Never Stopped Loving You (4 page)

On Whitney’s nod, Kara dusted her hands and stood. “You know what? The grass can wait until tomorrow. Or next week.”

Whitney laughed. “I love having you back.”

She smiled and grabbed the cans off the top of the pizza boxes. Maybe even somehow, there was a chance for more than just a wisp of what they used to have. “It’s good to be back.”

Whitney held out the house key and Kara took it. If Mrs. Jana had her hand in the inside of this house, it would be perfect in there. No TV dinners and plastic forks scattered about. Laundry wouldn’t be strewn from room to room and down the hallway. That funky smell that was some sort of combination of damp basement, dusty attic and old person would be gone. She grabbed her bag from the trunk and headed up the front wooden steps.

Through the windows was a dark house, but enough light came through and she could see floors. She blinked at the flat surface. Holy shit, she could actually see the floors. For some reason she’d thought they were wood floors, but they were brown tile. With the way crap no doubt spilled all over them, probably a good thing she’d been wrong.

She turned the key and the door swung open with a long creak. A habit of years in the making had her reach out to catch the door and push it farther open against whatever might be hidden behind it, but not necessary. The old oak turned all the way back. “Wow.”

“What?”

Kara shook her head and stepped through the doorway of a home that wasn’t at all familiar. She squinted down the dim hallway and ghosts of old stacks of crap at the edges of her memory covered the floors. She stepped farther in and the hazy images conjured up vanished.

The scent of old dust waved out. Not like an attic. Or a basement or someone else’s junk piled up in a backyard that Mom had dragged in. Just old and still. She smelled again and was reminded of the back of the barn at Chester Farms where shelves held rows and rows of old tractor and truck parts and dust. She dropped her bag at the door to hold it open to start airing out the house.

The little bench she’d sat on as a girl to tie her shoes and toss her raincoat across was right where it always sat. This spot had remained untouched by her mom’s collecting until Kara had been in about fourth grade. She’d put a drawing of their house down on her little bench. Doors had been opened, windows opened. Everything opened and people standing around like they did at Chester House. She’d gone to play at the Chesters’. When she came back, her picture was gone and a box full of photographs replaced it. None of her. Unless her mom being pregnant counted. Kara hadn’t ever thought so.

She dragged her finger through the layer of dust over the seat and reached for the wall to flip on the lights.

Nothing happened. She tried it several more times. “I called ahead and utilities were all supposed to be turned on.”

Whitney pointed to the light on the porch. “There’s no bulb in that one. Mom might have pulled them all.”

“Maybe.” Kara walked down the hall. Her steps echoed over the empty floor. Nothing was on the hall table. She touched over the glass top. So many cups and plates had been placed there and left. Piles of just stuff used to be across the floor. She turned to the left into the kitchen and stopped. A breath filled her chest and tears pricked the corners of her eyes. The small window over the sink let light in across the clean countertops. Canisters were neatly pushed along the wall. Paper towel holder on another side. It wasn’t a big kitchen like at Chester House. But it was plenty big enough to live in and feed a family of four or five on a daily basis. Seeing it like this—without all the dishes and newspapers stacked up. She shook her head. “It doesn’t even look like the same house.”

“You can stay at the house with me, if you want.” Whitney glanced around. “It’s a little creepy with it so quiet.”

With Wade there? Pass. “I’ll be okay. It’s so different than what I remember that it doesn’t even feel like home, you know?”

“I guess.”

Kara glanced up. God, even that thin space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling was empty. “Everything about it is so new to me, that it’s like I’ve never seen it before. Did your mom have anything painted or changed out anything?”

“Not that I know of.” Whitney set the pizza on the small, two-chair kitchen table and pointed at the light fixture hanging over it. “Bulb is gone from here too.”

“I have to go to the store to pick up some food. I’ll grab some while I’m there.” She moved over to the sink and lifted the window for the first time in her life. When she was younger, she hadn’t been able to reach the window. When she’d gotten older she hadn’t been able to lift it because of stuff stacked along the sill. A flash of what had to have been at least eight or so tins of pepper and half a dozen canisters of salt caught the edge of her vision along the white sill, but then it was gone.

