“I don’t know, Riley. Why would you? Maybe to pay me back. All I know is I’ve been sick twice and have no explanation for it. My doctor was a little curious, so he insisted on doing a tox screen. Is there anything in there that you think he might find?”
Riley’s face blanches an unnatural shade of white. I watch as she silently grapples for an answer, and I really don’t need to hear anything more from her. It’s clear that there’s enough truth to this accusation to make me sure I want to see the results of Dr. Macau’s testing. And get him to test the rest of my supplements as well.
Dillon
“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”
―William C. Faulkner
I HONESTLY THINK I’d forgotten how much I love it here.
Mama left me the house on Smith Mountain Lake. The Virginia land and old farmhouse were left to her by her parents. I’ve only been here once since she died, and pulling into the driveway now, I’m overcome with a wave of sadness. I turn the car off and sit staring at the house, memories welling up. I see Mama standing on the front porch, waving at me as I climb on the school bus. I see our Lab Lucy bounding down the steps to meet me in the afternoon.
It’s summertime here, and I remember countless days when Mama and I had sat on the front porch on a day such as this, eating watermelon and having a seed-spitting contest.
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to come now. But honestly, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I belong. Nashville felt like a place I needed to leave. The house Josh and I shared wasn’t ours anymore. It is his. I wish more than anything in the world that Mama was here to meet me. That I could run up the stairs and into the house to find her in the kitchen baking sugar cookies because she knew I was coming.
But I know she won’t be there, and so I get out of the car, walking up the steps and finding the key under the flowerpot by the front door. It fits in the lock exactly the same as the last time I’d used it, just slightly crooked, but the lock cooperates, and the door swings in.
The house always smells the same as I remember, a touch of lemon furniture polish mixed with the scent of yesterday’s baking. It’s not logical that the house would smell of Mama’s cooking, and sometimes, I wonder if it is my memory guiding my senses and not the actual house.
I step inside the foyer, my shoes squeaking on the polished hardwood floor. I’ve been paying Betsy Harker to clean every two weeks, and looking around, I can see she has kept things exactly as Mama would have. Mama loved a clean house, and she spent every Saturday morning making ours shine. She enlisted my help when I was older, and I never minded because her love for this place had been infused in my heart the same as it had hers.
I flick on lamps as I head toward the kitchen, stopping in the doorway to take in the room Mama had loved most. She’d kept much of it as it had been when she was growing up, the white stove with its gas burners, the farm table in the breakfast nook, the large cupboard with her grandma’s dishes prominently displayed.
I stand at the screen door that looks out onto the back yard, note that Betsy’s husband is as careful and meticulous with his mowing as she is with cleaning. It’s nice to come home and see the place so well taken care of. I know that would make Mama happy.
Why haven’t I come home more? I could blame it on Josh and the fact that he’d never been overly enthusiastic about coming here, but the fault is more mine, if I’m honest. I cared what he wanted more than I cared about coming home. I feel heartsick at the pain I must have caused Mama. And now it’s too late to undo any of it. Too late to tell her I’m sorry.
I turn and walk back to the truck where I pull my big suitcase from the passenger seat. I’d left the Porsche 911 with Josh. I don’t want it anymore. It was never me anyway. I pat the hood of the truck as I roll the suitcase toward the front porch. The truck has always been more me.
~
I TAKE A long hot soak in the bathtub upstairs. It’s the old clawfoot kind, and I’m a little tall for it, but it’s deep, and the water is deliciously warm, the bubbles I’ve added floating up under my chin. I close my eyes and try not to think about the scene with Josh before I’d left. I’ve hurt him. I know it, but it wasn’t because I wanted revenge. I just know it’s time to move on, figure out where I’m going from here.
My phone rings from the stool near the tub. I sit up and reach for it, glancing at the screen. My heart thuds and takes off at a gallop. Should I answer? Would it be better to leave the connection between us severed?
Probably, but I click the green button anyway. “Hey.”
“Dillon. Hey.”
His voice drenches me in warmth. I sit up in the bath, pulling my knees against my chest and putting him on speaker. “How are you?” I ask, my voice echoing in the room.
“I’m not too sure,” he says, and I can hear that something is terribly wrong. “What’s happened, Klein? Is it the baby?”
“No,” he says. “She’s actually good. Small but the doctors say she’s headed in all the right directions. I’m grateful beyond words.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad.” I wait, feeling there’s more he wants to say.
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
“Of course.”
“Something has happened that I’m not sure what to do about.”
I hear the weight in his voice and feel a pang of alarm. “What is it, Klein? What’s happened?”
“I got sick again the morning after I got back from Paris. The same as that morning at the hotel. I went to see a doctor at Vanderbilt. He ran a tox screen that showed traces of ipecac. It’s a substance used to make people throw up if they’ve ingested poison. The sickness hit me after taking my vitamins in the morning.”
“Riley put the ipecac in the capsules.” I say this with utter conviction, thinking back to the moments before I left Riley’s hospital room, the venom in her voice when she made it clear that if she couldn’t have Klein, no one would.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Oh, Klein,” I say, newly struck with horror for what I am hearing. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fortunately. Apparently, the amount I took in this last time was enough to make me sick but nothing worse. The capsules in some of the pills I hadn’t taken yet contained enough to cause a lot more than just vomiting.”
