by Hope Ramsay
“Uh,” she said as the tears gathered in her eyes. “See, I lost my job and Tulane hates me and it’s all my fault because, see, I wrote the memo that put him in a pink car…” She couldn’t finish, because two things happened.
She started bawling like a little kid.
And Ruby Rhodes put down the permanent roller she’d been holding, stepped across the room, and pulled her into a big, motherly hug.
“Now, you hush, sugar, because I’m sure Tulane doesn’t hate you. After all, you’re a minister’s daughter, aren’t you?”
Sarah pushed back, wiping tears away. “Uh, yeah, how did you know that?” Tulane wouldn’t have told his mother about Tuesday morning, would he?
“I’m to blame,” Jane said, getting up and coming to join in what was becoming a group hug. “You told me the night Pete died, and I know I said I would keep it a secret, but I told Clay and Clay mentioned it to Ruby. Clay couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended upon it.”
“Now, Sarah, you just calm down, because everything will work out. You’ll see.” Ruby gave her another big squeeze.
“You’re a preacher’s daughter?” Thelma asked. “I don’t believe it—really?”
“Yeah, I know, I really haven’t been behaving like one, have I?”
Ruby rubbed Sarah’s backbone. “Never you mind, sugar. Just dry your eyes and I’ll get you some sweet tea and you can tell us what happened.” She gave Sarah a critical look and then pulled the banana clip from her hair. “I told you to stop wearing these things. I think after you tell us what’s wrong, we’ll just fix you up with some highlights.”
“And a French manicure,” Jane added.
“But you won’t like me after I tell you what happened.” Tears began to leak from Sarah’s eyes and Jane pressed a tissue into her hand.
“Oh, I doubt that,” Ruby said.
It was almost noon when Tulane topped a hill and spied Last Chance’s watermelon-striped water tower through the windshield of his Ford.
He had driven himself home.
Again.
Irritation prickled his skin. What was he doing here? Pete was dead.
But Daddy was alive, and Tulane felt the sudden need to let Daddy in on the truth about Sarah.
He drove by Momma and Daddy’s house, but Elbert’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, so he headed south toward Golfing for God.
Tulane pulled his Mustang into the parking lot, right next to Daddy’s old pickup. The sound of a weed-whacker split the serenity of the summer day as Tulane opened his car door.
Daddy was cutting weeds, like he always did every summer. For some reason, knowing that Daddy wasn’t moping around the house made Tulane feel a little better. He tried hard to push that positive thought out of his mind, because he wasn’t here for anything positive.
He was here to make Daddy see the truth. Finally.
He got out of his Mustang and slammed the door. He strode down the gravel walk, the midsummer sun casting short shadows in the middle of a hot, humid day.
Tulane found Elbert trimming the main walkway. Beyond Daddy the ark baked in the noonday sun, its peeling paint giving the place a seedy feel. Even so, the grounds at Golfing for God had been tidied. The place looked better than it had on Monday morning.
“Hey, Daddy,” Tulane called, his voice tight, even to his own ears.
Elbert killed the motor on the weed-whacker and turned with a slow grin. “What brings you to Golfing for God this morning? Aren’t you supposed to be up in Darlington?” Elbert leaned the whacker against a pine tree. His T-shirt today said “Enlighten Up!”
“I’ve come to set you straight.”
“Set me straight? About what?”
“About Sarah. Daddy, she used you. And she made a fool out of both of us. She’s a liar and—” Tulane bit off his own words. He couldn’t manage to say the rest, because the emotions he’d tamped down suddenly bubbled up and caught in the back of his throat.
Daddy seemed unaffected. He stood with his feet planted wide, the noonday sun glinting on his gray hair like a halo.
“Did you hear what I said?” Tulane raged, his voice ragged.
“Well, you don’t have to shout. I don’t believe Sarah’s a liar or that she used me, son.”
“Well, you should believe it. She set me up. She set all of us up.”
“Uh-huh. And what makes you think this?”
