“Can we talk?” he asked as he approached.
Jax tucked her next to him, making Gareth give her an odd look.
Clifton offered his hand to Jax. “Clifton Amos.”
Jax assessed him before taking it. “Jax Hawthorne.”
“I’d like a moment with you, Em, if I could.”
She didn’t know what to say. Here stood the man who wanted to take her children from her, who’d had her so afraid, she’d resigned from Call Girls and was going to begin hunting for a job he would consider more respectable.
Yet, here also stood the man she’d accused of being a coward for not showing more interest in his children by coming back to Plum Orchard to see them. Right in the middle of the town square.
Jax pulled her tight to him. “Will you be all right?”
Just knowing he was on her side was all she needed. She grazed his cheek with her finger. “I’ll be just fine. Gareth, can you wait here with Jax while Mommy talks to Daddy for a minute?”
Gareth looked unsure until Jax said, “Bet my brother Gage has a ball. You wanna toss it around a little bit while we wait?” Jax held out his hand to him.
Gareth took it and nodded with a shy smile, sliding down Em’s hip. “Okay.”
Em turned to face Clifton, a man she’d once thought she would love forever, but now couldn’t feel anything for. “What do you want, Clifton? The house? My car? Dora?”
Clifton held up his hands as a gesture of peace. “I want to apologize.”
Her eyes pierced his. “For?”
He put his hands in his pockets, his face grim. “For everything. For leaving you and the boys while I tried to figure out what was happening to me. For hurting you, for lying to you. For threatening to take the kids. They need you, Em, and I overreacted.”
“What brought on this sudden change of heart?”
“The realization that I was teaching Clifton to do the same thing I did. Run away. Look, Em, I don’t want to see him beat up because of me, but I don’t want to teach him to run away from it, either. I don’t want anyone to ever keep him from being where he wants to be, and that’s with you and Gareth. Here in Plum Orchard.”
Her knees felt weak. “But he told you he wanted to live with you and Gina in Atlanta.”
Clifton’s chest expanded with a sigh. “He told me that when he was scared, when he was angry and hurt, Em. I used that to my advantage because I couldn’t stand that I was the reason everyone was picking on him. I set him straight today, about why I left and about how it had nothing to do with you.”
Clifton’s hurt compelled her to reach out, put her hand on his arm and squeeze. “They need you, Clifton. They need you to be their father. If you’re going to live your life with this truth you keep telling me about, then the truth is, you have to show up. You have to teach them how to live truthfully.”
As people milled about them, the occasional few curious, pausing to stare at the town cross-dresser, Clifton nodded. “And stop hiding from everyone.”
Em stayed quiet, keeping her eyes fixed on Clifton’s jacket. When she’d first found out about Clifton’s secret life, she’d ached for him, his infidelity aside. It had to be almost unbearable to watch all of your lifelong friends desert you just because you liked to wear a dress. Because they couldn’t understand what it felt like to want to be someone else.
“I made this really hard on you, didn’t I?”
Her spine stiffened in response to his hushed question. “If you want me to say this has been easy so you can ease your guilt, that won’t happen. You left me to do it all while you had your crisis. But the rumors and the cruel treatment of the boys isn’t entirely your fault.”
“About that, I spoke to Principal Crawford today.”
Her head shot up. “You did?” Clifton had taken an active part in his son’s life? Maybe, just maybe, this was a start.
“I did. I made him very aware of just how ugly I can make things for him with the kind of connections Gina has.”
“You threatened him? Oh, Clifton, is that really the way to handle it?”
“Sometimes you gotta get down in the mud, Em. I won’t stand by and let Clifton get hurt. The boy who hit him will be punished, and a better eye will be kept on Clifton. I won’t have my boy end up like one of those kids on the internet with a Facebook page dedicated to him because he did the unthinkable.”
Em had to close her eyes at the thought. Close them and squeeze. But he was right about running away. She’d been planning to do the same. Quit her job, take the boys and leave Plum Orchard. Move closer to Clifton in the hope that he’d drop the custody suit if he saw the boys more outside of Plum Orchard. “What about Call Girls?”
He scuffed his feet, looking away from her. “I was being a jackass. I know you keep the boys away from the sex talk, and I know Dixie and the girls love them. I just wanted to protect them, but I didn’t think it through very well. Just like I haven’t thought a lot of my life through very well. I’m still trying to figure this all out, Em. Me. Gina. How to deal with the boys, the people who turned their back on me. You got caught in the cross fire.”
Relief washed over her, so much relief, her legs felt weak. “So where do we go from here, Clifton?”
