Out of the Blue Bouquet (Crossroads Collection)

by Amanda Tru

  Just like her marriage to Chelsea’s dad. She wasn’t going to walk down that road again. Wasn’t about to make those same stupid mistakes.

  “I’ll see you in a few days,” he told her, even though Jolene had every intention of finding another way back to Orchard Grove after she flew home. He cleared his throat, unable to make eye contact. “Again, I’m really sorry.”

  Yeah, well, she’d heard that before too. From him, from Chelsea’s dad … The male race was plagued with cheaters, and all of them were masters of apology.

  She grabbed her suitcase handle and turned away. “Bye.”

  Funny, she thought she would have felt worse walking away from him. This was her first serious relationship after the divorce, but instead of mourning over a lost chance at love, she felt more relieved than anything else.

  With all Garcia knew about her, did he honestly think she’d just open her arms and forgive him for everything he’d done?

  The irony of being a divorcee who just broke up with a marriage counselor.

  She should have left him months ago. Should have recognized all those telltale warning signs. Should have never gotten together with him in the first place.

  More shoulds piled one on top of the other.

  When Mena asked her last winter to travel all the way to Seoul and stand as her maid of honor in her daughter’s place, Jolene had agreed without even thinking. It’s what Chelsea would want. What more compelling reason did she need?

  Maybe she should have prayed about it.

  Maybe she should have spent her energy preparing herself emotionally instead of pretending like this trip wasn’t going to happen.

  Maybe she should have kicked Garcia out of her life months ago.

  So many shoulds.

  Dozens of shoulds.

  Hundreds.

  The irony is that she wished she hadn’t traveled to Seoul alone, not for something like this.

  She should have never boarded that airplane in the first place.

  It took Joseph at least half a dozen business trips to Seoul to learn all the nuances of the highly ritualized ordeal of drinking shots with his associates. So many rules to remember, how to hold your wrist with one hand, how to never pour your own drink or turn someone down who offered to fill your cup, how to turn your back toward your boss when you took your first sip. Who knew how these customs began or what made them so important? What mattered was not forgetting yourself for a second.

  Even when, like Joseph, all you were drinking were shots of seltzer water.

  When he thought back about the mess his life had spiraled into five years ago, it was something of a miracle that he was still sober.

  Losing Chelsea had almost destroyed him. Almost driven him back into the clutches of alcohol and addiction and despair. Instead, it drove him into the arms of Denise, a perky intern his firm had just hired.

  He wasn’t proud of his failings. There was very little about that first year he wouldn’t take back if he could, but life didn’t work that way. You had to keep moving forward.

  He’d spent months rationalizing each and every act of infidelity. Denise pulled him out of his depression like nothing else could have, except maybe for the alcohol. And so he’d justified the affair, justified ruining the marriage he’d worked a quarter of a century to build.

  It wasn’t until Denise dumped him that Joseph realized what he’d done.

  How he’d irreparably destroyed his relationship with his wife. And for what? For a twenty-something-year-old brunette who left him the hour her ex moved back to town. He’d forgotten the pain of losing his mistress, but not his wife.

  Last he heard, Jolene was dating some marriage counselor.

  Nobody ever said God lacked a sense of humor.

  Life was funny sometimes. Like how for twenty-five years of marriage, Jolene had always been the one nagging him about going to church, about getting serious about his faith for Chelsea’s sake if nothing else. How it took losing their daughter and finally his wife before he truly repented and realized his need of a Savior.

  How now that he’d finally kicked his addiction for good, now that he was finally walking in a right relationship with the Lord, Jolene wasn’t around to see his improvements.

  Instead, she was dating a marriage counselor.

  Maybe this was her not-so-subtle way of getting back at him for refusing to go to couple’s therapy.

  More irony for you.

  Boisterous conversations flew across the table, most of them in Korean. Twelve months of half-heartedly working with Rosetta Stone meant that Joseph could ask for simple directions and order off a menu. That was about the extent of his language skills, but he put up a good show and laughed when everybody else did.

