A darling handyman, p.14
A Darling Handyman, page 14
“Feeling better?”
Sarah nodded and turned to an older woman smiling down at her with the patience only someone who had stood in her shoes could have.
“You look like you’re about my daughter’s age. She’s going through the same thing right now. Not that I don’t remember my own experience. I wasn’t lucky enough to make it to the bathroom. Threw up on the side of the boat.”
Sarah pushed herself up to stand and washed her hands. She wouldn’t be eating cupcakes again for a while. “I think I’ll be alright. Thank you.”
“How far along are you?”
Sarah frowned. How far along? They’d just left Ketchikan. This woman should know as well as she did. “Um….”
The woman glanced at Sarah’s midsection. “I am guessing the first trimester. That was my worst. You certainly don’t have a giant belly yet!”
The nausea was replaced with dizziness, and Sarah was certain she was going to faint.
The ride back to Darling was the longest of Sarah’s life. She felt numb, and in her mind the same thoughts kept repeating themselves over and over. She couldn’t be pregnant. It wasn’t possible. She was careful. She took birth control.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the dusty boxes of pregnancy tests at the store in town, but that was asking for trouble. She would make an appointment to go back to Ketchikan in two weeks. She was past peeing on a stick—what she needed was a doctor.
She’d tried to do the math. It definitely, probably, most likely, she was almost sure, wasn’t Aaron’s. That was months ago, and she would’ve been showing by now.
That only left one possibility. Will.
The thought alone was enough to make her want to vomit again. A married man who’d lied to her face. She sure knew how to pick them.
But where had Will gotten protection from? Would he have needed those for his wife?
The dusty shelves at the store came back into her mind, and her body broke out in a nervous sweat as she realized they may have used an expired product. Now she was going to have a baby to show for it.
Her head tightened with a migraine. This couldn’t be happening. Suddenly, her insistence on leaving this place and never looking back didn’t seem so dramatic after all. No good came from being here.
She loved a man who was going to leave her. And she was pregnant. Again.
Sarah rested a hand on the outside of her jacket. Pregnant. She had told no one the last time. Only Andre. It had been the last thing she’d said to him before he’d gotten on the boat that had grown smaller and smaller until she couldn’t see him anymore.
Then Julia had come to town, and not soon after, Sarah had lost the baby. She had been hysterical, and no one had known why. No one had known that she’d lost the last connection she’d had to the love of her life.
Her parents had begged her to tell them what was wrong, but Sarah had kept her silence. She’d been embarrassed. Andre had been cheating on her, and she’d been too devastated about the baby to say it out loud. So she’d left.
Sarah gripped the handrail as she walked off the boat. One thing at a time.
Right now, she had to face Will and Rachel. It was laughable that she might be pregnant with his baby, like something from a soap opera. Or it would’ve been laughable if she hadn’t felt so completely confused about her own life.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Will
Will was driving himself crazy. Taking care of the lodge alone and getting Rachel to go home had been nothing compared to waiting for Sarah to get back. Every time the door had opened, he’d stopped breathing, hoping it would be her.
What if she didn’t come back? Will dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. He wasn’t thinking rationally. Sarah would be back, just like she’d said she would. People didn’t just disappear.
She had been vague about her reasons for going to Ketchikan, and he hadn’t pushed her. He was just happy she was still speaking to him at all. Then again, there weren’t a lot of choices for a replacement who could run the lodge at the last minute. It wasn’t like she’d fire him. Or would she?
He paced the living room, Bart at his heels. His body hummed with nervous energy, and he wished he could go for a hike, or maybe take Bart down to the water so the dog could run and snap at the foamy waves. But he’d promised Sarah he would help at the lodge, so he’d kept himself stationed there in case a guest needed something. The last thing he wanted was for Sarah to come back and find him gone.
Bart soon tired of walking in circles and went to settle on his dog bed. Will envied him. In his next life, he wanted to come back as a dog. Dogs didn’t have to worry about destroying their personal lives by being an idiot.
