Left to Chance Read online

  I stepped to the side and held out my hand. “I’ve been carrying this around for a long time.” I flipped the stone over. Tulips. “I wrote that when I saw the tulips at Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island. I took out my phone to call your mom and tell her about them and—”

  “And you couldn’t.”

  “And I started to cry.”

  “In front of other people?”

  “A lot of people. But I didn’t care. I had to make it all mean something. The new job, the traveling. I couldn’t believe I was doing so much and your mom wasn’t part of it. So I took this stone from the ground. I knew one day I’d leave the stone here as proof.”

  “That you never stopped thinking about her.”

  “Ever. Even when it doesn’t seem like it.”

  “Go ahead, Aunt Tee.”

  “Do you want to do it?”

  “I think you should.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You don’t want to do it, do you? You don’t want to touch it or go closer. It’s really not so bad. At least it’s something real.”

  I placed the stone on top of the marker, the word facing down. No one else needed to know what it said. Or that I’d left it. I stepped back to Shay and held her hand.

  “I came here to tell her Daddy is getting married on Sunday. Do you think she already knows?”

  I nodded.

  “I knew you weren’t going to marry Daddy, Aunt Tee. But…”

  “It seemed like a good idea?”

  “Sometimes. I just don’t want to forget about her, and Violet doesn’t know anything about her.”

  “She can. You can tell her. I can tell her. Violet loves you, Shay. She doesn’t want to take your mom from you. I promise.”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “You should believe her. She’s a good one. I can tell.”

  Shay turned and looked at me. “You like her?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you think my mom would be okay with all of this?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  I gulped and remembered my dream. “She told me.”

  Shay just nodded.

  “Do you think you’re going to marry that guy? Simon?” Shay furrowed her brows.

  “I don’t know.”

  But I did know. Not once while I was looking for Shay or standing with her in the cemetery had I thought of reaching out to Simon. Not once had I heard his voice inside my head whispering words of encouragement or pictured his face for strength and comfort.

  Cameron was right. I didn’t love Simon.

  Three cars doors slammed. Neither Shay nor I turned around.

  “Everybody okay?”

  Shay nodded and walked into a hug with Miles. Violet joined them.

  Thank you, Violet mouthed to me.

  Beck stood off to the side.

  Shay looked at me and waved. “I think we burned the cookies.”

  Miles and Shay walked ahead to the car.

  “This has been a long road,” Violet said.

  “She loves you,” Teddi said.

  “I know she does, and I’m grateful for that every day.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Coming?” Violet said to Beck.

  “No. I’ll ride back with Teddi.”

  “Wait!” I ran over to Shay and grabbed her hands. “Strawberry ChapStick.”

  “You want some? I have it in my pocket.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. That’s what she smelled like, Shay. Your mom. She smelled like Strawberry Chapstick. Just like you.”

  Chapter 20

  BECK SAID NOTHING. I said nothing. Again.

  We walked into Nettie’s and Beck settled into the corner of the settee in the foyer.

  “Sit down, please.” His voice was soft, yet stern.

  I gulped away hesitation as I sat in the opposite corner. If only the cushion between us were enough space to muffle my thrashing heart.

  “Shay really scared you, didn’t she?”

  “I never felt anything like that before.” And I hadn’t. “I had no idea where she was and I imagined the most horrible things.”

  “You know it’s not your fault, right?”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because you didn’t push her out the door, Teddi Bear.”

  I bent my neck, stared at my hands in my lap, and clenched my lips to keep the sounds inside. I’d cried in front of, and with, Beck countless times. But that was then. We were different then. I was different then.

  “Do you want to tell me what you said to her?”

  I shook my head. My hair flung onto my face. Beck reached over and pushed the hair away and left his hand on my cheek. He stared at me. I looked away but I knew he was still staring. He slid closer. I counted to ten inside my head and then laid my head on Beck’s chest, on the space I’d left behind. I indulged myself and rested heavily on him, releasing any resistance. He wrapped his arms around me.

  Minutes passed. We stayed silent as the past crept into the present, threatening to tangle up the future. We stayed still as it relinquished its claim.

  I looked up and sat against the back of the couch, Beck’s arm still around me. “What happened to you while I was gone?”

  “I got arrested.”

  “No you didn’t.” I waved my hand, dismissing his ruse.

  “I did. I went to a bachelor party and was too damn stubborn to let the designated driver take me home. It was too soon after Cee for me to be out partying. I got a DUI.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Is that when you stopped calling?”

  “I stopped before that, because you didn’t answer me. But that was a wake-up call. I lost my driver’s license and had to come back from Columbus and move in with my parents, and they drove me where I needed to go. AA meetings, mostly, over in Tuckerton. Otherwise, I walked everywhere. That’s easy here. As you know.” I just shook my head.

  “You being out of the picture really was the least of my problems at that point, Teddi. If it hadn’t happened, and I hadn’t moved back, I wouldn’t have the relationship I do with Miles and Shay, and I wouldn’t have bought the inn, and both have been good for me. Even when I moved back to Columbus, I knew where my anchor was.”

  “You’re lucky.” I gasped. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I get it. And you’re right.”

