A New Hope - Robyn Carr Page 0,57
a bigger reason than that. You can hang up on your ex.”
She laughed softly. “Oh, I did. He’s such an idiot—you know what he said? Something like, ‘Gee, Ginger, you’re a little hostile.’” She laughed harder. “Really? Me? Hostile? I wonder why?”
“You did this to show Matt.”
“Show him what? If he wanted to find me, he’d know where to look, right? If he wanted my new number, he knows where I work. No, I’m not punishing Matt.”
“You’re not fooling me,” Grace said. “And good for you! Ha! I did that to Troy, you know. Right before we got engaged. I told him I was pregnant and he said he had a lot to think about, to process, that he needed time to think before he could decide where we go from here. Before he decided? Like it was up to him and didn’t really have much to do with me! I was only the pregnant one, but hey—Troy would figure it out and let me know what we would do next. I told him to take a hike, stay away from me and be sure to let me know when he’d ‘processed.’ I was so done putting up with indecisiveness from a man!”
“I didn’t know you did that.”
“Well, I probably don’t look that stubborn. And you certainly don’t.”
“Oh, I’ll be the first to admit I feel a little sad that it’s been days and Matt hasn’t tried to contact me.”
“Maybe he has the flu. Or was finally put in jail and needs his phone calls to get a lawyer. Hopefully the latter.”
“Grace, this isn’t about him. I don’t think Matt has any ulterior motives. This is about me. I’m never going to that place again—that insecure, lonely, desperate, unloved place. I’m not waiting and hoping. If I ever have a man in my life again, it’s not going to be because I’m fantasizing, it’s going to be because he’s made sure I know it.” She took a breath. “Very likely I will be alone. But with this new start of mine, with a good job, friends, family—I’m not going to be that sad, disappointed person. I don’t want to be that person ever again.”
Grace leaned a hip onto the front counter, half sitting. Her hands were folded across that raised thigh. “Fair enough—you should never be sad or lonely. You’re too wonderful. But I want to tell you something. Coming from me, I don’t know, you might want to get a second opinion since I have so little experience. Troy was my first real love. But there’s something I learned. In love we’re vulnerable, Ginger. It would be nice if it were more certain and immediate, but the truth is—we have our worries, doubts and fears. We have to inch our way along. We have to discover trust. Sometimes we have to just believe in someone. And sometimes we have to know when to let them go.”
“I guess that’s what I’m trying to learn,” Ginger said. “It’s possible Matt’s just not ready. After all, he went through some heartache, too.”
Eleven
Matt brought a cooler full of dead chickens into the kitchen for his mother. She was going to pluck, wash, butcher and freeze them. Since he’d been hanging around the farm, she snagged him for butcher duty.
“Help me with this,” she said, throwing a headless hen in her work sink. “It won’t take that long. And I wanted to ask you why you put in such long days and such silent nights.”
He frowned. “Silent nights?”
“You’re at my table every night. And you’re back to being quiet and withdrawn. You think we don’t see?”
“I have things on my mind, Mama. Nothing for you to worry about. I’m not depressed at all.”
“Ah,” she said, plucking away with hands that moved over that chicken carcass like greased lightning. “Maybe you think about that pretty friend of Peyton’s, that Ginger. She looks like ginger, doesn’t she? Kind of golden.”
“I’ve been thinking about the farm, the house I’d like to build. It’s a big step, building a house,” he said.
“And how is that pretty Ginger?”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” he said. “I should call her.”
“Oh, I thought you liked her.”
“I do like her,” he said.
Corinne laughed softly, feathers flying. She held up a naked, plump hen. “I’m behind the times, but usually when a man likes a woman, he pays attention to her.”
“She lives in Thunder Point. I can’t exactly carry her books home from school,” Matt said irritably.
“I understand that. Just so you’re not confusing her