Page 16 of The False Flat

“Bravo!” he said.

Deanna nodded. “Thank you, Pen.”

Grant was silent.

William steered the conversation back to food and then suggested I come on their Sunday bike ride. Yeah, right. But Deanna wouldn’t let me leave without agreeing to go or without taking leftovers (she’d made a whole second roast). So I took my pork, packed neatly in a biodegradable to-go container, and promised Deanna I’d go on their ride as I left their home, pretending I wasn’t still simmering and that the evening hadn’t ended in a way that showcased I wasn’t friend material.

At the door, Deanna leaned in. “I had a feeling about you. I needed that. Grant is an angel, the greatest man I know, but he’s also overprotective of me. No one stands up to him when he goes on his verbal tangents. Because they know his intentions are good, and, most of the time, he’s right. But you, you took him down a peg right when he needed it. I think I’ll keep you.” Her smile held so much humor it crinkled the corners of her eyes.

But the interaction had thrown me off, and I couldn’t really respond. I kept a weird, crackly smile on my face until I got into my car, where it dropped onto the floorboard of my Mazda.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

A sharp tapping on my window startled my eyelids open again.

Grant.

I rolled my window halfway down and stared at him.

“I need to apologize,” he said. “Deanna told me about your financial business. I didn’t mean to insult you or to insinuate anything about someone who works hard. Sometimes I come off as a bulldozing know-it-all. It’s just that my sister’s been through a lot, and as her older brother, I try to take care of her. Good intentions . . .”

Exactly what Deanna had said. He loved his sister. He cared about his sister. It was sweet.

It was crushing.

“I shouldn’t have been so defensive.” The words slid through my tight lips, my smile lost in the dark floorboard.

Silence.

More silence.

Was he expecting something else? Because that’s all I had.

He nodded and wished me good night, a hesitant wave on the end of his hand.

My head gave a curt nod as I watched him walk to his own car, and then I pushed the gas harder than I meant to, forgetting I was still in park. I jerked the car into drive, my face reddening, and sped off down the road, wishing I’d biked the six miles over.

Hell as it was, this evening had taught me a quick lesson. I had a past. My past had shaped me into an immovable form, and that form didn’t belong with these people. Despite what Deanna had said, it would only be a matter of time before they cracked me open and uncovered the scrambled eggs inside.

And that’s when Chad settled back into my mind, and even the thought of him made me feel comfortable. He was what I was used to. I didn’t even have to pretend he was a freaking number. He was just Chad. He didn’t make me feel inferior. I knew that Deanna and her lovely family—minus Grant—hadn’t meant to make me feel that way. They’d been delightful. But I couldn’t help it; the feelings were there. And I didn’t know how to manage them. How could I be surrounded by people but lonelier than ever?

What I’d had with Chad, before the cheating was an issue, wasn’t perfect (obviously), but he was driven, successful, sure of himself. A workaholic who didn’t want kids. Best of all, he was taller than me, one shallow prerequisite to my personal “fairly” tale.

Maybe committing to him was progress. Didn’t everyone deserve a second chance? He hadn’t been the complete jerk I’d thought he’d been. It still wasn’t okay, and I wasn’t justifying his actions, but he and his wife had both been unhappy. This situation wasn’t black or white. It was gray. Like it had been with my mom and dad. Aurora had forgiven my dad because of what they’d been through. We’d lost Brandon, which had led my father to do things he wouldn’t have done previously. Aurora understood that, and her words sprang back to my mind. People are complicated.

Before I changed my mind, I pulled over, located my cell, and did a quick online search for Vicki Gwinn. I found links to her Instagram and Facebook accounts. Before I did what I was thinking of doing, I needed to see more of Chad’s soon-to-be ex-wife, prove to myself that she wasn’t devastated, that what he’d said was true—that they both wanted this divorce.

The beach, a cabin in the mountains, painting some guy’s toenails, a girls’ weekend in Sonoma Valley, a “then and now” family pic with her brothers and sisters. His wife was surrounded, surrounded, by people. And just when I started to doubt I had the right woman, I found one picture of her with Chad, and he looked out of place.

If her online profiles accurately told her story and represented what was important to her, then Chad wasn’t.

I reread the text he’d sent me earlier in the evening.

He wanted me, was willing to work for us. Maybe, if I worked at us, too, we could have something more.

I typed Let’s talk into the reply box before I could overanalyze. Then I pressed send.

Three little dots appeared on my screen and then abruptly stopped. Two seconds passed, and then my phone rang.