Love Me for Me(14)
“Thank you very much,” she said. “That was so kind of you all.” She thought to herself how that little cottage was a lot like her: it needed some fixing to make it presentable again.
* * *
Libby approached the cottage slowly, swinging her gift bag and trying to make out the identity of a woman standing on the front lawn. “May I help you?” she called out.
The woman spun around, her face swelling into a smile. She started walking toward Libby, her arm outstretched. Her pencil skirt was just snug enough to limit the length of her stride, causing her to take two steps for every one of Libby’s. They met on the front walkway and shook hands.
“Hi,” she said, “I’m Veronica Redgrave. I work for Our Home Realty.”
Those were the only foreign faces in town. Her entire life, she’d seen them in their cars with the big magnets on the side, walking the streets and putting up signs in yards. The coast pulled in young real estate agents who thought they could sell more when at least a third of the real estate was waterfront property. They never stayed long, though, once they realized that most of the people there weren’t selling, and vacation cottages usually stayed in the family for generations. She wondered how this one had gotten wind of her intent to sell. Had Wade sent her?
When Libby didn’t respond, the agent added, “Pete Bennett said you wanted to put the house on the market.”
Pete? What does he care? “I hadn’t planned on selling just yet…”
“Oh!” the agent seemed surprised. “Pete called on your behalf. He had thought you were going to stay, but when he found out you intended to sell, he wanted to do anything he could to facilitate that process to get you back home as quickly as possible.”
“Did he now…?” Her mind was racing with the things she wanted to say to Pete Bennett. It was bad enough that she didn’t want to be there, but the fact that Pete didn’t want her there either made her almost want to sell the cottage immediately—for whatever profit—take the money, and run away never to return.
“He was mistaken. I’m not quite ready to put the house on the market yet. I’m so sorry that he sent you all the way out here.” She said the words, trying to maintain composure, but she wanted to explode. Being back was exhausting. What if it took months, not weeks, to get another job? What if she was stuck there and months turned to years? Suddenly, she could feel what her mother must have felt.
After making small talk for a brief moment, Veronica Redgrave got back into her car and drove away leaving Libby alone once more in the cool breeze. She walked around the house to the backyard and put her hands on her hips as the sea rippled in the sunlight. This beautiful bay was the only thing that made her nostalgic.
She remembered the old tire swing in her neighbor’s backyard that dangled from a pine branch the size of her torso. Her mother wouldn’t let her on it because she’d said that it was too dangerous, but her friends had convinced her to do it on the days her mother was at work. It was positioned right at the bank, and when she pushed herself off the tree, the long rope swung her out over the water, the movement of the waves beneath her causing blinding white sparkles in her vision. Like a life-sized pendulum, the wind picking up with every swing, she held onto the rope, her hands sweaty from the rush of adrenaline as it suspended her over water only briefly before pulling her back to the shore. The wobbly rubber tube beneath her as her only security, she had trembled her way to a standing position, her fingers crawling up the rope until she was ready. Then, with a shot of panic to her chest, she leaped, splashing into the water below. There was that one moment just before the splash, when she was suspended in air, falling, knowing her fate. She loved that feeling, no matter how much it terrified her.
That’s what it was like when she’d left home to live in New York. She was leaving the security of what she’d known, but she was soaring, floating, on her way to that final splash where everything felt right. She wanted that feeling again of knowing her fate. She wanted it more than anything in the world. This—this small town with its quirks and gossip and ghosts of people I left behind—this is not my fate, she thought.
Her mind went back to Pete. She did wish she could explain things, say something to make him understand. Then, shaking the thought free, she turned around and walked toward the rental car, her gift card in hand. Maybe she’d run into him in town and she could give him a piece of her mind for sending out that real estate agent.
Chapter Five
Wentworth’s Hardware looked exactly the same as it had when her father had made her go with him as a kid. She still disliked the musty smell of it and the sandpaper feel of the concrete floor beneath her shoes as she walked. In the last decade, she’d seen the invention of file-sharing, learned various new forms of social networking, and marveled at all she could do on a smart phone, yet at Wentworth’s it seemed that absolutely nothing had changed right down to the push-button cash register.