The Best Man (Blue Heron #1)(10)
But when she was home, he lay low.
For the first six weeks after their non-wedding, she and Jeremy had called each other every day, sometimes two or three times a day. Even with his stunning news, it was hard to believe they weren’t together anymore. From the moment she’d seen him by her bedside in the nurse’s office, for eight solid years, she’d loved him without one moment’s doubt. They were supposed to be married, have kids, have a wonderful long life together, and the fact that all those future decades were just whisked away...it was hard to wrap her heart around it.
He tried to explain why he’d let things go so far. That was the hardest part. She’d loved him so much, they’d been best friends...and he never even tried to bring it up.
He loved her, he said it repeatedly, and Faith knew it was true. Every day, every conversation, he apologized, sometimes crying. He was so, so sorry for hurting her. So sorry for not telling her, for not accepting what he knew in his heart.
One night six weeks after their wedding day, after they’d talked to each other in gentle voices for an hour, Faith had finally told Jeremy what they both already knew: they needed to truly break up. No more emails, no more calls, no more texts.
“I understand,” Jeremy had whispered.
“I’ll always love you,” Faith had said, her voice breaking.
“I’ll always love you, too.”
And then, after a long, long moment, Faith had pushed the button to end the call. Sat there on the edge of the bed, staring into space. The next day, she’d been offered a freelance job working with a well-known landscape designer at a new marina, and her post-Jeremy life began. Her father had come out to visit three times that year—unheard of if you were a farmer—and Pru and the kids had come once. They all had called and written and texted.
Forcing yourself out of love...it seemed impossible. Sometimes, she’d forget—someone asked her if she wanted kids, and her answer was, “We definitely do,” and then came the slap of remembering that there would be no beautiful, smiling, dark-haired kids running through the fields of the two vineyards.
And now, here in the Old House, it was impossible not to think of Jeremy. Memories of him were everywhere—he’d sat on the front porch, promising her father he’d take good care of her. He’d pushed Abby on the swing when she was little, took Ned for rides in his convertible, flirted with Pru and Honor, had beers with Jack. He’d helped her repaint this very room the same pale lilac it was now. They’d kissed right in that corner (lovely, chaste kisses, perhaps not what one would expect from one’s twenty-six-year-old fiancé) until Goggy had walked in on them and told them there was no kissing in her house, she didn’t care if they were engaged.
Faith had kept one photo of her and Jeremy, taken one weekend when they’d gone to the Outer Banks...the two of them in sweatshirts, hugging, the wind blowing her hair, Jeremy’s big smile. Every day, she forced herself to look at it, and a small, cruel part of her brain would tell her to get over it.
She hadn’t deserved him, anyway.
But for those eight years that they’d been together...it seemed that the universe had finally forgiven her for her dark secret, had presented Jeremy as a sign of absolution.
Seemed like the universe had the last laugh, and its agent had been Levi Cooper. Levi, who’d always judged her and found her ridiculous.
Levi, who had known and never said a word.
CHAPTER THREE
LEVI COOPER MET JEREMY LYON just before senior year began. He never expected that they’d become friends. Economically, that wasn’t how things worked.
Manningsport sat at the edge of Keuka Lake. The town green was ringed with picturesque businesses: antiques stores, a bridal shop, O’Rourke’s Tavern, a little bookstore and Hugo’s, the French restaurant where Jessica Dunn waited tables. Then there was the Hill, rising up and away from the village, the land of the rich kids whose parents were bankers and lawyers and doctors, or whose parents owned the vineyards themselves: the Kleins, the Smithingtons, the Hollands. Busloads of tourists would come in from April to October to see the beautiful lake and countryside, taste the wine and leave with a case or two.
Farther away from the lake were the pristine Mennonite farms, stretching on the hills, dotted with clusters of black-and-white cows, men in dark clothes driving iron-wheeled tractors, women with bonnets and long skirts selling cheese and jam at the farmers market on the weekends.
And then there were the other places, the long stretches of in-between. Levi lived at the base of the wrong side of the vineyards, where the shadow of the Hill made night fall a little earlier. His part of town had the dump, a grimy grocery store and a Laundromat where, legend had it, drugs were sold.
In elementary school, the well-meaning rich parents would invite the entire class to the birthday parties, and Levi would go, along with Jessica Dunn and Tiffy Ames. They’d remember their manners and thank the mom for inviting them, hand over the gift that had strained the weekly budget. As for reciprocal invitations, no. You didn’t have the class over for your birthday when you lived in a trailer park. You might hang out in school when you were young, might meet up in the summer to jump off Meering Falls, but way too soon, the economic divide started to matter. The rich kids started talking about what clothes they wore or what kind of new car their folks drove and where they’d be going on vacation, and that time you went fishing off Henleys’ dock didn’t matter so much.