“Yes. If things are different when he gets back … if you change, or if he does, know that you don’t have to say ‘I do’ because you already promised ‘I will.’”
Annie continued to stand there, head pounding as Laurel’s words played in her mind. Would Annie do it if she had to? If Eric turned out not to be the person she loved, would she say no? Annie believed that she would.
“I know I don’t have to marry him,” she said at last. “And I won’t, unless it’s the right time with the right person, which I’m positive that Eric is. Either way, twenty-two or forty years old, one engagement or fifteen, I can wait.”
She also understood she didn’t have to.
“Okay,” Laurel said, nodding. “Great. Though I’d prefer something less than fifteen engagements.”
“It was a joke,” Annie said. “Something I read in a book.”
Laurel smiled.
“A book,” she said. “Of course. Look, I’m sorry for bringing this up when maybe I didn’t need to. It’s funny … there’s, I don’t know, something different about you lately. On this trip you’ve suddenly seemed older, more grown-up. I suppose that’s quite the sad commentary on how much I’ve been away.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Mom. I’ve kept busy and even had a little fun besides.”
“I hope so.” Laurel sighed. “I’d hate for you to have bad memories of this trip. Or, worse, no memories of it at all.”
“No danger of that.”
“Good.” Laurel sighed again. “So, should we blow this taco stand or what? Or do you want to keep regaling the fine citizens of Banbury with our deepest personal problems?”
“Let’s go,” Annie said. “But first, I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Mom. ‘Blow this taco stand’? Please don’t speak that way again. I think it’s a form of child abuse.”
Laurel closed her eyes and laughed.
It was such a happy sound: light, high, and twinkly. Annie realized then how very long it’d been since she’d heard it. This town was getting to Laurel. It was getting to both of them.
“I have to ask,” Laurel said as they rounded the corner toward the inn. “Nicola says you’ve been running around meeting strange people, asking odd questions, borrowing bikes and flashlights. For what, exactly?”
“Um.” Annie paused and let her mother walk a few steps ahead. “I’ve been doing some, uh, research.”
“Research?” Laurel stopped, then turned back around.
“Yes. Research. On the town history.”
“Oh good grief.” Laurel rolled her eyes. “Is this about that old book you found?”
“Well, sort of,” she admitted. “I mean, it was the genesis.”
Because though it was about the book, it was not entirely so. Not anymore.
“Sweetheart, put it out of your mind. Stop spinning your wheels on this nonsense. Actually, I forgot to mention, but the other day, after you asked about the Grange, I looked into it for you.”
“You looked into it?” Annie leveled her eyes on Laurel. “What do you mean you ‘looked into it’?”
Did she trespass? Stand outside? See her only child coming and going?
“As it turns out,” Laurel said. “The property is gone.”
“Gone.”
“Yup.” Laurel answered with a stiff nod. “Gone. They razed the Grange. Mowed right on over it.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, um, Nicola?”
Nicola. Nicola who lent Annie the bike. Nicola who told her the address of the Grange and said to bother her best girlfriend next door.
“Are you positive?” Annie asked, a squeak in her throat. “Absolutely certain? Maybe you heard it wrong.”
“I thought the same thing. So when I had a few minutes on the way home the other night, I swung by. And the whole thing was … pssst.” Laurel whistled through her teeth. “Completely flattened, like it’d never been there in the first place.”
“Flattened. Really.”
“Yep. Don’t look so upset! It was just an old house. There are better things to see around here!” Laurel grinned. Annie never noticed how pointy her incisors were. “You know what I’m thinking? We need a big ol’ glass of wine. Where can we find some around here?”
“I’m sure Nicola has something,” Annie said, disoriented. Her headache had morphed into full-blown vertigo. “She, uh, usually puts out wine and cheese this time of day.”
“Yes!” her mom chirped.
Annie started.
“Um, what?”
“Nicola’s sundry wines and cheeses!” Laurel sang. “And the cakes. Don’t forget the cakes!”
With an exaggerated wink, she did a little gun-shooting motion, the kind of which Laurel Haley had never made in her lifetime. Then she jauntily bounced up the stairs of the inn. Annie remained at the bottom, mouth open, her tongue tacky and dry.
“Uh, Mom?”
At the top step, Laurel glanced over her right shoulder.
“What is it, Annie?”
“Well, it’s about the Gr…” she began.
Then Annie pulled back. It was not the time to ask. The exchange was too confusing, the pieces inexorably scattered. She didn’t even know where to start, or which aspect of the lie was most upsetting.