She turned around and leaned against the counter. Whitney took a napkin and knocked the dust from the two chairs and sat like they hadn’t been apart for all these years.

Kara wanted to tell her everything and had no idea what to say at the same time. Ever since breaking up with Wade, Kara had lost her sounding board. She’d do anything to have their friendship back. In those short months after the breakup, though, anything Kara had wanted to talk about would lead back to Wade and she couldn’t go there with Whitney.

Couldn’t tell her friend she hadn’t wanted to be just another notch in her brother’s belt. That she wanted to mean more to her brother than another girl in the dark. But she couldn’t say those things to Whitney.

God only knew what Whitney would have done. Either dropped Kara for talking trash about her beloved brother. Or run straight to her brother over the matter. Either way, it all ended with Whitney in the middle of two people she’d known her whole life and Kara had refused to put her through it. As much as she’d tried holding everything together, Kara had dropped it all in the end.

Now here she was, back and in the same position. Whitney sat in one of the chairs and rubbed her hands across the tops of her thighs.

Kara did now what she did then and ignored it. What else could she do? She needed this job and she wasn’t going to make waves and cause problems again. Her momma’s mind was lost a few decades ago. Her daddy dead to her, and her grandma in the ground. This was all she had left, if she could earn it back.

Whitney glanced at the napkin in her hands. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. She sucked in a deep breath and looked up with a broad, fake smile. “Ready for some pizza?”

Kara continued faking it too. For as long as they could muddle through it and try to get back to where they were without talking about the past, Kara was keeping her mouth shut. “Sounds good.”

Whitney pulled the packets of red pepper and parmesan from the box and shuffled them through her hand. “I made up some quick label designs after you left to go on your jars. If you want to stop by the house tomorrow and see what you think.”

Good. More moving on. “That’d be great. I have blank labels with me. I can’t wait to print some out.”

“I didn’t know if you wanted to try to can anything for the soft opening with the locals this weekend.”

“Um, it’ll probably be a squeeze to do that. I’d have to pick, wash, make the jams and then can them. Plus, I don’t want to strip the crops. I’ll wait and grab a few things on Sunday.” She tugged at her shorts and pretended not to notice the awkwardness floating in the room. Instead she flipped through the pizza boxes and found the large thin-crust supreme. “Is it like it always used to be? People come out, pick a few things and leave?”

“Pretty much. Wade put some picnic tables up, so some families make a day of it. The usual crowd comes in the kitchen and chats for a couple hours like we’re a diner or something.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“Yeah. Lots of kids running around when they do that. It’s nice. Maybe we can print a flier out about you.” She sprinkled red pepper across a slice of cheese and opened her drink.

“That’d be great, thanks. I haven’t been in town at all. I don’t think people even know I’m home and if they did, they wouldn’t know why I was here.” Not that she was looking forward to that, but she’d rather people find out on her own terms rather than when she happened to be crossing the street.

Lord only knew what someone might say. She knew what they’d said when she lived here before and most of the time it included “bless her heart.” Would they reference her horrible choices and her mom completely losing it and yelling a wide variety of language off the front porch? Kara hadn’t been expecting added complications from her mom when she got to town. Dad just said antics. He hadn’t been specific.

She ate more pizza instead of talking about that and added lightbulbs, paper plates and napkins to her shopping list on her phone.

“Are you going to talk about this or not?”

Kara glanced up from the list and tried playing it off, knowing she wasn’t fooling anyone. Still, it was worth the shot. “About what?”

“What happened this morning? You and Wade were supposed to work things out. By his attitude and that you’re about to jump through the ceiling, I’m guessing that’s not what happened.”

