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HUH. SO TODAY TURNED out to be the day he lost his mind. Not after burying his father when he’d decided to stay in the town he’d always hated. And not the day he picked up Cilla’s razor blade from the floor and stood holding it like a moron and martyring himself.
But today. The day he’d asked Cilla Reddy to move in with him.
The day she’d agreed.
Yeah. He needed to get that straight. She wasn’t moving in with him. She was moving into his house because he had the room and there weren’t many places in Hope Springs that did.
People either lived here all their lives, building on and remodeling as changes in their situations dictated, or they left with no expectations of ever coming back.
He’d never expected to come back, yet he had. Kaylie Keller had. He knew, too, of others who’d been called to the Hill Country for one reason or another. Usually personal.
Like Angelo Caffey who’d returned to marry Luna Meadows. Or Addy’s father Callum Drake whose story Cary had never heard. And though people in town knew who Cary was now, he kept to himself the same way he had the years he’d lived here.
It was comfortable, what he was used to. And focusing on work was easier without the clutter of external distractions.
He had no idea how he was going to keep to himself or stick to his schedule and deadlines with Cilla under his roof.
He wasn’t a fool. She wasn’t interested in him today any more than she’d ever been. It was almost a stretch to say they’d even been friends. Acquaintances, sure, but that covered everyone who’d had a hand in shaping who he’d become.
So when had he started inviting people he barely knew to live in his house?
Cilla, Cary. Not people. Big, big difference.
Yeah. He had several things he was going to have to keep straight.
Cilla found his address on her own and pulled into the driveway, parking near the walkway that led to the front steps. She opened her door before he could get out of the car. Maybe he’d offended her earlier when offering help. He didn’t think he had but he kept his distance.
He didn’t know what she’d been through since graduation, but something had happened to send her back to Hope Springs. It wasn’t just about drowning her sorrows in chocolate and vanilla buttercream. She was about to have a kid. And as far as what he’d learned today, she was on her own.
Then again, the fact that she hadn’t mentioned her parents or her baby’s father and his folks didn’t mean they weren’t involved in her life. Which left him wondering what she was up against.
Cilla had never been flighty. Bubbly and outgoing, sure, but headstrong, too. The poster child for the girl most likely to do everything right. He wondered what had gone so wrong that staying here with him had become her best option.
Because him being anyone’s best option...
Man, he really needed to stop thinking that way because no matter his response to Cilla about his very minor fame, he’d earned it. He wasn’t embarrassed by it. It was just hard at times to believe his life had turned out to include all the things he’d ever loved.
Almost all of them anyway.
He shook off the thought as they climbed to the porch, belatedly asking, “Do you have a bag?”
“It’s in the trunk.” She waved a hand toward the car. “But can we go in? I really need to use the restroom.”
“Sure.” He pushed open the unlocked door, stepping back to let her go first, only to be rocked by the sound of her laughter. He swore his face colored. “Guess that’s my Hope Springs showing.”
“It’s adorable and I love the sense of security, but can you point me...”
“Right,” he said, gesturing. “The hall there. To the left. Second door.”
“Thanks,” she said, dropping her purse on the floral sofa and hurrying away.
Pushing at his glasses, Cary stared at the fabric that was a vintage print, a cream background with sprays of pink roses in fanned greenery. The cushion on the right was worn bald. His mother’s seat. It was closest to his father’s lounger and both faced the TV. His mother had sat and read while his father had flipped through the twenty-four-hour news channels.
He couldn’t remember them having a single meaningful conversation, but in those days he’d only seen what they’d wanted him to see. And it was too late to learn more about who they’d been. Then again, their kicking him out had shown him enough.
He looked back to Cilla’s handbag. It was leather and the color of Tabby Danger’s trench coat, a deep autumn burnt orange to go with her eyes. Tabby’s, not Cilla’s. He imagined it cost more than the sofa had when it was new, and he wondered again what had brought her back to Hope Springs.
She’d seemed so out of place when she’d lived here. So much bigger and brighter than fit the small town. Yet he could totally see her living here now. Some of that, he supposed, had to do with how much the place had changed.
But part of it, he admitted, was because he was seeing things through the eyes of an adult and not a kid willing to do anything to escape. Funny how that anything had come in the form of Cilla’s razor blade.
“Uh, Cary?”
He looked up to see Cilla standing in his studio’s open door. “Yeah?”
“You sure you don’t work for the NSA?”
He watched as she took in his equipment. The monitors alone were impressive, but he was an unyielding tyrant about backing up to his own servers as well as storing his work in the cloud.
Lights blinked and flickered from every corner of the room, a red, blue, and amber show of twinkle and flash. Then there were his art supplies, both digital and mixed media, and all the tech used for his animation.