  He knew he pulled it off too.

  None of his associates would know the intensity of his grief.

  Nobody around him could guess the extent of his regrets.

  “Mrs. Gregory!” The young woman gave a hug strong enough to put a professional wrestler to shame.

  “Please, call me Jolene,” she insisted, feeling decades older than forty-nine.

  Mena dumped her purse onto the counter in Jolene’s hanok. “I’m so glad you made it. How was the flight? Did everything go ok? You must be exhausted. How long were you in the air? Have you eaten dinner yet?”

  Jolene stood blinking. Was this confident, boisterous woman the same gangly teenager who had spent so many sleepless nights gossiping away with her daughter back home in Orchard Grove? Where had the time gone? “I can’t believe you’re getting married,” she croaked.

  Mena was beaming. “I know. But if Jin-Sun had his way, I swear, that man would have dragged his feet until …” She stopped short. “You look exhausted. Do you need to call it a night?”

  Jolene shook her head, telling herself it was ridiculous for a woman her age to be scared of spending an evening alone in a big hanok like this. “I’m fine. It’s just that you’ve grown so much since I saw you last. How long’s it been?”

  “I was trying to figure that out too. I’ve been here in Seoul for a little over five years, so I’m guessing the last time we saw each other was the summer after Chelsea and I graduated.” She winced when she mentioned Chelsea’s name. Looked up at Jolene with uncertainty etched into every feature.

  Jolene hated when people treated her like an expensive figurine in danger of cracking. She spent nearly all her mental energy lying to herself and everyone else that she wasn’t nearly so fragile. She donned her most convincing smile and forced cheer into her tone. “Chelsea would be so excited for you, wouldn’t she?”

  There. She could talk about her daughter, talk about her as if every memory didn’t hack at her spirit like shattered shards splintering her soul.

  Mena didn’t look as convinced as Jolene would have liked. She paused with a half frown then grabbed her purse. “Well, hey, the best news about where you’re staying is there’s a great market literally around the corner. Have you eaten much Korean food? I should warn you, most of it’s pretty spicy. And I seriously hope you’re not a vegetarian because then you’ll be stuck with nothing but noodles the whole time you’re here. But if you’re hungry and feel ready for it, I can show you some of the places where Jin-Sun and I like to eat when we’re out this way.”

  Jolene nodded. Her body was exhausted, but she knew enough from her ex-husband’s life of international business trips that the best way to fight off jet lag was to force yourself to adjust to local time no matter how tired you felt. She’d stay up until the sun went down even if she had to prop her eyelids open with chopsticks. After grabbing her camera case, which would most definitely mark her as a tourist if by some chance her light hair and pale complexion failed to do the trick, Jolene glanced up at the sky roof. “Think it’s going to rain?” she asked. “Should I bring my umbrella?”

  “I’ve got one big enough for both of us to share,” Mena answered. “So you ready?”

  No, Jolene was most certainly not. She wasn�
��t ready for any of this.

  Not ready to admit that her daughter’s best friend was now a grown woman with an international career, a fiancé, and a life that hadn’t stopped when Chelsea died.

  She wasn’t ready to venture out into the city that had stolen her daughter from her.

  Wasn’t ready to stand in what should be her daughter’s place at Mena’s wedding.

  She wasn’t ready for any of it, but what choice did she have?

  Grabbing her windbreaker, Jolene took a deep breath and forced confidence into her tone. “Sure. What are we going to eat?”

  “More soju?” asked the vice president of the firm’s somewhat scrawny male assistant.

  Joseph shook his head. “No alcohol.” It was hard to explain in this company of loud, boisterous drinkers. In a culture in which the devastating impact of addiction was never openly discussed, in a work environment that placed such emphasis on doing everything—including getting dead drunk—communally, Joseph was ever aware that his status as a recovering alcoholic was a barrier to his success in the Korean field.