“Oh, crap, it’s a big complicated mess.” With that Tulane started to pace the walkway as he described every one of Sarah’s underhanded, no-account, dishonest actions. When he finished his detailed indictment, Tulane didn’t feel any better. Especially since Daddy didn’t seem very impressed with it.
Elbert stood with his hands planted on his hips and said, “Let me get this straight. You think that Sarah put Hettie up to forming the Committee to Resurrect Golfing for God for some cockeyed scheme to advance her career. And then, once we got the committee rolling, Sarah turned on us and made us look like fools by talking to that idiot Arnold Simons?”
Tulane stopped pacing and gave his father a dirty look. “Daddy, this is not about Golfing for God. It’s about the stupid pink car, and the car seat program, and all those nasty interviews they did of me, and then that vicious article about Haley.” He took a couple of steps toward his father. “Are you even listening?”
“Oh, I can hear you. But you’re wrong. This is not about a pink car or that nasty blog. This is, actually, about the golf course.”
“You’re crazy.” Tulane turned and took two steps. He wanted to scream out so loud that the angels would hear him.
“You can think what you like,” Daddy said.
Tulane heard the disappointment in his father’s voice. He took several deep breaths and tugged hard at the anger that was about to pull him out of control. When he’d managed to center himself again, he turned around.
“I’m sorry I said that.”
“I accept your apology. Besides, I didn’t take it literally.”
“Daddy, don’t you see, she used me.”
“Well, that might be true, son. But Sarah didn’t use me. And she didn’t use Haley, or Hettie, or your mother or any of the ladies that formed that committee. I don’t think she talked to Arnold Simons at all, although Lillian Bray sure did run her mouth off to that man when he came through town looking for background.”
“He came here?”
“Yeah. He came. I didn’t talk to him. And near as I could tell, he didn’t have any inside information when he arrived. Whatever nastiness he printed in that online blog of his came from Lillian. Lord knows that woman could poison the sweetest well on earth.”
“But, Daddy—”
Daddy put up a hand and gave Tulane his scary father look. “No, son, you listen now. Did you know that Sarah came down here on her day off and worked with the church ladies to help them organize their nonprofit committee? She wrote up a whole list of instructions about what they needed to set it up, legal like. She spent a lot of time on that. Ruby and Hettie were so grateful. Sarah didn’t have to do that, you know? And I don’t see where a person who does a thing like that is evil or nasty. And I sure can’t figure out how helping the committee get started was part of some crazy master plan designed to advance her career. So, I’m sorry, Tulane, but I don’t think I’m crazy or deluded when it comes to Sarah. I like that girl. A lot.”
“But—”
“And lemme tell you one more thing. You going off and listening to the ugly things those people from New York had to say and then rushing over here to spread that filth makes you just the same as them. Good Lord, Tulane, you should know better than anyone that just because someone says something ugly don’t mean it’s true. When did you become a bully, like Lillian and those New York people?”
Tulane backed up a step. The sun beat down on him, but all the heat inside him suddenly froze. Everything froze except his brain.
His brain, on the other hand, started to add things up, but it ran into some serious inconsist
encies in the data.
“But if it’s not true, why didn’t she defend herself? Daddy, I saw the memos with my own eyes. She wrote one that said it didn’t matter if I won any races, because just having someone like me in a pink car would sell diapers.”
“Well, I reckon she was right about that. It did sell diapers. And it’s her job to sell diapers. You can’t hold that against her, Tulane.”
“But she wrote the memo about the pink car.”
“Well, I reckon that sold a lot of diapers, too.”
“But she wrote this awful nasty memo about Deidre and her child, Daddy. I just couldn’t believe that Sarah would do a thing like that. And if she was capable of doing that, well, then she was capable of playing us all like fools. Me included.”
Daddy smiled. “And how did she play you for a fool?”
Tulane wasn’t going to explain about the one night he’d spent in Sarah’s bed. He just said, “She broke my heart.” The words came out husky.
