Firefly Lane (Firefly Lane 1)

But it was the other woman who held her attention. Maybe thirty, thirty-five, with a bright smile and a ready laugh. She wore the colors of a tourist: brand-new jeans, thick pink cable-knit sweater, aqua-blue hat and gloves.

"My daughter. Shes in grad school at NYU," Chad said. "And Clarissa. The woman I live with. "

"You still live in Nashville?" It was like rolling a log uphill, pushing those words out. The last thing she wanted was to make ordinary conversation with him. "Still teaching bright-eyed believers about the news?"

He took her by the shoulders, turned her to face him. "You didnt want me, Tully," he said, and this time she heard the gruffness of deep emotion in his voice. "I was ready to love you forever, but—"

"Dont. Please. "

He touched her cheek in a fleeting, almost desperate caress.

"I should have come to Tennessee with you," she said.

He shook his head. "You have big dreams. That was one of the things I loved most about you. "

"Loved," she said, knowing it was foolish to be hurt.

"Some things just dont happen. "

She nodded. "Especially when youre too afraid to let them. "

He took her in his arms again and held her with more passion in that instant than Grant had tendered in years. She waited for a kiss that never came. Instead, he let her go, then took her arm and walked her back up to the road.

In the sudden coldness of shade, she shivered and leaned against him. "Give me some advice, Wiley. I seem to have screwed up my life. "

Out on the sunny sidewalk, he faced her again. "Youre successful beyond your wildest dreams and it still isnt enough. "

She winced at the look in his eyes. "I guess I should have stopped to smell a few of those flowers. Hell, I didnt even see them. "

"Youre not alone, Tully. Everyone has people in their life. A family. "

"I guess youve forgotten Cloud. "

"Or maybe you have. "

"What do you mean?"

He glanced down to the park, where his daughter was holding hands with his girlfriend; one was teaching the other to skate backward. "I lost a lot of years with my daughter. One day I just decided it had been too long and I went to find her. "

"You always were an optimist. "

"Thats the funny thing. So were you. " He leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and drew back. "Keep lighting the world on fire, Tully," he said, and then walked away.

They were almost the exact same words hed written to her all those years ago. She hadnt recognized the sad desperation in them when they were letters on a piece of paper. Now she saw the truth: they were both an encouragement and an indictment. What good did it do to light the world on fire if she had to watch the glow alone?

If there was one thing Tully had always done well, it was to ignore unpleasantness. For most of her life shed been able to box up bad memories or disappointments and store them deep in the back of her mind, in a place so dark they couldnt be seen. Sure, she dreamed about the bad times, and woke occasionally in a cold sweat with memories on the oily surface of consciousness, but when daylight came, she pushed those thoughts back into their hiding place and found it easy to forget.

But now, for the first time, shed found something she could neither file away in the darkness nor forget.

Chad. Seeing him like that, standing there in her adopted city, had shaken her to the core. She couldnt seem to dislodge the memory. There was so much she hadnt said to him, hadnt asked.

In the three months since theyd run into each other, she found herself remembering every detail, going over the seconds like a forensic scientist, looking for clues to the meaning of it all. He became a kind of marker for everything shed given up for this life of hers. The road she hadnt taken.

And even worse than all of that was the memory of what hed said about Cloud. Youre not alone, Tully. Everyone has a family. Those werent precisely the words, but they were close enough. The gist of it.

Like a cancerous cell, the idea replicated in her mind and grew. She found herself thinking of Cloud, really thinking. She focused on the times her mother came back for her instead of the times she left. It was dangerous, Tully knew, to hang on to the positive when so much negative existed, and yet, she wondered suddenly if that had been her mistake. Had she been so intent on hating her mother, on shelving and forgetting the disappointments, that shed missed the meaning of Clouds many returns?

The thought of that, the hope of it, wouldnt fit in her box, wouldnt remain in the dark.