Return to sender, p.1
Return to Sender, page 1
part #1 of Pine Falls Series
Return to Sender
A Pine Falls Novel
Jennifer Peel
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer Peel
All rights reserved.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dedication
To the little girls who live inside each of us
who think they aren’t enough.
Please know that you are.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
About the Author
Prologue
“Ariana, what if I told you I loved you,” Jonah whispered in my ear, bringing me out of my sleepy haze.
I held impossibly still in his arms, hoping he thought I was still asleep. I told him from the beginning not to fall in love with me, and I promised I would never fall in love with him. I supposed we were both liars now.
“I know you’re awake.” He kissed my head.
I held back my tears and nestled into his chest, knowing this would be the last time. His chest hairs, peeking out from his button-up, tickled my nose. I would miss this. I would miss him more.
“Ariana?”
“Jonah, go back to sleep, you have to be back at the hospital in two hours.”
He frequently crashed at my place to catch a few z’s during his grueling year of clinical rotations at Pine Falls General in his last year of med school. My apartment was closer, and he was . . . well, he was infectious like a disease, but one you never wanted to be cured of. We were supposed to have remained friends only. That morphed into kissing friends. Then he started showing up at my door late at night or even in the middle of the night saying he needed to see my face or asking if he could just hold me. He’d slept on my couch so much the past several months I should have started charging him rent. I should have never let him in, but there was no saying no to his jade-green eyes and those dimples. Don’t get me going on his boyish charm.
“I love you.” He nuzzled my ear.
I tried to wiggle out of his arms. “Don’t say that. Please,” I begged.
He wrapped his arms around me tighter. “I’m not Kaden or your father, and you aren’t your mother.” The edge in his tone said he couldn’t believe I hadn’t subscribed to his way of thinking by now. Believe me, he had been difficult to resist, but resist I must.
I gripped his shirt and twisted it in my hands. My tears dripped on the soft fabric.
He stroked my long strawberry blonde hair. “I know you miss her.”
I wasn’t crying because I missed my mom. I was crying because I already missed him.
My relationship with my mother was complicated. She’d put me through so much. I wanted to believe she had done her best, though her best was far below average. But she did end up being right about men: they were nothing but heartache waiting to happen. Maybe Jonah wasn’t my father, who I’d never known except for the mysterious letter I received once a year that always went unopened and returned to sender. But for all I knew, Jonah could be a Kaden—seemingly wonderful and true to his word, until I’d found out it was all a lie. Thank goodness my engagement ring had needed to be sized. Had it not, I might have never figured out Kaden was engaged to another woman at the same time he was engaged to me.
With more force this time, I wrestled out of Jonah’s arms and sat up on the couch, running my hands through my hair, wishing more than anything that he would have kept to the rules we agreed upon when we became friends. More than that, I wished he could have his wish—me.
“You don’t want me,” I said. “I don’t fit into your doctor world. I didn’t even go to college. You’d be better off with Dani or Kinsley.” They were my best friends, and technically my aunts, even though they were younger than me.
I blamed Dani for bringing Jonah into my life in the first place. She’d met him along with her own unrequited love, Brock, at school in Boulder. Brock and Jonah were premed while Dani was studying sociology. She was out to save every foster kid she could. She felt she owed the world at least that after Grandma Kay and Grandpa Sam fostered and then adopted her and Kinsley. She credited them for saving their lives. I got pulled into their mix when Brock and Jonah started doing rotations at Pine Falls General last year.
Jonah sat up and leaned against the arm rest, scrubbing a hand over the dark stubble on his face that offset his sandy brown hair. “As much as I admire and respect Dani and Kinsley, they aren’t you. Don’t dishonor me or you by using your lack of a degree as an excuse. You know that I love what you do.” He ran his finger down my bare arm. “Ariana, I’ve accepted an internal medicine residency offer in Ann Arbor.” He paused. “I want you to come with me.”
I propelled myself off the couch, my heart about ready to beat out of my chest, and headed toward the kitchen to make coffee. It was too early in the morning for this kind of talk. I couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving, but I knew it was for the best. “I can’t move to Michigan with you.”
He stood and followed me the short distance to the kitchen. He folded his arms and sighed. “You mean you won’t.”
That was exactly what I meant, but I blamed it on my grandma. “If I leave, Grandma would have to sell her glass art studio.” I currently ran the studio and taught most of the classes we offered there. I grabbed the coffee pot to fill with water.
Jonah took it right out of my hands, set it on the cluttered counter, and gently turned me toward him. He tipped up my chin with his finger, making sure our eyes met.