  “So, you’re okay?”

  “I will be in about five seconds.”

  Beck kissed me twice, but didn’t linger.

  I pulled back gently. “Why didn’t anyone tell me what was going on with you? Miles could’ve told me. Your parents could’ve told me.”

  “I didn’t want them to. It wasn’t their story to tell, it was mine.”

  “I wish I’d known. Maybe…”

  “You couldn’t have stopped anything from happening. Just like you couldn’t have stopped Shay. If she didn’t do this tonight, it might have been tomorrow night, or when Miles and Violet are on their honeymoon. Shay likes to be near her mother, which is fine, except she can’t go there without telling anyone, and she knows that. None of it is your fault. You have to trust me.”

  “Still, I wish someone would’ve told me. About you.”

  “Except for Shay, you made it pretty clear you didn’t want to know what was going on back here.”

  I suppose I had.

  * * *

  I couldn’t fall asleep. I lay on the bed on my side and stared at the wall. My head hurt so bad I was either drunk without drinking or getting a migraine from six years of pent-up feelings that had just burst through the dam I’d built around them.

  Beck had needed me. Shay had needed me.

  And no one knew why I’d gone away.

  I slid to the floor and reached under the bed, pulling out the suitcase that didn’t fit into the closet. I unzipped it and lifted out a drawstring bag.

  When Miles had lifted
my suitcase into his car, he’d joked that I had bricks in it. When I told him rocks, I hadn’t lied.

  I emptied the bag into the well of my lap. Twenty-two stones tumbled out. Twenty-two testaments to friendship. I’d started with the one from Butchart Gardens, which would never settle in my pocket again. I picked up a small white stone and flipped it over. Gecko. I’d picked it up off the ground in Sabino Canyon in Tucson, when a gecko ran across my path. I jumped and ran away, knowing that Celia would have wanted it to come closer. I missed having someone who challenged my sensibilities but never asked me to change them.

  I could barely see the writing on a flat black stone, but I knew I’d written the word “peppers.” I’d lifted that one out of a cactus plant in our Albuquerque hotel, after I’d had some of the spiciest food of my entire life. Food that Celia would have loved, without flinching or without drinking a quart of milk.

  I’d gathered stones in Boston, Malibu, Seattle, Miami, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Savannah, but the stones weren’t meant to honor cities or hotels, or to serve as reminders of overarching sadness.

  These stones were moments. Twenty-two breathtaking, side-splitting, heart-wrenching moments from my travels I needed to carry with me, carry to Celia, so I’d tucked them into the pockets I’d had sewn into every dress.

  I gathered them back into the bag, slipped on my robe, and walked upstairs. Light shone under only one door. I knocked and Beck opened it.

  “I need to show you something,” I said. “And tell you something.”

  He stepped aside but touched the small of my back as I walked inside.

  Beck’s room had caramel-colored walls and majestic draperies and linens, and warm brown leather furniture.

  I knew it had once been two rooms—two large bedrooms. Now the bed was separated from a sitting area in an alcove. Ticking-striped drapes framed the walnut headboard.

  I sat on a chair and Beck sat on the end of the bed closest to me.

  No matter the distance, there was a bond between us that pulled at my heart, that made me not take my eyes off him even when I looked away. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed, no, forced myself to stay away so long, so long it would have been forever had Shay not unwittingly come to my rescue. What had I been thinking? I couldn’t outrun it no matter how hard I tried.

  “I’m sorry.” Too little, too late. I knew this.

  “It’s not your fault what happened to Shay. I wish I could say it was, but it’s not.”

  I shuddered from his misinterpretation. “That’s not what I’m sorry about.”

  He just stared, daring me. He wasn’t going to make it easy. He shouldn’t, but I wished he would anyway.

  “I’m sorry I left without saying good-bye. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls or respond to your texts. That was wrong.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I’m sorry for all of it.”

  “But you’re not sorry you left.”

  “No, I’m not.” The truth. “I am sorry about the way I left.”

  “You made a choice. We all do it, and we pay for it sometimes. I should know.”

  “I didn’t feel like I had a choice back then.”

  “I’m done being mad, Teddi, but it’s time to own what you did. You packed up your car and drove away and didn’t look back. You forgot about all of us. Including Cee.”

  “I felt like half of me died with her—but I didn’t have the right to feel that way. I wasn’t family. I didn’t lose a sister or a daughter or a mother or a wife. Your loss was deeper than mine. But it didn’t feel that way to me. I was empty and lost and there was no book or prayer or support group that could help me, because friends are at the bottom of the list. People wanted to know why I was late for work. Why I looked so sad. Why I had no appetite and didn’t shower. Losing Celia was the biggest thing in my life, and my grief was invisible.” I handed Beck the bag of stones. “And I didn’t forget about her. I carried her with me every single day.”

  He opened the bag and spilled the stones onto the bed, spreading them out with his hand. He lifted each one and examined it before setting it down.

  “When I found the first one, it was something to hold on to that was part of my new life but that kept me connected to Celia. I planned to come home and place it on her headstone. But I couldn’t bear the thought of any of it. So, I just kept waiting for the next perfect moment and the next perfect stone. Eventually, I stopped feeling like a balloon that was floating away.”

