Amelia called from downstairs.
She hurried off the bed, folding up the letter and sticking it back in her nightstand. When she made it to the staircase, she found Amelia standing at the bottom with a large pitcher full of margarita mix. “Seriously, why do you both keep feeding me booze? Do I look like I need a drink that badly?”
Amelia smiled. “Yup.”
“Great,” Clara muttered, trotting down the staircase. When she entered the kitchen after Amelia, she immediately spotted Maisie sitting around the old, worn oak kitchen table and inhaled the citrusy scent of limes. Back in the day, family meetings were held here with their grandparents. The tradition had lived on, and there was something about the table that always felt safe. “I’m okay, you know,” Clara said to her sisters. “You don’t need to stay,” she said to Maisie.
Maisie was moving her stuff out of the house in a couple of days to live with Hayes in a gorgeous home by the creek. Her youngest sister smiled. “Please, like I could pass up margaritas.”
Clara forced a smile and took her seat across from Maisie. When times got tough, some people chatted over coffee, some over chocolate, the Carter sisters drank margaritas. And usually, a lot of them.
Amelia began pouring the drink mix into the margarita glasses and asked, “So, thoughts on today?”
Maisie shrugged. “I think it went well with Ronnie. He seemed impressed by the brewery.”
“I agree it went well,” Clara added. “Now we just wait to see what kind of contract he offers us.”
“But we’ll take it, right?” Amelia asked, finishing up with the last glass. “No matter what it is.”
“We’d be crazy not to take it,” Clara agreed, reaching for one of the glasses. “We’ve got no one else interested. But, at the same time, we need to play hardball too. We deserve a good contract. Let’s make sure we remember that.”
“Hardball,” Maisie said with a firm nod. “On it.” She took a huge sip of her drink, her eyes fluttering shut.
Clara laughed softly, which admittedly, felt good. Maisie wouldn’t know how to play hardball if she tried. She was too…free. “You can leave this part to me. I’m good at negotiating.”
“You are,” Amelia said, licking the salt off her lips. “And we appreciate everything you’re doing for us and the company.”
“Thanks,” Clara said before taking a sip of her drink. The tequila hit first followed by the citrus sourness of the lime and then the sharpness of the salt.
She followed it up with another sip when Maisie asked, “Now let’s talk about Sullivan.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Clara insisted, setting her glass back down on the table.
“Sure, there is,” Maisie said with a sly smile. “Like how good he looks?”
Mouthwateringly delectable. “He doesn’t look terrible,” Clara conceded.
Amelia asked, “Was it weird, seeing him again? You must have felt something. It’s been so long.”
I felt everything. The guilt of keeping a big secret. The heartbreak of knowing the man she once loved no longer existed and had walked out on her. The yearning to run into his arms and stay there because it had once felt so good. The anger and desire to punch him in his handsome face. Feeling like it was impossible to explain all that, she shrugged. “I feel confused. I feel like I owe him the truth. I feel like Mason is owed a father. I feel like I wish things were different. That Sullivan was different. I wish he would have answered the damn phone when I called, instead of the woman. I wish he would have called back.”
Amelia frowned. “That’s a lot of wishes.”
“It is,” Clara agreed then took another long sip, adding moisture to her dry throat. She’d rarely talked about Sullivan to her sisters, particularly about Sullivan being Mason’s father. She’d swallowed and forged on, doing what had to be done. “But as much as I wish everything were different, I can’t undo the past.”
“You’re right, you can’t,” Maisie said.
And the past wasn’t pretty. When he was six years old, Sullivan’s mother received her breast cancer diagnosis. She went through repeated treatments for ten years. She fought so hard, but ultimately, the cancer took her. In the wake of losing his wife, Sullivan’s father became a drunk, and soon after, an angry drunk. He’d turned abusive and took his rage out on Sullivan.
“Well,” Amelia said with a shrug. “If you ask me, you shouldn’t have to undo the past. Sullivan left and completely ignored his life here. You were