“We’ve got the new traffic light now, and ski season has been bringing in quite a few tourists. They say we’re going to be the new skiing hotspot now, like Crested Butte. Dear Lord, I hope not, all those rich folks coming in, wanting all kinds of exotic foods ordered. Of course, it’s not like I couldn’t use the business. And it’ll do great things for you, won’t it, with the bed and breakfast? That is what you’re doing with Mrs. Crawford’s old place, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Ma’am - I mean, Connie C.,” I said. “I’m hoping I’ll have it all fixed up before ski season this year.”
“Mrs. Crawford kept it up pretty well, even after Mr. Crawford passed,” Connie said. “She got some help with repairs for a while from Mr. Austin. Well, of course you know Mr. Austin.” Her voice trailed off, her last sentence laden with meaning.
I felt a flush rise to my cheeks at the mention of the name.
Mr. Austin.
I couldn’t think of Mr. Austin without thinking of his son.
Cade.
Of course I knew the Austins. And I certainly knew Cade. In the most Biblical of senses. Of course, that was before everything that happened, everything that tore me apart.
Everything that tore Cade and I apart.
It was never their fault. You knew you would have to deal with this, coming back here, I reminded myself. You can’t run forever.
That’s exactly what my therapist in Chicago had said. You can change your name, your job, your location, but it won’t reboot your system, she’d said. At some point, you’ll have to stop running.
I was an expert at running. It was like second nature. Better than some other ways of dealing with shit, though, right? Some people drank, took pills, gambled.
Me? When things got tough, I ran.
The problem was, my therapist didn't know the real reason I was running back home. No one knew. Because if anyone knew the real reason I had left Chicago, they wouldn’t see me in the same way. They wouldn’t see me as the good officer, the Navy doctor who had done her duty, completed her tours on the ship and in Afghanistan. They wouldn’t see me as the girl who’d made good after her family tragedy, who had gone to medical school, joined the Navy.
“You know that Mrs. Austin passed a few years ago,” Connie said. “Cancer.”
“I hadn’t heard,” I said. She was like my second mother in high school, and Cade’s place was my second home.
Until my parents were killed. Until what happened with my sister. I still had a hard time even thinking the word, let alone speaking it. Suicide.
“Oh, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, Junebug,” Connie said. “I thought you might have heard. But no, I guess you probably wouldn’t want to keep in touch with them, after what happened.”
What happened.
My head was swimming, and I could barely hear Connie’s words. It was a mistake coming back here. I knew better than this. After all these years away, I didn't want to deal with dredging up the past. All the sympathetic looks, the head shaking and platitudes about the unfairness of life. I didn't want to hear any of it.
But I'd brought it on myself.
And then, to buy the house right beside Mr. Austin? It made me some kind of masochist. It was some kind of fucked up.
“No,” I said, my voice faltering. “I haven’t talked to Cade in years.”
Not since I left West Bend.
“Oh,” Connie said. “I’m sorry, honey. I overstepped my bounds, mentioning them.”
I cleared my throat, shaking my head like I could discard the feelings threatening to drown me. My head was spinning. “No, Connie,” I said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Coming back here must be hard.”
“No, it’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine.
I thought I had put more distance between myself and this place, enough to return and not be affected. Now I was seventeen again and everything had just happened yesterday.
And then to hear her mention Cade. My heart still raced at the thought of his name, even after all these years.
Even after all that had ripped us apart.
“He joined the Marines, you know,” she said, as if she could read my thoughts.
“Did he?” I asked, like I didn't know what he'd done after high school. Like he hadn't always been at the back of my mind, every time I'd gone to work. Every time I'd treated a Marine in uniform. When I'd deployed with the Marines.
I’d walk out into the waiting area of one of the health clinics, chart in hand, and call for a patient, and there he would be, looking up at me with that same crooked smile he'd always had, that smug sexy smile that made me want to smack him and screw him all at the same time.
And then I'd blink, and he would be gone. I looked for him everywhere, no matter where I was - at the big Navy hospital in Norfolk, overseas in Okinawa. In Afghanistan.
It would have been too easy to just pick up the phone and call him. Or send him an email. But I never did. And then I finally stopped looking for him.
What the hell could I say, after all that had happened? After all that had passed between us?
“He did really well in the Marines, from what I heard,” Connie said, her voice shaking me out of my thoughts. “His dad was so proud of him. Got a Silver Star back in - Oh Lord, it's been a while back now."
“Oh,” I said. That sounded like the Cade I knew. Cade had always been that kind of guy, the one who would run into a burning building to save your dog.
He had always been a good guy.