As the meeting came to a close Sue Ann opened the floor for questions and Mr. Reed, who owned the local bookstore Read Between the Lines in downtown Hope Falls, lifted his hand. “For this singles week thing, I’d like to do a reading event at the bookstore. Maybe get an author who has written a book on dating to come for a signing.”
“That sounds great!” Sue Ann smiled before calling on Mr. Brooks who owned Two Scoops ice cream parlor.
He asked, “Is there going to be a group promotion for downtown vendors?”
“I think we should do some sort of discount system that increases with each place you visit. Maybe some sort of punch card or something,” Jim Grady who owned the bowling alley suggested.
Sue Ann held up her hands. “Like I said, you’ll have to speak to Nonna and Viv about all of that. This is their baby.”
Everyone seemed excited about Nonna and Viv’s “baby” but Josh was still in shock that his grandmother hadn’t mentioned a word to him about it. She told him what she planned on cooking for dinner next Tuesday and what color she was going to change her nails to before she went and got them done. If she was going to change laundry detergents. And how many times she got up in the night to use the restroom. But this she hadn’t said a word about. It made zero sense.
He looked over at Audrey, and as if she sensed him looking, she turned in her seat and looked right at him. When their eyes met, hers widened as if to say, can you believe this?
He knew exactly what her expression meant. They didn’t need words to communicate. The corners of his mouth tilted up in a private smile as he shook his head.
Over the past eight years he and Audrey had grown…close. It was strange but their relationship was simultaneously not close enough and too close. He loved Audrey. She was the most important person in his life besides Nonna. And he would do anything for her, including keeping the feelings he had for her to himself.
When she turned her attention back to Sue Ann at the podium, he looked around the room and still had a hard time accepting that this was his life.
Unlike most people that grew up in Hope Falls, he hadn’t wanted to settle down and live his life here. He’d promised himself as a kid that the day he turned eighteen he’d be out of there. And he was. He’d joined the Army and spent seven years serving his country. He was an EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) specialist. Ultimately, his time in the service was cut short by an undetectable IED that detonated and ended his career. After a few months stay in the hospital he was medically discharged.
Without having another plan, he’d returned to his hometown a broken man. He ended up taking over the reins of his family business Pine Auto Shop after his father passed away just a few weeks after he came back. The timing of his dad’s death was shitty, not that there was ever a good time for someone to die.
Josh shifted in his seat trying to relieve some of the pain in his lower back.
Beside him, Nonna reached into her purse, pulled out a butterscotch candy, unwrapped it, not caring that the crinkling noise was loud, and popped it in her mouth. She offered one to him, just like she used to do every Sunday when she’d drag him to church as a kid and he was getting antsy, but he declined.
In church he used to get antsy because he was bored. His restlessness now had nothing to do with boredom. Whenever he sat or stood in one place for a prolonged amount of time, his back rebelled. His pain ranged from good days being about a four and bad days being a full on ten on the pain scale. Since the explosion that changed his life forever, there hadn’t been one day where he was pain free. And the physical pain was only part of it. After returning to the States, he’d fallen into a pretty deep depression that was exacerbated by night terrors and debilitating anxiety.
Not that he had the right to complain. He was alive. He was breathing. He was one of the lucky ones. Or at least that’s what he kept telling himself.
2
Audrey tapped her foot as the meeting was wrapping up. She’d been doing everything she could to stay focused on what Sue Ann was saying but her mind kept pulling her in the direction of how much work this singles week thing was probably going to be for her.
Viv was incredible. Amazing. When Audrey had asked her sister to move to Hope Falls, she hadn’t batted an eye before agreeing. And Viv had been dedicated to making their business successful. She showed up, not necessarily on time, but she always showed up. While she was at the coffee shop, she worked hard and then as soon as the clock struck midnight, or five when they closed, she partied hard. That was where her passion lied, it was in her extra-curricular activities.
Things just didn’t keep Viv’s interest very long. She would be obsessed with something one week and then the next week on to the next shiny new thing. Big picture ideas were where she shined. Follow through-grunt work was not her strong suit.
And as much as Audrey loved Josh’s grandmother, Nonna wasn’t exactly someone who was going to be picking up Viv’s slack. She barely knew how to use her smart phone for calling people. She never used it to go online, and as far as Audrey knew she didn’t own a computer. Oh, and she was ninety-two.
Audrey was torn between thinking it was sweet that Viv had teamed up with Nonna and wanting to wring her sister’s neck for taking this on. Especially right now. It couldn’t be a busier time for the Wells sisters since one of their sisters, Ava, was getting married on Valentine’s Day. It was the seventh of January, which meant that there were only four weeks until the inaugural singles week was scheduled to commence on February 7th. And five weeks until Valentine’s Day which was the culmination of the week-long event and their sister’s wedding.
What was Viv thinking?
“Okay.” Sue Ann hit the gavel that she used to call the meetings to order on the podium. “In the infamous words of Porky Pig, tha tha tha that’s all folks! See you next month on the twenty-first.”
Sue Ann barely got the parting comments out of her mouth before Audrey turned to her sister. “Why would you take on something of this magnitude when we have Ava’s wedding on Valentine’s Day.”
Viv looked wholly unimpressed by Audrey’s concern. “We barely did anything for the first one and that was when Ava lived in Chicago and the wedding was here. She actually lives in Hope Falls now. I doubt that’s going to mean more work for us.”
Their sister Ava had been engaged to Ian, her childhood sweetheart of twenty years, and had planned on marrying him the summer before in Hope Falls. But on the morning of her wedding, Ian slid a Dear Jane letter under her door explaining that he’d been having an affair that spanned over a decade and he was leaving her for the other woman.
It had all worked out in the end. Ava was now set to walk down the aisle with the man of her dreams. Their late mother would have called it fate. Cora Wells was a firm believer in true love, fate, destiny, serendipity. She was a true romantic.
Nothing wavered their mom’s faith in love and all things associated with the word. It was actually quite remarkable considering their father, who their mother maintained was the “love of her life” until her dying breath, had abandoned her with four daughters ages five, four, three, and two.
Audrey had no memory of her father, Mason Wells. She’d seen pictures. She’d heard countless stories, but she didn’t have any memories of her own since she was barely out of diapers when he took off. From the stories her mom would tell about him, he’d been a magnet that people were drawn to. Sort of like Viv. Their mom always said that Viv took after their father. She was outgoing, fun, fearless.