“I’m so sorry, Klein. What are you going to do?”
He’s quiet for several seconds. And then, “Curtis thinks I need to go the police.”
“What do you think?”
“Logically, I know that’s the right thing.”
“But she’s the mother of your child.”
His silence tells me I’m right. “I feel sorry for the baby. I mean what a start. First, Riley telling me she hadn’t kept her. And now this.”
I consider my words for a few drawn out seconds, and then, “The really good thing is that she has you for a father. And she needs you to protect her. Riley could have killed you, Klein. I think you have to report it. Even if she isn’t charged or punished, maybe it will stop her from doing something like this again.”
“I know you’re right. It’s just so ugly.”
“It is.”
We’re silent for a bit, and then he says, “Where are you?”
“I’m in Virginia. At my mom’s house. She left me the place, and I haven’t been here for a long time. Just kind of needed to get away.”
“Ah. Are you and Josh—”
“No,” I say. “We’re not.”
“Oh.” There is relief in his voice. “Can I be honest, Dillon?”
“Yes.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“Will you give me some time to get my life straightened out?”
“Take all the time you need. I’ll be here.”
Klein
“One word
frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
―Sophocles
Fourteen months later
I’M SO NERVOUS, I can barely think.
Noelle and I walk among the early French paintings in my favorite section of the Louvre. I carry her with my right arm, answering her baby-talk questions with full answers because I mostly understand what she’s asking when she points and babbles. I kiss her soft forehead, and she reaches a palm for my chin, grabbing and giggling.
“Okay, naughty Noelle,” I tease, and she wriggles to my left arm, still laughing. The sound never fails to melt my heart.
I glance at my watch. She isn’t late yet, so I don’t know why I’m nearly sweating with nerves. I try to distract myself with more tutorials for Noelle, telling her who painted the enormous framed painting in front of us.
I feel her walk into the room before I ever turn around. I just know that she’s there. Praying I’m right, I force myself to look, my heart thudding and thumping with all the elegance of a thirteen-year-old at his first dance. “Hey,” I say, my eyes drinking her in.
“Hey,” she says, shy as I’ve never heard her before.
I walk over to stand in front of her. “This is Noelle.”
“Hi, Noelle,” Dillon says, reaching out a hand to offer Noelle a finger to shake. Noelle does so with her chubby hand, and Dillon visibly melts.
We look at each other then, our eyes meeting, holding. I don’t bother to hide how happy I am to see her, and if I’m right, she’s just as happy to see me. “Thank you for coming,” I say.
“Thank you for asking me.”
“I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I wasn’t sure I should. But here I am.”
Suddenly, my plan feels clunky and not well-thought-out. What if I’m wrong? What if. . .I’m not going to let myself back out now. I reach for her hand, tug her gently across the room to the painting titled, Trussing Hay.
She looks at it and smiles. “I’ve thought of this painting so many times.”
“So have I,” I say. “And of our conversation about what it takes to create something lasting.”
She looks up at me, nods, quiet, as if she knows I have something more to say. Noelle patty-cakes my cheek. I tickle her belly and say, “I’m pretty sure whatever art I’ve created isn’t going to endure as long as what these artists created has. But there are two things in my life that I know will last. My love for this little girl. And my love for you, Dillon.”
The surprise on her face is instant. Her voice breaks across my name. “Klein.”
“Will you marry me, Dillon? Be our family?”
The tears slide down her face now, and I lean in to kiss her softly, with everything I feel for her completely evident. Noelle smooths a hand across Dillon’s hair and coos.
Dillon is outright crying now, and she slips her arms around my neck, hugging Noelle and me both at the same time. “Yes,” she says near my ear. “Yes, yes, yes.”
We kiss again, but this time there’s nothing tentative about it. It’s hello, I’ve missed you, I want you, I need you. I feel complete, this circle of three we make, as if I will never need another thing to make me happy.
I pull back in a bit. “You have any opposition to getting married in Paris?”
“No opposition,” she says, kissing me again. “No opposition at all.”
Dillon
“I love you and that’s the beginning and end of everything.”
―F. Scott Fitzgerald
AND THAT IS exactly what we do.
We elope, Klein, Noelle, and me in an afternoon ceremony at the Chapelle Expiatoire, a beautiful old chapel opened in 1826 and dedicated to King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. It is late summer, and so the unheated chapel is perfectly comfortable. I’ve had exactly a day to find a dress, which really isn’t that hard in Paris. Klein and Noelle had gone with me to shop for it, and Noelle loved it so much, we found her a tiny almost identical replica.
I carry a bouquet of white roses, and we are married by an English-speaking French priest who treats our vows with such sincerity that it is as if we are the first couple he has ever married. Our kiss at the end is long and lingering, and when Klein picks Noelle up, she kisses his cheek and then mine. My heart feels as if it will explode with happiness, and as we walk out of the chapel and into the city light, I feel as if I am walking into a wonderful new chapter of my life, everything that came before woven with good and not-so-good memories, but all of which have made me who I am today, a woman in love with and so very grateful for a new love with a man I adore, a man who loves me as I am.
