Missing Lila?
Erin
And you.
I’m here.
Anytime you want to talk. ROHELL.
I couldn’t help but smile.Holler. Like me, Callan rarely raised his voice, but that didn’t mean his house was quiet when we were growing up. You’d have to yell to be heard above the arguing—and the laughing. Did anyone still laugh? Lila had been gone for three years. Surely some joy had crept back into the sad, lifeless walls that had suffocated us all in the days after her funeral…
Callan
I mean it. You can talk to me about anything. Except maybe shoes. I own three pairs. But anything else. Ok?
Erin
K xo
If only my problems were as easy to figure out as shoes… and I could talk to Callan about them. This topic was off-limits—his girlfriends, my marriage—we never went there. My way out of this mess was to figure it out on my own.
And I had no idea what the hell I was going to do.
3
That Unexpected Call in Winter
Callan
August cut the daysshort, but the fading winter sure as hell wasn’t a break. The farm never let up.
I’d been on the hop since I’d rolled out of bed and my bare feet had hit the icy hardwood floors. Twelve hours later, heavier steps hauled me back to the grand old house on the hill. The two stories of pale golden sandstone had stood watch over this greenbelt of the Coal River Valley for more than two hundred years, and setting eyes on the tall columns that anchored the narrow veranda to the dormer windows of the attic was finally my welcome home.
I didn’t rush to unlace my boots by the back door, though.
“You never listen to me!”
My sister.
“There’s no point listenin’ if you’re talkin’ crazy, Bronte!”
My mother.
She’d clip me around the ears if I called her that. When my older brother was knee-high to a grasshopper, he couldn’t quite say “Mum.” So, “Mim” she was. Even my father called her that. If he called her Sharon, she’d probably clip him around the ears, too.
“I’m not crazy!” Bronte shouted. “You can’t stop me from living my life just because you’re squawking louder than a cat stuck in a drainpipe!”
Mim snorted. “I’m not squawkin’. I’m givin’ you a nudge,” she said. “Agentlenudge.”
Fighting back a laugh, I kicked my boots off by the back door.A gentle nudge, my ass. But was I going to correct my mother? Nope. The smartest thing a man could do in this situation was to let that pair argue it out. Honestly? I’d be more worried if they weren’t fighting. Still…
The lump in my throat reminded me how much I wished my woman was there, in the kitchen, squabbling with them. But the woman taking up all the space in my head was a world away. And she wasn’t mine.
I got one foot through the kitchen doorway before two heads of red hair whipped around.
“Cal!” Bronte caught my gaze first. “Tell Mim I’m making the right decision.”
“She’s making the right decision,” I said, sidestepping the war zone to grab a cookie off the counter and shove it in my mouth. I groaned. So good. Gooey chocolate chips hot enough to singe my tongue. Must have been fresh out of the oven. I reached for another.
