Nights Under the Tennessee Stars. Joanne Rock
corduroy jacket. “Don’t forget your bag.”
He pointed to her suitcase in the waiting area and she vaguely recalled he’d been seated near her earlier. They’d talked about the weather and the local baseball team. It seemed like a million years ago.
“Thank you.” She nodded. Swallowed. Forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, her whole body numb with shock. “I’ll go get it.”
Patrick was married. The man she thought she loved had children.
Grabbing the smooth tortoiseshell handle of the suitcase—a suitcase she’d packed so carefully and hopefully—Erin strode up the concourse and away from the flight that would have taken her home. Away from the Finley family, who expected her to show up with Mr. Right just in time for dinner.
She should be embarrassed about being so stupid and blind that she hadn’t known the love of her life had been lying to her every second they’d been together. He’d lied in the worst and most clichéd manner possible. He was married. She should feel ashamed to be an unknowing “other woman” in an era where most of her friends performed Google searches on any guy they dated.
But Erin wasn’t ready to acknowledge any of those things just yet because most of all, she felt deeply sorry that she’d wounded an unsuspecting woman—a mother, no less—whose world must be falling apart faster and harder than Erin’s today.
Focusing on the pain she’d inflicted helped keep some of her own fury at bay—at least until she arrived at her car. She dropped her bag in the trunk, then slid into the driver’s seat. Once the doors were safely locked and the windows rolled up, she succumbed to the urge to pound her fist on the steering wheel and scream. She was done with Patrick. Done with men who had complicated lives and too many secrets. Life at high speed didn’t suit her. Time to slow down. Regroup. And hope the day would come when she didn’t feel the need to scrub her skin with disinfectant to get rid of the memory of Patrick’s touch.
She needed to pack her rental place and get far away from the adulterous ass who’d done nothing but lie to her. Any other day it might have made her smile to think that what she really needed was to get back to Heartache.
Six months later
ERIN HANDED HER sister an airline ticket, her phone charger and her suitcase.
“I’ve got this, Heather. Go have fun.” She nodded toward the door of their jointly owned boutique, Last Chance Vintage, figuring her organized younger sister would never get under way without a hard shove and possibly a crowbar. “You’ve been babysitting me too long. Time to let me do my own thing.”
Erin and Heather were expanding the tiny shop on Heartache’s main thoroughfare, taking over an ancient cobbler’s storefront to make way for the new design. They’d done a lot of the labor themselves to save money, their DIY skills reasonably strong since their father had owned a construction business and their older brother still ran the family’s building-supply store. Erin had finished sanding the hardwood floors in the new space two days ago. Even now, the pungent scent of a fresh coat of stain permeated the heavy plastic divider that sectioned off the workspace behind the front counter. Heather had tried to mask the scent with lavender chips in an electric warmer, but so far, the wood stain was winning out.
“Babysitting?” Heather dropped the bright teal suitcase on the rag rug, beside a display of necklaces artfully draped on the spokes of an old bicycle wheel. “As if. Last Chance is my store, too, you know. I can’t help it if I want to oversee the redesign.”
The freckles across Heather’s nose aligned when she scrunched her face into a mad expression, a quirky characteristic no one but a sibling would notice. Heather and Erin had looked a lot alike growing up, so the freckle pattern was familiar from Erin’s own reflection in the mirror. Her hair had been as red as Heather’s once upon a time, too, but Erin had been dying it different colors since she was old enough to buy Clairol at the local drugstore without Mrs. Bartlett threatening to tell her mother.
Erin was almost done with the Goth-girl black on her lopped-off curls, knowing she looked way too much like a caricature of a pissed-off woman. But the inky shade sure did suit her mood lately. The store expansion had been her brainchild, prompted by a sudden desire to wield a sledgehammer.
She put her hands on her hips. “I’ve got the redesign well in hand, and you know it. The expansion is no excuse for you sticking to me like glue these days.” Erin kept her voice low even though there was no one else in the store, and probably wouldn’t be, since closing time was five minutes away. After her mother’s legendary tirades, Erin tended to keep a tight rein on how she displayed her emotions. “You have to admit you’ve been hanging out at my house every day after closing time. And we never talk about the store.”
Erin loved her hometown for a lot of reasons. But the shoulder-to-shoulder proximity of her brother’s, mother’s and sister’s homes was not really one of them. However, since the Finley land had been free for building and gifted in parcels to each of them, that was exactly how things had panned out. A couple of acres separated each house, and the farmland nearby was still mostly vacant.
“So sue me for preferring to share a bottle of wine.” Heather rearranged the silk daisies tucked inside the bicycle basket, her hot-pink manicure showing off metallic emerald stripes. Erin had painted her sister’s nails earlier in the week while sharing one of those bottles. “It’s been nice having both of us in town for a change. I get tired of doing the dutiful daughter thing here by myself.”
For years, they’d traded off time in Heartache to keep tabs on their mom’s health. It was no different now that they owned the store. They each traveled to scout new items for the store or to sell on their website. Last Chance Vintage had cornered a niche market on antique linens and silverware, catering to numerous independent decorators who liked doing business with smaller companies. Sometimes, in their flea market scouring, they found genuinely valuable antiques, as well, and they’d been in business long enough that they knew which of their clients would love them.
Still, Erin knew she’d done the lion’s share of the traveling in the past two years while Heather had been at home to weather more of their mother’s crises. Heather deserved to get out of Heartache more often. She’d stifled her own dreams as a musician for the sake of a job that kept her in town.
“I’m planning to stay closer to home in the future, so I’ll be here when you get back. And clearly, someone needs to do some buying if we’re going to fill the new floor space.” She gestured at the heavy plastic sheet hanging between the old store and the new expansion. “It’s definitely your turn to rack up the frequent-flier miles.”
It was stupid, but the thought of setting foot in an airport again practically made Erin hyperventilate. She hadn’t left town since returning six months ago. She’d methodically cut every reminder of Patrick out of her life, from giving away the landscape painting he’d done for her to dumping every card, memento and shared concert ticket in the trash. After chucking her cell phone and changing her number—overkill, but that was how she rolled these days—she’d also gotten rid of her landline in the Heartache house because Patrick had that number, too. She had planned an extended hiatus from dating and men since she didn’t trust her judgment anymore.
Sometimes, she woke up punching her pillow in a fury, and it had been half a year since she’d found out he was a lying cheat. If she hadn’t loved him—hadn’t thought for sure he’d been about to propose and seen for herself how gooey and blind that had made her—she might have been able to control the anger better. But knowing she’d been played for a fool, that she’d been in love with an illusion, rocked her.
“I know.” Heather sighed, removing one of the silk daisies to wrap around her wrist in an impromptu bracelet, an accessory that actually looked pretty cute with her sunshine-yellow blazer and jean capris. “But I’d gotten into a good groove with my students here and part of me worries you’re only sending me out to shop because you