“What’s done is done,” Vivi said with finality, though she still wasn’t meeting Chey’s gaze.
“No, it’s not. You can cancel the meeting.”
Vivi did look at her then, and Chey’s heart broke a little at the utter resignation she saw in Vivi’s eyes. Even at their lowest, most grief-stricken moments, Vivi had been their cheerleader, their fierce champion. Never once had Chey seen her look defeated like this.
“I’ve opened that door,” she said simply. “It doesn’t matter if I try to close it.”
“Would it help if we went with you? Strength in numbers?”
“No, this is something I have to do by myself.” She sighed and set her mug down. “I should have done it years ago, quite frankly. Instead of diminishing the impact, time has merely fed its importance, and that’s unacceptable.” She covered Chey’s hand on her wrist with her soft palm. “You know a little about that, my dear,” she said, not unkindly. “Watching you and Wyatt gave me a good reason to put this piece of my past to rest once and for all.”
“Will you be safe? I mean—”
Now Vivi laughed and it was a relief to hear a bit of her usual vim back in her voice. “My darling girl, did you not witness my prowess with my umbrella?”
Chey smiled at that. “Maybe I wasn’t talking physically, but I suppose that umbrella would work to abort the mission if you were feeling threatened either way.”
“Indeed,” Vivi said, then patted Chey’s hand again before withdrawing her arm and standing, mug in hand. “I’ll be fine.”
Chey wasn’t so sure about that, but she’d done what she could. For now, anyway.
“Speaking of minefields, where is your young man?” Vivi said as she went to the sink and pulled on the rubber gloves.
Chey didn’t bother trying to take over. She knew how she was when she needed to distract herself from a challenging situation. She puttered. Like dish scraping. So did Vivi. Instead, Chey picked up a dish towel and started drying. “He’s out in the stables with Bailey. She’s showing him her goat enterprise.”
Vivi laughed. “Now, letting those two put their heads together. . . they could solve all the world’s problems before dinner.” She shook her head. “You know, I was thinking earlier, when she was grilling Wyatt, that I could see her doing what he’s doing. When she gets older. Saving the world.”
“I was thinking president of the United States, but hey, why limit her powers to just one country?”
They laughed, then fell into the comfortable and comforting routine.
They’d moved on from plates to glassware when Vivi asked, “What are your plans when Wyatt heads off to save the whales, or some exotic plant in Bora-Bora?” She sent a side look to Chey as she scrubbed out another glass.
“I don’t know,” Chey said, with complete and utter honesty.
Vivi leaned into Chey, pressed the side of her head to Chey’s. “You know if you want to go with him—”
“I know,” Chey said, and saw she’d surprised Vivi by not immediately stating she would never dream of leaving them, or Lavender Blue. “I know I could go off and blaze trails with him, and probably have a life full of experiences most could only dream about.”
They continued in silence for another few minutes, and then Vivi said, “You’ve already done plenty of that while growing up.”
“Yep,” Chey said succinctly. “And I know what I do here isn’t as important as the difference he’s making—” She talked over Vivi’s immediate rebuttal. “He was the one who told me that if we make any positive change, even if it’s one horse rescued, or one life resurrected—or four, by building this farm—then good is being put out into the world.”
“You can’t save it all, but your effort can make the world of difference to the ones being helped,” Vivi said. “He’s right.”
Chey nodded. “And that’s something.” She picked up another glass. “It’s more than that, though. I know my life is here just like he knows his life is out there. This isn’t a way station for me. I’m not searching anymore. What I do here matters, to me, to us, to those horses out in the field. But more than that, it helps me. I’m the one being saved. I feel settled, and good.” She looked at Vivi. “I didn’t think I ever would again. That’s important, too, right?”
“Most important,” Vivi agreed. “Maybe it’s just as well you two didn’t cross paths any sooner. Maybe you were meant to find your way, find your meaning, while he found his, without anything else clouding your judgment. Anyone else.” She handed another glass to Chey. “Now, whatever you decide, you’ll be making choices with the full knowledge of what you want, what compromises you’re willing to make.”
Chey put the last glass up in the cupboard and closed the glass-front doors. She tossed her damp towel over her shoulder and turned to lean against the counter. “Is it wrong that I think it sucks that we have to make compromises at all?”
“Sometimes the best things take a little work. Or a lot of work.” Vivi let her gaze wander the room, then land back on Chey. “We, of all people, know the truth of that.”
Chey pushed away from the counter and went into Vivi’s arms for a hug. It was a rare thing for her to want. Maybe Wyatt had broken down that wall, too. Because this felt really good, and she wondered why she’d deprived herself of the comfort of something so easily given, and so easily received, for so long.
Vivi pressed a kiss to the side of her head and let her go. “The things we need to feel happy, and settled, and joyful are ever changing. Life isn’t stagnant—it keeps changing, too. Some good, some bad, some awful, some perfect. And we change along with it. It’s impossible not to. We’re not the same women we were before we experienced the losses we did. And we can’t go back to how we were before that, because we’ve been changed by it.”
Chey nodded, agreeing with her.
“That’s a major change,” Vivi went on, “but there are dozens of tiny ones, too. And they all change the course of the river we’re flowing along, cher.” Her New Orleans drawl snuck into her voice as she draped her arm around Chey’s shoulders and leaned her head to the side until it touched Chey’s. “Would you have ever imagined yourself here? If someone said you were going to have to pick between barrel racing and runnin’ a lavender farm back when you and Tory were busting your adolescent little tushies beating the snot out of each other in the ring? What would you have said?”
Chey snickered at Vivi’s colorful description and Vivi squeezed her shoulder in a light hug. “I’d have been making a deposit in the swear jar,” Chey answered, and they both laughed again.
“When you were seventeen, if someone told you that you would willingly choose to live on a farm with three women, without a single sexy, dashing cowboy in sight, you’d have called them crazy.” Vivi glanced at her. “Am I right?”
Chey laughed. “All true. I guess I never thought of it that way.”
Vivi let go and slipped the towel off Chey’s shoulder as she straightened and stepped away. “Now things are changing again. You had to make compromises to be here, to do this. Living in the middle of nowhere, cutting yourself off from a social life with people your own age.”