Return to Sender, page 2
part #1 of Pine Falls Series
After Isaac came Tom. Tom was a truck driver and he moved us to North Dakota. Mom “needed to stay warm” in the winter, and with Tom being gone most days of the week, she sought out companionship with Weston. He was the first live-in boyfriend. They were both gone by spring.
After Weston left, we moved back to Pine Falls for a brief stint to live with Grandma and Grandpa. I wanted to stay and begged my grandparents to let me, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. I think it about killed Grandma and Grandpa when Mom married Hank and he took us to South Carolina. It wasn’t bad living near the beach, and Hank was probably the nicest of all the men I was subjected to. Which meant he pretty much ignored me.
Unfortunately, Mom was looking for love in all the wrong places. She should have loved herself first. There was no way to calculate the heartache, hers and mine, that could have been avoided if only she had.
After Hank—or during Hank, I should say—came Ed, live-in boyfriend number two. Ed moved us to Texas out in the middle of nowhere. We lived in a trailer with a dust bowl for a front yard. Ed drank too much, so there was a lot of yelling. Mom sought the comfort of Ed’s brother, Carl, who she had crowned as her knight in shining armor. She declared she had finally found true love in Carl, the self-proclaimed West Texas King of Karaoke, so he became husband number five. The balding sleaze ball sold lies to Mom like he was Amazon.com on a bender. She bought them like she had a credit card with an unlimited line of credit. Even at fifteen I knew what a liar he was. I mean, come on, no way was he getting hired every night to do a different karaoke party. We lived in a town with one stoplight, and the median income was at poverty level.
I’ll tell you what Carl was doing—well, maybe I won’t. I’ll tell you this, it wasn’t with only my mom. It didn’t take long for the rumors about Carl’s cheating ways to get back to Mom. The town’s population of two thousand was a real killjoy for ol’ Carl. Sadly, it wasn’t enough for Mom to leave him. The final straw had to come at my expense. Carl’s hungry eyes started to rove over me, so I locked and pushed my dresser in front of my bedroom door every night I was home. But then one night he came home drunk, and in front of Mom asked if I wanted him to tuck me in and teach me how to be a woman. I still squirmed thinking about it.
The AD period of my life began with one slap across Carl’s face and his clothes being thrown out the apartment window. That night did something to Mom. The impact her choices were having on me finally dawned on her, though it should have been obvious well before that. I was hardly coming home at the time. One of the only friends I had made in that desolate town, Ginny, had the nicest parents who were not fooled by Carl. I had an open invitation to eat with them or spend the night anytime I wanted. I took them up on it, not only because I hated Carl, but because Ginny had an older brother, Riley.
Riley was my first kiss and the first time I ever got an inkling of why Mom was obsessed with the opposite sex. That smooth-talking boy of seventeen used to tell me I was the prettiest girl he’d ever met. Even prettier than the poster he had of Reese Witherspoon in his bedroom. He used to pick me daisies and write me little notes. That case of puppy love didn’t last long. It all ended with dynamite.
Mom decided to proclaim herself cured of men in a grand fashion. I’m not sure where she got the idea to blow up all five of her wedding dresses—from the micro white dress all the way to the ball gown she’d worn for her wedding to Carl—or where she got the dynamite. But I’ll never forget the night she and I stood on the rocky ridge overlooking a barren wasteland outside of town with her friend Callie, who was higher than a kite. I think Callie was the one who borrowed the dynamite. The sun was about to set, and its last rays gave the endless dirt and rocks a little bit of character. Mom held me tight with one hand while she held the detonator with the other. Before God, she swore she was done with men and that they all deserved to be returned to sender.
Then Mom smiled at me with tears streaking down her porcelain face. “Promise me, Ariana, you’ll stay away from men, all of them. Promise me you’ll return any man that comes your way. They’re nothing but a heartache waiting to happen.”
