There was something laced in those words. A kind of benediction. Like she was telling Josie that Cameron’s leaving really had been for the best. Or, if not the best, had at least had a bright side.
“He stopped asking after you about a year after he left,” Alice said, stepping closer and then stopping, like she felt the force field Josie had up. “I thought maybe he got in touch with you.”
“No.” Josie managed a smile. “He just…” Forgot about me? “Moved on. Which, you know, is good.”
“Have you?” Alice asked, which frankly seemed like the dumbest question ever. Josie was standing in a dark kitchen in tears over some postcards that had nothing to do with her.
“Of course,” she said, and it wasn’t totally a lie.
Josie was saved from any more conversation by Grandma Iris walking in the door bearing an empty serving tray. Alice rushed to take it from Iris’s shaking hands. The cousins followed carrying dirty dishes. “Josie!” Stella said. “Do you think I could apply for that summer internship program at your network this year?”
“You need to be in college,” Josie said.
“Yeah, but aren’t there some strings you can pull?” Stella waggled her eyebrows and Josie shook her head, and as promised, the mayhem of the Mitchell family took the pressure off her and within a few minutes she found herself escaping the kitchen.
And the postcards.
It was too bad the boy who wrote them was not so easy to escape.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Helen said, an hour later as she and Josie sat in the quiet of the lodge. Helen, holding her hand to her stomach, shifted and then shifted again, struggling to get comfortable on the leather couch in front of the fireplace that was, as a rule, the most comfortable piece of furniture ever made. Only pregnancy could make it uncomfortable. And Josie, sitting next to her on the same couch was getting tossed around like they were at sea by all of Helen’s shifting.
“Helen.” Josie laughed. “You made it very clear that if I wasn’t here this year for Christmas you were going to disown me.”
“I didn’t say that!” Helen cried.
“I read between the lines.”
“Well…enough is enough and all that. You should be here for Christmas, and if you didn’t come, you’d never see what a cute pregnant lady I am.”
“You are a very cute pregnant lady.”
“Right?” Helen asked, preening a little. And the girl had the right to preen.
“So, you and Evan?” Josie asked. “I guess it’s for real now.”
Helen smiled. She and Evan had always been for real, from the second they met at university in Boston. Peas and Carrots, Grandma Iris had called them. Which was the highest compliment a couple could be given in Iris speak.
“I can’t believe you haven’t been back to the Riverview in five years.”
“Me neither, really,” Josie said.
“What do you do at Christmas?”
“Work.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope. I have to work while I’m here. We’re casting for the new season. It’s actually a really busy time of year.” They were still creating a new season of I Do/I Don’t and hopefully transitioning to her new idea next year.
“You really are a big deal,” Helen said, nudging Josie’s shoulder and grinning. “Hotshot.”
“Hardly.”
“You must make a shit ton of money.”
“Are you going to ask for another donation?” Josie pretended to tease. Donating to Helen’s cause was literally the least she could do.
“No. But…” Helen sighed. “I love my job and I believe in it, but with the kid coming I think either Evan or I need to get something that earns a little more or is a little bit more stable.”
“You know the family will support you.”
Helen nodded, but stared off into the flames, her hand over her stomach. That was the funny thing about a family like the Mitchells. They could make it real comfortable to rely on them.
To stay, even. To be a part of the legacy here rather than step outside and find something of your own.
It was tricky.
“It must be weird being here without Cameron,” Helen said.
Again that name. It hit like a smack and Josie couldn’t stop the flinch.
“Please,” she whispered. Helen was the only person she could admit this to, and even that felt like too much. “Don’t. I can do this, I can be here and I can even be happy, but if we talk about him…” She couldn’t actually finish the sentence. Living with a mistake like the one she’d made required extreme compartmentalization. She had it squished down into a box, but the box was leaking and making a mess, and she was compensating for that box in a lot of different parts of her life, but it was closed.
And it was never—ever—opened.
“I need…to tell you something,” Helen said. Her tone was serious and Josie put a hand on Helen’s shoulder. They were cousins by marriage, but truly sisters at heart.