Page 44 of When You Were Mine

“To check on the resort.” There was some truth in that. But boy, did she need to vent.

“Uh huh. Okay. Well, it’s going great. Chef fired Miss Butterfingers, which puts us in a bind, so Kelly’s called a few of the servers from the first round of interviews to give them a second chance. So, yeah. That’s it. Okay, bye.”

“Wait.” Jess chuckled. “Don’t leave me yet.”

“You know, it’s okay to come to me for advice. I’m only three years younger than you.” Her sister paused. “You’re not my mom, you know. You never were.”

“Yeah? Then, why do you and Kelly send me Mother’s Day cards?”

“Because it’s funny. And because you were like a mom when we needed it. But, Jess? We don’t need one anymore. The three of us need our sisterhood. And part of that code is brutal honesty, so I’m going to tell you something. If you want to move on—and I mean finally let this whole traumatic thing go—then, you have to talk to him. Get the closure you never got. It’s wild that you guys were so in love you gotmarried, and then, he left, and neither of you ever even tried to work it out. I mean, make it make sense.”

“I did try.”I just never told you.Because, yes, I did want to preserve that boundary between a parent and a child. “His mom told me he’d bought a place in Calamity, and I went to see him.” Even though it killed her to know he was living their dream without her. “It was four years later, and I still lived at home, but I’d grown up enough to know I’d handled it all wrong.” She remembered it so vividly, that sense of purpose, of rightness. She was going to get her man back, and everything would be all right. She’d reclaim her equilibrium instead of moving through life like the earth’s axis had tipped at a hellish angle. “I had this whole movie in my head about him seeing me and breaking into a run.”

“Am I going to need a stiff drink to hear this?”

“Probably.”

“Oh, God. What happened?” Her sister sounded wary, like she wasn’t sure she could handle the answer.

“Well, first of all, there was a fancy security gate. So much for the running into my arms scenario.” He’d bought the great, big ranch they’d always wanted, and she half-believed he’d done it with her in mind.Ha. What a fool. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat in my little junker of a car for a minute, trying to figure out a plan. I’d come all that way, and I was determined to see it through. And then, this huge SUV pulled up. All black and shiny with tinted windows. I thought, Oh, my God, it’s him. He’s here.” The memory kicked an old bruise, so she steeled herself against the pain.

“You don’t have to finish telling me. But also, you kind of do.What happened?”

Her sister’s quirky sense of humor eased the tension. “I had…” Her voice came out strangled, so she swallowed. Took a breath. “I had all these presents for him. Those gross sour gummies he liked so much.” He used to say, “Oh, but the punishment feels so good.” She hesitated, finding it hard to be so vulnerable. “A pair of boots.”

“Boots?”

“Yeah, I know. It sounds weird, but Trevor and I spent a lot of time imagining our ranch in Calamity. I mean, we knew the color of the kitchen cabinets.”Slate blue. “And one thing he always wanted was a pair of good cowboy boots.” As a kid, Trevor never owned new shoes. But the farmhands’ kids sure did. They also had gas in their trucks. Which was a beautiful thing. Truly. But it also sucked for Trevor when he couldn’t get to school some days.

“If you tell me you’ve kept those boots all this time, I’m going to bawl my eyes out.”

Since she moved so often, she had a storage unit for all the things she dragged from one resort to the next. They were somewhere in there. “Put it this way, as long as you keep sending me Mother’s Day cards, you’ll never be privy to that kind of information.”

“You do. Oh, God, you kept them. Go on. Finish the damn story. I can’t take much more.”

“Anyhow, I got all my gifts together, and I was just about to open the door.” She would never forget sitting there like a total lovesick moron. “When Trevor got out of the car in his stupid kilt and combat boots.”

“And you said, ‘What a tool’ and then floored it back to Riverton?”

“No. He went to get the mail, but something in the car kept distracting him, so he opened the back door and leaned in. He pulled out this little kid who was crying and wailing, and…” Her heart wrenched. “The boy clung to him like he was the last safe harbor in the entire world.” She would never forget the sight of those little arms and legs clutching, digging in. “And Trevor…” She swallowed past that painful knot. “Hugged him. He held him until the boy quieted down. And I knew right then, it was over. For good. Because he was a dad.” And a good one.

“Oh, God, Jessie. I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”

It broke me.“It was. But it kicked my butt into gear, right? There I was, waiting for us to get back together, and he’d moved on.” It had only been fouryears later.

That’s all it had taken for him to erase me.

God, it hurt.

“You know, I admire you,” her sister said. “You took something that could’ve destroyed you and used it to build a great life for yourself. I just wish you’d told me this before. I couldn’t figure out why—after a lifetime of being single—you’d choose to marry a guy like Joel.”

A guy like Joel?“What does that mean? He’s a good guy.”

“Maybe for someone else. But you don’t love him. Come on, this can’t come as a surprise.”

“No, but—” She wouldn’t bother defending herself because what she’d accepted as normal now sounded sad coming out of her sister’s mouth. “We’re fond of each other.” Amber laughed so loudly Jess had to pull the phone away from her ear. “Oh, cut it out.” But she quit grumbling because her sister wasn’t wrong. “Iknow. You think I don’t know? I’ve barely thought about him since I left town.” It was a relief to say it out loud.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure out fondness is a lot safer than the kind of love you and Trevor had.”

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