“You’ll only have an hour between closing the thrift shop and opening the taproom,” Gwen pointed out.
“I think Mallory will probably leave the thrift shop earlier, and I’ll close it up. Eventually we’ll probably go back to regular hours at Sutton’s Seconds, but I think for at least a few weeks, we’ll have one at a time open.”
The rest of them talked all through the meal, but Gwen didn’t give them her full attention. Her mind was still on the conversation with her mom in the kitchen. On some level, she’d been afraid her mom would get her hopes up about Case and Gwen’s relationship being serious enough to keep her in Stonefield, but having her fear confirmed was unsettling.
When they were finished, but before anybody got up from their seats, Evie spoke. “I have something I want to show you before we go back to work.”
She retrieved a box Gwen hadn’t noticed from the dining room and brought it back to set on the kitchen table. When she opened it and took out one of the glasses they’d ordered, everybody looked confused.
“Most of the boxes are in the taproom since we’re doing the glasses this week, but I took a few of them to try something.” She held up a glass with the Sutton’s Place logo on it. “There’s one for each of us.”
When she’d passed them all out, Gwen realized Evie had etched their names into the glass. In a clean, bold script, theGwenwas subtle but visible under the logo. It looked nice, and she told her sister so.
“Thanks,” Evie said after everybody had complimented their glasses. “But they’re not just keepsakes. So hear me out before you react. People like to be a part of things—to belong to something. Like the guys who have their regular seats at the coffee counter at the diner. Or how the knitting club gets the comfy seats at the library on Tuesday nights. They not only visit these places, but they have a sense of belonging there. I think when a person becomes a regular at Sutton’s Place, they get their own glass with their name etched on it. There can be a special shelf for those glasses, and when that customer comes in, he or she gets that feeling of being part of it.”
She paused and reached into the box to pull out another glass, which she set in the middle of the table. Gwen had to lean forward to read it, and then tears blurred her vision and she had to blink them away.
David. Cheers, until we meet again.
It was Case who got up to go in search of a box of tissues, since the tears were pretty immediate.
Gwen’s eyes were dry, though, as she stared at the glass in her hands, replaying Evie’s words about being a part of something and belonging in her mind. And they made the glass feel as if it weighed about a hundred pounds. She didn’t think it was deliberate on Evie’s part—she couldn’t very well make a glass for all of them and leave Gwen out—but she couldn’t help feeling there was some kind of subliminal message in it.
You belong at Sutton’s Place.
But she didn’t. She’d always be a part of it, of course. It was a family business. But she intended to be a part of it from a distance. Actually belonging was a different story. She belonged in Vermont, finishing her book and then going for quiet, solitary walks to plan the next one.
Case’s knee bumped hers as he sat back down, and she looked sideways to find him smiling at her. When his leg stretched out along the length of hers, warm and firm, she smiled back. His glass was on the table and she watched as he took hers out of her hand and set it next to his.
Gwen. Case.
Side-by-side. Belonging.
To her dismay, tears welled up in her eyes, and she could only hope anybody who noticed—especially Case—would blame the emotion that had overwhelmed the room when Evie showed them their father’s glass.
But those tears had come with the realization that she was in over her head with Case. She was falling in love with him, and every day they spent together, she fell a little bit more. And that meant that every day she spent in Stonefield was going to make it that much harder to leave him. There might even come a time when she surrendered to spending the rest of her life in this town, going back to writing bits of books when she got a chance and she’d worked too hard building her career to even wrap her head around that.
It was time to go home.
Something had changed in Gwen when the glasses came out. Case couldn’t quite put his finger on it or define what it was, but something was definitely going on with her. He didn’t have to wait long for the answer to his unspoken question, though. Once they’d all agreed to embrace the etched glasses, they were talking about who was doing what for the grand opening when she dropped the news.
“We should probably talk about this in the context of me not really being a part of it,” Gwen said quietly during a break in the conversation. “So we can make sure everything runs okay, I mean. I’ll be here for the grand opening to help out if needed, but then I’m going home. To Vermont.”
Case froze, not wanting to give away the impact her words had on him. That impact was how he imagined it would feel to have a wrecking ball come out of nowhere and drive into him, knocking him off a cliff into a river that tumbled him against rocks until he slammed into a massive concrete dam.
It hurt, to say the least.
She was leaving. And not only was she leaving, but she was leavingsoonand she hadn’t even bothered to talk to him about it. To tell him first, privately, rather than blowing his life apart without warning and in front of her entire family.
“So soon?” Ellen asked when the silence had stretched past awkward and into downright painful.
“Soon? Mom, I’ve been here for almost three months and we’re not even open yet. You knew it was temporary and, to be honest, I feel like once the bar is open, it’s going to be too easy for everybody to keep assuming I’ll just be here the next day to work, and the day after that. The grand opening feels like a segue into a new phase, and I’m not going to be here for that phase. I can’t write here and they’ve already given me two extensions. If I miss my new deadline, I... I just can’t.”
Case heard the conversation, but the words swirled around in his head in a way he couldn’t make sense of. He wasn’t grasping what she said in a logical way, but rather wasfeelingher words as emotions that pummeled his senses.
There was still nothing in Stonefield she wanted to stay in town for.
When everybody got up to leave the table, he was slow to do the same. Ellen and Gwen were still bickering about her departure as they walked away with their hands full of dinner dishes—Mallory and Evie right behind them. He knew he should grab some dishes and follow, but his feet didn’t move.