I stared into his bloodshot eyes, wishing things could be different, but life had taught me they never were. We would eventually end, just like over half of the population. I couldn’t bear us hating each other, or worse, him proving my mother right. It was best to end it while all my memories of him were fond ones. Like I had always planned on doing for both our sakes. But I hadn’t planned on him. I got lost in him and waited too long to walk away.
He rested his hand on my cheek. “You’re making excuses.”
“I love my job and my life here.” That was true.
“I know that, and we would try and come back here eventually, but you can open a studio in Michigan or wherever we end up after my residency.”
I turned away from him and grabbed the pot. “Life isn’t that simple. And I don’t have that kind of money.”
“I do.” He leaned against the old Formica countertop.
He wasn’t helping his plight. It was only a reminder that he came from a “normal” family. His parents had been married forever and were both successful dentists in St. Louis. His mom certainly hadn’t blown up her wedding dresses like mine had, or toured the country with her daughter in tow seeing how many worthless men she could marry in the span of fifteen years. To top it off, his parents didn’t think too highly of me. They’d made that very clear when they visited last month, even though they believed Jonah and I were only friends. They thought it was a crime that I bucked social norms and skipped out on higher education.
I turned on the water. “I’m not taking your money.”
“What if it was ours?”
My head popped up. “What are you saying?” Wait. I didn’t want him to say it. I dropped the pot in the sink and rushed to place my finger on his soft lips. The ones I had reveled in feeling against my own many times. “Please don’t ask.” My voice cracked.
He removed my finger with a hefty exhale. He clasped my hand and let our hands fall together to our sides. “If I don’t, I’ll always regret it.”
“Even if you know the answer will be ‘no’?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he pled. “We’re good together and you know it.”
A hundred memories of us played at high speed in my head. They were all wonderful, from taking late-night hikes to eating ice cream in our pajamas at the nearby café. I remembered the first time he’d called and asked me to ice cream, I told him I was in my pajamas and the bra had already come off. He’d said, “Perfect, I’ll meet you there in my pajamas, and I won’t wear my bra either.”
It hadn’t been only fun and games though. He was there for the difficult times too. He’d held my hand when my mom slipped into a
“We are good together now,” I countered, even though I couldn’t make eye contact with him. I didn’t want him to see the shadow of doubt that filled my own. He was making me question the cold hard truth I had on my side. I’d seen for myself and had firsthand experience how devastated a man could and would leave you, given the chance. The first man who should have loved me left me before I was even born.
“That’s your mom talking.”
With my free hand, I held onto the counter for support. “Every man in my life, I’ve had to return. I refuse to let you be one of them.”
He pulled me to him and leaned his forehead against mine. His breath cascaded down my face like a warm waterfall. “What do you think you’re doing now?”
“Saving us.”
“No, Ariana.” He kissed my nose. “You’re throwing us away.”
“I told you not to fall in love with me,” I cried.
His tears mingled with mine. “By then it was too late.”
Chapter One
Nine Years Later
“Goldie Hawn, now that it’s November and officially cold, what outfit should I wear today? Mustard sweater with a hole in the pit, or gray sweatshirt with a gravy stain?” I asked my goldfish while I stretched my arm, trying to reach for the warmer clothes on the top shelf of my closet.
Goldie stopped mid turn in her bowl and flashed me a look that said no grown woman of thirty-five should be asking that question. It was probably a fair assumption, but I ignored her and kept blindly reaching for the clothes. With one more good stretch, I yanked on what I thought was the sweatshirt. Unfortunately, that tipped an old shoebox over and a shower of odds and ends rained down on me.
“Crap!” I tried to cover my head as best I could.
I swore I heard Goldie laugh.
“Keep it up and you’ll be taking a joy ride down the toilet,” I threw out an empty threat. Goldie knew she was safe. Who else would I discuss my myriad of issues with? She was the cheapest therapist around. Which was probably why I was still dressing like a hobo. You get what you pay for.
Ugh. I bent down to clean up the mess before getting dressed for the day. I grabbed the tattered old shoebox and began gathering my old trinkets—tubes of Lip Smackers lip gloss that were probably dried up and notes folded to look like triangles from high school friends. There were even some old photos. One photo in particular. A photo I wasn’t sure why I kept.
I leaned against the wall and stared at the faded polaroid I had salvaged when I was a little girl from a pile of junk my mom was going to throw away. If she had known I saved the photo or even that I knew it existed, she would have been furious. But I had wanted to know what he looked like.
