“I’ll be at the house in the morning to see her off,” Kimmy said.
Kimmy had arrived half an hour before they needed to leave for school. She took lots of pictures of Sasha: standing by the door, out on the front steps, with and without her backpack and lunch box.
“Can you take a few of us together?” she’d asked, handing Josh her phone.
“Sure.” He snapped what felt like hundreds of pictures of the two of them. Sasha finally tired of it, and Kimmy crouched down in front of her and smoothed her hair.
“I’ll be thinking of you all day today. Tonight, we’ll have a special dinner and you can tell me about your first day.”
“What if no one plays with me?”
“They will. You’ll see. And don’t forget that Daddy and I love you very much.”
“Okay.”
“I’m getting off early and I’ll pick her up after school today,” Kimmy said, even though she’d already mentioned it twice in the last twenty-four hours. She grabbed her purse and travel mug. Gave Sasha one last hug and kiss. “Gotta run,” she said to Josh.
He was leaning up against the counter. “Yep,” he said. The screen door banged shut and then it was just the two of them again.
Sasha’s early-morning enthusiasm had been momentarily eclipsed by her fear, but once they’d made it inside the building there hadn’t been any further delays, and he had Sasha’s music teacher to thank for that. Before pulling out of the school parking lot, he’d sent Kimmy a quick text letting her know that Sasha had made it into her classroom without a hitch. Telling Kimmy it hadn’t all been smooth would only add to her angst, and the last thing he wanted was to tell Kimmy that something else hadn’t gone quite the way they’d hoped.
* * *
Josh turned his thoughts away from Sasha and mentally reviewed his day. Lots of people dreaded Mondays, but Josh loved them. Mondays meant putting on his electrician’s hat and doing the work he loved. It meant losing himself in an intricate jumble of wires and using his experience and problem-solving skills to figure out a solution. Most importantly, it meant not sitting in an office all day staring out the window or at the clock.
He drove to his client’s home, and Carl came to the door and opened it before Josh finished knocking, his shaggy white dog, Norton, at his side. “Morning, Carl,” Josh said. He’d learned to speak loudly, because Carl had lost most of his hearing. “We’ve got a lot of work to do today.”
“Long as we’re done by noon,” Carl said. He was dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, and the work boots on his feet had probably been purchased sometime in the eighties. Carl was ninety-six years old and still lived alone. His daughter June checked on him daily, and Meals on Wheels kept him fed. His refusal to consider assisted living had less to do with an absence of any serious health problems and more to do with the fact that Norton might not be able to accompany him, and Carl would have none of that.
June had called Josh’s business line one day, frantic about the jumble of exposed wiring she’d discovered in the basement of her father’s house and in dire need of an experienced electrician. It seemed that Carl liked to tinker in his spare time—of which he had a lot—and though he’d probably been quite handy back in the day, he was not remotely qualified to work with electrical systems. Josh had told June he would make sure that it was safe and that everything was up to code.
Unfortunately, it had taken longer than he’d envisioned. A lot of the wiring was outdated, and each problem he’d uncovered led to three more, most of them critical in nature. How the house had not yet gone up in flames, he didn’t know.
Josh had yelled up the basement stairs the first day and asked Carl to bring him up to speed on what exactly he’d been doing down there. Carl had walked slowly down the stairs in his jeans and slippers and appointed himself Josh’s unofficial apprentice, offering helpful advice that, had Josh followed it, had the potential to electrocute them both. Instead of following it, Josh offered alternatives that Carl begrudgingly admitted “might work.” At one point, Carl had gone upstairs to use the bathroom, and when he returned, the boots had been on his feet. The dog had perched on the stairs and fallen asleep while Josh and Carl worked side by side until the Meals on Wheels delivery person arrived. “I’ve got to eat lunch and watch the news now,” Carl said.
“And then what?” Josh had asked.
“Then I take a nap,” Carl said. “Come back tomorrow.”
On their third day working together, Carl said, “It’s probably going to take us a while to get this all sorted out.”
Josh had requests for bids stacking up, as well as a few larger jobs that would require him to be on-site all day instead of arriving in the afternoon after spending the morning at Carl’s. He’d hoped to wrap this up in the next couple of days, but a lump had formed in his throat and all he’d been able to say was “Yeah.”
chapter 3
Layla
That evening, when the first day of school was finally, blissfully behind her, Layla went out to the deck. When the Realtor had shown her the house, there were so many things she’d loved about it, among them its smaller size and rustic charm and, most importantly, the fact that it was ten thousand dollars below her budget. When they’d made their way around to the back and Layla had seen the covered deck, she’d turned to the Realtor and said, “Sold.”
Layla had created a sanctuary for herself with comfortable all-weather furniture and a large gray-and-cream-striped outdoor rug that felt soft under her bare feet and would be protected from the elements by the deck’s roof. She’d placed lanterns in each corner, and the flameless candles inside them were on a timer that turned them on at dusk. She’d spent most summer evenings here with her guitar and a glass of wine and her journal. She strummed and she sipped, and she poured her thoughts and fears and dreams into the creamy white pages. She made lists and set long-term goals, and those nights on her deck were cathartic in the exact way she needed them to be. She felt energized, alive, and the guitar and the journal lifted her spirits in a way that nothing else had in an awfully long time.
The night she left Liam, between bouts of crying, she’d scribbled a few things down on the hotel notepad at the Holiday Inn Express where she’d fled, too ashamed at first to let anyone know she was there. Too afraid she’d see it on their faces: I told you so. Over the summer, she transferred those thoughts into the journal and added to them, jotting down the things she’d always been too ashamed to vocalize. Things Liam had done and said that she’d allowed. Things that she’d even made excuses for. Writing them down was her way of working through them, and her journal had become her therapy. She’d never shared these things with anyone—not her mom, not her sister or brother, not Tonya—because she feared their judgment: Why didn’t you leave him a long time ago? they might wonder.
Yeah, why hadn’t she?
But now, reading the things she’d written over and over desensitized her and gave her the courage, the strength, to realize that every mistake she’d made was a blessing and a lesson. Layla wasn’t perfect. She was human and she’d made a few wrong turns. It was time to forgive herself and get her life back on track. But sometimes, when she’d had one glass of wine too many, she retraced her relationship with Liam in an attempt to figure out how it had happened. Where it had started to go so wrong. Wondering what he’d done that had led to her falling so hard for him, because for many years, she had loved Liam Cook fiercely.