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She didn’t want to disturb them. Gabby Wilder had not been well the past month since being diagnosed with Lyme disease. It was already nearing 9:00 PM and they might be asleep, as they tried to keep the house quiet so she could rest as much as possible. She would call tomorrow and find out if he was there.
She found a suitable vase and put the flowers in it, inhaling their sweet fragrance as she did. She had a notion and took a pair of scissors out of the drawer. Ava clipped one of the roses off just below the flower and brought it to her bookshelf.
She removed her hardbound copy of Crime and Punishment from the shelf. She hadn’t touched this book in several years and forgot how heavy it was. Ava flipped through the pages looking for a suitable place to dry the flower when she came upon another lavender rose. She removed it carefully so as not to disturb the dried petals. This was from the first roses that Xander had sent her. She remembered when she had picked them up from the front desk, expecting them to be from her current boyfriend at the time, Liam, but instead they had been from Xander.
Back then, she was curious as to why he had chosen lavender. When she looked up the color’s meaning, it had said love at first sight as well as enchantment. A couple of weeks later, Liam was out of the picture, and Xander had taken his place. She was happy back then.
Now she was on the cusp of her career as an attorney, and she was extremely unhappy. Even four years later she had not gotten over him. She had not kissed or slept with another man since they separated. Each time someone asked her out (and there were many), she declined. She found herself comparing them to Xander.
Why had he sent her flowers with that particular phrase on the card?
If he truly loved her and wanted her, then why didn’t he show himself? She placed the old rose back between the pages and found a spot for the new rose. She had no idea why she was bothering to press roses from a man that wanted nothing to do with her, but she felt compelled to do it.
* * *
The next day, Ava sat in the Beacon Theater during the Convocation ceremony. This would probably be the last exercise of her academic life. She had no intention of attending anymore school at least for awhile, if at all. Once the ceremony was concluded, she met her family after the ceremony and they went out to lunch.
Alicia, Michael, and her father were leaving the next day to fly back to Georgia. They struck up a conversation that she barely heard. Her mind was elsewhere, on Xander. She wanted to call the Wilder’s but couldn’t as she had to be at the theater early that morning. This left her no time to call until after she got home from lunch.
“Ava, are you listening to me?”
She snapped out of her fog and looked at her father. “I’m sorry, what were you asking?”
“Are you going back to work next week or taking some time off?”
Ava finished the bite of food she was chewing. “Uncle Daniel said I could take next week off, but I’m not sure I will do it. I’m taking two weeks in June off to volunteer for Kids Afloat.”
Ever since Xander had introduced her to the Kids Afloat charity, she had either made a donation, volunteered for a couple of weeks at their camp during the summer or both. This year she had donated and was volunteering to help at the camp. She looked forward to attending the camp in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. The accommodations weren’t the greatest, but she enjoyed spending time with the children and lending a helping hand. She looked up and saw that everyone was staring at her.
“Don’t worry; I will come down for my niece’s and nephews’ birthdays. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”
Fortunately, the twins and Brooke’s son, William, all had birthdays within four days of each other. Since William was born, they had celebrated all three of the children’s birthdays together. It was easier than having two parties with many children running everywhere.
Ava’s father usually went all out for his grandchildren, much the way he had when his children were little. There was usually a petting zoo, bouncy house, clowns, magicians, catered food and even a small carousel. They always had a lot of guests, and there were so many presents that the children couldn’t open them all in one day.
Ava tried to visit her family as often as she could. She had gotten over the horrible incident at the end of her freshman year. She found that not many people in town knew about it, but she was at the stage where she didn’t care if they did.
After her accident, she and Brooke had made peace with each other, becoming close during her recovery. Brooke had returned from Europe four years ago when Michael and Alicia got married. She had spent several hundred thousand dollars of her inheritance on partying her way through that continent. She had stayed in Georgia, though, to help Ava through her recovery and that was very strange. Brooke even drove her to physical therapy and doctor appointments.
Brooke had never liked Ava, even when she was a baby. She had spent a good majority of Ava’s childhood verbally assaulting her. After their mother had passed away, it had gotten worse.