I thought about Riley and how sweet he was and his kisses that made me feel warm from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. In my teenage heart, I knew I could and would be smarter than my mom. I was certain I could find a man who didn’t ever have to be returned like all the men in my mom’s life. In my naivety, I was positive I would always choose nice boys like Riley. But given my mom’s unstable state and the fact she was holding a detonator in her hand, I could hardly disagree with her. And in that moment, I wanted her to be happy. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen her truly happy. So, I nodded my head with my fingers crossed behind my back. “I promise,” I’d said, lying to her for the very first time. It wasn’t the last.
Satisfied with my response, Mom squeezed my hand, and with the most maniacal laugh I’d ever heard, she pushed the detonator. I’m not sure how much dynamite she used, but she lit up the night like the Fourth of July. Remnants of the dresses mixed with dirt and gravel rained down on us. Mom twirled around in it like it was washing away every mistake she had ever made. From that night on, she was true to her word. She never again had anything to do with a man except her father. We moved back home to Pine Falls and there she began her life of celibacy.
Meanwhile, I was starting to explore the wonders of the opposite sex. It was unfortunate how wonderful and tingly they could make me feel. Those intoxicating feelings had me lying to Mom about hanging out with friends when I was really meeting boyfriends, whether it was at the movies or school dances. I hated the lying because I’d been lied to so much growing up, but I felt it was unfair for me to miss out on dating just because my mom had a problem. After all, I was smarter than her.
I believed that lie until I was twenty-two.
Then I met Kaden, the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. He had been on an awkward blind date taking one of the mini mosaic classes I taught at the glass art studio. Kaden flirted with me while I was showing him and his date how to properly grout. I tried not to encourage the flirting, even though his date did seem disinterested in him and spoke more to her friend they were double-dating with. It should have been a warning to me, but I was overly confident and naïve. When he came back that night while I was closing and asked for my number, I gave it to him.
Mom was sticking to her mantra that all men were the spawn of Satan. By that time, she had become a popular indie artist in the area. She had leased the space next to the glass art studio where she opened her own gallery. Our lives were so entangled back then, there was no way to keep her from knowing about my man-loving ways. Besides, I didn’t like lying to her, or anyone for that matter. I was going to prove to her that there were still good men and that I could make good choices.
From day one, though, she hated Kaden. Before we parted that night, she said, “Watch your step with that one. He has dark eyes.”
I wanted to respond, “I know, aren’t they beautiful? Like deep, dark chocolate.” Instead I said, “I promise I’ll be careful. Besides, it’s only one date.” Mom had shaken her head at me, walked out, and slammed the door.
That one date led to spending every waking minute we could together between my job at the studio and his as a construction foreman for a housing development in nearby Edenvale. I’d thought we were made for each other. We were both spontaneous and loved adventure. It was nothing for us to decide on a whim Sunday morning to go rock climbing or sign up for scuba diving lessons.
We were head over heels in love. I didn’t care that Dani, who had become one of my best friends despite her being my “aunt,” began to question Kaden’s and my relationship. Even Kinsley, who was only fifteen at the time, expressed her concerns. They said he was too perfect. I knew he was. That’s what made him so great. And it was why, when we had only been dating for six months and he asked me to marry him, I said yes. Mom had cried and painted a gruesome picture of a white wedding dress with a knife shoved in the bodice, dripping with blood. She displayed it proudly in her gallery until some jilted woman bought it. Unfortunately, that painting foreshadowed things to come.
After Kaden and I were engaged, the construction company he worked for got a contract for a large development in Denver, four hours away, which meant he was gone during the week and would come home on the weekends when he could. At first, we tried to talk every day, but then he had less and less time. He blamed it on work, but even when he came home, he seemed distracted. He wouldn’t set a wedding date with me. He said he just wanted to wake up one weekend and take me to Vegas, but it would be a surprise. That sounded like my style, so I went with it.
This went on for a few months. That was, until I went to the jewelry store to get my ring sized. Kaden had been promising me he would do it, but I was afraid I would lose the rectangle sapphire ring he’d put on my finger. When I looked back, I would be forever grateful for that stupid ring. It saved me from myself.