~
KLEIN HAD BROUGHT a kind young nanny named Alyssa with them to Paris. She’s from Signal Mountain, Tennessee, and she is wonderful with Noelle. But it is still hard to leave Noelle with her in their room across the hall. Klein has already put Noelle to bed though and tucked her in. She’s fast asleep when we let ourselves out, Klein asking Alyssa to call us with any concerns at all. She assures us she will.
And so, when we step inside our suite, and he closes the door softly behind us, I feel as if I have stepped inside someone else’s dream, that none of this can really be happening. Klein turns to face me, still dressed in his dark suit, the white shirt and tie striking against his incredibly handsome face. “Hello, wife.”
I smile at this, just the word making my heart flutter. “Hello, husband.”
Lamplight bathes the room in a soft glow. Klein reaches for me, pulls me to him. And for some long, drawn-out moments, he simply holds me there against him. We look into each other’s eyes, and words aren’t really necessary. I see and feel what he is thinking, because it is what I am thinking, too. Life is not always easy to understand, the things that happen to us not even possible to explain, but then we arrive in safe harbor, and whatever ugliness has assailed us in the past, is no more. Something new and good has taken its place. “Mama was right,” I say.
“How so?”
“You make my life bigger, better, greater.”
Klein reaches a hand to my face, presses his palm to my cheek. And then he leans in to kiss me, our first alone as husband and wife, our first with the true freedom to give ourselves to each other fully. He grazes the backs of his hands across my shoulders, down my arms.
“You look so beautiful in this dress,” he says. “Everything I never imagined having in a bride. You’re beautiful, Dillon. And I am so grateful that you’re mine.”
I reach for him then, loosening his tie and undoing the first buttons of his shirt. He unzips the back of my dress, drops it to my waist. I feel no insecurity, no need to hide myself from him. I’m not perfect. I know this. And yet, it doesn’t matter because I am loved. I know this, too.
“I love you, Klein. So much.”
“I love you, baby,” he says with a lingering kiss on my mouth. He reaches out to flick off the nearby lamp. And then in the near dark, he lifts me into his arms and carries me to bed.
Epilogue
From Nashville News Today, Nashville, Tennessee
Country Music Star and Songwriter Wife Start Home for Foster Kids
Country music superstar Klein Matthews and his award-winning songwriter wife, Dillon Blake-Matthews, have created and funded a new home for displaced foster kids, a safe place to land while waiting for a permanent placing. When asked what made the two of them get behind this project, Matthews says, “I grew up in the foster care system, and there are times when a child is between placements that it would be nice to have a home setting where a kid can just feel that he or she is wanted and safe. My wife, Dillon, has such a heart for these kids and made a video recently at the new place with the kids there singing her new hit song.”
Known for writing heartrending country ballads that reflect life in small-town America, Blake-Matthews grew up as an only child but says, “I had so much love from my mother who pretty much devoted her life to helping me achieve my dreams. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a child alone in the world. If we can do anything to make a hurting child feel less lonely, I will feel like we’ve
done something that matters.”
Matthews married Dillon Blake, two-time recipient of the CMA Songwriter of the Year, in a secret Paris ceremony just over a year ago. Matthews’s previous girlfriend and mother of his two-year-old daughter Noelle, Riley Haverson, was the subject of an investigation into allegations of a poisoning attempt on Matthews’s life. Charges were dropped after an apparent mix-up at a testing lab where evidence in the case was mishandled. Haverson has since moved to Los Angeles, California. Matthews has full-custody of their daughter.
If You Enjoyed That Weekend in Paris. . .
Ren Sawyer and Lizzy Harper live completely different lives. He’s a rock star with a secret he can no longer live with. She’s a regular person whose husband stood her up for a long planned anniversary trip.
On a flight across the Atlantic headed for Italy, a drunken pity party and untimely turbulence literally drop Lizzy into Ren’s lap. It is the last thing she can imagine ever happening to someone like her. But despite their surface differences, they discover an undeniable pull between them. A pull that leads them both to remember who they had once been before letting themselves be changed by a life they had each chosen.
Exploring the streets of Florence and the hills of Tuscany together – two people with seemingly nothing in common – changes them both forever. And what they find in each other is something that might just heal them both.
Buy it here.
That Birthday in Barbados
What is it about turning forty that makes a woman take a look at where she’s been and make her wonder where she’s going?
For ActivGirl CEO Catherine Camilleri, it is a crossroads that has her wondering where she went off course. Divorced without children, life isn’t what she had pictured for herself twenty years ago. Not up to admitting any of this in front of friends and family, she bails on the surprise party being thrown for her and books a last-minute trip to Barbados for a stay at the luxurious Sandy Lane Hotel, the same place where she’d spent her honeymoon ten years before. Is she going back to mourn the marriage she’d thought would last forever? Or in an attempt to chase out of her heart for good a betrayal that forever changed her?
That Weekend in Paris (Take Me There(Stand-alone) Book 3) Page 21