Maybe I’d get lucky and Talia would want to spend her lunch hour talking baby names. Fingers crossed.
Steeling my spine, I grabbed a block of muenster and the butter, then carried them to the prep table before setting them down to hug my sister. “Hi.”
“Hey.” Talia was dressed in blue scrubs, her pregnant belly round and adorable. We’d each pulled our dark hair into a ponytail today, and people always said that we were easier to tell apart when our hair was up.
“Want some lunch? I was just going to make myself a grilled cheese.”
“Sure.”
I was grateful for the task of cooking. It meant I didn’t have to make eye contact. My sister would see too quickly that I was barely holding it together.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Much.” I sliced two pieces of cheese.
“What was wrong?”
“I don’t know. I just felt sick.”
“Did you have a fever?”
“Um, no?”
“What were your symptoms?” This was the problem with having a doctor in the family. Doctors asked questions, and good doctors, like Talia, could tell the difference between a fake illness and an actual illness.
“I was kind of sore. Like body aches? I think I overdid it on the hiking.”
Her stare burned into my profile. I didn’t need to look at her to know her eyes were narrowed. That she could hear the lie in my voice.
“Lyla.”
“Yeah?” I walked to the shelf and took down a loaf of bread.
“Vance is gone, isn’t he?”
Shit. That didn’t take her long to figure out, did it? My shoulders slumped. Then I nodded, keeping my back to my sister. If I said the words aloud, if I looked at her, I’d cry.
And by some miracle, I hadn’t cried. Not yet.
Not from the time I’d left Vance in my driveway. Not through my entire morning routine. I’d fought the tears like a warrior. But this was a battle I’d lose. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. The tears would come in a devastating wave.
Just not yet.
They’d have to wait. I had to get through my workday first. I had to make grilled cheese sandwiches.
“Are you all right?” Talia asked.
No. Not even a little bit.
I shrugged, returning to the table. I found a serrated knife and began slicing the loaf. “I always knew this would happen.”
“Did he say anything about coming back? Maybe staying?”
I loved my sister, but God, did we have to talk about this right now? I shook my head, the fire in my throat blazing hotter than ever. “It’s not like that. I’m not . . .”
“Not what?” Talia put her hand over mine, forcing me to stop cutting.
“I’m not the right shade of blue.”
Deep down, I knew that the reason Vance left had nothing to do with me. But the doubts were creeping in, crippling and heartbreaking. Would he have stayed for another woman?
Talia’s eyebrows knitted together. “Huh?”
“Never mind.” I slid my hand free of hers and set the knife down, moving to turn on the cooktop.
“You don’t want to talk about this right now, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Okay.” She went to my office, wheeling out my desk chair. Then my beautiful, happy sister spent the next thirty minutes talking to me about baby names while she ate her sandwich before going back to work.
As the day wore on, the exhaustion from a sleepless night began to take its toll. My bones felt too heavy. My muscles weak. But somehow, I persevered, and when I finally turned the lock on the front door and flipped the sign to closed, I breathed a sigh.
I reached for the light switch, dousing the shop in shadows. The streetlamp outside cast its white hue through the front windows. Normally, that light would scatter, barely brightening the front third of the shop. Tonight, it was like a spotlight shone directly on the empty table and chair by the window.
Vance’s chair.
A sob escaped my throat. I gave in to the burn in my throat. And tears began streaming down my face.
The war was over. So I stopped fighting.
Instead, I buried my face in my hands and cried for the man who’d changed my life. The man I loved.
The man who’d walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
VANCE
The drive from the station to my house was eleven minutes.
For the past eleven minutes, I’d felt like I’d forgotten something in the captain’s office.
Not just something.
My badge.
Effective today, I was no longer a deputy with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office. And even though I’d planned for this, eleven minutes hadn’t been long enough for this new reality to sink in.
I wasn’t a cop, not anymore.