I wasn’t the only woman Kaden was engaged to. It was an awkward moment when I went into the jewelry store and they pulled up his file. He had purchased quite a few rings there. Two, most recently—mine and his other fiancée’s. That poor salesclerk about wet her pants when she realized what she had revealed to me. But to this day, I thanked her. I left the ring there and had the jewelry store inform him of the return. What made it worse was Kaden didn’t seem to care. I thought he was madly, deeply in love with me, the way I loved him. But he called to say it was better this way. He said the thought of monogamy frightened him. He didn’t care that he had crushed my soul or made me question every decision I had ever made and everyone’s motives around me.
Mom was downright gleeful about it, which I had to say I resented after all the men and heartbreak she had subjected me to over the years. All I had wanted was a comforting shoulder. My error in judgment had scared me. How could I be so fooled? How had I not learned anything from all the losers my mother had been with? My conclusion was I had no choice but to agree with Mom. Men were nothing but heartache waiting to happen. Unlike her, I didn’t swear off men completely, but I would never let one get close enough to hurt me like Kaden had. Like Roger and an entire slew of men had done to my mother and me.
Then a few years later came Jonah. I hadn’t meant for us to grow so close.
My eyes welled up with tears while I brushed my fingers over Roger Stanton’s face. “I didn’t want to return him to sender. That’s all you’ve ever been to me. Why is that?” I asked the picture another poignant question, “Did I make a mistake where Jonah was concerned?”
Roger stared back at me silently.
“Jonah ended up married and happy, as far as I know,” I told Roger. “He even has a little girl.”
I’d watched her grow up the last four or five years through the Christmas cards Jonah sent Dani. The ones she’d tried to hide from me. Obviously, Jonah and I hadn’t done a good enough job keeping our feelings secret even though we never acted like a couple in public, not even in front of our friends. No one ever said anything to me about him over the years. But they must have known, as no one questioned why I didn’t get invited to his wedding seven years ago. Our circle of friends here had done a terrible job of keeping their plans from me to fly to Nantucket to watch the blissful event.
Jonah had married a beautiful woman named Eliza, and they had a gorgeous baby named Whitney. Their Christmas card every year was a stab in the heart, but I’m the one who stuck the knife in there, so I had no one but myself to blame. The baby girl with bouncing sandy brown locks and her daddy’s green eyes could have been mine, but I had made the right choice. Jonah got the family he always wanted. His wife, Eliza, from all accounts, was lovely and ambitious; a Princeton graduate with an amazing mind for business, as Brock called it. That was before he realized I was in the room.
But looking at Jonah’s wedding photos and Christmas cards over the years had cemented my choice. His life was so different from my own. See, I would have never wanted to get married in Nantucket in a dress like Eliza’s. Don’t get me wrong, she looked lovely in the lace trumpet gown, but I would have preferred a short, cotton, off-the-shoulder number. And I would have been barefoot under some pine trees in the mountains. Definitely not at a country club with several hundred guests all dressed to the nines. And those Christmas cards he sent every year looked like they were posing for a company brochure in front of a boring gray canvas back drop. He and his wife both wore suits and their darling daughter was always dressed in something just as stuffy and stiff. If it was our family, we would have been out in a sunflower field and casually dressed. And probably barefoot. I wasn’t a fan of shoes.
I was happy for Jonah. Really, I was. If anyone deserved to have the unattainable, it was him. I knew he was meant for a life I couldn’t give him. He didn’t really want an eclectic artist with an ugly past. He had been wrong—I did save us from ourselves. I didn’t throw us away, I let us go onto something better. The studio was doing better than ever, and it had been nine years since my heart was broken for the last time.
