Where You Least Expect by Lydia Rowan Read Free Book Online Page B

brighter, but the look fell away with her heaved sigh.
    “I suck at life, Joe,” she said with a finality that made him want to comfort her.
    “You don’t—”
    “It’s okay,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t need anyone to try to smooth it over, give me a pep talk to make me feel better. I suck at life, at everything. I’ve known it for a long, long time, but I always thought I’d get better, turn the corner, that I had more time to improve. But I’m thirty now. And as my father so definitively established, time is up.”
    “What? Verna, you’re not making any sense.”
    “It’s just,” she started to shrug and then stopped halfway through the motion, gave a sad little shake of her head instead, and continued, “I have nothing to show for myself. There’s nothing to justify my existence. I never finished college, or even went seriously. That car you hate so much, it was my grandmother’s before she passed. You know about the house, but I bet you didn’t know I only pay about a third of what Quinn could get on the open market, and I had to fight to even get her to take that.”
    “She’s your best friend; it’s understandable that she doesn’t want to take your money.”
    “Or maybe she just pities me.”
    She looked so miserable his heart went out to her as he groped for words to refute her thoughts.
    “Quinn loves you like a sister; she wouldn’t insult you with pity. And besides, people aren’t what they own, Verna, what degrees they have, and you shouldn’t reduce yourself to those arbitrary measures,” he said, finally settling on an approach.
    She rolled her eyes and leaned back in her deck chair.
    “Jesus fuckin’ Christ. It’s worse than I thought. You’re actually trying to make me feel better. I should just end it now.”
    She put a finger to her head and pretended to shoot herself.
    “Verna,” he said, his low voice making her jump and turn to look at him. “Don’t ever say that again, you hear me? Don’t even think it.”
    “It was just a joke,” she said quietly.
    “Not a funny one and it’s no laughing matter,” he said, voice still firm.
    She nodded quickly, but he held her gaze, hopefully conveying how seriously he took the issue. After a moment, she looked away and in increments, the sudden tension faded.
    “It’s just,” she said, “I’d imagined so many great things. I was going to do this and do that, follow my dreams, fall in love…” she said wistfully. “And as I drove home today, it hit me: I’m nothing. I have nothing and I am nothing.”
    The words and the fierce conviction with which she said them tore at his heart. He had to wonder why he’d never noticed her deep self-loathing before, had to wonder if anyone noticed or if they, like he’d sometimes been, were thrown off the trail by her wit and abrasiveness.
    “Verna, you’re not nothing. You have people who care about you, people whose lives you make a little bit brighter every day. That’s so much more than a lot of other people can say.”
    She laughed, but the sound was bitter. “That’s right, I’m a little ember of goodness and light, aren’t I?”
    “To the regulars at the restaurant you are. Do you think many other people take time to listen to them and make an effort to make them feel special each and every time they show up? And what about the people at the food bank who get what might be their only decent meal of the week because of what Love’s does on Wednesday nights? And if I had to bet, that was all your idea. I’m right, aren’t I?”
    “Pfft. That stuff’s just human, a grasping attempt not to be a complete waste of space.”
    Talking to Verna had often felt like he was banging his head against a particularly thick wall, but never more so than tonight, and he was getting frustrated.
    “Okay. So, explain to me, in detail, why you, who, by all accounts, is a well-liked and well-respected person, is nothing, and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong. Four