Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other, page 20
The honesty was disarming, but he still wasn’t satisfied. “But you’re going to leave. In three days you’ll go back to New York, and the people of this town will be left putting on an archaic, expensive, ridiculous festival—”
“Oh.” The short word was long and drawn out as she raised her hand and dismissively brushed away his words lingering in the air. “It’s not that bad.”
“If it’s not that bad, why was it the thing you pointed out to Mark Irvine? The evidence you used to convict and sentence your hometown—”
“Because it’s weird!” She undid her seat belt and mirrored his position, her knee up on the seat. “I’m not denying it’s weird. How many kids outside of Colonial Williamsburg or, I don’t know, 1776 have to grow up learning musket safety and how to churn butter? That was our life growing up in this town, until that stupid festival died off. And we didn’t even have the Bean Franklin and Valet Forge back then. There was a George Wash-and-Go laundromat.”
He was staring at her, irritated, until the smile finally made its way to her eyes, and he couldn’t help but respond in kind.
“Seriously?”
Brynn nodded. “Oh yeah. And back then my friend Wes’s mom ran the diner, where the Bean Franklin is now, and she always had these punny specials of the day. Eggs Benedict Arnold, Bunker Hill of Bean Soup, Lexington Biscuits and Concord Grape Jam, Boston Massa-curried Chicken Salad . . . stuff like that.”
Sebastian laughed. “It’s ridiculous. I mean . . . Bean Franklin would be clever anywhere, I think, when a coffee place is owned by someone with the last name Franklin. But the rest . . .”
She nodded. “I know. So stupid.” Her face grew contemplative and she sighed. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“I don’t know. It was kind of wonderful, too, I guess. We’d all get dressed up in these colonial outfits that Mrs. Kimball made—”
“Bill’s wife?” Sebastian had never heard anyone speak of her, and he’d never thought to ask.
“Yes. She was a sweet lady. They actually met at one of the first Township Days, in the seventies or whenever. Did you know that?”
Sebastian tried to do the math. “That wouldn’t make sense, would it? When was Cole’s mom born?”
“She was Mrs. Kimball’s daughter from her first marriage. But they came out here, touring the West—Grand Canyon and such—and stumbled across Township Days. The rest is history.”
Well, no wonder the stupid thing meant so much to Bill. Not that he ever would have been so human or vulnerable as to say any of that to Sebastian.
Sebastian leaned his head back against the headrest and exhaled. “We don’t have the people to manage it, Brynn. The people who want it back are too old to do the work. We don’t have anyplace to stay apart from the inn. The Bean and Cassidy’s are the only restaurants . . .” He let his voice fade away. Even he was tired of hearing himself make all the same arguments over and over.
“So why don’t you work with some of the nearby towns? Team up. Create a whole Colonial Colorado Tour?”
“People won’t want to have to go to a different town just to—”
She dismissed his words again. “Are you kidding? We used to have to go to different towns just to get to school. Hospitals, movie theaters . . . Don’t people drive to another town for those things all the time? People spend all day in traffic to get from one side of LA to the other, and all you have to look at there are the bumper stickers on other people’s cars. Here, the time on the road will be spent in the clouds, not the smog. The journey from town to town is as much a reason to take the trip as anything else.”
A lump formed in Sebastian’s throat as he watched her talk and brainstorm without an iota of self-awareness. As he heard her unironically and maybe unknowingly confess her appreciation for the town she claimed to hate so much.
He coughed and cleared away the emotion as subtly as he could so as not to break the spell. “But it’s still a really stupid idea for a festival, isn’t it?”
“About five hours from here, in Fruita, they have the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival every year to honor this chicken that lived without a head for eighteen months in the 1940s. In Nederland, up near Denver, it’s Frozen Dead Guy Days, all because there’s been some dead guy on ice in a shed in someone’s backyard since the nineties.” She tapped her knuckles against his knee on the seat. “The stupider the better.”
Sebastian smiled at her. “I’m not convinced, but I’m intrigued. I’ll give you that.”
She smiled back and then turned her head and faced out the front windshield. “Me, too, actually.”
