hers while mine licks my face. “I’ll be right back. These are outstanding. I love the fullness of this arrangement.”
“Thanks. Jennifer did it.”
“She’s good,” she says, winking.
I look at Buffy. Little yellow bows sit on her ears as she wags her tongue in my face. “What about you? Are you good?”
The poodle barks in response, her body shaking from excitement.
I laugh. “You’re a good ego boost, you know that?”
Meredith returns quickly, a smile splitting her cheeks. “Here. Come to Mommy.” She opens her arms and the dog leaps into her chest. Meredith nuzzles her under her chin, scratching her belly as she looks at me. “I was hoping you’d take a walk with me, Haley.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “I, um, I need to get back to work. Jennifer is on her own, and there are a lot of things happening today.”
Meredith smiles, undeterred. “So a short one, then?”
I want to say no. I need to get back to the shop and away from all things Kelly. But Trevor’s words ring through my mind, that Meredith always gets her way, so I relent to get it over with.
“Well . . . okay.”
We traipse across the yard parallel to the house. I’ve been here a hundred times to drop things off for Dane or to let Mia see him when he was working late. But I’ve never seen the far side of the house now that the porch is up.
“Oh, wow,” I say as we round the corner.
I can imagine the view from the top of the deck and how far you can see. It would be the perfect place to sit and read a book or watch the leaves turn colors.
“What I want to show you,” she says, “is even better than this.”
“Is that possible?”
Her baby-blue eyes shine. “Yes.”
The grass is soft, my shoes sinking into the ground as we plod our way down the side of the hill. My brain is muddled with the loss of Trevor and the uncertainty of the flower shop. I suck in a breath and tell myself I’ll battle through today because I always do.
“How have you been?” she asks.
“Okay.”
“I heard Trevor is an idiot.”
“Yeah.”
She smiles at me. “You know, Branson and I dated when he first got divorced from the boys’ mom. It was this torrid love affair, a fling that had my head spinning. And then he stopped seeing me out of nowhere.”
“Why?”
“Heck if I know.” She tickles the dog under its chin. “I was devastated. He’d talked about marriage and I’d told him I can’t have kids and I was ready to do the damn thing. And then he pulled the plug. I was . . . well, destroyed. I don’t know what else to say.”
My heart aches for her. She’d be a great mom, oozing love for Branson, her dogs, and everyone around her.
“I’m sorry to hear you can’t have kids,” I say.
“I’m lucky to be alive. I’m able to live and love and have my puppies and maybe adopt one day. I don’t know. Branson is a lot older than me, and I don’t want to put pressure on him to raise a baby at this point in his life.” She shrugs. “It’s a discussion we’ll have someday. Hopefully once we settle in up here.”
We walk a little farther until the house is out of sight. There’s a stand of trees to our right, and Meredith leads me around them.
I glance to my left and think the road must be close. “Aren’t we almost by the road?” I ask.
She nods. “We are. There’s an access point to it, actually, right around this bend.”
I furrow a brow, not remembering ever seeing that from the road. As we make the turn around a grove of pines, I gasp.
“Oh, my God. Meredith! This is amazing.” My jaw hangs open as I see a little cabin, not much bigger than a standard living room, nestled into the stand of pines. It has a little chimney on top and a wall of windows that overlooks a valley in the back.
“It’s a sweet little place, isn’t it?” she asks smugly.
“Sweet? It’s perfect.”
I walk a circle, taking in the beauty of the space. It’s nestled against a grove of trees, but the view on the other side is breathtaking. It’s absolutely spectacular.
Meredith points to a spot off to the side, beneath some of the windows. “Tulips will come up there in the spring. And crocuses. But no daffodils.”
“Oh, that’s perfect,” I say. “Daffodils are so boring.”