heart. I open the web browser and type in the company’s website address. As the site opens, my heart stills.

It’s unexpected. No stock images of Vermont to celebrate nature and the beauty of the state, but a short, animated film starts with an old-school pencil drawing of Ashleigh Lake coming to life in color as the drawing evolves, zooming in to animated characters walking along the historic streets, eating ice cream. From there the camera follows a young woman who gets onto a horse-drawn cart with a man her age. I recognize them as Hunter’s parents, Annabelle and Trent Logan, who died in a car crash when he was just twelve. That is the Ashleigh Lake summer fair horse-drawn cart, and together they head out into the sunshine and through the fields of grazing cows to a farmhouse before they slip off the screen. It’s May and Bill’s farmhouse, with seven children sitting on the porch steps, eating ice cream in pastel colors that make my tongue tingle with the need for a small taste. On the side, May scoops some for her and Bill and both adults sit down on a swing chair. The camera zooms out to the bigger picture. The beautiful view over the lake and the far hills and valleys of Vermont. The short film is nostalgia scooped in a cup and my throat closes up with longing as it comes to an end. Ashleigh Lake Organic Ice Cream and Dairy. Where honest goodness still counts.

God, he had me at the opening image of Ashleigh Lake. This is a story within a story, revealing its secrets only to those who know the family well. How Hunter and his three brothers went to stay with his mom’s sister when they were orphaned and grew up with his cousins, making a compound family with seven kids. With my heart in my throat, I watch as the general landing page opens, the same style drawings leading the eye to the different sections of the business.

As I browse the website, which was clearly designed by a professional with an artistic eye, I am in awe. Was this what held Hunter back when he sent me that last message years ago? I’m going to Burlington University. Stanford is too far. I can’t.

He had a budding business by then that would take care of his family for the foreseeable future and even for generations to come if he played his cards right. I had promptly deleted all his messages and blocked his number. By that time, we hadn’t seen each other for two years. Our calls had become further and further apart, more strained with each awkward conversation that couldn’t dissolve the distance between us. We needed each other physically, to be there in person and look each other in the eyes to know how we were, to be each other’s unfailing support. Much like fire needed oxygen to live, that’s how I’d needed Hunter.

Up until that point, I’d waited like any other dumbass woman for him to come to me, to pick me over everything else for once. Like Mom, I’d waited. Well, guess what? I wasn’t Mom and I sure as hell wasn’t going to make her mistakes. Hunter had chosen his business over me and at least it seemed to have served him well.

Why do I have this heartache in me that surfaces now that Hunter has shown his face out of the blue? This isn’t good. I had it all buried long ago.

Closure. That awful word. Put it in a bubble and blow it away. That’s what they used to tell us in kindergarten when we got upset over small kiddie problems. I learned long ago that it doesn’t work for big girl problems. Hunter and I never had closure. I was forced to leave and he couldn’t follow. We never broke up; we merely drifted away in opposite directions like two life rafts on the ocean pushed apart on the whim of the winds and the tide.

The big girl problem that pokes its head out between the others is the one I should sort out before I sell the farm: I never got to say a proper goodbye to the folks in Vermont when we got rushed and hushed out of Ashleigh Lake. At the time, I didn’t understand why we needed to move to the other side of the country, but with the unexpected inheritance and Mom’s disclosure about our father, things became clear. The Andersons were not to drag Lady Collingwood’s name through the mud. Not with a sordid affair. Her husband was after all a churchgoer and community leader. Lady Collingwood stood her ground once she learned who we really were. We weren’t the impoverished tenants old Collingwood had taken up as a charity case. Nope, we were his sin on her doorstep and needed to be ousted like the plague.

---