“Not my good news to share.” He pulled out his phone to check the time. “Shit. I’ve gotta hit the road soon. Mitch checked about an hour ago and Liz’s flight is on time, so I should be, too.”
It was another forty minutes before he managed to free himself from the tangle of family and his truck from the tangle of vehicles and hit the road. Kevin, along with a partner, was in the process of opening a second branch of Jasper’s Bar & Grille on the snowmobile trails in northern New Hampshire, and wanted some advice on hiring a contractor. Aunt Mary wanted to know how Josh was really doing, and Uncle Leo wanted to know every detail of the work they’d done on the lodge.
But he finally extricated himself and the almost three-hour drive was actually a nice break. He wasn’t going to get a lot of quiet time this weekend.
He hung around the baggage claim area for what felt like forever before passengers began streaming toward the carousel. Liz spotted him immediately and he grinned. She looked great, with her long, dark hair loose and frazzled around her face. While they were all losing their summer color already, her tan set off the blue eyes crinkling as she smiled.
She came at him on the run and he caught her as she threw herself into his arms. It had only been a few months since she’d flown home for Sean and Emma’s wedding, but he’d noticed then that she seemed to have a hard time leaving when it was time to go home.
“It’s good to see you,” he said around a mouthful of her hair.
“I can’t believe Mitch is getting married.” She moved toward the carousel as bags started dumping off the belt, and he had to walk fast to keep up. “What do you think of Paige?”
“She’s awesome. She’s kind of quiet and she’s a bit of a homebody. Doesn’t take any crap from Mitch.”
“I always thought we’d end up with a sister-in-law who was a Vegas stripper or a Miami Beach bunny. What does Rosie think of her?”
When she grabbed hold of a massive, battered suitcase, he reached past her and took it away. The thing weighed a ton and he thanked his lucky stars the wheels were still in fairly good shape. “Rosie loves her.”
“Then she must be awesome.”
They walked out to his truck while she filled him in on the sick kid and the cranky woman and the snoring guy on her flight, and he hoped her chattering covered the sound of his grunt when he had to lift her suitcase into the bed.
“Growing weak in your old age?” Apparently, it hadn’t. “It’s under the fifty-pound limit. Just barely, but still.”
“Shut up and get in the truck.”
She was quiet while he navigated his way out of the airport to the open road. Actually, she was more quiet than usual, just staring out the passenger window. Usually she at least sang along with the radio.
“How’s Darren?” Not that he cared, but he figured it would be rude not to ask.
“I moved out last weekend.”
Ryan almost drove off the road. “What? What happened? Are you okay? How come I didn’t know about this?”
“You didn’t know because I haven’t told anybody. And you can’t, either. I don’t want people worrying about me instead of enjoying Mitch’s wedding.”
When had he become the keeper of the whole family’s damn secrets? “You didn’t even tell Rosie?”
“I’ll tell her before I leave, but not until after Mitch and Paige leave for their honeymoon.”
“So what happened? And are you okay?” They’d been trying to get her to dump the guy for years, but that didn’t mean it was any easier for her.
“Nothing happened really. It was just another long day like every other long day and, after another talk about money—or the lack thereof—and why he couldn’t set an alarm to remind him when I’d be home so maybe he could at least throw leftovers in the microwave, I thought to myself, ‘I’m thirty-two years old. I only have to do this every single day for another forty, fifty, sixty years.’ And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it even one more day.”
“That’s no way to live.”
“It wasn’t bad.”
“But it wasn’t good.”
She sighed, tapping her fingers on her knee. “I just want more. When I think about having fifty or sixty years left to do what I’m doing, I want to think it’s not enough, not that it’s too long.”
“I’m sorry, though. You guys were together forever.”
She laughed. “Don’t lie. You—all of you—have always hated Darren.”
“We just wanted him to man up and be a little more responsible. Get a day job so all the burden wasn’t on you. Instead, he talked you into going all the way across the country so we couldn’t be in his business anymore. He took you away, so yeah...we’re not huge fans. Doesn’t mean I’m not sorry you ended up here, kid.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll be okay.”
“Are you coming home?”