“What did you do before?” Mercy asked. “Ava said you had, and I quote, a ‘legit degree.’”
Leah snorted. “Accounting. And, yeah, it’s legitimately boring. I was working for a CPA in Chicago. I guess I’ll look at H&R Block or something down here.”
Ava made a considering face. “Dad’s trying to get a whole bunch of new businesses up and running in town. He might have something.”
“Be careful: that sounds like more charity.”
“No, it wouldn’t be. He’s got Bell Bar they’re remodeling, and Albie’s furniture place. What’s it called?”
“Maude’s,” Mercy supplied.
“And then Mom’s restaurant – oops, that’s a surprise for her for Mother’s Day, so don’t say anything.”
She mimed zipping her lips.
“But there’s a space he hasn’t figured out yet.”
“Your dad didn’t figure something out?” Leah asked with – mostly – mock alarm.
Mercy chuckled.
Ava said, “Whatever it is, he’ll need a manager.” She waggled her eyebrows in invitation.
Leah laughed – but only a little. She wanted to sigh instead. “That’s really sweet.”
“But?”
“But – I dunno. I’ll figure something out.”
Ava looked troubled, and sympathetic, and like she wanted to help. But she picked her pizza back up and said, “Well, since you need a kitchen table and chairs, I totally know a guy…”
~*~
Ava didn’t press for details about Jason in front of Mercy – she wasn’t a gossiper by nature, and she definitely wasn’t going to start becoming one with a man in the room, even if it was her man. She hadn’t pressed on the phone last week either, when Leah first called to tell her that she was headed back for Knoxville.
In truth, the details were neither dirty, nor even interesting. There’d been no cheating scandal, no raucous confrontation. He hadn’t been leading a double life – hadn’t secretly been the cousin of her high school bully and working undercover for the FBI. That sort of wild shit only ever happened to Ava Teague.
For Leah, life had been much more straightforward; much less daytime-television-worthy. Sometimes people drifted apart in the same way they’d drifted together. Sometimes leases weren’t renewed, and you were left holding your life in boxes. Sometimes CPA firms went under – the irony wasn’t lost on her there – and you had to admit defeat, put your boxes in the back of a rental truck, and head home.
It felt like defeat some moments, and like a chance to start fresh in others.
Like defeat when she waved goodbye to Ava and Mercy and closed her new front door. Turned around and put her back to it, and looked at the scuffed cardboard boxes, and her ugly secondhand sofa, and her empty kitchen counters. She wasn’t a pessimistic person by nature, but there were moments, like now, when it was hard to find the silver lining. When the backs of her eyes stung, and she felt like she’d been wasting time.
Her mother would have argued.Time isn’t wasted if you learned something.
She’d learned not to work for someone who was scamming his clients.
Learned that love wasn’t a guarantee, and sometimes it didn’t last, and sometimes it had been so flimsy to start with that you didn’t even miss it all that much.
She stood chewing at her lip, twirling her ponytail around her finger, until she heard Mercy’s bike start up in the parking lot. Then a grin touched her lips. There were motorcycles in Chicago, but they hadn’t sounded the same. Not like Knoxville. Here, that sound meant something totally different.
As she went to put the pizza boxes in the trash, she realized she’d missed it.
Three
“Why weren’t you helping us wrestle that couch upstairs last night?” Aidan asked the next morning, jabbing an accusatory finger toward Carter.
“What couch?” He’d had a quiet night. Jazz had wanted to study, and he’d watched TV in the common room a little while before eventually dragging himself to bed with a bottle of whiskey tucked under one arm. Now he had a headache and a sour stomach; had overslept his alarm and missed his chance for coffee and breakfast.
