“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Of course, you are,” he replied. “Look, I have to go. When we get to Chester, we can tell our parents we’re splitting. We should probably do it separately. We’re gonna have to face these kinds of things on our own, so we might as well get used to it, okay?”

Stay strong. Don’t cry.

“Okay.”

I was on my way to spend the summer in Chester, seeing how my apartment in Atlanta wouldn’t be ready for me to move into until August. On one note, moving back to Chester terrified me because it wouldn’t take long for people to realize Finn and I weren’t together anymore. On another note, I was secretly excited to be in the same place as Finn. On the same sidewalks where we first fell in love. Maybe having that connection would make him look at me the way he used to. I had a summer to make my husband fall in love with me again.

I climbed into my car, and when I turned the key, the engine sputtered. Oh no. I turned it again, and it made a scratching noise. Finn cocked an eyebrow my way, but I tried to ignore his stare. My car was ancient, a little pink Buick I’d had since the day I left for college. The only thing I’d had in my life longer than that car was Finn, and now that he was on his way out, Rosie was the oldest thing that belonged to me.

That late morning, she’d developed a cough.

“Do you need me to look at the engine?” Finn asked, but I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t, not after he snapped at me and made me feel awful just for being me.

“No. I’m fine,” I told him.

“Will that thing even make it all the way to Chester? You should’ve gotten a rental car and trashed that piece of junk.”

“It’s fine,” I told him, turning the key and hearing that nasty sound once more.

“Gracelyn—” he started, and my nerves were at the edge of panic.

“Just go, Finn. You made it perfectly clear that you don’t want to be here, okay? So, just go.” Unless you stayed…

He frowned and stood a bit taller. “All right, I guess I’ll go.”

“Yes. You should.” Unless you stay…

I was pathetic.

His lips turned down. “Bye.” He left me there along with our history, closing the door on the chapter of our story, one I was still trying to rewrite.

My chest tightened, and I called after him. “Finley,” I shouted, making him turn my way.

“Yeah?”

My fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. Those fighting words in my mind wanted to escape. They wanted my lips to be their battleground, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t beg my husband to stay with me, not after all we’d been through. “How did this happen? Where did we go wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He grimaced. “Maybe some things just aren’t meant to be forever.”

But what if we were meant to be, and instead of trying to pull our boat back to shore, we were willingly letting it slip away?

Tears fell from my eyes, and I hated that he saw them, but at the same time, I needed him to witness my pain, to witness how he’d hurt me. I needed him to see me aching, and I needed to remind myself he was no longer the man who could comfort me.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Grace?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

I nodded slowly. “I know.”

I believed him, too. Judy would call me foolish to believe in my husband’s love, but I knew a few things about love that my little sister had never learned. Love was a messy emotion that didn’t walk a straight line. It worked in waves and loops of ups and downs. It was a screwy emotion that could somehow still exist amidst the ultimate heartbreak and betrayal.

Finn loved me, and I loved him back in a twisted and painful way. I wished there was a way to stop it—to shut off the love faucet, and make my heart stop feeling.

But still, it felt.

Still, it burned.

In the dark trunk of his car sat five pieces of mismatched luggage, all of which were tattered and torn, all of which held a part of me within them.

I watched them all drive away.

I sat there in the parking lot with only a wish and a prayer that my car would start, but luckily, my parents taught me that that was all one needed in life. You just needed faith the size of a mustard seed that no matter what, things would work out.

I kept trying to turn the engine and then paused for a moment.

Dear God, it’s me, Gracelyn Mae…

When Rosie finally started after about five more attempts, I closed my eyes and took a breath before I drove away. “Thank you,” I said softly.

It was nice to know that even when I felt alone, there was something bigger than me to believe in.

*

“I hope this is the right choice,” I muttered to myself as I began my drive to Chester. Back where we came from, everyone believed Finn and I were still in love, living our happily ever after.

He hadn’t told a soul, and I hadn’t either. Maybe because we knew the type of people who lived in the town where we grew up. Maybe we hadn’t told anyone because we both weren’t ready for their judgments, their thoughts, their opinions.

Their advice.

Chester was a small town in Georgia about five hours from Atlanta, and when I said small, I mean everybody knew everybody’s middle name and when they had their first kiss—at least the fairy-tale romance story of it, not the actual truth.

In a place like Chester, everyone lived on semi-truths—you know, where one only told the side of the story that made them look like a proper lady or gent.

Everyone knew I was coming back to town because they knew Finn had landed the position at the hospital, but what they didn’t know was that when I came back, I wouldn’t be laying my head right beside his.

I hadn’t made plans for where I’d stay; a silly part of me thought Finn would come back and we’d somehow end up back in love. Even though that wasn’t how it went, I wasn’t too worried about finding a place to lay my head that night. My family would be there for me, always and always.

In Chester, the centerpiece of the whole town was Zion Church, which sat right in the middle of downtown. The church was the heart of the town, and my father, Samuel Harris, was the man who ran it, just as Grandpa James had before him, and Great-Grandpa Joseph had before him. Daddy never said it, but I was certain he was disappointed when he didn’t have a son to take over the church someday after he stepped down.

He had asked me, and I’d respectfully declined. Finn had gotten into medical school in Tennessee, and like the good wife I was, where he led was where I followed. I followed him many different ways throughout his schooling, and I thought Atlanta was the final stop. When he told me he applied for a position in Chester, I had to admit I was surprised.

He used to say he never wanted to return to small-town life, always said it suffocated him.

Dad respected my choice of not wanting to take over the church and said he was proud of me, and Mama respected that I stood by my husband’s side. There was a reason her favorite song was “Stand by Your Man” by Tammy Wynette.

The church was an integral part of my family’s history, and the whole town of Chester gathered in the building more than once a week for sermons, prayer circles, Bible studies, and pretty much any bake sale that took place. Church on Sunday morning was just as common as football on Fridays and whiskey on Saturdays.

In a way, my family was royalty in small-town USA. If you knew the church, you knew our family, and if you knew our family, you knew our wealth.

Daddy claimed the money didn’t matter and that his main purpose was to give back to the community and serve God, but Mama’s red-bottomed shoes and flashy jewelry told a somewhat different story.

She reveled in being small-town royalty. She was Queen Loretta Harris, the pastor’s wife, and boy, did she take that role seriously.

The closer I got to Chester, the tighter my stomach knotted.

It’d been years since I’d packed up my life and relocated with Finn, and the idea of returning home without him terrified me. I hated how loud my insecurities were lately, hated that I cared so much about how the town would judge me.

What would people think?

What would they say?

Worst of all, how would Mama react?

3

Jackson

“Five hundred today, five hundred next week,” I dryly told the woman who kept beating her fake eyelashes toward me. She tried her best to push out her chest in my direction, but it was pointless. I’d already seen what was under that blouse, and there wasn’t much for her to push out.

“But…” She started talking, but I tuned her out. Nothing she could say would interest me. Nothing about small-town USA interested me in the least.

Everything about Chester, Georgia, was a pain in my ass, and I hated that I somehow got trapped there.