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At the same time, Jessamyn whirled past them in Ryder’s arms, still dipping and stepping to a one-two-three count. “It’s all good! I think we’ve got it down well enough to survive our couples dance.”
This time, Lark was grateful for her sibling’s starry-eyed romance since it distracted Fleur from inquiring more about what troubled her.
“I really should return to work.” Lark edged away another step, seeing her chance to escape.
Between the constant reminders of her ex-husband next door, the pheromone-filled atmosphere at Crooked Elm with both her sisters in love and the pending court case with her father, she felt pushed to her personal breaking point this week.
“If you really have to,” Fleur said reluctantly, moving toward the animal enclosure to scratch a friendly black-and-white goat named Guinevere. “But can you check in with Mom sometime tonight to ask for her flight details? I know she’s booked her trip here for the wedding, and it would be great if you could pick her up at the airport.”
“Really?” she blurted before realizing how rude she sounded. She moved closer to Fleur to scratch one of the other goats—was the brown and white one Morgan Le Fay?—who headbutted her in the hip. “I mean, of course I’ll find out when she’s flying and I can take care of the airport run. I’m just surprised she agreed to come to Catamount...” Lark’s gaze found Jessamyn where she still twirled and laughed with Ryder as they worked on their waltz moves. “Er—while the court case is in progress.”
She was actually sort of surprised Mom had signed on for the wedding in the first place given the way Jessamyn had taken their dad’s side in the split. While Mom had never held that against Jess, Lark knew their relationship had been strained. Diplomatic avoidance had been their usual MO.
Fleur glanced toward the dancing couple too, following Lark’s attention.
“Well for starters, Jessamyn reached out to Mom after she got engaged and it sounds like they had a good talk.” Fleur straightened the blue collar around Guinevere’s neck with a silver name tag in the shape of a crown—a recent gift from Drake. “And once they started discussing the will contest case, it turns out Mom had a lot of ideas for potential witnesses who heard Gran talk about leaving Crooked Elm to us. Including Mom.”
Lark’s hand stilled on Morgan le Fay’s neck. “You don’t think Mom wants to get involved in the case? I mean, I’m all for winning this thing, but do any of us really want to see Mom and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named facing off in another courtroom battle?”
Their family had barely survived the first one.
She’d begun her college studies in psychology at first, not because she’d had her heart set on being a therapist, but in order to have a reasoned, rational approach to analyzing what had gone wrong in her family. It had been her way of coping with a hurt that was, in essence, an abandonment. One day, she’d known two loving parents. Then her mother caught her father cheating and Lark found her own home a war zone with both the adults too consumed with their anger to remember things like after-school pickups, sports practices, or to even buy groceries. One of their money arguments turned into a contest to see who could go the longest without being the one to make a supermarket run.
At sixteen years old, Lark became the one to bum rides from friends who could drive in order to obtain food for the week with her babysitting money. Later in life, she’d learned about her mom’s depression and had been able to forgive her for those dark months that had turned into two torturous years. But understanding those times hadn’t made them easier to survive while she’d been going through them.
Fleur shrugged, her attention shifting to a stretch of backroad leading to Crooked Elm that was visible from this corner of the yard, where a dust cloud stirred in the dry air. “Mom is in a good, healthy place now. I think it should be her call. Besides, the attorney is accepting written statements, not just in-person testimonies.”
Lark didn’t share her easy acceptance of the idea. In fact, her stomach tightened into a knot. “Written statements that could easily lead to in-person testimony if the judge wants more information, or if Dad’s attorney wants to question any of them.”
This week was tough enough with Gibson in town and facing her manipulative, self-centered father. She wasn’t ready to relive the toxic family dynamics, too.
“It will be fine.” Fleur’s tone was placating at best as she still stared out toward the road. Distracted. “I don’t recognize that vehicle coming toward us. Do you?”
Sighing at the way Fleur wasn’t taking her concern seriously, Lark took a sidestep to see around a low hanging branch of a cottonwood tree.
Could it be Gibson? Her heart did a funny quickening that she firmly ignored. But the SUV moving through the dust cloud sure wasn’t Gibson’s truck or his sports car, both of which Fleur probably would recognize since he’d started spending more time at his house just a stone’s throw from Crooked Elm.
Although he would use that road to approach the house. There weren’t many places to access the quiet country lane, and Gibson’s home—the one they were supposed to have shared—was one of them.
“I’m not sure.” Lark took a few more steps toward the tree line that hid some of the thoroughfare, squinting to see through the dirt kicked up by the vehicle.
“I think there’s a logo on the side—” Fleur began at the same exact moment Lark recognized it.
“It’s the pain-in-my-ass sports media,” she muttered, the knot in her stomach tightening as she headed for the back door. “And there’s no way I’m letting them take pictures so they can use me for their stupid clickbait headlines.”
She could already see it: “Where Are They Now? Former Hockey Wives We Loved to Hate.”
At least they hadn’t filmed her country waltzing in the yard with the goats as a backdrop. They’d try to fabricate a story about how lonely she was without Gibson in her life that she needed to dance alone. That’s all her family needed was an excuse to probe.
Angry at the whole pseudo-industry that was loosely labeled sports entertainment “media” and didn’t have a damned thing to do with news or evensports, Lark slowed her step.
Why should she have to hide herself away just because she resented them so much? Did it really matter what they had to say anymore now that her marriage was already over?
She’d come to Catamount to put the past behind her, after all. To bury the hatchet with her sisters. To secure Crooked Elm from her father’s greedy clutches. And, most recently, to heal her guilt about her part in a failed marriage.
Maybe it was high time she gave the proverbial middle finger to her old enemy, the sports media, too. How long was she going to allow them to write her script for her, while she ducked and hid and hoped they wouldn’t notice her? How had she let herself become that woman?
She had things to say for herself, damn it. Why not use the platform rather than run from it, at least this one time?
