“Give it a few days. Maybe a week. She’ll come around.”
His sigh seemed to come from deep inside. “You are far more optimistic than I am.”
“Juliet can be stubborn but she’s not stupid. Eventually she’ll have to see how perfect you are for each other.”
His mouth twisted into a caricature of a smile. “I guess the two of us see things that way, but our opinions don’t really matter here, do they? Your mom has made her position clear and I won’t push her.”
From Olivia’s perspective, Juliet needed just that—a big, hefty shove in the right direction. Too bad Olivia didn’t know how to do that.
“I think she’s afraid,” she said softly.
“We’re all afraid, Olivia,” Henry answered, his voice quiet. “You can’t make it through life without it. The trick is figuring out that the thing you need is just on the other side of that fear. The only way you can reach it is by going right through the center of it.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m rooting for you.”
His smile was filled with an ocean of sadness and very little hope. “Thanks,” he said, then waved and headed back to his friends.
As she found a corner where she could log in to the fire department’s account and upload some of the pictures, Henry’s words seemed to echo in her head.
We’re all afraid. The trick is figuring out that the thing you need is just on the other side of that fear. The only way you can reach it is by going right through the center of it.
She was doing that. Letting fear stand between her and the life she wanted. It was controlling so many aspects of her life, from the restaurants where she ate to the relationships she created.
She was living in fear.
Right now, she seemed to be handling her anxiety about crowds. She no longer jumped and wanted to hide in the corner if she heard a loud noise. But she was still running away emotionally, afraid to trust. She had been running a long time, long before that attack. Throwing herself into her business so she didn’t have to think about how alone she felt.
She was tired of running. She wanted a deep, loving relationship like her parents had shared, like her mother could have with Henry Cragun.
Look at Pete Gallegos and his wife. The previous fire chief had Parkinson’s disease and couldn’t even shake hands at the event without severe trembling, yet his wife, Sheila, stood at his side, her hand on his shoulder, looking at him with so much love, everyone around was touched by it.
Olivia wanted that. She wanted a relationship with someone she knew would be in her corner, no matter what.
She spotted Cooper, who had stepped away from the grills and was talking to an older couple she didn’t know.
Was it possible Cooper was the person she had been waiting for all this time? Did she have the strength to find out?
If she didn’t, if she continued to hide rather than plow through the middle of her fear, as Henry had said, was she really in a place to lecture her mother about taking a chance at love?
JULIET
This had been a mistake.
She should have stayed home, where she could continue to smile and pretend everything was okay. She could manage that for a small audience. Caitlin. Olivia. Her physical therapist.
Now that she was here among hundreds of her closest friends, keeping up the facade was proving to be more exhausting than she could handle.
“This is a great crowd, isn’t it? How wonderful, that everyone is coming together to help Pete and Sheila.” Stella Davenport Clayton sipped at her orange juice.
Juliet forced a smile, wondering how long it would take before her cheerful front would crack apart like a fragile robin’s egg. “It’s terrific. I always love when we rally around a common cause.”
“Yes. Like our Arts and Hearts on the Cape event.”
Stella organized an arts festival each year, which benefited a charity intended to encourage and help foster families in the area.
“Pete and Sheila are a big part of the community. Everyone loves them and wants to help them,” Juliet said.
It was hard for her to see Pete struggle with his disease. He was using a wheelchair more these days, likely because he didn’t have the strength to stand for long periods of time.
Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis weren’t the same. While both affected the central nervous system and some of the symptoms could be similar, she knew MS impacted the