I stifle a chuckle, but not at my father—at Odette. I imagine she’s the main reason he’s yet to “hang up his hat.” They’ve been married since I was five, but they’ve never been overly wild about each other. It always seemed like a companionship sort of arrangement. My father was a lonely widower with money and Odette wanted someone to take care of her. I’m sure he also thought he was getting some kind of mother figure out of the deal for my benefit, but motherhood was never on Odette’s bucket list. The woman doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body, but at least she was always real about it. She’s never been fake or pretended to care when she didn’t. She’s always kept me at arm’s length and it’s been no skin off my back.
We have an understanding.
We all do.
“Blaire, are you still there?” Odette asks.
“Yeah. Yes. I’m just … trying to figure out the logistics … I’ve got an audition next week … and we’re short at work …”
“Need I remind you this is your father we’re talking about?” Her voice is cutting and curt.
I bury my face in my hands. I know how this sounds. And she’s right. Over the years, I’ve gotten away with giving them a million excuses as to why I can’t come home. But now that my father is laid up, all of those excuses are null and void.
It isn’t that I don’t want to see him or that I don’t want to come home—it’s that I don’t want to see the other him.
Wyatt Buchanan.
For ten years, I’ve avoided the man like the plague.
But to be fair, he avoided me first.
2
Blaire
* * *
I kill the engine of my rental car and stare into the dimly lit windows of my childhood home. I imagine it still smells like the cinnamon Odette uses to cover up the tell-tale scents of her three Persian cats. I imagine every side table and wingback chair is still covered in those frilly white doilies Odette knits when she’s bored. If it were wintertime, the fireplace would be aglow in the front room, but given that it’s June, there’s likely a few cracked windows letting a warm breeze trail through the house.
Two days ago, I never would’ve imagined I’d be setting foot in Whiskey Springs this week. In fact, sometimes I liked to pretend that this place was a figment of my imagination. A false memory of sorts. In acting school, they teach us to draw upon our own personal traumas and experiences to rouse up emotions, to bring them to our character’s surface.
It was painful as hell, but it worked like a charm every time.
I’d think of my mother, whose life was cut tragically short in a freak car accident on the way home from the grocery store. When that didn’t work, I’d think of the pain and emptiness my father must have felt after losing her and how hard it must’ve been to look into my eyes—which were the same hazel-brown as hers—and feel so close to her yet impossibly far away at the same time. If those didn’t do the trick, I’d think of Wyatt.
If I’m being honest, I thought of Wyatt more than I should have, but to be fair, there was a lot to draw from. The highest of highs. The lowest of lows. Magic and tragic—that’s how I would define whatever it was we shared for those four years.
Everything and nothing.
Two sides of the same cruel coin.
Climbing out of the car, I grab my suitcase from the trunk and make my way to the front door. Planting myself at the welcome mat, I realize I don’t know whether I should knock or just go in. I grew up here, but it hasn’t been my home since a lifetime ago.
Clearing my throat, I rap lightly.
“Coming …” Odette’s voice is followed by quick, light footsteps. The heavy wooden door swings open a moment later, and I’m met with tired, crinkled eyes and a curt smile. “Blaire. You’re early. We weren’t expecting you until at least eight o’clock.”
“My flight was overbooked and they offered me a seat on an earlier one … I can come back later …”
“Oh, heavens no. That’s nonsense. Come on in.” She moves out of the way while I wheel my bag over the threshold and brace myself for the cinnamon-scented assault on my lungs. “Your father’s in the kitchen finishing his dinner if you want to head in there.”
She clasps her hands at her narrow waist, studying me with her signature lukewarm gaze.
“You can leave your bag at the bottom of the stairs for now,” she says. “Your room is exactly how you left it.”
I lift my brows, but keep my thoughts to myself. A handful of times over the years, she’d mentioned turning it into a craft room or a reading space, but my father always shot her down. He’d remind her there were five bedrooms in this house and she could do whatever she wanted with any of them except for mine.