He watched her, trying to make sense of her, until Brynn’s eyes flew open and she leaned forward in her seat. Sebastian turned to follow her gaze and saw Laila loading pies for Cassidy’s Bar & Grill—courtesy of Andi, of course—into the back of her Subaru Crosstrek.
“You should go talk to her.”
Brynn’s head snapped around to Sebastian, just for a second. Just long enough for him to see the moisture pooling in her eyes. Then she faced forward again. “It is Laila, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. And I think she’d be really happy to see you.”
She sniffed and laughed and then swiped at her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I figure she’s at the top of the list—”
“Of people who love you?”
A sob broke free, and she didn’t even seem to try to control it. “Sure. Once. But now . . .”
“What did Doc say? When you had the concussion? That there would always be consequences for your actions . . .”
But the sooner you owned up to them, the sooner you could start healing.
Neither of them needed to say the rest of the words aloud. The message had been received.
Laila closed the gate of her vehicle and began walking into the street, around to the driver’s side, waving to Ken Lindell who was out sweeping the sidewalk. In one fluid motion, Brynn pushed up on her left knee and held on to the steering wheel as she leaned over to Sebastian’s seat and kissed him on the cheek. She pulled back and whispered, “Thank you,” and then twisted around, opened the door, and hopped down onto Main Street.
Brynn yelled Laila’s name before closing the door, and then Sebastian watched as Laila turned back and recognition dawned. By the time Brynn got to her, running all the way, Laila was rushing toward her, arms open wide.
Sebastian fired up the Bronco again, made a U-turn to head back to Cassidy’s, and wiped from his cheek a tear that he thought belonged to Brynn, though he couldn’t say for sure.
* * *
“Hey, Seb.” Cole greeted him as he stepped onto the porch at Cassidy’s. “I saw the Bronco here earlier, and then you vanished. Everything alright?”
What a crazy amount of humanity had been experienced since he’d thought about passing the time by helping out with inventory.
“Yeah, fine. I was going to see if you needed some help, but some things came up. Sorry about that.”
Cole resumed sweeping the porch. “Nothing to be sorry about. I figured either you had other things to do, or the PTA ladies kidnapped you. Either way, I knew you’d come back to us eventually.”
Sebastian laughed. “I don’t get it. You’re younger . . . better looking . . . you can cook . . .” He unzipped his jacket. He’d put it back on as he drove away from Brynn and Laila, but with the sun beating down on him, it was another of those strange, wonderful Colorado postcard sorts of days. Sunshine and snowcapped mountains. “So why do they like me so much? You’re much more of a catch than I am.”
“That’s the problem with small-town life. Those ladies either grew up with me, in which case they saw me with zits and braces, or they were older than me, in which case they remember me as the obnoxious kid who used to prank call everyone in town pretending to be from the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. A lot of people in this town had a fortune dangled in front of them, only to have it cruelly stolen away, my friend. A lot of people.”
He smiled as he leaned the broom up against the screen door and then walked over to the thick wood railing of the porch and hoisted himself up onto it. “Laila ran into town to get the pies from Andi. PTA Night is such a strange cacophony of appetites.”
“I saw her. I think she may be a while.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. She and Brynn bumped into each other.”
Cole looked down at his feet and released a deep breath. “Good. She’s been looking forward to it and dreading it, all at the same time. At least it will be out of the way now, no matter how it goes.”
“I can’t imagine how weird it must be for you guys.” Sebastian pushed himself up onto the railing a few feet down from Cole and leaned his back against the massive log column so he could face him. “Are you going to try to see her?”
“I don’t know. Lai and I talked about it a lot this morning. I still don’t know where I stand.” Cole seemed to keep considering it for several moments, and then after all that consideration, added a shrug. “Yeah . . . it’s just . . .” He copied Sebastian’s position, leaning back against the other column and pulling his knee to him. “I’ve never really watched her on TV. Ever. I hear things from others—the good and the bad, I guess—but I’ve never wanted to see her that way.”
“‘That way’?”