  At least now he knew that the setback was worth the cost. There was a time when nothing, not even family, was allowed to come before his career advancement.

  Which could explain in part why his wife left him and was now dating a marriage counselor.

  Or maybe that wasn’t a fair assessment. His career may have put a strain on their relationship, may have made things worse when he wasn’t there to mourn with her over Chelsea’s death, but wasn’t the affair what truly destroyed their marriage?

  It was hard to tell. Looking back, they had drifted apart years before Chelsea traveled to Korea to visit her best friend. Years before Joseph’s firm ever hired Denise.

  What made it worse was thinking about how close they’d once been. Both in college, head over heels in love. Their differences in faith were hardly cause for worry. Jolene had been raised in a Christian home, but by the time he met her at the university, she was just as ready to have fun as the next girl. Three years later, when Joseph asked her dad for his blessing to marry his daughter, the topic of religion came up briefly. Joseph had been quick to assure his future father-in-law, “I believe in God. I’m a Christian,” as if the two statements were interchangeable.

  There was so much he hadn’t understood at the time.

  Like how their first miscarriage would cause Jolene to turn to the Savior she hadn’t thought seriously about in years.

  Or how their daughter’s birth would solidify his wife’s desire to buckle down about attending church every Sunday. Before long it was daily devotions, annual prayer retreats with the other ladies from Orchard Grove … When had living a nice, comfortable, suburban life stopped being enough?

  When had Joseph stopped being enough?

  What kind of husband wants to feel like he’s been replaced by an invisible deity, a perfectly selfless, loving, and all-powerful God you could never dream of competing against?

  From the moment of Jolene’s spiritual renewal shortly after their marriage, Joseph could no longer satisfy her like before.

  Was it so wrong to want to come home on a Friday night and watch a movie with his wife? Soon even that became a near impossibility. This film had too much swearing, that one was too violent. Anything that even hinted at immodesty or immorality was scrutinized, judged, and condemned. And seriously, what grown man who was partner and VP of his own firm would actually want to come home and watch movies about talking animals since that appeared to be the only kind of show tame enough for Jolene’s now prudish sensibilities?

  And then there was the nagging. Aren’t you coming to church with us? Why don’t you lead the family devotions tonight? Do you want to pray about it? Every hour, every minute of the day.

  Wasn’t it enough that Joseph brought in a hefty salary, that they owned their own four-bedroom in the Heights, that their daughter never wanted for anything?

  “What she wants is a spiritual leader,” Jolene had told him.

  As if a four-year-old cares about whether her dad does or doesn’t close his eyes when the family prays around the table.

  The more she nagged, the more he pushed Jolene away. For years, he pushed her away. Eventually, the nagging stopped. Maybe she gave up. Maybe she realized it wouldn’t do any good. But even when the verbal bashing ended, the judgmental attitude didn’t. She stopped telling him what kind of movies he could or couldn’t bring into the house, but if there was a sex scene or if the scriptwriters used one too many bad phrases, she’d stand up and walk out of the room. She never said a word in complaint, but her silence was even more pointed than a dozen lectures.

  She was disappointed in him.

  Story of his life for over two decades.

  And now he was doing all the things she’d begged him to. Now he was trying to live a righteous life. He turned to God when he was still reeling from his daughter’s death and his mistress’s abandonment. With the help of his recovery sponsor, he’d finally come to realize what Jolene meant when she talked about having an actual relationship with the Lord.

  He wasn’t just going through the motions anymore. He was reading his Bible and was excited about the content, at least when he remembered to keep up his daily devotion time. He was part of a men’s group at church and had gone to a Truth Warriors conference in Seattle to hear speakers talk about how to be a godly man in the home and in the workplace.

  He got it now. He wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but he was finally starting to understand what it meant to be a selfless and loving leader.

  Of course, now it was too late.

