She walked out into the damp, cold morning. The fog hung low over the buildings on Main Street, rolling in off the sea. The air smelled sharp like salt and pine, with an earthy hint of asphalt and dirt thrown in for good measure. The street was mostly empty, with nearly everyone gone off to work or settled in to wherever they might be spending their mornings.
It wasn’t high season yet, and the town was populated mostly by locals. Once things picked up, Emma would be busy with the inn. She always helped her family work the inn during the busy season, and they would need her help more this year than usual.
She sighed heavily. She had no idea what it was going to be like at school today. In some ways she could see why her mother had been tempted to call in sick to life.
“Better to just face it,” Emma said.
“People probably won’t ask,” Catherine said.
“Why not?”
“Because it makes them uncomfortable.” Catherine smiled and reached for Emma, wrapping her arm around Emma’s shoulder. “I’m not uncomfortable, though. I’m here for you. Even if I have to be...here for you while I’m in Boston and you’re in Oregon.”
ANNA
She was standing frozen in a deserted aisle of the grocery store in front of bags of quinoa with reality bearing down on her like a herd of wild horses.
Thankfully, it was early and the store was mostly empty.
The past two weeks of Anna’s life had been like a competition for just how far the phrase going from bad to worse could stretch.
Jacob’s death.
Her decision to take her emotional affair and make it physical.
Thomas finding out.
She kept replaying that moment over and over in her head. That rush of elation that had turned into dread, her scalp and face hot as her eyes met his.
He hadn’t spoken to her for days. It was the silence that had killed her. If he’d yelled, if he’d screamed, if he’d cried, even, she might have felt...
Like it mattered. Like they mattered.
And then she’d had to move back in with her mother.
Even a cabin on the property was a little bit much. Rachel might be able to deal with living in such tight proximity to their mom, but Rachel was...
Well, Rachel was a saint. And that wasn’t helping anything, either.
She could still remember, though, when her mom had caught her sneaking in one time, on the cusp of what might have become a misspent youth...
“You have to take your life seriously, Anna. You have to surround yourself with the right people.”
“We weren’t doing anything! Just hanging out.”
“Good people make the difference. Good men do. I was married at eighteen, and I did right, but he didn’t. And it’s what he did that hurt me for years. You have to be careful whom you associate with, because even if you don’t mean to do wrong, the people around you might...”
Thomas had been a good person, in her mom’s opinion. And she’d been relieved that Anna was settling down with him. Because, of course, that meant Anna would be spared the ugliness that her mom had experienced in life.
Then she’d gone and made her own ugliness.
Maybe it would be different if Michael had asked her to run away with him.
She waited for some kind of jolt of excitement, a lift in her spirit, but it didn’t come.
Honestly, that he’d sort of vanished over the revelation of the affair had killed a good amount of her elation over him in general.
Well, reality had done that.
Fallout.
And she was living in the debris.
She looked down at her hands, wrapped around the cart handle. They were bare. And it was weird how not weird that felt after fourteen years of marriage.
She had taken off her wedding ring with ease. But, then, she had taken it off multiple times over the past few months. Every time she’d gone to talk with Michael. Every time she’d kissed him.
And definitely when they’d...
She sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to move forward. She had a list. She needed to go down the list and get the groceries. She did not need to stand in the dry goods aisle grappling with a minimeltdown. She pushed the cart ahead, and nearly into another cart coming from the left.
And she nearly ran into Laura Keller.
Just great.
Laura had been kind to her at the funeral, but that had been prior to...well, Anna becoming a scarlet woman.
“Anna.” Laura sounded surprised, but not unhappy. And that was weird to Anna. But some people were busybodies. Some people would have seen this moment as a full-fat cream indulgence opportunity.
Laura wasn’t one of them. In many ways, Laura was one of the most genuinely nice people Anna knew. But Laura was also...good.
She was good in a way that made Anna uncomfortable sometimes.
Her smile seemed too easy. Her laugh too bright. It chafed against the hidden meanness inside her, made her feel emotionally claustrophobic. The weight of pretending she was as shiny, as good, as someone like Laura, had been one of the things that had made her go so brittle over the years.
And she was sure Laura wouldn’t—couldn’t—like the person she’d been revealed to be.
“How are you?” Laura asked.
She seemed like she might really want to know.
How many times had Anna asked parishioners, “How are you?”
And hoped they’d respond with something light and generic so she didn’t have to stay and talk too long?
“Good,” she said.
Light and generic it was.
That was a lie, but it was the kind of lie that didn’t invite questions.
“I mean, it’s been very hard for Rachel,” Anna said, just pretending that Sunday hadn’t happened.
“Good. But you know, I wasn’t actually asking about Rachel.”
Anna tightened her grip on the shopping cart and for some reason became incredibly conscious of the song that was playing over the speakers in the store.
About someone saying it best when they said nothing at all.
It felt painfully ironic on multiple levels.
“I...”
“I didn’t like that he did that to you.”
Anna blinked. “I...”
“It didn’t feel right to me. He’s taught, many times himself, that you’re supposed to let your critics say what they will and you just go on. Well, he didn’t give a chance for anyone to criticize him, did he? He just handed you to all of them.”