There was a duffel bag in the back seat of my truck full of everything I’d had stuffed in my locker at work. Even though Christmas was still a few weeks away, Alec’s wife had made me a tin of holiday cookies. They were in the passenger seat.
I hauled everything out of the truck but left it on a shelf in the garage, not having the energy to deal with it right now, then headed inside the house.
The moment I walked through the door to the laundry room, Vera came rushing around the corner. Her sock-covered feet slid like ice skates across the hardwood floor. “So? How’d it go? Did you quit?”
“It went. And yes, I quit.” I sighed, setting my keys on top of the dryer.
There used to be a hook beside the door where I’d hang my keys. But when we’d arrived in Idaho six weeks ago, the hook had been missing along with a long list of other things that Tiff had taken when she’d moved out.
In the past six weeks, I hadn’t bothered to find a new hook. Or new nightstands for my bedroom. Or a coffee table in the living room.
The furniture had been mine, though apparently Tiff hadn’t cared. Vera didn’t seem to mind that there were holes where pieces of furniture should be. And I didn’t give a shit about, well . . . a lot. At least not much here in Idaho.
For the past month and a half, it had become glaringly obvious that I’d left far, far too much of myself in Montana.
With Lyla.
“Are you okay?” Vera asked.
“All good,” I lied. “You got a haircut.”
It was still long, the orange-red strands brushing against her heart, but it was six inches shorter than it had been when I’d left this morning.
“It was still scraggly.” She plucked at a lock. “It needed to go shorter.”
Which was exactly what the stylist had told her the first time we’d gone to the salon—it had taken Vera nearly a month before she’d leave the house without me, so I’d taken her to that first haircut. And despite the stylist’s advice, Vera hadn’t wanted to lose too much length.
She liked her long hair. And I think she’d feared that if there were too many changes, she’d lose herself. She’d lose the girl who’d spent those years in the wilderness with her father.
I was proud of her for going there today. For making another change.
“It looks really great.”
“Thanks.” She shrugged. “I like it.”
“Then that’s all that matters.” I toed off my boots, then I took off my winter coat, glad I had nowhere else to go today, because the roads around town were slick and covered in snow. “Maybe it’s time I got another haircut too.”
The day I’d taken Vera, I’d had mine trimmed too, but that had been weeks ago and it was getting long again. Without Lyla around to run her fingers through it, there didn’t seem like much point in letting it grow.
“We could walk to the salon tomorrow,” Vera said.
“Or you could practice driving.”
She shook her head.
Vera wasn’t ready to drive again, not yet. Without any practice in the past four years, she had a lot of relearning to do. For now, wherever she needed to go, she walked. Even so, she rarely left the house.
“On my walk back, I picked up stuff at the store to make soup. It’s ready and I set the table. Are you hungry?”
No. My stomach had been in a knot all day and would need a while to unravel. The idea of food only made the cramp worse.
But a week ago, Vera had declared that she wanted to contribute more around the house and that I needed to let her contribute more around the house. Apparently I’d been babying her. So in an effort to back off, I’d put her in charge of dinner every night.
If she’d made soup, then it was time to eat soup.
“Soup on a cold day sounds great.”
“Okay.” She stood a little taller. A tiny smile graced her mouth before she whirled around and slid-shuffled across the floor toward the kitchen.
That small smile was about as much joy as Vera showed these days. It was hard to remember what she looked like when she was actually happy. There was no laughter in her. No blinding, toothy smiles.
I missed that Vera. And I wasn’t sure how to get her back.
So I’d focused on the practicalities instead.
Turns out . . . bringing a kid back to life was a clusterfuck of paperwork and skepticism.
Most people, like Alec, had needed an in-person visit to believe our story that Vera had shown up on my doorstep six weeks ago.
After I’d called to tell him, letting him be the dry run before my meeting with the captain, Alec had rushed over and stared at Vera, speechless, for almost thirty minutes.