“Just . . . however she is now. You know? Anything other than how I remember her.” He stared off into the direction of the forest Sebastian had burdened with his unleashed frustration a couple hours earlier.
“I think . . . ,” Sebastian began and then thought better of it. But he had Cole’s complete attention, so he blurted it out, figuring Cole was probably the most objective person to share his thoughts with. “I think being back here is good for her.”
Cole reached over and scratched at a rough patch in the wood beneath his foot. “So what happens when she leaves again?”
The unanswerable question.
Sebastian rested the back of his head against the log column and stared up at a sky so blue and clouds so white that they had always reminded him of the way a kid would draw them. “It’s crazy for me to try to imagine what it must have been like for you all, growing up together. Like, the way you all knew each other and were part of each other’s lives. I just can’t wrap my head around it.”
“I know our town is smaller than most, but it’s not that weird, is it? How many kids did you go to school with?”
Laughter burst from him. “Well, that depends on which school.” He lowered his head and met Cole’s eyes. “The high school I graduated from, in DC, was the fourteenth school I was enrolled in. Military schools, private, public, arts, math and science . . . Went to a Quaker school for a few months.” He smiled in response to Cole’s laughter. “I graduated with a class of 742. And there were probably eight or nine kids who knew my name and I knew theirs. Not even one I would have counted as a friend.”
“Okay, that is a little different from what we had here.” Cole stepped down onto the planks of the porch. “I heard you yelling at a bighorn sheep or something earlier. Want to talk about it?”
He appreciated the offer. But his state of mind was so far removed from where it had been after that phone call with his mother, he really didn’t see the point in going back there.
He followed Cole’s lead and hopped off the railing. “Why would we waste time talking about my deep-seated emotional defects when we have the place to ourselves?”
Cole groaned and began walking toward the door. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes, my friend. Oh yes.” Sebastian stepped in front of him and grabbed the broom, then opened the door for them both. “The ladies won’t be here for another”—he looked at his watch—“six hours or so, and there is a perfectly good karaoke machine through these very doors.”
Cole’s groan morphed into laughter, but the eye rolls didn’t go away. “You are the only person I have ever known who is perfectly content singing karaoke in a room by himself, one hundred percent sober. That’s so messed up.”
“It’s great therapy! You have no choice but to relax and let go and think about nothing except the melody and the lyrics—”
“And what a dork you are?”
Sebastian pulled the door shut behind them. “Just for that, I’m pulling it out tonight.”
“No! You can’t. Not on PTA Night.”
“Are you kidding? PTA Night is the perfect time. You think those ladies love me now?” He tipped his ball cap as if it were a Stetson. “Just wait until they get a load of me sharing the gift that is the musical stylings of one Mr. Glen Campbell.”
Chapter 21
Brynn
Tuesday, March 22
10:29 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time
I had been the one to leave. Right? I had been the one to hitchhike to Denver in the back of a PT Cruiser, alongside an extremely non-hypoallergenic pug named Gypsy Rose Lee, before spending twenty-three hours on a bus to Los Angeles, during which time sleeping was impossible for a multitude of reasons—the Neil Diamond impersonator we’d picked up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Reno passenger “Ed the Egg Salad Sandwich Guy,” as I’d dubbed him, just to name a couple. Those were pretty vivid memories, but the way Laila kept apologizing to me, I couldn’t help but be a little confused. Confused enough that I spent a quick nanosecond wondering if I’d been brainwashed or incepted. (Incepted? Is that what it’s called when Leonardo DiCaprio makes his way into your dreams? If so, I had been incepted a lot through the years.)
As we settled in at the Bean Franklin—where Andi Franklin née Gardner, back when she babysat us, greeted me with a “Hey,” as if we’d seen each other every day for the last twenty years—I finally got a chance to make my big confession and explain why Laila had nothing to apologize for.
“It wasn’t that you guys couldn’t track me down. Or that you didn’t try hard enough.” I took a deep breath. “A couple months after I left, mail from Addie found its way to me. Right into my hands. And I was so desperate to avoid coming back to this place, I changed my name.” Laila tilted her head in confusion. “Well, I changed the spelling of my name.”
