Between Sisters - Kristin Hannah [53]
The memories twisted Meghann's insides, made her feel needy and weak. She couldn't hold it all inside anymore. “It was so romantic,” she said softly. “The night he proposed to me. The white rose petals were true. So was the music. He poured a glass of champagne and told me that I was his whole world, that he wanted to love me forever and be the father of my children. I cried when he said it.” She wiped her eyes of tears that should have dried long ago. “I should have known how fragile love was, given my family history, but I was reckless. I handled a glass bubble as if it were made of steel. I couldn't believe how quickly it broke. He left because I didn't know how to love him enough.” On that, her voice cracked. “You can't blame him.”
“So, you did love him.”
“Oh, I loved him,” Meghann said quietly, feeling the dormant pain well up and become fresh again.
“It's interesting that you readily remember the pain of your divorce, but you have to be reminded of the love.”
“No more,” Meg said, standing up. “This is like open-heart surgery without anesthesia.” She looked at her watch. “Besides, we're out of time. I told Claire I'd be there this evening. I need to go.”
Harriet slowly removed her glasses and looked up at Meghann. “Think this thing through, Meg. Maybe this wedding could bring you and Claire together, give you some new ground to stand on.”
“You think I should just let her marry Bobby Jack Tom Dick and say nothing?”
“Sometimes love means trusting people to make their own decisions. In other words, shutting up.”
“Women pay me handsomely to tell them the truth.”
“Your version of the truth. And Claire is not one of your clients. She's a woman who is getting married for the first time. A thirty-five-year-old woman, I might add.”
“So I should just smile and hug her and tell her I think it's great that she's marrying a stranger?”
“Yes.”
“What if he breaks her heart?”
“Then she'll need her sister. But she won't turn to someone who'll say, I told you so.”
Meghann thought about that. She was opinionated and abrasive, but she wasn't a dimwit. “Sorry, Harriet,” she said at last. “I don't agree. I can't let him hurt her. Claire's the best person I know.”
“The best person you don't know, you mean. Clearly, you want to keep it that way. You want to keep her at arm's length.”
“Whatever. Good-bye.” Meghann hurried from the office.
Harriet was wrong. It was that simple.
Meghann had let Claire down once; she wouldn't do it again.
It's stupid to marry a man you just met.
“‘Stupid' is not a good word choice.”
It's inadvisable to—
“You're her sister, not her lawyer.”
Meghann had been carrying on this demented conversation with the rearview mirror for more than an hour. How was it that she came up with closing arguments that would bring a jury to tears and she couldn't find a simple, compelling way to warn her sister of impending doom?
She drove through the stop-and-go traffic of downtown Seattle and into the flat green farmland of the Snohomish valley. Towns that in her youth had been sleepy little dairy towns now wore the glitzy facade of bedroom communities. Big, brick-fronted, porticoed suburban homes sat on chopped-up pieces of land, their driveways cluttered with SUVs and recreational vehicles. The original clapboard farmhouses had been torn down long ago; only rarely did one peek out from behind a billboard or beside a strip mall.
But as the highway began to climb, that yuppie sheen disappeared. Here, in the shadow of the lavender-gray peaks of the central Cascade Mountains, the towns were untouched by the march of progress. These towns, with names like Sultan, Goldbar, and Index, were too far out of the way to be gentrified. For now.
The last stop before Hayden wasn't a town at all; rather, it was a collection of buildings on the side of the road, the final place to get gas and supplies before the top of the pass. A run-down tavern—the Roadhouse—sat huddled beneath a blinking