For a long time, there’s no sound in the house except the old mantel clock ticking in the living room, my heart pounding in my ears, and the occasional car passing on the street.
“No,” she finally says, her expression blank. Her lips don’t even have that pinched look, and I can only assume she’s in shock.
“Yes. It’s happening. He asked me to marry him and I accepted.”
“You barely know him, but we know his family and…just no. You’re not marrying a Reilly. Any Reilly at all, but especially that one.”
That catches in my mind again—why does Gin seem to have a grudge against Hayden in particular? It doesn’t make any sense. But now is not the time to go off on tangents.
“You barely know him. I know him very well.” I used to, anyway. “I grew up with him and we dated in high school.”
“First of all, high school was a long time ago. And secondly, you didn’t date. He asked you to homecoming and then stood you up.”
And there’s that familiar pang of hurt and humiliation. Thanks, Mom. “He asked me to homecoming because we’d been seeing each other for months. I think you can figure out why I didn’t tell you about it. And we reconnected online a while back. This isn’t out of the blue, Mom.”
Her eyes narrow at my lie. “He started talking to you on the internet before he tried to buy my house?”
And there’s the suspicion I was afraid of. “He knows I don’t want to leave you alone here, so he thought if he buys the house, you can get something small and cute, and I’d be free to move to Boston. I don’t want to live in Boston, though. I love this house when it’s not draining the life out of me.”
“You can’t marry him.”
“You said you wanted me to marry some guy from Sumac Falls. Hayden is a guy from Sumac Falls.”
Her cheeks are hot, and I’m afraid she’s going to bend the spoon in her hand if she doesn’t put it down. “Carolina Marie Gamble, I’m not going to tell you again—I promised your father I would keep this house in the family.”
I already know there’s no sense in telling her again that no reasonable man would expect two women he loved to let a house fall down around their ears. But I’ve learned the hard and exhausting way that Gin won’t see reason.
Instead, I have to lean into Hayden’s ridiculous plan.
“If you sell it to Hayden and me, the house does stay in the family because I’m your daughter.”
“If you marry that Reilly boy, you’ll be a Reilly.”
“And yet, still your daughter.” Her mother’s attachment to the house was almost as ridiculous as the family feud. “I won’t change my name. A lot of women don’t these days, you know. I’ll still be Cara Gamble and this will be my house.”
“That’s not?—”
“And my house will have a hot water heater. You’ll have kept your promise to Dad, and you can get a fresh start and everybody wins.”
“For now. But when you have a child, it’ll be a Reilly and that’ll be the end of it.”
Oh, for the love of— “That would be an issue no matter who I married. But we’ll hyphenate the kid’s name to Gamble-Reilly and maybe that can be the end of this feud crap.”
She stands, her chair scraping so harshly against the old linoleum, I wince. Then she practically throws her bowl into the sink, and I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. “This is the most ridiculous conversation we’ve ever had.”
It’s certainly ridiculous, but any more than the conversations we’ve been having lately? I don’t think so. “I think it’s more ridiculous for us to stay on this sinking ship until we drown because you made a promise to a man who’s no longer with us.”
“Not just a man, Carolina. My husband. Your father. While you may not care about honoring your father, I certainly care about honoring him.”
I can’t even speak for a long moment. Angry and hateful words want to fly out of my mouth, but I clench my jaw tight until I can’t stand it anymore.
“I don’t care about honoring my father?” As much as I don’t want to throw fuel on this fire, there’s a limit to how much of this crap I can tolerate. “I’m the one who’s been honoring him, you know. If not for me, you would have had to break that promise years ago.”
“Do not speak to me like that.”
“We’re getting married,” I say firmly. “And then you can sell the house to us. It stays in the family and Hayden can restore it so it’s beautiful for your grandchildren and future Gamble generations to come.”
“Absolutely not.”
