I want you to stay.
Then I’ll stay.
“I can’t.”
“You will, Jane!”
She had never heard her uncle’s voice so sharp and angry. The tears she’d been holding back slipped from her eyes.
“You will, or we will have nothing more to say to one another, you and I. Nothing more. And I will not welcome you back to our family. I will assume you have turned your back on us, and I will take similar measures.” He paused. “Am I understood? Am I understood, Jane Mays?”
A life without Uncow. A life never being able to see her father’s eyes staring back at her again. She couldn’t lose her uncle. It would be like losing her father all over again.
“Yes, Uncow,” she whispered, her heart shattering into painful shards, puncturing her soft insides, making it difficult to breathe.
“Your aunt and I will come down to the city on Wednesday night for dinner, and we’ll work this all out. We’ll speak to Sara and impress your value upon her so she eases up on you a little. I know she can be a…handful. But, deep, deep down she cares for you, Janie. She needs you. It’s all going to be okay. You’re a good girl, Jane. Travel safe. Goodbye, now.”
Jane stared at her phone in shock, in disbelief, for several seconds after her uncle had hung up. She was startled by the lobby doors opening and jumped, watching as a father and his young daughter walked out holding hands, the daughter clutching a hot-pink fishing pole that leaned up against her shoulder. The little girl grimaced at Jane and Jane raised her hands to her tear-stained face. She hurried into the lobby and bee-lined for the bathroom.
She rested her hands on the cold marble counter, staring down at the sink before her, trying to catch her breath, and silent the infighting exhausting her brain.
I am not going back to New York. I’m staying with Lars. I love Lars.
But, if you stay, you lose Uncow.
If I go, I lose Lars.
Maybe not. Maybe he’ll wait for you. If you stay, losing Uncow is guaranteed.
How long will he wait for me? They’ll try to trap me into staying there forever.
You don’t know that.
I can’t go. I can’t leave him!
But, you cannot lose Uncow. You already lost your mom and dad. You cannot lose him too, and that’s final.
She looked at her face in the mirror. Her perfect makeup job was a wreck. She took paper towels, wetted them and tried to even out the tear lines. She opened her loaner purse and freshened her lipstick.
Her face, which had looked so fresh and happy only ten minutes ago was now worried and worn. She smiled at herself in the mirror, but it quickly faded. It was going to be an awfully long day if Jane couldn’t smile for more than two seconds, and Lars was certainly going to pick up on her sadness. He was much more perceptive than most men, something she loved about him.
Her despair overwhelmed her. She would be swallowed up by Sara’s needs, Sara’s schedule, Sara’s life…and Lars would have girls coming and going from the park. Girls who wanted to touch his beautiful body. Girls he could look to for comfort as he got over Jane.
How could their week together hold up over a few months apart?
She knew his feelings for her were true. Hers were too. But Jane was a realist and such a new love probably wouldn’t withstand the distance. As Lars had observed last night: long distance would kill it.
Still, if she wanted to have both her uncle and Lars in her life, going back with Sara and staying on with her for a little while longer seemed like the only way. She could try to talk to her aunt and uncle and explain that she wanted a new life; she could try to reason with them. Maybe she could train Laney as more of an assistant for Sara; heck, Laney might even be a better fit for Sara than Jane was. And then when she returned to Lars, she could have him without losing her uncle.
Even as these desperate thoughts circled in Jane’s head, they were underscored by the cruel and harsh reality of the situation: if she left Lars after committing to stay, feeding into a fear he had already shared with her, she would almost certainly lose his trust, and eventually, his love.
She heard his voice at the front desk, asking for them to call her room and she tried to smile at herself one more time. You have to believe this right now because there is no other option, Jane: You will survive the distance and you will come back to him.
She nodded once at her reflection then swallowed, smiling her brightest smile as she opened the door and stepped into the lobby.
***
Lars watched Jane, who was sitting on the porch swing again, bouncing Erin on her knee as Jenny talked animatedly beside her.
He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something didn’t feel right as the day wore on. She looked beautiful—when she had come out of the lobby bathroom, his mouth had literally dropped open, she looked so stunning. Her dress, her shoes, her beautiful face and soft hair. She looked every bit as lovely as her exotic cousin, in her own fresh-faced way.
She had taken his hand, smiling, and they’d headed to church together, sitting in the same pew he sat in with his family for most Sunday mornings of his life. She smiled and commented at all of the right places, helping to lay out the lunch at his father’s house and taking one of the girls when Kat or Jenny needed a hand.
No one else would’ve noticed.
But Lars noticed.
Jane was quiet. She didn’t banter, even when he baited her. He caught her several times looking distracted, far away, then quickly composing herself when someone spoke to her. When he took her hand throughout the day, she had been the one to drop his first. Especially when he had shared with his family at lunch that Jane was staying in Gardiner, she had looked down nervously first, before raising her eyes with a careful smile. A smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
Lars thought he may have been reading into things, but it almost seemed like she was avoiding him. Oh, she was working hard to act normal, but she wasn’t, and he could tell.
He played with the heart-shaped keychain in his pocket. It had a copy of his house key on it, and he had intended to give it to Jane tonight so that she could start coming and going to and from his place after checking out of the hotel this morning.
But he couldn’t shake the increasingly uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong. He had seen a variation of this behavior before. Last Sunday when she’d gotten businesslike with him and Tuesday when she’d broken things off with him; both times she had backed away from him. Both times she was letting him go or protecting herself. So, what was this, then? A sickening feeling started rolling around in his gut and he knew. Letting him go. Protecting herself.
He sucked in a breath of air and held it, concentrating on it so that his eyes wouldn’t water with the force of his disappointment. It was suddenly as clear to him as the park on a sunny day.
Jane wasn’t staying, after all.
***
As the sun started to set, Jane hugged Jenny and Kat goodbye, and was surprised when each of the Lindstrom men embraced her too. She kissed the babies on their foreheads and tried not to wince with unexpected longing when Jenny waggled Erin’s hand and said, “Bye-bye, Tant Jane.”
Everyone had giggled and Jane had done her best to look surprised and amused, even as her broken heart bled. She had let them all believe that she was staying in Gardiner and hated herself for deceiving them. Tant Jane. Maybe if you stayed, one day you really would have been Tant Jane. But her decision was already made, no matter how much it hurt.