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Irubbed my chest, trying to soothe the ever-present ache in my heart. Fuck, I missed Ally. So much. Seeing her at Matt and Zara’s had been harder than I’d thought it would be. And talking it out with Matt over a beer hadn’t really helped. One thing everyone agreed upon when it came to Ally was how stubborn she was. I’d said, “I’ll be here if you change your mind,”and she’d replied, pretty emphatically, “Yeah, I won’t.”Nothing that had happened since then made me believe that she ever would.
It was a perfect spring day in Riverside Park and it seemed like the whole town had turned out for Esperance Day. Everyone seemed happy, smiling and laughing. It was a cruelly sharp contrast to my own feelings.
Bruce and Ellen had taken the grandkids to meet the people dressed up as the town founders, Fergus and Evangeline Ballantyne, and I could see Jesse was thrilled with the bag of candy he’d been given.
“Hey.”
I turned to see Zara walking toward me, a picnic basket in her hand. “Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Great. You?”
“Also great.”
Such a lie. I was happy to see her, though, because this was the first time I had Zara alone since all this mess happened and I wanted, desperately, to ask her about Ally.
“Do you mind helping me with this?”
“Not at all.” Taking two corners of the giant picnic blanket, I helped her spread it out over the ground, under the shade of a willow tree.
“Ally’s coming today.”
Just the sound of her name had my heart lurching. “Is she?”
“Yeah, she wasn’t going to, but when I dropped in on her the other night, I sort of insisted that she come.”
Okay, this was getting interesting. “You did?”
She sat on the blanket, dragging the basket over and opening it up. “Here, sit with me a minute.”
I sat, taking the chocolate chip cookie she offered.
“She seems pretty cut up, to me, if that helps.”
It didn’t. At all. This whole thing was hard enough without thinking it was hurting Ally as well. “Not really, to be honest.”
A soft smile curved Zara’s lips. “Give her time, is all I’m saying. She might come around.”
“Might?”
She let out a sigh. “Look, she has some stuff from her past she hasn’t dealt with yet. It messes her up.”
“Josh, yeah. I know all about Josh.”
Her eyes widened. “Whoa. That’s a very big deal, Gabe. She only told me about it last year, and we’ve been best friends for over a decade.”
“I see.”
“Okay, honestly, I think if she manages to work through all of that shit, it might all turn out.”
“That’s a really big if Zara.”
“I really wish I could give you more, but she’s very closed off right now. But I am working on it, if that helps.”
“It does. Thanks.”
“You love her.”
