defeated. By everything. If the one champion of casual sex in the whole room couldn’t even claim an experience of it, there was no hope. “I can’t imagine that. Getting married again. I don’t want that.”
“I don’t think I do, either. But I don’t know how to imagine... I want to be loved,” Anna said. “I want to be loved in the way that I think I can be.”
“I was loved,” Rachel said, her voice hushed.
But she ignored the yawning cavern in her chest. Wouldn’t it be nice to be loved again? Wouldn’t it be nice to have it be different?
A man who could take care of her.
Her heart kicked violently against her breastbone. Guilt assaulted her. She couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t. It wasn’t fair.
“You really want to never be loved again?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be loved, it’s that...” She swallowed. “I mean Mom has never dated anyone, has she?”
“Uh, yeah...no. I mean how many times did we watch her friends from town throw eligible single men at her while she destroyed them with a single look? Unless she has a layered secret life we know nothing about.”
They exchanged a glance, and Rachel knew that both of them were thinking there was no way Wendy McDonald lived her life with secrets. She was too...her.
“I doubt Mom has dated,” Anna said. “But she’s also been bitter about Dad and everything for years. She’s...held on to that. And I don’t want to hold on to my past. I needed to get out of my marriage. I don’t want to keep pieces of it with me.”
Rachel felt... She didn’t know. “I never let myself think about my life past him. I knew it would happen. I knew for a long time. I watched him die for years, Anna.”
“I didn’t let myself think about a different life for a long time. I didn’t even tell myself I was unhappy. I hid it. So that I wouldn’t...well, so that I wouldn’t do what I did. And once I really looked at my life I knew I couldn’t go on the same way I had been.”
“Well, I know I can’t. But doesn’t loving someone mean... Doesn’t it mean not moving on fully?”
“I have no idea,” Anna said.
“That’s not helpful at all.”
Anna moved over to the window and moved the lace curtain, and revealed a clump of bugs. She wrinkled her nose. “Well, until then we can vacuum ladybugs. Endlessly.”
“That seems like a poor substitute for sex.”
“It’s less complicated,” Anna said.
Rachel looked around at her surroundings—her haven for all these years, her first job and her continued passion.
Yes. It was simple. Here in this bedroom, cleaning with her sister, things seemed manageable.
Maybe she should just be happy with manageable.
Heaven knew that there was less guilt involved.
WENDY
It had been over a month since John Hansen had left the inn, much to her relief. He unnerved her. Not because he was off-putting in any way.
That was the problem.
He wasn’t off-putting at all. He was the best-looking man she’d seen in she didn’t know how long, and he was also plainly interested in her.
And not just in her, but in the house. In its history.
Basically, in absolutely everything she cared about.
And that made him feel...dangerous.
She was fifty-seven years old. She should not be thinking about a man like that. Dangerous. Handsome.
And she shouldn’t be...nervous around one.
She was way too jaded for that. She knew exactly how this sort of thing ended up.
She’d been happy enough in her life as it was for years. She’d wished, of course, that Jacob had been in better health. But she’d been surrounded by her family, her girls. Now it was all changing. Emma was going off to school. Anna and Rachel seemed to be finding a bond with each other, but Anna was still so distant from Wendy.
She tried to put it out of her mind as she knocked on the door with her elbow, her hands full of a cheese platter that she had made for the night’s cribbage game.
She and a few of the other female business owners got together once a month to talk about business, town politics and everything else under the sun. Mostly it was an excuse to eat and laugh, and this was the first time she’d gone since Jacob’s death three months earlier.
The group fluctuated and rotated, depending on the season, who was in town and who wasn’t, who was busy and who wasn’t.
As soon as Cynthia let her in, the woman