He made his way into the sitting room, where he eyed the liquor cabinet. His mouth watered. Was it too early for an Irish coffee? That might help him relax.
As he reached for the whiskey, the front door opened. His heart jumped into his throat. Was she back? He peered around the doorway.
Sarah walked in and slipped off her rain jacket and boots. She looked pale, her hair tangled. Dark smudges sat under both her eyes.
His heart squeezed. As miserable as he’d been, Sarah was the real victim here. And he was the one who hurt her. “How was the ferry?”
She avoided his gaze. “Same as always.”
He decided not to beat around the bush. He didn’t want to waste another minute of the limited time he had left with Sarah. “Rachel’s gone.”
Sarah’s gaze flicked up. “Oh.”
Will took a step towards her. He knew she was upset, and rightfully so, but once he left Alaska, he’d have no chance of fixing things between them. “Sarah, please let me explain. She didn’t tell you the entire story.”
She looked to the door of her office and then back at him. “Fine. Let’s go sit down.”
They made their way to the couch where Bart instantly hopped into Sarah’s lap, positioning his head under her hand for pets.
Will cleared his throat. “Can I get you anything?”
She shook her head. “Just tell me what you want to tell me.”
He took a deep breath. It was now or never. “Rachel and I haven’t been romantic for a long time, okay? The marriage was basically over, or that’s how it felt to me. Yes, I have a company with my best friend. Had. I had a company. He and I built it up from the time we were in college. I worked myself to the bone keeping up on everything in the office while Jason preferred to be out in the field. So maybe part of the problem was that I was almost never home.”
His throat grew tight as he remembered his last few days in Seattle. “The night of our anniversary, Rachel comes and tells me she wants a divorce. Her and Jason, they’ve been seeing each other for a while.”
Sarah frowned. “Your business partner? Your best friend?”
Will nodded. “And the best man at my wedding.”
Her face fell. “Shit. That sucks.”
“It gets better. As we leave the lawyer’s office, Rachel hands me an invitation to their wedding. Not only was the ink not even dry on our divorce papers, our divorce wasn’t even a thing when she started planning. Oh, and she took my shares in the company.”
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t understand. So why did she come here, claiming to be in love?”
Will ran a hand through his hair. “Because that’s how she is. She uses people. If she isn’t getting her way, she’ll find a way. From the sound of it, running the company is a lot more work with me out of the picture. Now that she isn’t just sneaking around with Jason anymore and they are in an actual relationship, it’s apparently not all rainbows and sparkles.”
“So you came up here to get away from all that? And you took this job because you needed it?”
He nodded. “Don’t get me wrong. I have money, but it’s tied up in retirement accounts and investments.”
“Your home?”
“Sold it. Along with my truck. I had to. I couldn’t count on income from the company anymore.”
Sarah let out a deep sigh. “Have I said this sucks yet?”
Will chuckled. “I think it’s worth saying more than once.”
She looked at him, her eyes round with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Will. That sounds awful.”
He reached for her hand, but it was limp and cold in his. “What I am saying is that I didn’t mean to lie to you. I should’ve told you the truth. But I didn’t expect this, us, to happen. I didn’t even know how much it meant to me until Rachel showed up and it fell apart.
“But I’ll be divorced soon, and there is absolutely nothing romantic going on between me and Rachel. By the time she left here, she was already back to talking about her wedding plans.”
Sarah looked at her hand in his, then back up at him. “She is very beautiful.”
“Until you get to know her.” Will brushed the hair back from Sarah’s face, and her expression softened. His heart soared as he realized he was getting through to her. “You’re the most beautiful person in the world to me.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “So, what’s the plan now?”
He sat up, not sure what she was getting at. “What’s the plan? The plan is this. I want to stay here, to be with you.”
Sarah was silent for a moment. Will’s heartbeat pounded in his ears, his confidence from a few seconds ago drained away, replaced by panic.
