“I’m sure. And thank you…for the food and the ride.” For taking such good care of Dylan.
“My pleasure and,” she sighed, “I love that boy to death. Like he was my own. But he’s not easy. And he carries a burden so heavy he’s getting crushed under it and doesn’t even realize.”
I knew that; perhaps that was part of what we’d been attracted to at the beginning. Both of us knowing, somehow, that we were carrying impossible loads.
“And sometimes,” Margaret continued, “I wish he would meet a girl. Someone like you. Someone who doesn’t care about his money and his scars. Or what he’s done in the past. Who cares about him. Who makes him smile and pulls him out of that garage where he’d spend every living moment of his life, and then I think…no. If he met a girl who loved him, she would get crushed under that burden too.” She turned to face me. “Don’t come back, Annie.”
I blinked, stunned.
“It hurts me to say, but you’re a good girl. Find yourself an easier man and don’t come back.”
I stumbled out of the car, my goodie bag of gourmet leftovers banging against my legs. She lifted a hand in a wave and the car pulled away, flinging mud up everywhere. My eyes burned. My throat hurt and my body was sore from Dylan’s hands.
Instead of going to my trailer, where I would do nothing but lie there and think of Dylan, I walked toward the office. Toward distraction.
The bell rang over the door as I stepped into the office. Kevin was playing solitaire in front of the blasting air conditioner.
Exactly the same. Like I’d never left.
I appreciated Dylan’s offer of the house, but if I was going to divorce Hoyt, I had to stand on my own two feet. And that meant staying here. Working here. Living here. The luxury of my hours with Dylan was a dream. A beautiful dream. But it was time to wake up.
“Hey there,” Kevin said, glancing up from his game.
“Just checking in on the storm damage,” I said. “You need me to do any work?”
“We got a shit ton of fallen trees in the back lots. One of the trailers nearly got crushed. We’re going to need a chain saw.”
“We don’t have one in the tool shed,” I said, jumping with great relief onto the idea of work. Physical hard work would clear out my head. Get me right. If nothing else, it would fill up the empty hours.
“Yeah, I’ll need you to go into Cherokee and rent one. Come back in the morning and I’ll get you some cash.”
“Thanks, Kevin,” I said and walked back out the door, the bell tinkling all the same. Coming, going, it didn’t matter. I found the consistency comforting. I paused in the doorway and thought for a second that I should ask him about Dylan. What he knew about us. But in the end it didn’t matter.
There was no more us.
I walked back through the trailers with the families, where a few people were clearing branches out of their driveways or away from their cars. Tiffany was in the playground with her kids picking up branches, or at least she was picking up branches. The kids were in a stick sword fight.
“Stop it now, kids,” she said. “Someone is going to get hurt.”
“Hey,” I said as I walked by.
“Hey,” she said, pushing her long hair off her face. She seemed startled to see me. Like she hadn’t expected me to come back. “You’re here!” She wore men’s work gloves that made her wrists and arms seem so fragile. More fragile than the sticks she was carrying. “You weathered the storm someplace else?”
“Yeah, a friend’s. It was bad here?”
“Scary. A little,” she said. “Kids were freaked out, but Phil was here and he kept us all in the bathroom. Made it seem safe.”
I absolutely tried not to react, but my eyebrows hit my hairline anyway.