Ava recalled that when she awoke in the hospital and if her father had left the room, Brooke would take his place. Ava remembered that her sister’s eyes were red and swollen from crying. Brooke reached out to touch her arm. It was during her recovery that Brooke had told her why she had been so mean to Ava over the years.
Elizabeth Keene had had a difficult pregnancy with Ava. She was put on bed rest from her fifth month. Brooke was four at the time and very upset with her mother for not playing with her while she was pregnant. She vowed to hate the baby when it was born. When Ava was born, she was showered with the family’s attention. Michael was seven and Ava was his favorite. He would run home from school to take her out for walks in her stroller. He used to play with Brooke, but after Ava was born, he gave her little of his time.
As the girls grew older, Brooke devised more and more nasty things to do and say to Ava. Their mother usually was the one to diffuse the situation between the two girls, but when she died, Ava was mostly on her own. She was not as close to her father as with her mother and he often wasn’t sure how to handle the situation other than grounding Brooke. Michael often defended his baby sister, but he was away a lot at sports camp and college. A lot of the time, she would hide from Brooke in the walk-in closet of her bedroom. She would hide snacks there and sit and read. Brooke never figured out where she was.
Now things were very different. They talked on the phone several times a week. Ava had planned to stay in Georgia longer than the four months after her accident, but the irony was that Brooke also decided to stay, too. She claimed that she had grown tired of traipsing all over Europe like a leaf in the wind. She had repeatedly taken Ava to Atlanta for doctor’s appointments at the hospital and had reconnected with a man that she dated in high school.
Walter Cartright was two years older than her sister and owned several businesses in Sandy River. He was a handsome man with inky black hair, bright blue eyes and a slightly crooked nose from several breaks while playing football. He was at the hospital to get an MRI on his shoulder that had become aggravated while he was playing golf.
He struck up a conversation with Brooke, and they started dating two days later, which gave the sisters something more to share than just Ava’s recovery. But Brooke quickly fell in love with him and three months into the relationship; she announced they were engaged, and she was pregnant.
It had been almost four months since the accident when her sister’s announcement was shared with the family. Ava was happy for her sister, but she knew she couldn’t stay in Georgia any longer. The loss of her babies was torturous, and if she had to watch Brooke’s belly swell with life, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. The wound was just too fresh for her. So she let everyone know it was time to get back to New York and resume her life. Her wounds had healed on the outside, but the emotional ones remained.
Ava had spent so many weeks crying over Xander, until her father told her to stop. Brooke became her advocate and one evening when they thought Ava was asleep; she could hear a loud conversation between the two. Brooke protected Ava and told their father that Xander was the best thing that had happened to her in a long time. Her father argued that he was a horrible person, and he was glad that Xander was gone from her life. Then Brooke reminded him that Xander had saved Ava’s life not once but twice — once when Liam attacked them and the second when she had died in that field after the car accident.
As physically broken as Xander had been, he performed CPR on Ava until the paramedics came. Without him, she would have been dead. Jason had said maybe so, but without Xander, the car accident might not have happened at all. The conversation ended with her father descending the stairs.
Ava knew at that point that it was the right time to head back to her apartment and deal with the remainder of her healing. Her family had protested her leaving, but she used the excuse that she needed to get back to her independent life in New York. Now the pain was dull when she encountered women who were pregnant. Back in New York, she saw Sandra, Jacob’s wife, on a regular basis and she was four months pregnant with their second child. It was just something that now seemed to be a rather numbing feeling for her. What helped revive her was her little niece and nephews.
Ava was disappointed that Brooke and her husband were not able to join the celebration in New York for her graduation. Ava’s nephew had fallen ill with a horrible earache just before they were supposed to fly from Georgia to the city. So, their father had used Facetime so that Brooke could watch the ceremony as it was happening. Michael also recorded it so they would have it to show other family members who could not attend. Alicia used Brooke’s ticket since you were only allowed three tickets per family, so Ava had as many family members there as possible.
Once home in late afternoon and finally alone again, Ava called the Wilder’s house. Peter told her that Xander had not been staying with them and he hadn’t heard from him. She was surprised since Gabby’s health seemed not to be improving. Xander had always been close with his mother, and she was sure he would want to be with her during this time.