On either side of the doorway, on walls Cilla couldn’t see from where she stood, hung framed covers of every issue of The Adventures of Tabby Danger. He liked seeing them when he left the room. He liked being reminded of his purpose-driven work that felt like play.
Of the joy he brought kids who read for pleasure.
Of the hope he brought others who had none.
They were the ones who stuck with him, the ones who looked beyond Tabby’s capers, who followed her journey to overcome a past spent abandoned in shelters and bullied by toms.
If he offered one kid a reason not to give up, to endure neglect or worse, survive abuse, then the realism he’d drawn on for his fiction would be worth revisiting his own ugly past.
Cilla turned to him then without entering the room. “You really shouldn’t leave this place unlocked, Cary.”
“I guess not.”
“This setup must be worth a small fortune.”
He could see where this was going and deservedly so. “It is, yeah.”
“I mean insurance will obviously replace the equipment in case of a fire or theft but you’re risking your intellectual property...” She let the sentence trail, shaking her head wryly. “I’m sorry. I’m butting in where I have no business—”
“It’s fine.” He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Don’t worry about it. I have multiple backups, but I’ll start locking the doors. You’re right.”
“It would make me feel better if you did. Not because I’m here,” she hurried to add, “but I’d hate for you to lose anything.”
He took her at her word because he had no reason not to. Besides, it meant a lot that she cared. “I’ll just need to remember my key when I go out. And find one for you.”
“Thank you,” she said and looked back at the room. “This really is amazing. I always pictured you hunched over a table with brushes and bottles of ink and colored pencils.”
“Not for a lot of years,” he said, wondering why she’d ever pictured him drawing. Wondering why she’d held on to the memory. Wondering most of all why the idea had his heart racing.
“Did you get a degree in art?” she asked, finally turning toward the main room, slipping off her sweater and draping it next to her purse.
She’d taken it off while they’d eaten but only after they’d settled into their chairs. And she’d tugged it back on before standing. With the bulky garment out of the way, he could see how far along she was.
She was huge. Even larger than he’d realized when he’d first seen her on Fourth Street.
“When are you due?” Crap. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to say.”
A nervous smile played across her lips as her hand settled protectively on her bulk. “Are you sure?”
To cover his gaffe, he went back to what she’d asked. “I never got a degree. I never went to college.”
“Really? I thought you of all people...” Frowning as if unsure about going on, she paused, then rushed forward with, “I’m due on Christmas Day.”
Her due date was suddenly the last thing in the world he cared about. “What do you mean, me of all people?”
“C’mon, Cary,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and above her belly as she moved to put the sofa between them. “Everyone knew how brilliant you were. How brilliant you are. How talented,” she added, and he huffed in response. “It’s true. We all did.”
He didn’t buy her insistence. “News to me.”
“Well, you were rather... unapproachable,” she said archly. “But believe me when I say that most of us thought you should be going to Rutgers or Bard or MIT. Their art programs are amazing.”
“MIT costs money,” he said, stopping short of asking who she meant by most of us. And why any of them thought about him at all. “And I didn’t have the grades for a free ride. Or, you know, a diploma.”
He would kick himself forever for that, because a stellar GPA wouldn’t have been that hard to earn if he’d returned the next year to graduate. He’d just been more interested in getting out than where he’d end up after leaving.
“I suppose a degree would’ve been a waste of your time,” Cilla said into his musings. “You seem to have done well for yourself without one.”
“It would’ve cut down on the trial and error,” he said with a shrug. It was easier than going into all the things he’d done wrong before finding his calling with Tabby Danger.
“Was there a lot of that?” She reached for her sweater then left it on the back of the couch, tracing a rib of cable-knit with one finger. “On your way to being a celebrity?”
“Some, sure,” he said, her earlier words still echoing through him. “But probably no more than any teenager trying to find himself. And then I wasn’t a teenager anymore.”
Another moment passed, and she picked up her sweater, her voice soft as she asked, “Why didn’t you say anything? You didn’t tell anyone you were leaving or where you were going. You didn’t even say goodbye.”
He thought about rushing out with the truth, telling her now what he’d wanted to tell her then, but he bit back the words and said simply, “I didn’t have a reason to stay.”
It was a truthful response and yet it didn’t answer all of what she’d asked. The time for that admission had passed, and yet... She held his gaze, her expression telling him everything he needed to know: she’d been fully aware of the life he’d lived in this house.
Well, crap.
He glanced at the floor, rocked back on his heels, finally looked up again, and, one more time, locked the past away. “You think maybe it would be easier if you took my bedroom down here? I can move upstairs.”
“I’m pregnant, Cary,” she said, her eyes misty, her smile tremulous but true. “I’m not an invalid. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She didn’t sound sure about anything. And the only response he could think to make was, “So, I should get your bag then?”