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I lowered my head. “It was a long time ago.”
I sighed and tried to turn from her, but she gently pulled my face back toward hers. “What happened?”
After everything Lettie had just opened up to me about, I felt it was time I confessed. “It happened that night after I went home from crashing your ball. My father was awake and in a mood. He and I got into an argument, and to be honest, I can’t even remember what it was about. All I remember is he hit me in the face with a broken bottle, and I swung on him. I hit my dad in the face. It was the first time I fought back.”
Lettie’s hands were covering her mouth. “Your father had a black eye that night. I didn’t even think—”
“It’s okay. I just didn’t want you to be exposed to that kind of life, Lettie. And it reiterated everything your father and Theo had said about me. I didn’t want you waiting around for someone like me.”
“They were wrong.” She kept her eyes focused on mine for another moment before she lightened the mood by dipping her finger into the icing mixture. “Besides, Theo Martin got arrested for masturbating in a movie theater, so I don’t really think anyone should be listening to what he has to say.” She licked her finger, and I began laughing.
“No way! You’re lying.”
“No, I swear. And that was just thefirstarrest. A couple of years later, he was masturbating on the tennis court at the country club.” I watched as she shrugged and went back to the icing. She paused and looked over at me once more and said, “I guess ‘playing his guitar in public’ had just been a euphemism.”
In that moment, I laughed harder than I had in a long, long time.
SIXTY-TWO
LETTIE
It wasa weight off my shoulders having finally told Tuck about the miscarriage and asking him that question that I had carried around for so long. I could fully inhale a deep breath and it didn’t get stuck midway through, there was finally a closure of sorts.
On my way home from the bakery, I reflected on what he’d said. I came to the realization that maybe it was good I hadn’t known why he’d left for all those years. If I had known while I’d been younger, inexperienced, and still developing myself, I might not have understood. Scratch that, I more than likely would not have understood. I would have been angry, bitter, unforgiving. Hearing the reason now, as an adult, I could fully process what Tuck had gone through. His feelings of unworth due to our very opposite upbringings, my dad and Theo bombarding him, the fear of not knowing what would happen coupled with leaving the only home he had ever known for the Army and a place he had never been. He had beeneighteen.Then there was his father. His father who had hit him so hard, he’d split his jaw and then kicked him out, telling him never to return.
How could I be angry that he’d thought he had been protecting me from everything he’d endured? How could I possibly be angry with an eighteen-year-old boy who hadn’t known what else to do?
But here he was now, back in Aveline as a man. A man who I still felt connected to and who I wanted to get to know.
Everything happened for a reason, or so they said, and for once, I was choosing to believe it.
I went back to the bakery the next day to talk with Lenora about everything. I sat on the counter, something I used to do while she’d baked in the mornings while I’d been in college, and began to tell her about meeting with Tuck.
“He seems the same when I’m with him. It’s weird. You would think we wouldn’t have anything to talk about or that we would feel awkward around each other, but we don’t. We just talk and laugh and it feels… normal,” I said, watching her mix ingredients.
Lenora had a gleam in her big, brown eyes. “It’s not weird at all,” she replied. “You and Tuck are soulmates. I’ve known it since the moment you walked into my bakery door and I saw his eyes fill with hearts. I called it that day because I had never seen Tuck Anderson look at anyone the way he looked at you.”
I felt my body buzz with electricity. I’d never doubted that what we’d had that summer had been real love. Even as a grown woman, I knew that Tuck and I had not been just two kids with a crush. We hadn’t been just a summer thing. Tuck and I had been more in love that summer than most people would ever be in their entire lives. It was what had made finding anyone after him so difficult. How could anyone else compete with a love that you could feel all the way to your bones?
They hadn’t.
They couldn’t.
“It’s just unfortunate, you know?” I said, lowering my head and picking at my nails.
“What is?”
“That so much time has passed. It’s too late now. I feel like if I would have just written to him, even one time, things could have been different. But now it would never be the same as it was,” I admitted.
Lenora stopped what she was doing and came over to me, taking my hands in hers. “Lettie, it’s not supposed to be the same. No relationship stays the same. Take Teddy and I for instance. We’ve been together forever, and our love now is not the same as it was back when we first fell for each other. We grew, and so did our love. Just because things won’t be the same doesn’t mean it can’t be good. It may end up even better.”
She kissed my hands and went back to stirring.
Lenora was right, as she had always been, and it gave me something to think about. Tuck and I didn’t have to be the same as we’d been that summer. We didn’t have to put pressure on ourselves to be the people we had been, but instead, we could be who we were now. Maybe, just maybe, he’d been right all those years ago that it was fate that would pull us together again. And if he’d been wrong, well, maybe we could each gain a really good friend either way.
“Why are you so smart?” I asked her, hopping from the counter.
“Because I’m old! When you’re old, you’ll be as smart as me too.” She winked and I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her back.