I brushed my finger over the picture of Roger Stanton, the man whose blue eyes and last name I shared. He was standing next to my mom in front of the Camp Alpine sign where they had met as camp counselors several years prior. In the white space under the photo in faded pen it read, Roger and me, with a tiny heart next to the script.
I wasn’t sure what killed me more, the inscription or my mom’s permed blonde hair and shoulder pads. Who needed shoulder pads in a t-shirt? It wasn’t as bad as Roger’s feathered-back auburn hair and his ridiculously short athletic shorts. I knew it had been the style in the early eighties, but it seemed wrong in any era for men to wear such tight, high shorts. I could see Roger’s charm though. He had an athletic build and a handsome, angular face.
When I was growing up, I would secretly hold the picture against my chest whenever I got scared and wish with all I had that Roger would come and rescue me from the madness Mom was subjecting me to. Even now, as I touched the old photo of Roger holding my mom’s hand while she smiled up at him as if she could see forever in him, I wondered what had happened. Why had Roger disappeared?
Mom rarely talked about him and when she did it was only after she’d had a few too many drinks. Most of the time it was to warn me to never open the letter from Roger that arrived every Christmas Eve without fail, even if it was on the weekend. A special courier always delivered it.
I’d kept my word and always returned it to sender, though I was more than curious what was in the letter-sized envelope from Dr. R. Stanton. The envelope never had more than his name on it, which spoke volumes to me. He didn’t want me to know where he lived. I think that more than anything kept me from opening it. To spite him, somehow.
However, I did once try to search for him when I was twenty-seven. When I googled his name, 7.8 million search results popped up. I went through at least a hundred pages searching for the man who looked like the picture I held. I even tried narrowing it down to Chicago, the only place I’d known he had lived, but all it ever came up with was a bunch of old men who couldn’t possibly be him. I gave up after that. He wasn’t worth the effort. After all, I could blame him for a lot of the reasons I was seeking therapy from my goldfish.
It was odd, though, how he knew where to find me no matter where we lived. I say odd, but it was unsettling. And sad. If he cared enough to know where I was, why didn’t he come himself? My mom wouldn’t tell me, so I dreamt up my own reasons. For a long time, I imagined he was a CIA agent and he stayed away to protect me. But when I was around twelve, I figured out that was ridiculous since he was only twenty-one when he met my mom. Too young to be in the CIA, unless he lied about his age.
It made more sense that he was in the witness protection program. Right.
And more outlandish was the fantasy I had that he was the prince of a European country and wanted to see what it was like to be a commoner, so he disguised himself as a camp counselor. He didn’t count on falling in love with my mom because he was already betrothed. It broke his heart to leave my mom and me, but his family would have disowned him if he didn’t.
I came up with this farfetched dream after my mom let it slip that my dad had told her if he ever had a daughter, he wanted her to be named Ariana. That was a pretty royal sounding name to me at the time. I was never sure why Mom honored his wish or gave me his last name. I’d asked, but all she would ever say was it was meant to be my name.
But as I aged, I realized I wasn’t going to be a princess, and that Dr. Stanton was really a selfish jerk who impregnated a young woman and didn’t want to take responsibility for it. The way Grandma told it, my mom came home from Camp Alpine that year saying she had met the man of her dreams, a premed student from Chicago, and they were planning on getting married when he graduated with his undergrad. She forgot to mention she was pregnant. Or maybe she didn’t know right away.
A month later, though, according to Grandma, my mom went crazy after a long-distance phone call to Chicago. Grandma never knew what happened on that call, but she said her Joanie was never the same. It wasn’t long after that, Mom left with some guy named Jeff, who I’m sure was a loser because all her men were. Grandma thinks she turned to her wild, free-loving ways to try and fill the void Roger Stanton left.
Little did Roger know he’d created a hole in me too. Not only by ignoring me for my entire life, but by the impact his actions had on my mom.
My life could be broken into two time periods, BC and AD. I wasn’t talking about Before Christ and Anno Domini; I was referring to much more recent and personal eras, Before Carl and After Dynamite.
My first fifteen years of life were Before Carl. During that time, my mom was married four times and had two live-in boyfriends as she tried to fill the crater-sized hole in her heart created by her first love, maybe her only love.
My mom’s first husband, Doug, I couldn’t remember, but she referred to him as a deadbeat. In my opinion, they all fell under that category. Then came Isaac, he was the first stepfather I remembered. He was one of those people who believed children should be seen but not heard. Unfortunately, at the time, I liked to be heard. I was punished plenty for it. Everything from spankings to going without dinner. We lived in Tahoe with him, and the only decent thing he ever did was teach me how to ride a bike.