Oh, well. Maybe not completely what Kara thought, but nearly as bad. She started to say something, but then came up empty. That was the problem with having your life tossed in the air and turned upside down. It was impossible to explain, never mind how she intended to pick up all the pieces. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

She squeezed the can to hide her shaking hands until the tin popped. “I really am.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit, Kara.” Whitney braced her hands on her hips. “I deserve better than this. After everything. How close we were as kids. The things we went through, talked about, and you just dropped me. Left town to live with your daddy two states over without even telling me! And you didn’t even like the man.”

Kara swallowed and looked down. She wouldn’t run from the truth. If she wanted Whitney back, she was going to have to face this head-on. “I know. I’m sorry. I really am.” She dropped the last of her slice. “I didn’t want to put you in the middle of us.”

“Middle of what?”

“Wade and I.” While she didn’t want to go back, Whitney had a right to know. “Back then. I didn’t want to put you in the middle.”

Whitney’s hands fisted against her hips. “Forget back then. That’s gone. What’s going on now?”

Oh
,
that.
Err, Kara would rather talk about the past. It was in the past, over with and she was less likely to say something she shouldn’t. It was easier to say,
Back then Wade and I made a mistake and I figured out what I should have done instead.
Now was just...she didn’t even know because it was all so messed up. “It’s going to be awkward talking about this.”

Whitney gestured at the space between them. “And this isn’t?”

She had a point there. “Wade kissed me.”

Whitney was silent. Kara glanced up and saw her friend with her mouth open.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard after all. Talking about this was less likely to hurt Whitney’s feelings if she knew the whole score. She hoped. “On the porch. He broke up with me years ago because we weren’t working out and then he kissed me today.”

Whitney was still silent.

Kara blew her bangs out of her face. “And this is why I don’t talk to you about this. It’s weird. He’s your brother. We used to sneak in his room and put glitter on his things and empty our hairbrushes over his clothes.”

Whitney snorted. “Oh man, he would get so pissed.”

Kara joined in her laughter. “Putting pink glitter down his gel was the best though. He went out to the ball game with it all in his hair.”

Laughter burst out of Whitney’s mouth and she slapped her hand across her lips. “Dad tried yelling at me over that but couldn’t.”

“After putting that lizard in your jewelry box, he deserved it.”

“That was the last time he did that too.” Whitney picked at the corner of the cardboard box in front of her as she chuckled.

Kara pulled out another slice of pizza. She’d been missing this. This banter and fun, but she didn’t want to waste the opportunity. Whitney clearly had more questions and Kara was ready to get it out there while they were laughing. “And this is why I couldn’t talk to you about your brother. You think of him as the guy with lizards. And I...don’t.” She was quiet for a while and tested the waters to touch on something deeper. “I didn’t for a long time. Long before Wade ever asked me out the first time.”

Whitney smiled. “If it gets too squishy, I’ll put my hands over my ears and sing
lalalalala
. Deal?”

Kara blinked, but didn’t take long to think it over. This was some of what she wanted back from this town, and Whitney, bless her, was giving Kara the chance. “I’ll try.”

Whitney wiped her hands clean. “So what are you going to do about Wade now?”

“You really want to talk about this? It’s okay if you want to. Or if you don’t.”

Whitney’s smile stretched from one side to the other. “This is the grown-up version of bedazzling Wade’s boxers. If it aggravates him, I am
so in
.”

She laughed, feeling how little things had changed so maybe they’d get there. At least there looked to be a chance. “It’s nothing to talk about though. With Wade and I. I don’t know why he kissed me, but I have a lot going on. It’ll never work out.”

Whitney’s smile was soft.

Kara cleaned her hands off on her napkin and stared down at her list. “I have a lot of crap I need to buy.”

Whitney grabbed the list and turned it around. “This is stupid. I’m telling you, you should stay at the house. You can have my old room.” She glanced up. “Did I tell you I took over Mom’s room? She moved out. I replaced the carpets, repainted, updated the bathroom and got that big walk-in closet all to myself. Heck, you could put a bed down and sleep in there if you want.”

Kara glanced around the kitchen. With all the stuff cleaned out, it was like someone had come through here and redone the house to scrub her mom off it too. “Thanks for the offer, but I want to stay here. Congrats on the new room.”