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“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a painful memory.”
“I’ve been thinking about Chuck all day.” Truth be told, she thought about him most days. “It’s unavoidable.”
Juniper looked worried. “You didn’t say anything about it.”
“I don’t want to make your wedding about my issues. It isn’t about my issues. Your wedding is about you. And I’m so happy for you.”
“You seem like you maybe aren’t sometimes.”
“It’s not that. I think it’s a little bit strange that you’re marrying a Carson. All things considered. But I’m coming to terms of it.”
“And it has nothing to do with Kit?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t push it.” Juniper had never mentioned Kit, or Shelby’s non-situation with Kit, until recently. Shelby didn’t like the new development.
“Did something happen between you two?”
“No! When would anything have ever happened?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never known. All I know is that when you see him...”
“Please don’t finish that sentence, because my pride is hanging on by a thread, because I nearly fell down into the man tonight, and I don’t need anything to compromise what remains of it. It is tenuous. At best.”
“I don’t think anyone else can tell,” Juniper said quickly. “It’s just that I know you. I know you really well.”
“And you know me well enough to know that if I don’t want to talk about it I’m not going to talk about it.”
Juniper nodded. “You’re right. I do know you well enough to know that. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Like I said. I’m a little bit surprised, both because of his family, and the circumstances...”
“Oh, the thing that I did that you absolutely disapproved of because it was really messed up?”
“Yeah. That thing. Where you lied to the guy about who you were? And who he was?”
“It worked out,” Juniper said. She winced. “Believe me. I have apologized many times over. And I do feel bad about it. Though, forgetting who he was... And me treating him like he was somebody different... It was the only way that we could really get to know each other. I know it sounds imbalanced. But... It’s just how it works.”
Shelby couldn’t help it. Right in that moment, she sort of wished that she could have that. A moment to be somebody new. Maybe she needed to leave town. She had never really considered it before.
Losing Chuck had been destabilizing in every way. Leaving Lone Rock, leaving their land...leaving her parents, her grandparents—that was something that she couldn’t even fathom. But it was hard to be here. Hard to be in a place where everybody knew who you were, where everybody knew your life story. So they looked at you like you were sad even when you had never exchanged three words with them, because they already knew through the grapevine exactly what you’d been through.
“I can see how that would work,” she said, her voice feeling scratchy.
“It did work,” Juniper said. “So are you going to head up to the venue early?”
Shelby looked around at all the things. “I don’t see how it will work if I don’t. I need to get everything set up for the bachelorette party, and I need to get all the party favors up there for that. Plus the wedding.”
“He has six brothers. He will absolutely handle whatever needs handling.”
“I’m your only sister,” she said, fiercely. “And it means more to me now than it ever has. Your... You and Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa are all I have. I was supposed to make a family, an expanded family with Chuck. And I... I want to do everything for you. Just trust me.”
Juniper looked at her, her dark eyes steady and level, and filled with compassion, and it put Shelby back to that night three years ago when Juniper had come over to tell her...
When Juniper’d had to be the one to tell her Chuck was in a car accident, and he hadn’t made it.
Her sister was real. Genuine. When she said she wanted to be there for Shelby, it wasn’t an empty gesture. She’d proved it that night. She hadn’t passed the job off on someone else. She’d been the one to do it. She’d been the one to hold Shelby while she’d cried like she’d never stop.
“Oh, Shelby,” Juniper said. “I’m so sorry that this is hard.”
