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“He texted.” She grabbed her other bag from the carousel, stacked it on the cart, and wheeled toward the exit.
“Are you really going to make me ask?”
“Savannah, I’m standing in the middle of an airport, here.”
“I don’t care if you’re standing in the middle of the Vatican. What did he say?”
She sighed and pulled her cart to the side, accidentally cutting off a businessman in the process. He glared as he drew even with her. “You want to know what he said when he found out I was pregnant?” The businessman’s expression froze, and he hurried past as if she might throw a net over him. Men.
“Spill it.”
“This won’t take long. It was only two words.”
“Sinclair…”
“Okay. Okay.” She took a deep breath. For some stupid reason, her heart skipped a beat at the idea of saying the words out loud. “He texted, ‘Trust me.’”
Silence followed. Finally, she asked, “Did you hear me?”
Then she heard it. A sniffle.
“Don’t even.”
“I c-can’t help it,” her sister replied and sniffed again. “You’ll see. Anyway, as two-word replies go, that’s a pretty good one. Can you do it?”
“Trust him? I don’t know. He lied to me. I know that doesn’t necessarily sound like a big deal, given everything at stake now, but it is to me. How do I know he didn’t lie about everything?”
“Because you know,” her sister insisted quietly. “You knew how he felt about you ten years ago, and you know how he feels now. And underneath the completely understandable anger you’re experiencing, you know how you feel, too. For that reason alone, you need to give him the chance to explain.”
She closed her eyes and let the truth of her sister’s words sink in—the near inevitability of them. She’d loved Shane Maguire for ten years. He’d been her first. He’d be her last. It would always be him. “I know.” The words came out little more than a whisper.
“So, call him,” Savannah urged. “Call and talk things out.”
She looked at her watch. “I planned to call him tonight, anyway. My guess is he’s on a flight to Seattle right now, but even if he’s not, this isn’t a conversation I want to have on the road.”
“Especially not tonight. Be careful driving home. You’re headed into the mess, not away from it.”
Sinclair signed off with a promise to be careful and strode through desultory rain to where she’d parked her car. The blanket of gray overhead hung low. A few beams of sunlight broke through in isolated patches to the south, like rays of hope. Her gaze sought them out in her rearview mirror as she drove onto the freeway, and she tried not to read anything into the fact that the skyline in front of her churned with clouds—thick and foreboding. Not a shred of light in sight.
Afternoon gave way to evening as she drove home, but the murky sky and constant rain made it an uninspiring transition from dusk to dark. She didn’t normally mind the drive. Watching the sprawl of Atlanta thin out to suburbs, and then
farms, and then miles of greenbelt dotted by the occasional signs for gas, food, Jesus, or Lake Winnepesaukah helped her shed the stress of the business side of her job. But tonight she just wanted to get home—for however much longer it would be home to her. The lawyer she’d retained to give her an opinion on her chances of fighting Ricky’s termination of her land lease hadn’t been too encouraging. Yes, the Pinkerton Family Trust might owe her damages for entering into a land lease they knew, or should have known, violated local zoning codes, but at the end of the day, the code was the code, and it would control. He was looking into the specific language to determine if she had any wiggle room given she used her building for business and residential purposes, but ultimately, she’d probably have to move.
A couple months ago, her world had been settled. Stable. Within her control. Now the status of her home was just one more uncertainty in a life suddenly rife with them. Maybe she was going to be a mother. She’d do whatever she could to make it happen. Of that much she was certain. Maybe she would have the man she loved at her side. She’d do whatever she could to make that happen, too, even if it meant uprooting herself from the place she considered home. Shane didn’t. Yes, he’d let her believe their second chance included him coming back to stay, and he’d let her believe coming home was important to him, but considering how bleak the odds of her keeping her home looked at the moment, it could be the universe was trying to send her a message.
Maybe he didn’t come back to Magnolia Grove, but he came back to you.
The epiphany flew from her mind when she reached the rise of the hill where the Whitehall Plantation stood, and through the steady curtain of rain her headlights picked up the outline of trucks and equipment sitting in the distance, beside long, parallel walls of mounded dirt.
“That bastard.”
Ricky and team had wasted no time getting their golf course construction underway. Dammit, she still had over three weeks to move, according to his stupid notice. How much rain had they gotten? She slowed and took the turn to her drive. How much of it was being funneled down to her end of the creek? More importantly, how much water could her end of the creek hold before the banks overflowed?
Her high beams provided answers about three-quarters of the way to her house. A huge puddle covered the path, stretching from the tree-line on the left and continuing all the way to the other side of the drive. She slowed and steered the Tahoe through, listening as the muted sound of rubber cutting through water thinned to the tinny, hollow pings of waves splashing against her hubcaps. The water seemed to get deeper by the second. How much clearance did the Tahoe have? A foot? Eighteen inches? And how would she fare, knee-deep in water with a discernible downstream current?
Best not to find out. When the barn came into view, she gave the steering wheel a hard turn and drove up the slight slope on which the structure perched, lurching to a stop beside the big, double-hung sliding doors on the side. Her heart pounded as if she’d sprinted up the driveway. Sweat coated her cold skin. Three feet more, at most, and she’d have a wading pool for a first floor. She needed to…fuck…what could she do, except grab everything important, toss it in the back of the Tahoe, and drive to her parents’? Her mind raced through a list of things to gather—her sketchbooks, everything in the safe, her tools, her computer…oh God…so much. She launched herself out of the car and nearly lost her footing on the slick, muddy ground. Rain gear. A hysterical laugh tried to break free from somewhere beneath her pounding heart. Rain gear would be handy.
Stinging droplets pelted her skin and soaked her hair. She pushed it out of her eyes and took a lunging step toward the barn. The blast of a horn brought her head around, and headlights momentarily blinded her.