It was hard to admit the truth. But the way his chest felt right at that moment, he knew for a fact that his heart was not just broken, it was shattered. He wanted Sarah like nothing else, but the Sarah he wanted didn’t really exist.
“Oh, I see.” Daddy sounded concerned now. The humor had left his voice. “A broken heart is an awful thing. You just have to look at what a broken heart has done to your oldest brother. I can’t help you with a thing like that either. On the other hand, I’m sincerely glad to hear you have a heart to break. It shows maturity on your part.”
Tulane closed his eyes and kind of sagged where he stood. His head hurt. His heart hurt. He was confused.
“Did you ever tell Sarah that you love her?” Daddy asked.
Tulane opened his eyes. “I was going to.”
“You were going to? Son, that’s not the same as actually telling a woman you love her, you know. It’s hard to be brokenhearted if you never actually say the words.”
“I was going to. I had it all planned out for yesterday. I planned to have a serious conversation with her about a relationship.”
“Well, that sounds grown-up of you, I guess.”
“But then the shit hit the fan, you know? And then everyone was telling me that she wasn’t worth it.”
“And you didn’t come to her defense when the bullies attacked? Boy, that’s a change in your usual MO. I can’t remember how many fights you got into over me. And I know you love me.”
Tulane blinked. “Daddy, last Monday you told me I should ignore the bullies, not fight them.”
“Well, yeah, you could have ignored them and gone and found Sarah and had that serious conversation. But you didn’t do that either. From the purple bags under your eyes, I’d be willing to bet you did something stupid instead, like getting drunk.”
“Oh, crap.” An emotion that was both wonderful and awful gnawed at Tulane’s insides. Was this how Racer Rabbit felt every Saturday morning when the clueless bunny finally figured out the lesson he was supposed to learn?
“I am an idiot,” Tulane said.
“Yup. You are,” Daddy agreed. “But you wouldn’t be the first Rhodes male to stake a claim to that title. Clay behaved pretty idiotically when Jane crossed his path, too. You missed that last October when you were off testing cars. It was right entertaining there for a while watching that boy squirm.”
“I gotta go, Daddy. I gotta find her. You think she’s already gone home to Boston?”
“Uh, no. I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“Absolutely not.” Daddy grinned like the proverbial cat who had lunched on the canary.
“Daddy? What’s going on?”
“Well,” Elbert said, “the truth is that Sarah’s at the Cut ’n Curl, having her hair and nails done. Now, mind you, she didn’t exactly come to get her hair and nails done, that’s just a by-product of the real reason she came, which was to get your phone number.”
“But she has my phone number.”
“No, I guess it was in her corporate-issue BlackBerry, which National Brands took away from her when they fired her. And if you ask me, that is truly tragic, when you think about the way Sarah used that thing to manage Pete’s funeral.”
“She came to get my phone number?”
“Uh-huh, something about needing to apologize to you for something she wrote. Anyways, your momma called and told me I should send you to the Cut ’n Curl just as soon as you showed up.”
“When I showed up?”
“Uh-huh, see, Miriam and your momma have been waiting on you since about ten this morning, on account of the fact that Miriam Randall is never wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Son, Miriam told your momma that you would marry a preacher’s daughter back when you were about fifteen years old. None of us really believed it until Sarah showed up. So anyway, Sarah came to your mother this morning, full of apologies for things that weren’t really her fault. And Ruby’s been keeping Sarah on ice, so to speak, until you showed up. Apparently, Miriam was certain you would show up before lunch. You’re running a little late.”
“Miriam said I would marry a preacher’s daughter? Really?” Something eased in Tulane’s chest. “Hey, wait, how did ya’ll know Sarah was a preacher’s daughter? I didn’t even know that until last Tuesday.”
“Well, I guess she told Jane. And Jane told Clay, and you know how that works. Once Clay knows a thing, it’s not a secret anymore.”
“So when did ya’ll know this?”
“Oh, well, I think Clay told me on the day Pete was buried. That’s why your momma has been working so hard to match you two up.”
“Momma’s been what?”