Her face was blank as she looked him in the eye. “I’m sorry, Will. That’s not going to work. The thing is, I need to thank you, really. You helped me realize this isn’t the life for me.”
His heart crashed into the ground. “What are you talking about?”
She held his gaze. “I’ve accepted the job with Aaron.”
His throat tightened. This wasn’t happening. “But what about the lodge? Half of it is yours now.”
Sarah gave a sad smile. “None of this is mine. I had the paperwork amended. It’s all going to Mac.”
Will swallowed. “That’s why you went to Ketchikan.”
She pulled her hand from his grasp. “So now that I’m leaving, and I am assuming you don’t want to work for Mac, I think you need to consider other options.”
Will searched her face. How had this gone so wrong? “You can’t be serious. This is what you want? Really?”
She wrapped both hands around Bart, leaning over to place a kiss on his head. “It is.” Her voice cracked.
Sarah gently lifted Bart and stood from the couch. She walked to the door before pausing. “It was good that Rachel came here. We were just fooling ourselves. We both know these kinds of things always come to an end.”
She turned away, and he caught a glimpse of a tear running down her cheek. A cold dull pain seeped through his body as he felt the weight of the loss. The weight of everything that would never be.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sarah
Just like that, Will was gone. Sarah had expected him to fight, to resist, but he had done what she’d asked and left. She’d waited a full twenty minutes after she’d heard the door closing behind him to sob.
Pressing her face into her pillow, she hoped no one in the lodge could hear her.
She missed him intensely. She missed Bart’s scruffy fur and Will’s minty smell. The familiar loneliness came for her instantly, twirling its fingers in her hair and wrapping its icy hands around her heart.
Sarah knew she was the one who’d sent him away, and she knew it was the right thing to do. She didn’t deserve to be in love, and look what had happened when she’d tempted fate? It would have never turned out well. That didn’t mean that it felt good, once again watching the man she loved walk away from her. But Sarah had learned her lesson.
She passed the next week in a daze, a permanent smile frozen on her face. The show must go on. People paid good money for their stay at the lodge, and the last thing Sarah intended to do was shoot herself in the foot. The doctor had confirmed she was pregnant. Assuming she carried this baby to term, she wasn’t going anywhere. The lodge had to stay in business.
That brought her to her next problem. She had to tell people. Her parents. Mac. Aaron. She couldn’t take that job in Los Angeles, and she doubted Aaron’s romantic interest would survive now that she was pregnant with another man’s child. Even though she was scared, and she would love to run far away from Darling, it had helped nothing before. This time, she could not survive alone.
When the phone rang one morning, Sarah hadn’t expected Natasha to be on the other end. She certainly hadn’t expected her ex-boyfriend’s mother to ask her out for lunch. Maybe because Sarah had no strength left, or maybe because she didn’t trust herself to know when to be strong, she agreed. She was a fish in a tide pool, letting life move her.
Sarah went to the Buck, barefaced, with her hair up, and wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. She didn’t see the point of trying anymore. Who was going to tell her differently, anyway? She had become as adept at dodging her parents as she had been all the way in Los Angeles, and Mac at least had enough common sense to avoid the hot mess she had become.
Sarah spotted Natasha right away, sitting alone in a booth by the window and clutching a coffee cup. The woman’s eyes darted around, and she fidgeted in her seat.
With a deep breath, Sarah slid into the seat across from her. Why had Natasha asked her here? “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.”
“Not at all. I’m glad you came.” Natasha gave her a small smile. A tiny row of perfectly straight, white teeth showed themselves just for a second. Sarah sometimes forgot how delicate Natasha was. She didn’t act like it.
Wolfie came over to take their order before leaving the two of them to sit in silence.
Sarah traced the nicks and dents on the table with her finger. “So why did you want to meet? Why now?”
Natasha sighed. “So we agree? It’s easier if we just get to business?”
Sarah nodded. She was tired of pretending. She only had the energy for the truth.