All because I felt the need to escape. All because I was too scared to trust anyone. After all, if I couldn’t trust my own mother, how was I supposed to trust anyone else? Wasn’t she supposed to be the one person who would do whatever it took to keep me safe? And wasn’t she the one person who had continually put me in harm’s way? How was a little girl ever supposed to trust anyone when she grew up with that as her reality?
But when I slept over at Addie’s house, or Laila’s, I didn’t have nightmares.
When I was at school with Mrs. Stoddard, I wasn’t so afraid to say or do the wrong thing that I didn’t allow myself to say or do anything.
When Andi was in charge of us, I didn’t flinch at every loud noise or sudden movement.
Even when I was working in the stockroom at Cassidy’s with Old Man Kimball, I wasn’t afraid to turn my back.
Wasn’t that trust? Wasn’t that love? Wasn’t that maybe even what family was supposed to be like? Somehow that little girl had been fortunate enough to be loved by an entire town of people she could trust, and in the name of self-preservation, she’d written them off alongside the evil she shared a name and home with.
“I’m sorry, Laila.”
I didn’t know how many more apologies were going to be necessary before the week was through, but if the way my tense muscles were abruptly relaxing was any indication—not really in a relaxing way at all but more like when you crack the Belgian chocolate at the top of a tub of Magnum ice cream into jagged little pieces to reveal the creaminess that awaits you—this one was a good place to start.
Lester Holt had once told me I used too many metaphors in my reporting. I clearly needed to work on that. Regardless, tears were streaming down my cheeks and my spoon was ready to dig deep into the creamy goodness.
“I’m so sorry, Laila,” I repeated and buried my face in my hands and propped my elbows on my knees.
Within seconds her arms were around me again. She crouched beside me and rested her head on my shoulder and rubbed my back soothingly as she whispered, “Shh . . . It’s okay. Let it out.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. The dam holding back my tears collapsed. Or the ice cream melted. Whatever.
Suck it, Lester Holt.
A few minutes later, once that round of tears had dried, she sat back down across from me and said, “That envelope? It was probably a wedding announcement.”
I had been as impenetrable as Teflon for twenty years, but now guilt was forming an increasingly grimy layer on my heart, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to scour it away. My hands covered my mouth and then crossed over my heart. “Where did she and Wes end up? Are they still here?”
She began chewing on her bottom lip, and my stomach dropped. What had I missed? “Laila?”
“Wes skipped town. The morning of their wedding. His dad showed up, after his mom died—”
“As in the dad he’d never met?”
She nodded. “Yeah. That morning, he and his dad were just . . . gone.”
I’d already encountered several things I had not seen coming. I never would have believed Doc Atwater and Mrs. Stoddard would seem younger than they had twenty years ago. Never ever in a million years would I have believed that Old Man Kimball would sit in my presence without bringing up the $6.42 I owed him for whiskey glasses I had broken in 2001. But those were just surprises. I never could have been prepared for the shock of Addie Atwater and Wes Hobbes not living happily ever after together.
“I should have been here,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I should have been here, Laila. I should have . . .” What? What could I have done? “I should have been here for her.”
“No. You shouldn’t have been.”
“But—”
“You shouldn’t have been here, Brynn.” She lowered her head to meet my eyes. “Yes . . . you should have let us know where you were. You should have trusted us enough to know Elaine would never get any information out of us. Never. Not from anyone in this town. It makes me really sad that you didn’t know that.” Her chin tightened. “But you had to go. You had to figure things out and figure out a life away from this place. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She got up and grabbed a box of tissues from behind the counter and then sat back down in the seat next to me. We each grabbed a tissue and blew our noses. Laila grabbed my hands. “You know, Wes lost his mom senior year, and then within months, we lost you. Then we lost Wes.” She sniffed and, never letting go of my hands, raised her forearm and brushed it across her eyes. “Then, for a while, Addie lost herself . . . and then she left. So, yeah . . . it was a rough few years. And it just felt wrong—it was wrong—that you weren’t part of our lives anymore. But you’re back now—”
