and stamped her card.
Hannah made a big show of protesting. “Well, skipping over the accident and the ensuing realization that my career—my life—was over?” She nodded as if giving herself permission to continue. “Okay, so, skipping over all that and in addition to trying to forgive the drunk driver who almost killed me, I’m learning to enjoy life in a different, more content-based way—as my expensive sports psychologist terms it. Not that I wouldn’t ski competitively again if I could—without risking messing up my body forever, because I would. But the cool thing is that I’m learning and trying to accept, that skiing doesn’t define me as a person.”
“That’s...awesome, Hannah.” And it was. Jonah could only imagine what that kind of recovery entailed. Hannah had been skiing since she was four years old. Even Jonah had to admit that when he thought of Hannah—he couldn’t picture much else but her on a pair of skis.
“Yep, it is.”
“How are you doing that?”
She belted out a laugh before commenting, “Slowly, painfully, and with extreme difficulty. Kind of a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ kind of thing. Shay has been amazing, of course, giving me a job and a place to live and tons of unconditional sister support.”
Her tone was light, but Jonah could hear the pain still lurking in her voice. He wasn’t sure what to say. He stamped his card, and his adopted cards, and struggled to come up with something profound.
Hannah was smiling at him, warmly. “Shay’s right about you, isn’t she?”
He let out a chuckle. “Probably, but in what way are we referring to specifically?”
“About your lawyering, specifically—how important it is to you. You can’t even begin to consider what your life would be like if you couldn’t be an attorney, can you?”
This was true, he thought, and Shay had certainly accused him of putting too much importance on it in the past. But the part he’d never understood was how his focus on his career was so different than how Shay felt about the inn. He’d asked her about it when they’d had that fight a couple years back, but she’d only looked at him like he was the biggest fool on the planet.
He looked up at Shay now. She was such a force in this town. If it was possible to personify a place, Shay did so with the Faraway Inn. She was the Faraway Inn, and how ironic he thought, that the word also described the nature of their relationship; Jonah and Shay—so far away—too far away from each other in every sense that really mattered.
“I’m sure your sister couldn’t imagine her life without the Faraway Inn either.” Jonah could hear the defensive tinge in his tone.
Hannah’s chuckle had him thinking that she could hear it, too. “That’s where you two have some common ground then, isn’t that right, counselor?”
“Common ground?”
“Shay thinks she wouldn’t be who she is without the inn and you probably think you’d just shrivel and die without the ‘attorney at law’ tacked on to the end of your name. Common ground.”
Shay was staring at him again. He met her eyes and felt a shot of awareness course through him because she was smiling at him—that dazzling dimpled smile that used to leave him dumbstruck. He smiled in return, and had to correct his previous thought, because they weren’t so far away in all the ways that mattered—just the ones that would allow them to ever be together again.
Hannah had started talking once more. “...but if there’s one thing I have learned from my experience it’s that true happiness is not about what you do for a living, there’s a lot else besides work, right? That’s what Dr. Vossel keeps telling me anyway. And I’m trying my hardest to believe it.”
Jonah stared blankly at Hannah, taken aback by her statement, not sure if he agreed, but certainly not wanting to disagree in light of everything she’d been through.
Jonah looked around in bafflement as some in the crowd began making a “quack, quack” noise. Then Shay called out something that sounded like “clickety-click.”
Hannah grinned, then reached over and stamped the O-66 space on his card.
“O-66,” she explained and then yelled, “Bingo!”
* * *
SHAY ANNOUNCED A short break and then dabbed the sweat from her brow with a tissue.
Janie handed her a glass of cold punch. “Looks like Caleb and Mary Beth are getting pretty cozy.”
“I noticed that. It’s sweet, huh? They’ve been spending quite a bit of time together lately.”
“Bernice is gunning hard for Doc.”
“I could hear that, too—all the way up here.”
They shared a chuckle.
“Jonah only takes his eyes off of you long enough to stamp an entire table’s worth of bingo cards, which surprisingly doesn’t take him long at all. It’s like he’s a veteran.”
Shay grinned. “You can’t tell but his eyes are pleading with me to come and save him.”
“Save him?”
“Yeah, I kind of, um, encouraged him to come tonight.”
“Ah,” Janie said with a quick grin. “I see. Well, he should be here. It’s not going to kill him to spend a night out with his grandfather.”
They both watched Jonah extricate himself from the table where he’d been sitting for the last hour. Shay had to give him credit for sticking around this long.
“I think he’s heading over here. Are you going to—save him, I mean?”
Shay turned to fiddle with the bingo cage so Jonah couldn’t read her lips. “Not. A. Chance.”
Janie snickered.
“As a matter of fact—I think we both deserve to go home early tonight. Or even better, Janie, how about a drink at the Cozy Caribou? Text our good buddies, Laurel and Emily, and see if we can meet up.”
“But I’m supposed to call the numbers next.”
“Oh, Janie, my dear, sweet cousin-slash-friend—watch and learn.”
“Good evening, ladies,” Jonah said as he approached them.
“Hey, Jonah,” Janie said.
“Hi, having fun?” Shay asked.
“Yes,” he said sarcastically. “I can only think of about eight-thousand things I’d rather be doing.”
Shay frowned.
“Hey,” he continued with a laugh. “I’m here, aren’t I? And I have been stamping away over there like a madman in case you haven’t noticed. I’m probably going to end up with carpal tunnel.”
He’d obviously intended to goad her.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I am kind of having a good time.”
His smile seemed entirely genuine, and Shay felt her insides begin to melt along with her resolve.
“And Gramps is loving it.”
She considered aborting her plan.
“I also find it highly amusing that this is what you choose to do with your free time.”
That comment shifted her right back into action.
“You think it’s funny that we donate our free time to the Seniors’ Circle, where the money earned here tonight goes to the hospital’s home hospice outreach? For hospice care like your nana had before she passed away.”
“Shay, I was joking. I’m—”
“Why can’t you believe it?”