she ran out of words, and he ran out of apologies, and she did the only thing a respectable southern belle like herself would do: wrap herself around his neck with one hard, final hug, peck him on the cheek, straighten her blouse, and tell him she appreciated the strength he demonstrated in talking freely with her.
Honestly, she was going to make a terrific senator’s wife.
Back at home, Chip lay on his back in the quiet of his room, the same milky moon watching him from the window. Quietly he lowered his hand and rubbed Russell’s ear.
Russell inched his head up and leaned into Chip’s palm, then dropped down again on his paws.
For several minutes, he lay there in the quiet, thinking about the bid and the Monday morning meeting he’d finally secured with a bank to talk about a credit line. Thinking about his crew and the ongoing schedule changes and needs. Thinking about the bathroom wall he had meant to paint that evening. Thinking about the strange way a man had to keep living in this world, making plans and goals and priorities, knowing how fleeting it all was. Thinking about Jake. Thinking about Bree.
Chip pushed his sleeping bag off and planted his bare feet on the cold hardwood. Russell lifted his head while Chip went over to the new dresser, where a legal pad lay open in the center next to a Sharpie. He uncapped it. Wrote the message.
SLEEP WELL
As he settled back down on the mattress, his eyes didn’t stray from her large, dark window.
He watched the window as the minutes on his watch ticked on and the milky moon rose higher in the sky.
Eventually Russell fell asleep.
Chip’s own eyes started to take longer and longer blinks.
And then, from one moment when his eyes closed to the next when they opened again, her response was there.
YOU TOO
Chapter 17
Bree
“What did you do?”
Bree opened her eyes slowly, blinking as light flooded her retinas. Slowly, she registered the hands on the hips of wildly flared bell-bottoms. The keys, with attached donut keychain, clutched in one hand. Her gaze lifted as she watched Evie’s chest rise with an impatient breath. By the time her eyes lifted to Evie’s face, she didn’t expect any less than the heavy purple-lipstick frown.
Evie put more effort into her scowl and furrowed her brow deeper, but she only succeeded in looking a little more like a peeved squirrel.
Bree winced as she raised herself on her elbow. She began rubbing her eyes with one hand. “What’s wrong, Evie?”
“I’ve got a car blocked in and a meeting in ten minutes. And I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but I have a feeling you can tell me.”
Evie moved over to the window and pulled back the sheer white curtain. She pointed. “Tell me, Bree, might you know why our street is covered with farm trucks and chickens?”
As Bree crossed to the window, the events of the evening before sprang into her mind. In reverse.
Bree answering Chip’s note in the window. Dinner with Chip. Chip beside her on the porch beneath a clear sky, as she shared things about her life she hadn’t even told her oldest and dearest of friends. Gravel tapping her window while she stood in her room, overwhelmed with the news. Anna in the hospital. Anna getting transferred. The New York girl. Chip sitting in the audience, holding up the absurd sign about family dinner—
Wait.
Backtrack.
There.
Just after the play.
When she made it to the dressing room, she had swooped to her phone with the deftness of a vulture alighting on its dead. As she clicked open Craigslist, her fingers never paused or faltered. She had published a post.
The fate of her job, the news about Anna, the bizarre evening beside Chip had eclipsed her memory of the little, insignificant post.
The post she had assumed would amount to nothing but a few annoying phone calls—at best, a random visitor.
Bree spied out the window.
Tried to swallow but felt her throat too dry to do so.
She had done an excellent job—too excellent—getting revenge.
Her eyes bounced from the cars to the trucks covering the cul-de-sac.
One impatient driver honked at a truck trying to parallel park in too small a space.
In front of Mrs. Lewis’s, a family stood at the open back door of an old Camry, tugging on the rope of an unwilling goat in the back seat.
“Oh no.” Bree reached for a sweatshirt hanging on the door of her closet and yanked it over her head. She tripped