  Five years too late, to be exact.

  The waitress yelled something at Jolene, gesticulating angrily.

  “She’s telling you to take off your shoes,” Mena whispered.

  When Jolene slipped out of her sneakers, the waitress’s voice doubled in volume and her mannerisms grew even more furious.

  “Not right here,” Mena said. “Over there.”

  Jolene didn’t need Mena’s help to translate the woman’s body language. Stupid tourist.

  “It’s ok.” Mena smiled and led Jolene to a small cubby, apparently the proper storage place for shoes. Then they sat down on cushions beside a table low to the ground.

  Jolene wondered if Chelsea had come to this same restaurant, if her first week in Seoul she’d gotten berated by an angry waitress as well. Chelsea had come out here five years ago since she and Mena couldn’t bear the thought of a semester apart from one another. When Mena got her internship to work for Korea Freedom International, a non-profit helping North Korean refugees resettle in Seoul, Chelsea convinced her father to book her tickets out here that same week.

  Joseph hadn’t even asked for Jolene’s opinion. Of course, Jolene would have agreed to the trip. Chelsea deserved it after graduating with her degrees in psychology and early childhood development. But he’d never even asked …

  Still, she couldn’t blame him for everything. In his own way, he grieved Chelsea’s death every bit as much as she did. Of course, she hadn’t thrown herself into the arms of some secretary only two years older than their dead daughter the minute sadness overtook her.

  In so many ways, their marriage had been doomed years earlier. After starting off so strong, after three years of passionate, adventurous, reckless dating, she would have never pictured them turning into the kind of couple that only remained together for the sake of the children.

  But that’s precisely what she’d done.

  She’d stayed with him through the worst of his alcoholism when his addiction nearly cost him the job he’d sacrificed so much for. She’d stayed with him through the confusing years of empty-nesting when she was terrified to discover she had no interests, no pursuits, no hobbies or aspirations that didn’t somehow relate to raising her daughter. During those long, quiet months with Chelsea all the way out on the East Coast, Jolene was forced to find herself all over again, a second adolescence stuck right in the center of mid
dle age.

  She’d stayed with him even after the silence of grieving severed her heart into bloody shreds. She vividly remembered waking up one morning and realizing the man she’d gone to bed with the night before was a complete stranger.

  And then came the affair.

  She’d known even before the piece of incriminating evidence fell into her lap. She’d known but tried to convince herself it was something else. It was grief. It was stress. It was a mid-life crisis.

  A mid-life crisis in a tight, sheer blouse and three-inch heels.

  And then, just a week ago, her boyfriend had done the exact same thing, only this time with the sister of a client.

  Mena was saying something to her, asking what she wanted to order. How long had Jolene been stuck in the past?

  Would she ever learn to live again in the present?

  Thankfully, the menu contained some pictures, and Mena relayed their order to the waitress who seemed just as grumpy as before.

  Jolene hadn’t realized she was staring until Mena asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  She was tempted to make up a lie. Tell Mena she was jetlagged or daydreaming about her upcoming wedding. But Mena had been part of her family’s life since she and Chelsea met in middle school. There was no reason to keep secrets.

  “I was just imagining how much Chelsea would have loved to be here right now.”

  Mena’s smile was soft, appropriate for a young woman who’d lost her best friend but was about to get married and clearly expected to face nothing but happiness and bliss in the decades to come. She sometimes looked so much like her daughter Jolene was tempted to reach out and touch her hair. Stroke her cheek. The girls had always joked they must be long-lost sisters, and with as close as they remained throughout their teen and college years, Jolene almost had to agree.

  “I wish she could be here too,” Mena replied in a soft voice. “I miss her so much.”

  Just three more blocks and he’d be back to his room. After so many trips to and from Seoul, he should have been prepared for the amount of noise at tonight’s company dinner, but he’d been fighting a headache since morning. The cacophony at the restaurant did nothing to improve matters.