Four days. That’s what she had left in Huckleberry Creek. Four days to decide if the life she’d built was worth more than the one she could have here. Four days for me to either get her back or lose her for good.
The ceiling had no answers. Neither did the empty room, or the cooling sheets, or the ache settling deep in my chest.
CHAPTER 17
GILLIAN
I turned down Doc’s street with Diego’s words still echoing in my head.
Then what was this? Nostalgia? Goodbye?
They’d been rattling around in my skull since I walked out his door with a knot in my throat I couldn’t swallow. The more I replayed it, the more it bled into older memories—another version of me on this same road, four years younger, a suitcase in the backseat and the kind of brittle determination it took to drive away from someone you love because everyone you’ve ever trusted told you it was the smart thing to do.
Why the hell was I still listening to them? Wasn’t it time I finally made the choice for myself?
Headlights washed over the white painted brick of Doc’s place, the familiar horseshoe pattern in the porch rail, the ferns drooping from their hooks in the thick summer heat. And there, right in the driveway, was my parents’ silver Lexus. No mistaking it.
The sight hit low, somewhere under my ribs. They didn’t come to Huckleberry Creek for casual drop-ins, and they hadn’t told me they were coming. If they were here, it meant an agenda.
The porch light threw a warm spill over the stoop, moths flickering in and out of the glow. Through the screen door, I caught the rise and fall of voices. Not shouting, but sharp enough to set my pulse ticking faster. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew the cadence. Business-meeting clipped. Judgment baked into every syllable.
Inside, the living room looked exactly like it had my whole life—Doc’s recliner angled toward the TV, the same braided rug underfoot, framed photos of fishing trips and old baseball teams on the paneled walls. But now my parents were here, sitting on the sofa like they’d claimed the high ground. My father’s suit jacket lay neatly folded over the armrest, his tie still knotted; my mother’s dress didn’t have a wrinkle in sight.
Doc was in his recliner, not kicked back but leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight. He looked…cornered.
“We were talking with your grandfather about what’s best for him.” My mother’s tone was smooth as glass.
Her perfume reached me a beat later—floral with a sharp edge, the same fragrance she’d been buying since I was ten. It hit my stomach like muscle memory, part nostalgia, part warning.
My father reached for the leather briefcase propped against his shin and pulled out a slim folder. He set it on the coffee table as if it were evidence in a case he was about to win.
“An offer.” He nudged it toward Doc with two fingers. “In writing. They’re ready to close before summer’s out.”
The room felt smaller. The folder sat there as if it were humming.
Doc didn’t pick it up. Only gave one of those half-shrugs that barely moved his shoulders and kept his eyes on a spot somewhere near the rug. That was worse than if he’d argued. It was the look of someone already halfway talked into something they didn’t really want.
I would know.
“It’s a generous number,” my father continued, smooth as a closing statement. “And it would free you from… all of this.” He made a vague gesture at the bar keys on the end table, like they were shackles. “You could travel, spend time with friends. Ensure your retirement is comfortable.”
“And,” my mother added, turning her attention to me like I’d been called to the stand, “you could take that promotion you’ve been offered and get back to your real life.”
That last part landed harder than the folder on the table. My real life. As if the last two weeks were a dress rehearsal. As if what I wanted didn’t count unless it came with billable hours and a skyline view.
I didn’t answer right away.
Doc’s words from this afternoon surfaced—quiet, matter-of-fact—about why he’d walked away from medicine. About how sometimes keeping your title cost too much. My own body chimed in with its testimony: the knots that lived in my shoulders, the coffee-for-dinner nights, the hollow feeling after winning cases that didn’t matter to anyone except the partners’ bottom line.
I looked between the three of them—Doc, who’d traded the weight of a title for peace, and my parents, who saw that peace as failure. And for a second, the only sound was the hum of the AC trying to push back the July heat.
“No.”
The word came out before I’d fully formed the thought, but once it was in the air, I couldn’t take it back. Didn’t want to.
“I’m not going to let you bully him just because you don’t understand his choices.” My voice was steadier than I expected. “There are more important things in life than achievement.”
My mother stiffened like I’d dropped an f-bomb in the middle of Sunday service. Her spine went rigid against the sofa cushions, her perfectly manicured fingers tightening aroundher clutch. My father’s brows slammed down, creating that deep furrow between them that used to make me scramble to apologize, to backtrack, to smooth things over.