Elbert put up his hand. “Son, I try not to pay attention to details when it comes to stuff like that, but Ruby and Jane were laughing about some kind of pointy-toed boots or something. Look, if you want my advice, you should just give up. Sarah was made for you. You have Miriam’s word on that. If I were you, I’d get my butt over to the Cut ’n Curl and start apologizing. Take it from me, there ain’t nothing a woman loves more than a man who knows how to grovel and beg forgiveness.”
CHAPTER
20
Sarah hadn’t managed to get Tulane’s phone number from Ruby. She’d confessed all her sins, and the members of the Committee to Resurrect Golfing for God had absolved her of all wrongdoing. Except for the pink car memo, which they all agreed was an idiotic way to wreak revenge but which had, nevertheless, turned out to be a brilliant piece of marketing.
Sarah had lost count of the glasses of sweet tea she’d consumed while Jane did her nails and Ruby added highlights to her hair. But she had failed in her mission.
Sarah firmed her resolve. When Ruby finished blow-drying her hair, she would make a stand. She would get Tulane’s phone number.
And just then, the bell above the Cut ’n Curl’s door jangled.
Sarah looked into the mirror, which reflected the door, to see what new denizen of Last Chance had come by to gossip. The shop seemed to be overflowing with ladies this morning. Most of them weren’t even getting their hair done.
But it wasn’t one of the female residents of Last Chance. No, this visitor was definitely male. And the minute Tulane walked into that shop, Sarah’s autonomic nervous system went haywire.
He wore his favorite Alabama T-shirt and looked like he’d rolled right out of bed this morning. A cowlick stood straight up in the back of his head that would have made him look about twelve—except for the day-old beard darkening his cheeks. Sarah’s fingers itched to push that little tuft of hair back into its place. God, she loved the feel of his hair against her palm.
She ached with the thought that she would never touch him that way again. It was over between them.
She needed to apologize and then go home to Boston.
Ruby shut off the blow-dryer, and Sarah hopped down from the chair, still wearing her beauty shop drape. She turned and met him face-to-face.
“Tulane
. This is a surprise.”
“Not as big a surprise as finding you here.” His drawl was deep and did something wicked to her insides. She loved him. She wanted to fall into him. But he was angry. The little muscle along his jaw was working. And when his muscle twitched like that, it was a warning sign.
“I was going to call you. Just as soon as your mother gave me your phone number.”
Tulane’s sober gaze flicked over the gallery of Last Chance ladies, who were following the conversation like spectators of a close tennis match. Sarah was suddenly glad for the audience. She was going to prostrate herself, and having witnesses was probably part of the penance she needed to serve before she could clear her conscience and move on with her life.
So she reached deep for that quiet authority that Grandmother Howland always possessed when faced with a difficult situation.
“I need to apolo—” They spoke in unison.
“What do you need to apologize for?” Sarah said.
“For believing that crap Deidre told me yesterday. I read that memo you wrote, Sarah. I’m still trying to understand how a person like you could write a thing like that.”
Despite Sarah’s efforts to remain quiet, logical, and formidable, her hands began to shake and heat crawled up her cheeks. “I know. It was really stupid. And my explanation is equally lame. Steve stole one of my ideas, and I thought if I wrote something silly, put his name on it, and then put it on Deidre’s desk, it would take his reputation down a little. I never gave one thought to what might happen if Deidre took the memo seriously. And I never even considered what putting a man in a pink car and driver’s suit would do to him. You’ve been incredibly patient. Really. I admire that about you.”
“Thanks, but—” She held up her hand to stop him.
“No, let me finish. I’ve learned my lesson. If I hadn’t been so set on getting revenge, or trying to be something that I’m not, then none of this would have happened. So see, I’m really, really sorry for the pain I caused you. And I can assure you that I’m going back to Boston and I’m not ever going to break any rules again.”
She ran out of breath.
Defeat curled around her insides when she saw the expression on Tulane’s face. She wasn’t sure what that vulnerable look was all about. He might be about to explode in a profanity bomb, or he might be about to laugh at her.