Page 113 of Merging Wright

I sit upright in my seat, suddenly questioning what I’d done. I’d gone to Myles because I didn’t want to disappoint him. However, we were in a position that he could take over. He had all the contacts, although I’d made plenty of connections within the town.

“What are you not saying, Garrett?” I challenge him.

“I’ve just never known you to leave anything unfinished.” He pauses. “And Wrightwood wasn’t done, correct?”

Back in Wrightwood, we still had bits and pieces to complete. The fire was a setback. But Garrett is right. I wasn’t one to give up. A setback was a challenge I often welcomed. I refused to be defeated. There was only one person who could bring me to my knees.

“I really don’t think I can face Mach.” The admission is hard to swallow.

“What about that little girl?” Lindee asks, crisscrossing her legs on her seat.

Willow. How could I forget Willow?

During her days in Wrightwood, Lindee had met my sweet little shadow. Lindee had teased me about my attention to her, mothering her, treating her like I’d once treated Lindee as a child. Lindee even commented how eerie it was Willow had features similar to me.

“What little girl?” Garrett questions, turning his head from Lindee to me.

“Willow,” Lindee clarifies.

A vision of my girl comes to mind. She isn’t actually mine, but we’d formed such a strong bond. My sidekick of sorts, as Mach called her, but she was stronger than a side character. She was a survivor. She was like me.

“I didn’t say goodbye,” I whisper, realization settling in. I hadn’t told Willow I was leaving. Did she wonder what happened to me? Was she hurt I didn’t see her before I left? My head wasn’t in the right place when I’d rushed to pack a bag and leave Camilla’s home.

With Garrett’s eyes still on me, I quickly explain who Willow is.

“And you left her?” He sits up straighter, his voice incredulous with a sprinkle of accusation. The four of us share residual effects of our father disappearing on us as children. Garrett and I had it rougher than our younger siblings when our father left. We were old enough to remember him. We remember the fights between our parents before he went away. We remember the tears from our mother and her heartbreak for years as we held our family together while mere children. Mae chooses to forget. Lindee has no memory of him.

“Why do I feel like you’re accusing me of something? I don’t have a claim to the child.” Still, my heart hammers at the thought of leaving her with unanswered questions.

“Do you want one?” Garrett stares at me.

“I . . .” I didn’t know how to answer him. I did want Willow, which felt selfish and sad. She belonged to Theo Clarke. Still . . .

“She’s not going into foster care.” The idea of Willow with people who aren’t from Wrightwood, who don’t define what Wrightwood means, which is family, friendship, and love, hits me so hard I flinch back in my chair, and it rocks against the hard wood beneath it.

Mae gasps. Lindee stares at me, but Garrett slyly smiles.

“Do you think I let her down?” I glance from sibling to sibling. “Did I let down the town?”

I’d worried about Myles because he was losing out if we didn’t finish by Kringle Fest. Wrightwood as a community brimmed with enthusiasm that the festival would happen, bigger and better than it ever had been. Businesses would be open with new faces and interiors, and the Christmas season was going to be extra special this year.

I’d made that promise to them.

And I wanted to be there to see it happen.

I deserved to see all my work come to fruition.

“Uh oh. She has that look in her eye,” Mae teases beside me.

“There’s the fighter I know,” Garrett adds.

Lindee only smiles, sensing my plan.

I wasn’t finished with Wrightwood.

+ + +

As I rush to pack and book a flight as close to Wrightwood as I can get, my phone rings.