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“Aunt Janice, it’s so nice to hear from you,” she greeted.
“Hello, my dear,” her aunt said, sounding strange.
“Aunt Janice? Are you okay?”
“Oh, just a silly cold, sweetie—nothing to bother yourself about. Vivian has given me something. I should be fine by tomorrow. I haven’t heard from you for a while. How are you? And Dylan?”
As Riley opened her mouth to answer, her aunt coughed.
“Sorry, Riley,” she said, sounding tired.
“Aunt Janice, you are not well!” Riley scolded. “Are you in bed?”
“Yes, yes, I am.” There was another round of coughing.
The line crackled, and Riley could barely hear what her aunt was saying.
“Stay at home…”
Riley got up quickly. “You stay put. Dylan and I will be there tomorrow. Promise me you’ll stay in bed?”
“No, sweetie, that’s really not necessary…”
“Of course, it is. Now drink your medicine and rest. I’ll let you know when we’ll land in Bozeman.”
“But, Riley, you are so busy. I don’t want to take you away from your work.”
“I don’t have another photo shoot over the next week, and editing photos I can do from anywhere.”
“I really don’t want to burden you…”
“You’ll never be a burden, Aunt Janice, you know that. See you tomorrow.”
Minutes later, Riley was on her phone, looking for flights. Aunt Janice should’ve called her sooner, and why hadn’t Craig or Aiden told her their aunt was ill?
Groaning, she quickly booked flights for herself and Dylan. Aunt Janice wasn’t the problem. She was. Because she hadn’t wanted to hear anything about Mitch, she hadn’t spoken to Aunt Janice or her brother or cousin in a while. She was the only one to blame.
*
Mitch’s fingers wereflying over the keys of his computer. The words were flowing; he didn’t hesitate once. There was an urgency inside of him, pressuring him to finish the story. It was Thursday night, and he was nearing the point where he could writeThe End.
The story he’d started on the night of Craig and Annie’s wedding had moved in a direction he couldn’t have foreseen four months ago. Initially, he’d wasted precious time trying to keep to some kind of structure. He’d quickly discovered writing didn’t work that way. At least, not for him.
Over the past few months, he’d learned to trust the voices in his head, he’d learned not to try and force something on the characters they didn’t want to do, and he’d learned to rely on the mysterious workings of the subconscious. Things happened in there while he was sleeping.
What he hadn’t foreseen was that grief would somehow invade his story as one of the main themes. It hadn’t even been something he’d thought about, or rather, he hadn’t known it had been on his mind. He hadn’t known he was still grieving for his parents.
After all this time, he still vividly remembered the moment he’d heard they were gone. His dad had accompanied his mother, a social worker, when she’d visited a client on the wrong side of town. A spray of bullets from a drive-by shooting, meant for someone else, had killed both of them.
The feeling of despair and hopelessness he’d experienced then, he’d buried deep. His sisters had needed him, and he hadn’t been able to fall apart—he’d needed to be able to help them. Turned out, he’d discovered while writing this story, grief refused to be buried. It had to be dealt with. Writing the story that had been mulling in his mind for so long had given him an opportunity to do just that.
What had probably surprised him the most, though, was the way he’d ended up describing the daughter of the protagonist, Alfred Cooper. He didn’t need a psychologist to explain to him why Dorothy had red hair, blue eyes, and a body that left men drooling over her.
Chuckling, he rubbed his tired eyes. He was still lusting after Riley O’Sullivan. That was why. And that damn kiss? He went to bed thinking about Riley’s soft lips, and every single morning he woke up with the same thought, his body on fire for her. And he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since she’d left.
Writing in August had been easy. It had still been school holidays, but since school had started at the end of August, the only time he’d had to write was during the night and the odd weekend when there hadn’t been any school sport he’d needed to attend.
Writing had also effectively prevented him from doing something stupid like getting on a plane to visit Riley and Dylan. Damn it, he missed her. He’d thought she’d have made a trip to Marietta to see her family again by now, but since she’d left the day after the wedding, he hadn’t seen or heard from her.
