didn’t need anyone’s permission to feel or act. It was easy to forget that when Mom was so intent on crushing her like a distasteful bug. Mom would never understand that Meg was made from a different mold; she’d always hold Meg at fault for her inability to shape herself into what a proper Carmichael was supposed to look like.
Meg was too old to let that knock her down, too far into recovery, into rebuilding her life. She had to be better than this, and she would be.
Workroom clean, she grabbed the fancy basket of soaps she’d made up for Elsie and decided not to wait to deliver it. The world was dusky, but it was early yet.
She forced herself to grab an apple so she’d at least have something in her stomach and ate it as she drove into town. Though she was embarrassed by the reason for needing to pay off Dan in soaps, she was glad for something to do tonight that would hopefully keep her mind off what she’d done last night.
When Meg arrived, Dan’s cab was in the drive and he opened the front door with his version of a smile. He ushered her in, and Elsie eased off the couch, where she’d been watching TV, to ooh and aah over the soap basket.
Meg realized she needed to do more of this. Not just sell, but give. Not just build, but enjoy the moments of joy and simple pleasures.
Elsie fussed over her, though she was bone thin and gray. Meg did her best to allow some of the fussing, and curb some of it. She tried not to think too hard about what it might have been like to have parents like this.
“Now, Elsie, you’re worn to the bone.”
Elsie huffed out an irritated breath. “Get a little cancer and this tough rock of a man turns into a fawning worrywart.”
“It’s important to keep your strength up, though. I so enjoyed visiting with you, Elsie.” Meg patted her knobby hand, knowing Elsie looked and probably felt much older than she actually was.
Life was oddly harder here. None of the comforts of what Meg had grown up with. None of the luxuries. Dan and Elsie looked like they could be her grandmother’s age, but she was pretty sure they were only in their early sixties.
“I’ll walk you out, Meg,” Dan offered as his cell phone bleeped. “You get in bed, Elsie, so I can take this fare, or you’re going to be in big trouble.”
Elsie muttered something that sounded like a creative string of curses, but she took her basket and eased her way into the dark hallway.
“She seems to be in good spirits,” Meg offered as she walked outside their seen-better-days tiny postage stamp of a house.
“That’s my Elsie.”
Meg smiled. Dan was a crusty old codger, but the love for his wife always shone through and that warmed Meg’s heart.
“You know much about Charlie Wainwright?” Dan asked, his segue less than smooth.
Meg tried not to blush, but she couldn’t manage it. Though she’d been in far more embarrassing situations and faced them with don’t-give-a-crap aplomb, something about Dan and Elsie and the way they’d taken her under their old, withered wings in this tight-knit community made this humiliation burn through her.
“He’s slick, but he’s not a bad kid.”
Kid. Meg wanted to laugh. They were adults and people still called them kids.
“I like the Wainwrights,” he continued. “Good family.”
“Okay.”
He shifted, then spat. “But if he ever gives you any trouble, if anybody does, just know, Elsie and me, we got your back. Got it?”
Meg didn’t know why it hit her so hard. Maybe it was because he was mostly a stranger, an odd little friendship built because he thought his wife might like her soaps. “You’ve always been so nice to me,” she managed, her voice more than a little raw.
Dan shrugged, looking out into the starry evening. “You know Cornley House?”
Meg stilled. It wasn’t the recovery center she’d been in, but a friend of hers had ended up there. Was she that transparent? After all these years?
Still, what did it matter if Dan knew? If everyone knew. It was part of her, and she was healing. “Yes.”
“Our daughter is there now.” He nodded at Meg’s shoulder where a bright orange-and-yellow sun poured light onto the blue sky and white clouds of her forearm. “She’s got that same sun thing, but on her back, and her hair used to be just your color.” He shrugged and spat again. “You remind Elsie of her. But last time she was home she trashed the place, took all the cash we had on hand.” He let out a breath. “Elsie’s had a rough life. I think it’s good for her to see you and think Hannah’s got a chance. She needs some hope.”
Meg swallowed. So much pain and grief in the world. And people like her who did it to themselves, and their families—at least the people in them who cared. No, she wasn’t going to fall back into that. “I’d like to come visit once a week. Bring some soap, maybe some food. What day would be good?”
Maybe she couldn’t make up for anything she’d done, and she couldn’t completely eradicate the feeling she was worthless, but she could put some good out into the world. She’d start here.
“YOU BETTER GET IT together before Mom calls a therapist.”
Charlie tried to grin and bear it, but it was hard. His acting skills were failing him. Hell, what wasn’t?
He’d been unemployed for a month. He’d grown a beard. He felt like a ghost of himself, and his family was tiptoeing around him like he had some kind of communicable disease.
But he didn’t know what to do. Who to be. He’d finished out his last two weeks at Lordon, ever the dutiful employee working to ease the transition for all those who got to keep their jobs.
He’d been offered interviews by a few headhunters. There were companies interested in his experience in sales, in his years as management.
He couldn’t muster up the energy to make the calls. A decade ago he would have jumped at the chance to move to Chicago, California, Denver. But sitting in the middle of his niece’s second birthday party, he thought relocating was the last thing he wanted to do.
The whole love of the farm thing might be Dell’s shtick, and Charlie might have moved downtown to get out of the small-town atmosphere of New Benton, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love his family. He wanted his mother close enough to make him dinner and tell him he’d land on his feet. He wanted to watch his niece grow up. He wanted to be here.
Lainey was running around dressed up like a princess. His baby sister was talking intently with Mia’s baby sister. Except Kenzie and Anna weren’t babies anymore. Both had graduated from college, Kenzie was going on to get her master’s and Anna was taking over her father’s dairy farm operation. Mia and Cara were fussing over a table full of cupcakes while Dad, Cara’s husband, Wes, and Mia’s dad were standing around the grill. Dogs ran all around the spacious green yard, yipping happily.
He
