Page 61 of Almost Home
Out of the Army, she meant. “Yes. On his terminal leave, I think it’s called? But yeah. His friend Bruce gets here next month. There are some other people involved, but I don’t think you’d know them. Anyway, it’s really interesting.”
She was quiet on the other end for a bit before she finally spoke again. “I can see this for you. I mean, you can’t stay an admin or on a temp contract, but I can really see you doing this. I know you have all kinds of guilty feelings about not teaching and saving all of America’s children or whatever, but—”
“I do not! That’s ridiculous—”
“The point is, I like this for you. Security is interesting, and you’ve got a great brain for this. I hope Wilder won’t be a typical grunt and assume that, as a woman, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Knowing that she’d faced more than her fair share of sexism in her field, though I wouldn’t have guessed diplomacy would be viewed as a man’s world, I could understand her comment. But thinking of Wilder, how great he’d been about everything. How wonderful he was…
“He’s not.” My voice came out soft, and so like her, Eddie jumped on it.
“Ohhh. I’ll need you to tell me the whole situation.”
I squirmed. “There’s—it’s—still developing.”
The pause in our conversation could only mean one thing—Eddie was figuring out her approach. It meant I’d have no peace until I told her everything. Blowing out a breath to calm myself, I dove in.
“Fine. Okay. We went out last night. A few weeks ago, I apologized for leaving, for hurting him, and things got a lot less awkward. He’s still very…him,but he warmed to me faster than I would’ve expected.”
Another little sigh escaped because I had fallen fully into theWilder is dreamyfeelings and I knew them well. I’d spent most of my days from age twelve until I left Silverton feeling some measure of that consuming ridiculousness. It’d crept in on and off since I’d apologized, though I’d try to ignore it and not get ahead of myself.
“So we’re there already—with you sighing over him.”
“Um, excuse me? You’ve beensighing overBri Williamson for like two decades.” The woman had been in love with the world-famous popstar her entire life. Completely counter to her anti-romance perspective on life, but one of my favorite little pieces of her.
“As if. Nottwo decades.And stop trying to distract me from Wilder. My point is, if he wasn’t such a solid guy, I’d be upset. But this, too, makes sense for you. I just have one thing to say.”
Something about her saying he was a solid guy sounded like she knew he was a solid guy. I wondered if she was able to see his military records or they had a friend in common who could vouch for him. But more than that, her silly claim there at the end had me smiling to no one there in my dim living room. A giggle slipped out, because Eddie rarely had justone thingto say. “Do tell, brilliant sister.”
“I’m glad you apologized. You needed to. But you also didn’t need to. You were a seventeen-year-old kid who’d had her world changed overnight, and then it happened again. Our parents pressured you about everything, all the time, and I wasn’t so young I didn’t see how they treated you until after we moved.Theyare culpable for so much, Sar, and I hope you won’t let them off the hook anytime soon.”
I sat up, the lazy, chatty feeling gone. “They thought they were doing the right thing at the time.”
Even if I always wondered if they’d realized that leaving Wilder had meant leaving my best friend—not just my boyfriend, the guy who’d gotten me pregnant. I’d lost the man I thought I’d marry, sooner or later, and I’d lost the person who knew me best in the world. I’d lost his brothers, who I loved like my own, and I’d lost Jane, his wonderful, caring mother, and Tilda, his oddball, endearing grandma.
“That’s the excuse-making nonsense they’re going to capitalize on if you try to go to that wedding.”
I gritted my teeth. Eddie and I had never agreed about this, and though I respected her take, even recognized the truth in her words sometimes, I didn’t want to do all this again.
“I’ve forgiven them for my own sake. I don’t want the poison of bitterness and blame in my heart—trust me when I say I have lived there, and it’s brutal and I won’t go back. As much as ending things with Aaron sucked, the best thing that came out of it was talking to a therapist and figuring out how I’d ended up marrying a man I got along with and not much else.”
I could think of that marriage without cringing most of the time, too, thanks to therapy. Since I’d had a job with benefits and I’d stayed in Georgia while saving up to move out here, I’d focused on myself. I got mentally and physically healthy again, and then I left.
Eddie’s voice came through softer now. “You know I’m proud of you for that. And I don’t want to sound like another jerk trying to tell you what to do. I justhatewhen you give them the benefit of the doubt because they don’t deserve it. But enough about them. I want a photo of you and Wilderstat.Tell him hi for me, and do not elope without inviting me—I’m stateside for a few months, and I’ll meet you wherever.”
I laughed, love and delight twining through me even as my heart thumped wildly at her words. “That’s probably a bit premature.”
She snorted. “Sure. Twenty years in the making, you reunite with your first love, who you were torn from in the drama of losing a child you both wanted, and you both happen to be single. You date and… take it slow? Come on, woman. Let’s get real.”
I shot to my feet, pacing. “I don’t have any idea what he wants. We’re just getting to know each other again. He may not—”
“Sarah. I love you, and I love that despite being gaslit and controlled by our parents for way too long, you have maintained your soft, kind heart, but please allow yourself to have this happiness. I don’t know if Wilder wants forever with you, but if he’s single and asking you out on dates, if he hasn’t fundamentally changed who he was—which I grant you is a possibility over the course of time—then he does. Hedoes. But ask him yourself.”
“I’m not about to—”
“Not tonight or tomorrow. Maybe not even next week. But have the conversation about future plans. Ask him. Because you deserve to be loved well, and Wilder did that. I’m betting, if you both want it, he would again.”
I sucked in a breath. “For someone who is patently unromantic, that’s a very sweet thought.”