Natasha took a deep breath. “I know about Julia. I know you know about Julia. How she is now.”
Sarah stiffened in her seat. It wasn’t possible. No one knew. That secret had weighed Sarah down for years. It was a burden she had carried alone. “What do you mean?”
Natasha broke her gaze, looking outside. “I will always love my son with a mother’s love. Unconditional. Fierce. But he was a young boy, and even if he hadn’t been, no soul in a human body with an ego does not make mistakes.”
Sarah looked down at the table, her heart roaring in her ears. She willed herself not to be sick in the middle of the restaurant.
“I think he really loved you,” Natasha continued. “But that’s not the point. I can’t prove that to you. The point is, you’re not the one dead.”
Sarah’s head snapped up. Heat flared in her cheeks. “You wish I was the one who had died instead? Well, the joke is on you. I wish that too.”
Wide eyed, Natasha reached out, wrapping her bony fingers around Sarah’s hand.
“Not at all, my dear. I’ve never once wished that. And you shouldn’t torture yourself with such thoughts either. Not when you have so much life ahead of you. So, why aren’t you acting like it?”
Sarah swallowed. “How did you know?”
The older woman lifted her coffee cup with her free hand, taking a sip. “You know how.”
Sarah nodded. Whether or not people believed Natasha, they all knew the stories. She knew things no one else did. “How much do you know?”
“I know you have a hole in your heart bigger than anyone knows about. So tell me. What happened? What happened, so that Julia makes hot pink cupcakes, and you’re sitting here looking like walking death?”
Fat tears rolled down Sarah’s face, leaving dark spots on her jeans. Just like Sarah’s own mother would have, Natasha whipped a tissue out of her purse and handed it to Sarah.
“Thank you,” Sarah mumbled. Her eyes burned as she struggled to regain her composure. “I don’t know how to say this. I’m the reason Andre is gone.”
Her voice cracked, and she pressed her lips together.
Natasha watched her carefully. “That’s what you really think? Why?”
“Because that day, I told him I was pregnant.” Sarah’s heart slammed in her chest as she spoke the words out loud for the first time. “He was mad. He wasn’t ready, I think. So when he left, and then Julia showed up, and he never came back, it was too much. I was devastated that he had cheated. Scared about losing the baby. Then destroyed when I lost the only connection to him I had left.”
Natasha stood from her side of the booth and joined Sarah, wrapping her in a hug. Sarah winced at the touch. She didn’t deserve compassion. “Oh, honey. You’ve been carrying that around this whole time? No wonder you haven’t been able to move on, to be happy. None of that is your fault. My son made his choices, and that’s our right when we are alive. Now it’s your turn.”
A bitter laugh escaped Sarah’s throat. “If it’s not my fault, then why did I do the same thing again?”
Natasha patted her back. “What do you mean, my dear?”
Sarah wiped her nose. “I’m pregnant again. Pregnant and alone. No one knows.”
“But that’s wonderful!”
“Wonderful?” The word caught in Sarah’s throat. “It’s terrifying. Everything is hopeless. I’m hopeless.”
Natasha squeezed her shoulder. “Look around. This place is filled with people again. You see them walking outside. This town used to wheeze like a dying animal. Now it has the soft, slow breath of one growing in strength. You did this. You and Will.”
Sarah’s stomach sank. “Will left.”
“What happened?”
“I sent him away. I… it’s complicated.” Sarah told Natasha the details, including Will’s previous marriage and Rachel’s surprise appearance in Darling.
“That doesn’t have to be the end of the story.”
Sarah sniffed. “Maybe not. But I’m not ready. I don’t even know how to tell my parents, or Mac. Any of them.”
Natasha nodded. “When you’re ready, you’ll know. But for now, let me say this. We don’t always get to understand why everything happens in life. Don’t get so busy searching for answers that time passes you by. Uncertainty is part of life. It’s not a reason to stop living.”