  “You wouldn’t have felt so disconnected if you were here.”

  “It would have been worse.”

  “How can you possibly think that?”

  “Because Cee wanted me to leave Chance.”

  “No. She would have wanted you here for Shay. For Miles, too. Even for my parents.”

  “Well, she didn’t. I turned down a job in Chicago and she knew that, so she wanted me to go out and find something else. She was the only person who knew all the things I wanted to do and all the places I wanted to go. And you know what I did when she wanted me to promise I’d leave? I said no. To my dying best friend. It was the only thing she asked me to do for her and I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. I told her I was going to stay in Chance and shoot local weddings and schools and Little League teams and become a Wagoneer and volunteer at the freaking library sales.”

  “And that’s not what she wanted for you.”

  I shook my head. “She was so disappointed in me.”

  “She loved you. And she was really proud of you and of your work.”

  “You didn’t see her face that day when I said no. She thought I was kidding. But how could I say I would leave when Shay was here? When you were here? I couldn’t fathom it. And then…”

  “She was gone.”

  “And I could only think one thought. I had to do what she wanted me to do. Especially since deep down, I knew she was right. But it took her dying to get me there. Do you hear me? My best friend had to die for me to start living. That eats away at me every single day.” I slowed my thoughts and hoped my breathing would follow. “And I doubt she meant ‘go away, don’t talk to anyone, and come back six years later.’ That part? All me.”

  “You could’ve told me why you were leaving.”

  “I didn’t want you to stop me. And I didn’t want you to be mad at Cee.”

  Beck looked down and fiddled with the stones. “I loved you, Teddi. I’d have wanted you to go if that’s what you needed. I would have understood why Celia wanted you to go. At least I would have tried.”

  Beck had loved me?

  Beck had loved me. Past tense. I stood as why didn’t you tell me screamed at the back of my throat and exploded in my ears.

  It was better that I hadn’t known.

  Beck rose from the bed and hugged me around my shoulders with a strength that wasn’t mine to absorb. I didn’t move in too close.

  “I couldn’t have gotten through those six months without you.” I looked up as he kissed the top of my forehead, but didn’t linger. “I’m not staying away anymore.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “And I don’t want to lose you again. I know it’s not like before, but…”

  “Me either,” he said.

  I walked out of the room and heard Beck push the door shut behind me.

  “I loved you, too,” I said, loud enough for him to hear.

  Chapter 21

  I AWOKE AS THE sun was lifting away darkness, and slipped a dress over my head and quiet shoes onto my feet that wouldn’t click or flap. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and slipped my camera over my neck. I turned the doorknob slowly and opened the door with gentle ease.

  My velvet bag was on the floor, a note attached.

  T—YOU SHOULD PUT THESE

  WHERE THEY BELONG.

  B

  I tucked the stones into my camera bag and walked outside.

  The porch was damp from morning dew. I held the banister and looked out at Lark Street, then closed my eyes to snap
a mental picture. I touched my camera to make sure it hung around my neck even though I’d just placed it there.

  I shook out one leg. I needed to move, to walk, to run. I skittered around to the side of the house, through the white gate, under the weathered trellis covered in purple clematis, and into the garden, shrouded from Lark Street by high bushes and draping trees. I looked at the stepping-stones but walked on the grass, examining the flowers and bushes. I clamped my lips in defiance of my mother, who used to ramble off every species and insist I repeat them. It took me six months not to read the signs with the plants at Hester hotels, to just look at the plants and flowers and stones and grasses and photograph them. I did not want to get caught in the academic details of beauty. I snapped a few photos through the morning mist, with the light offering just a peek at what was to come. I slipped a stone into my pocket that had been hidden beneath a cluster of black-eyed Susans. There were weeds to be pulled there as well, but I wasn’t in the mood and it wasn’t my job.

  Celia would have done it anyway.

  I stood in the garden longer than I ever had before.

  My stomach grumbled. Perk would have just opened a half hour ago. I could take my tablet, set myself up at a corner table, and review the wedding schedule and shot lists. Today I would be on my own. Josie was helping set up for an open house. Miles and Violet and Shay were tending to post-trauma and pre-wedding details with family. I was happy and sad. I was hopeful and fearful.

  I was also eager to see Cameron, and tell him that I’d decided about my dash. And to ask him to be part of it.

  * * *

  I opened the garden gate and walked to the front of Nettie’s. Someone was standing on the porch facing the house.

  “Miles?”

  He turned around. “Look who I saw walking on Main Street.”

  A man rose and came into my line of vision, blocked momentarily by a pillar and by a tightening in my stomach. My hand touched my side as my brain arranged the visual puzzle pieces. Taller than Miles, slim, but broadened by a sport coat, meticulous hair, a familiar gait. The man turned and held up a garment bag. “Special delivery!”

  I stopped at the bottom of the steps. The knot in my stomach cinched and stomach acid lurched into my throat. Simon! In Chance. On the porch. With Miles. The puzzle pieces fit together in my head. I wasn’t ready. “What are you doing here?”