After losing her job and her girlfriend, it's time for Annie Abraham to admit defeat and move back in with her parents. She has hardly been back to her tiny Montana hometown since the unforgettable summer before her senior year of college, when she...
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I haven't been home since I left after lunch on Christmas Day. Tuesday was a day of domestic bliss. Wednesday was spent at the store; Laurel and I could hardly catch a break all day from the people desperate to get out of the house and away from their families for a few minutes, armed with gift cards and cash. Now it's Thursday, halfway through the weird week between Christmas and the new year, and I have some time to myself. Laurel's at work and Hannah's with her at the store; Ava's at daycare, and I just got back from taking Otto to Josh's house.
Which means today I am alone, and I guess now is as good a time as any to break the news to my parents.
Or I could say nothing and they'll figure it out when I start packing up the stuff that, for the most part, I've only just finished unpacking. After mooching about in Laurel's kitchen for a while – it will take some time for me to think of this place as mine, too, as ours – I head out. I still feel like something of an interloper, an imposter in Laurel's life. As though any minute she'll come to her senses and realize that I haven't earned a place in her home.
But until then, I'll make the most of this life I've found for myself. This life that used to feel like something that had slipped through my fingers, like a road not taken that I would never find again. I'm here. I came back, I found that fork in the road, and now I'm here. Part of me thinks this was inevitable. When it comes to Deer Pines, all roads lead to Laurel. It was only a matter of time before she ended up in my life. Or rather, before I crash landed into hers.
Before I can stress out over what could have been – if I hadn't lost my job; if I had loved Holly; if I hadn't come back to my home town – I get back into Laurel's car and I drive the five minutes to my parents' house. It isn't even five minutes. More like three and a half. Every time I came home in the last eight years, she was so close. A mile and a half down the road, waiting for me to find her again.
Nathan and Lily left yesterday, flying back to New York after one last meeting with Laurel, to which my brother brought a contract that he had put together with the help of Lily's eagle eye. I only glossed over it and got the pertinent facts from Laurel: Nathan, of his own volition, stipulated that he will pay fifteen percent of his salary each month until Ava turns twenty-one.
I've always known my brother makes good money but I didn't realize how good until I saw what that fifteen percent amounts to. Way more than I make from the bookstore. I guess it pays to work in New York banking. Laurel chose the right guy to knock her up – there's even a college addendum in there, outlining that if Ava needs financial support, should she choose to go to college, Nathan will provide it in the role of the supportive uncle, rather than any sort of parental obligation or fatherly gesture.
Everything's coming up roses, I guess. I just hope I'm not about to upset my mom, especially with Dad heading off to Alaska in a few days for another job that will take him away from home for at least four weeks.
I let myself into the house and find my mom knitting in the living room with Cooper's head on her lap. She looks up when she sees it's only me and says, "Hi there, stranger."
