Page 161 of The Lonely Road

But then again, I’ve always been a fixer, and if I can’t fix this, I’m not worthy of that dubious title.

CHAPTER 39

taya

Since Bree wants to get drunk and not in public, Joy offers up her place and comes to town to pick up wine, Bree, and me, and in that order.

Kincaid Farms in the evening is gorgeous—the big house is lit from the inside, the greenhouse is gleaming, there is the sound of horses, the smell of cottonwood and hay, and the delicious scent of a Colorado summer.

Mav is on the porch when we pull in.

He watches the three of us getting out of Joy’s Jeep, at the case of wine, at our expressions.

“I’ll go into town,” he says.

“You’re very smart,” Joy tells him.

He gives Bree and me a quick hug. Kisses his wife on the cheek, gets into his truck, and goes without being asked twice, which is one of the many reasons Aria Kincaid gazes at her husband the way she does.

“We didn’t let Aria cook.” Joy puts the red wine, white wine, and champagne in their appropriate wine fridges.

Aria is a wine connoisseur—she used to manage a vineyard in California, so their home always has some of the best wine in the valley.

“I am a really good cook,” Aria protests as she looks through the wine Joy bought in the fridge with a critical eye.

“She cooks like a granola head,” Joy counters. “We are getting food from Blackwood Prime.”

Bree pushes her blonde hair off her face. “I need grease with my alcohol.”

Joy nods appreciatively. “Truffle fries are greasy.”

I miss Sienna in the moment. I wish she were here—she’d have a blast with these women.

I called her after the debacle with Mason, and she was gleefully delighted that I kneed him. I still can’t believe I did that. I feel awful about it—mostly. But a small part of me is a little pleased by his discomfort.

What lingers most, though, is relief—that he isn’t just the man who stole from me, but also the man who came back, apologized to Mac and Clara, and is trying to make it right.

I know what it is to look back at a life you lived and find that some of your choices haven’t aged well.

When I was at the firm in Aspen, it felt right—felt earned. And that doesn’t change, because I have a new calling. I’ve just evolved inside it. Nobody pointed a finger at me. Nobody called me a hypocrite. I arrived at the reckoning on my own terms, and I did something about it.

Mason may be on that same road.

And if I’m being honest, I never went back to look at the cases I worked on in Aspen. Never traced what my filings did to the families on the other side of them. Never looked for a Clara Whitman in my own history. It takes—real courage, or at least real honesty—to look at what you did when you believed you were doing it right, to see the fallout clearly, and to decide that better is still possible.

All of that is true.

It doesn’t unbreak my heart.

That’s the part I don’t know what to do with. The part that sits in my chest at three in the morning, regardless of what my mind has worked out. I can hold two things simultaneously—I can believe in his evolution and still be broken by what he did. I can understand the journey and still be the damage left behind.

Understanding a man doesn’t mean you’re healed from him.

Bree pours champagne into glasses. The liquid fizzes softly, catching the light as it tips. According to Aria, every evening must start with champagne, and then we can move on to other wines.

Joy is halfway into the bags from Blackwood Prime, the smell wafting through the air before anything even comes out—burgers wrapped in paper, fries dusted with salt and doused in truffle butter, fried chicken still holding onto heat, buffalo wings sharp with vinegar and spice.

She lays everything out without ceremony, one container after another, turning the dining table in the kitchen from polished to lived-in in under a minute.