I took one more good look at the picture of my parents. I was sure my twenty-year-old mom thought her life would turn out much different than the one she ended up living. She’d chased after that dream for many years, the white-picket fence complete with an adoring husband. As happy as I was when she gave up on men, I was always sad she never had what she desired. She was never happy. She literally died trying to fill the void Roger Stanton left in her—she’d contracted hepatitis B from one of her lovely husbands and, unfortunately, it turned chronic and eventually into liver cancer. At least now she was at peace.
I wiped a tear off my cheek. “I am happy, Roger,” I lied to him. “Unlike Mom, I never needed you for that.” Or did I? Would I have been happier if he’d rescued me? Could he have changed my life? Would I be with Jonah now? I couldn’t think like that.
I threw the stupid picture in the box and buried it under all the rest of the crap from my past before I shoved it back in the closet.
I held up the stained sweatshirt and the holey mustard sweater. “Which one, Goldie?”
She swished her fin at me in disapproval, clearly communicating, “You need help.”
I know.
Chapter Two
“Why are you both staring at me like that?” Dani and Kinsley had been shooting furtive glances to each other then at me all night. I didn’t have time to keep guessing why—I assumed they had some unpleasant news to share and I just wanted them to get it over with. I’d had a customer special order custom Tiffany-style Christmas ornaments, and she wanted them well before Thanksgiving. She should have thought about that before placing the order on November 5th.
I was sneaking in working on them any time I could get. Between our busy holiday class schedule at the studio and the large stained glass piece of a dove with a starburst behind it a pastor had commissioned for his church in Carrington Cove that was being renovated, I’d had to start working late into the night in the loft above the studio I’d moved into a few years ago with Dani and Kinsley. It was a great way to save money. And I enjoyed not being home alone every night.
Dani was tapping her fingers against our table that frequently functioned as my workspace, and Kinsley was twirling her long blonde hair as I wrapped copper tape around a piece of stained glass shaped like the crook of a candy cane. Something was definitely up, but neither of them was being forthcoming, so I changed the subject.
“How are restaurant and non-profit life going?” I asked.
Kinsley had opened a new restaurant called Two Girls and a Guy with some friends she’d met at culinary school. It was an awkward situation, if you asked me. One Dani and I had warned her about. Not only was the restaurant theme based on love triangles, but it was obvious Kinsley and Gisele both had a thing for Carter, their other partner.
Not that Dani had a lot of room to talk. She had her own weird triangle thing going on. She was in love with Brock Holland, who might have feelings for her as well, but I swore his identical twin, Brant, also had feelings for Dani. Brock and Brant Holland lived nearby in Carrington Cove and were from a wealthy and powerful family. Their dad owned a gas and oil company here in Colorado and had been a US senator. Dani, Brock, and Brant had a three-musketeer vibe between them. She even had a “Dani test” that all the women the brothers dated had to pass.
Basically, we were all a mess when it came to love.
“Our holiday donations for Children to Love are up this year,” Dani answered first. Children to Love was the non-profit she ran for kids still in the foster system and for those that had aged out. She and her organization made sure each child in a foster home in the three surrounding counties received a Christmas gift every year. They also provided mentors and job training for those aging out of the system. I had hired a great young woman who’d graduated from their program to help in the studio. She answered the phones for us and handled all our scheduling. Dani was doing great things. It was amazing considering where she came from, a child of the system herself.
“That’s great,” I commented while smoothing out the copper tape. “The donation box at the studio is full already. I’ll make sure to drop off the toys during lunch tomorrow.”
“I can grab them in the morning and take them in,” Dani offered.
“I suppose that would work too.” I grinned.
Kinsley, with her nervous energy, jumped up. “I’ve been working on a new chocolate peanut butter dessert. Do you want to try it?”
Chocolate and peanut butter were my true loves. “Always yes, but first, why don’t you tell me what you’re both hiding from me.”
Dani and Kinsley gave each other uh-oh looks.
“That bad, huh?” I set down the piece I was working on.
Kinsley sat back down while Dani let her gorgeous ebony hair out of her ponytail. Her hair fell nicely at her shoulders. I looked between my two friends, sisters really, wondering who would cave first.
