I look up, seeing Pastor John Lewis leaning against his car. I give him a small nod as I help her walk over. He doesn’t say anything, instead climbs behind the wheel, but I don’t miss the smile playing about his lips. I help her get settled in the passenger seat and stand back so they can pull out.
Clearly that last buck off knocked all the sense right out of my head, because if I was a smart man I would have gotten back in my truck and hightailed it right back out of town, but with my ear still burning from Marybeth Perkins’s wrath, I pull out of the church lot and head to the last place I want to go.
The Davis ranch.
Home.
6
LEIGHTON
“Better in Boots” by Tyler Farr
After leaving the church, Clay heads toward my house. The ride is silent, but my mind isn’t, and for that, I am thankful. It means I’ll have some quiet time before I need to be at the PieHole. I have a feeling that they need that as well. Right now, the last thing I want is to head over there, which has me feeling even more out of sorts. Normally, you couldn’t get me to leave my bakery, but after this afternoon I just want to stay home, pour a hot bath, and get lost in a good book.
With a deep sigh, I climb the steps to my porch, waving good-bye to Clay’s retreating truck as I go. I had planned on spending some time on one of the many rocking chairs that line the wraparound porch after Buford’s funeral, but I know any time I allow myself to be idle will just kick my mind into full speed down memory lane, and that’s the last place I want to be.
Kicking the package at the door with my toe, I bend down and lift the mat to grab the key, pulling back the old screen and unlocking the door. My mind continues to churn as I bend to replace to key and pick up the box—judging by the logo-printed tape, another impulsive Amazon purchase that I didn’t really need. Stepping inside, I quickly kick off my heels and settle my feet down on the cold hardwood, letting my arches have a moment of bliss. As much as I love the way my legs look when I wear those beauties, I would much rather be wearing boots or chucks.
I wasn’t kidding earlier when I told Maverick that I stopped dressing to impress years ago. Even though now I actually have a body worth showing off, I still feel like that little girl playing dress up. I would much rather just be me.
“Hey, baby,” I coo, a smile hitting my face when I feel the comforting furry caress against my shins. Bending down, I pick up my beefy cat, Earl, making sure to scratch him behind his left ear. His purrs greet my ears, breaking through the silence around me. Earl is the only thing that makes living alone bearable. I hate the silence that suffocates me when I’m home, which is probably why I spend so much of my time at the PieHole.
At the PieHole the only thing we serve is pie, so it isn’t your typical bakery. It’s so much more than that. Over the years, I’ve been able to turn my obsession with making pies into one of the best specialty shops around. It started as a way to keep my mama’s memory alive—to feel like she was still with me—and to ease that ache I felt daily with her absence. I wouldn’t say that owning a bakery is something I always dreamed of, but it was her dream, and when I lost her, I found my happiness in making her dream a reality. I’ve been lucky, and now people come from all over the South just to grab some of my famous pies. Quinn jokes that it’s my secret “recipies,” something I won’t even tell her about, but I like to think it’s just my mama looking out for me from above—giving my creations a little dash of herself that make them so memorable everyone craves the feeling they get with each bite. We get people from all the way over in Georgia and all the way up to Canada.
Leaving the entryway, I move from the front door, around the love seat and coffee table, trying to decide where I want to settle; I finally choose the deep-seated couch. Earl’s purrs intensify as I cuddle him close and continue to scratch behind his ear. He’s a beast, but I love holding him close to my chest, or as close as you can get a twenty-pound Maine coon. He looks more like a small bobcat than a domestic house pet, but I love the little fur ball.
With a deep sigh, still petting him softly, I look around my home.
With the sudden appearance of Maverick back in Pine Oak, I can’t stop my mind from playing loops upon loops of old memories. Not just of him, but of my parents too. Because our past is so interwoven, I should have seen this coming, but the pain the memories bring is greater than I could have ever anticipated. I feel the loss of my parents like it was just days and not years since they’ve been gone. My eyes roam over the room, looking for subtle hints of them.
For the first year after they were gone, I couldn’t even stand to be here, the pain of their loss too great to stand. We had lived comfortably my whole life, and my father’s thriving horse breeding business meant the house I grew up in was paid off. I was left with more money than I would ever spend in my lifetime because of their planning, but it was money I would have gladly given away to have them back. After selling our land to the Davis family, aside from the ten acres that my house sat on, that money grew even larger. It was Clay’s idea to remodel my childhood home. I had never felt right spending that money, but he reminded me that my parents had worked hard to make sure I would always be taken care of—even if they weren’t around. It was his idea that made it easier for me to be here, because once the house no longer resembled my childhood home, it stopped being a constant reminder of what I’d lost.
The first thing we did was take two of the back bedrooms and knock out some walls, turning my old en suite into a bathroom fit for a luxury spa, complete with a tub of my dreams. Big enough to fit two people—not that I’ve had that opportunity in a long while. By freeing up what had been one of the two guest rooms, my room now had a walk-in closet that I would probably never fill completely. We took my childhood bedroom and made it into a woman’s dream dwelling: white-and-lavender accents with the palest of purple walls completed the look, giving me a soft, feminine room that looked nothing like the teenage cave it had been.
The other guest room we left alone, but gave it a fresh coat of light yellow paint and new furniture. It was simple but cozy.
It was another year after we finished those rooms until I was ready to clean out my parents’ old bedroom. Since their room took up half of the front of the house, opposite to the large family room, we decided to turn it into two rooms. It took awhile, since we were taking the old bathroom and converting it into a smaller guest bathroom that attached to one of the newly framed guest rooms. The rest of the space was turned into a library, a small one, but one with shelves lining every wall with two huge cozy chairs, separated only by a small end table in the middle. There was no doorway, just a double-wide arched entryway.