“Really?” he asks. “This is the first you’ve mentioned that.”
“My lease is up at the end of August … just has me thinking, that’s all.”
“If it’s really what you want to do, I say go for it. You have our full support. Of course, Odette will be bummed about missing out on her thrice-yearly shopping trips to New York, but I’m sure the palm trees and sunshine will more than make up for that.”
“Anything to keep Odette happy.” I wink.
He winks back.
“How long do you think you’ll stick around Whiskey Springs?” he asks.
“I’ve got the next two weeks off,” I say. “But I can extend it if you need me to stay longer. Odette said your doctor’s making you take six weeks off to rest and destress?”
He waves a hand and makes a scrunched face. “These doctors, I tell you. They make mountains out of molehills. See if I ever climb on a ladder again. God forbid a man accidentally misses a step and bumps his head.”
“Try to look at the upside—you’ll get a taste of what retirement could be,” I say. “Think of it as a trial run. Maybe it won’t be so bad?”
“From your lips to God’s ears, Blaire.” He makes the sign of the cross before rising and taking his dinner dishes to the sink. “You going to meet up with any old friends while you’re here? I doubt you want to hang out with old Dad the whole time …”
“Is there anyone left?” I tease. “Seems like everyone got the heck out of Dodge about the same time I did.”
He rinses his plate, nodding. “There are still a few that stuck around, yes.”
My heart lurches in my chest at the thought of bumping into Wyatt. I imagine he’s still around, working his family’s ranch. But I don’t know for sure. A couple of months after I moved away, he stopped taking my calls, stopped returning my texts, and basically fell off the face of the earth with no explanation.
I think of the pact we made—the optimistic, naïve little version of me who lapped up his promise and surrendered to him like a milk-drunk kitten. Those words got me through the rest of that summer and my first homesick months in a new city. Then just like that—they became nothing more than empty, meaningless words.
I know now that I was a fool to think an eighteen-year-old boy was capable of making such a loaded promise, but at the time, he could’ve told me the sky was lime green and I’d have believed him.
“You ever run into the Buchanans at all?” I reference Wyatt’s entire family in hopes it makes my curiosity slightly less obvious.
“I see Renata every now and again, when she stops into the bank or when Odette drags me to the farmer’s market. She’s still selling her soaps and flowers on Sundays. She’s got little some grandkids that help her out now. A boy and a girl. Not sure how old they are.”
The squeeze in my chest is sharp and painful, but it’s fleeting. So much can change in ten years. Some of Wyatt’s brothers must have married, had children. It’s strange to think of them all as grown adults now with lives and real responsibilities.
I don’t discount the fact that perhaps Wyatt did the same.
“They all married off, did they?” I ask because I’m a glutton for punishment. If we’re going to rip the Band-Aid, I’d rather do it all at once.
“Most of them, yes,” he says.
A lump is lodged in my throat, but I swallow it down. “Wyatt? The one I dated—you remember him?”
My dad sniffs and cocks his head. “Pretty hard to forget since you two were attached at the hip for years.”
“Whatever happened to him? We lost touch.”
“As far as I know, he got married a while ago. Imagine he’s probably still working the farm.”
Nausea floods my stomach. I’d always wondered if the reason he quit talking to me was because he met someone else. Out of all the scenarios I’d conjured up in my head, it was the only one that made sense—and it was the most painful of them all.
“You know Ambrose passed a while back, didn’t you?” My dad references the Buchanan patriarch—Wyatt’s father. “Not long after you left, actually.”
“What? No. I had no idea.”
A time or two over the years, I’d attempted various Internet searches on Wyatt, but given that he hated social media and didn’t have time to waste online, I never could find anything about him. All these years, the only things I’ve known was that he stopped talking to me and everything after that was a giant question mark.
I never thought to search obituaries.
“Oh, really? I could’ve sworn I mentioned it to you way back when. Anyway, I heard it was a heart attack.” My father shakes his head, placing his plate and silverware into the dishwasher. “Poor Renata, she’s been struggling ever since. They’ve got that farm mortgaged half to death, but you didn’t hear that from me.”