He finally smiled at her under the twinkling lights of the tree. “Well, you go finish up your date with your new beau, and I spend some long-overdue time with my boys. Boys I promise to be there for, and we move forward and try to work this parenting thing out.”
“Thank you, Clifton.”
Clifton pulled her in and dropped a quick kiss on her cheek. “I hope Jax makes you really happy, Em. You deserve it.”
He left her with those words and for the second time in a day, she felt like everything made perfect sense.
Twenty-Two
Which lasted all of ten seconds. “How sweet, you and Clifton makin’ nice. Did he ask to borrow your nail polish?”
“Louella Palmer, I have a bone to pick with you!” Dixie hollered from across the square. The clack of her heels as she stormed over to them was matched only by the silencing of the crowd and the turn of heads.
And here they went again. Another loud, public display wherein Dixie would take up for poor, can’t-stick-up-for-herself Emmaline Without A Spine.
No. More.
Marybell and LaDawn were right behind Dixie, ready to help her protect their friend.
And she loved them for it. She just didn’t want it anymore. It was time to take a new tack with Louella. One she’d thought over while driving to the festival.
Em stepped in front of Dixie and smiled. “This one’s on me.”
Dixie’s eyebrow rose in silent question, but she backed right off, rolling her hand and giving Em the floor.
“Louella? Walk with me, won’t you?” Em said, sticking her arm through Louella’s. “And keep smiling or I’ll tell everyone what you did in the corner of that hayfield with that summer worker Coon Ryder hired. In detail. While your mother listens.”
Louella’s body language said she hated Em’s guts, but she strolled alongside her, smiling as they made their way through the surprised crowd. Em stopped at the benches, located just outside the perimeter of the square, and pointed. “Sit.”
“How dare you tell me what to do?”
Em pointed to the bench. “Sit, Louella. Sit now. The summer of ’93 hayfield hijinks are callin’.”
Louella dropped down on the bench, crossing her legging-clad thighs and folding her hands in her lap. “So?”
Em sat next to her. Right up close. “I don’t like you, Louella. You’re mean and ugly and bitter about things you no longer have control over. Has all this, all that you’ve done, gotten you anything but some lonely satisfaction? Who do you celebrate your wicked victories with? Who pops the champagne and pours the bubbly wi
th you?”
Louella glared at her.
“That’s what I thought. No one. Who wants to celebrate little boys bein’ beat up at school? Isn’t that like pickin’ the wings off moths?”
“That wasn’t my fault, Em.”
Em leaned into her, nudging her shoulder. “But it is your fault. If you hadn’t wanted to exact revenge on Dixie through me and something very private, none of this would have happened.”
“Dixie deserves every rotten thing that happens to her.”
“Because she stole a man who would have never been yours anyway?”
Louella’s lips tightened.
“That’s the truth, isn’t it? Caine never loved you, and he never will. You’ll always be second fiddle to Dixie Davis.”
“Dixie Davis doesn’t deserve Caine.”
“Whether she deserves him or not isn’t the point. She has him, you don’t, Louella.”
Louella’s lips thinned to a cruel line. “You women are destroying the purity of Plum Orchard. This town’s reputation was built on family and good Southern values. Phone sex is hardly a family value. How will we ever hope to drum up more tourism with a phone-sex company harbored in the middle of everything? Who wants to visit in a bed-and-breakfast that sits right in front of a company that sells sex, Emmaline? Who wants to have a cup of coffee right beside a woman that looks like she just stepped off the stage at some heavy-metal concert and scares children to boot?”
“Suddenly this is about the purity of Plum Orchard? You’d better look past the end of your stuck-up nose before you start lobbin’ insults. And if you’re referring to Marybell, when was the last time you went to the library and read to the children, Louella? Made balloon animals for the sick babies in the waiting room to ease their fears? When was the last time Louella Palmer did anything—anything other than stick her broken nose in where it didn’t belong?”
Louella sat very still, her lips clamped tight.
Em shook a finger at her. “So, don’t you talk purity and values to me. And don’t you dare insult my friend with your fake values and your fake Southern nonsense. You don’t care about whether the coffee shop thrives or how many guests stay at the bed-and-breakfast. Your jealousy fuels this grudge, Louella. Don’t tell yourself anythin’ other than that when you put your pretty head on your pillow.”
When Louella didn’t respond, Em went in for the kill. “Now, I’ve let you slander my good name. I’ve sat back and allowed you to gossip about me, watched my boys hurt by your narrow-minded thoughts, and it’s about to end.”
“I can’t stop people from talkin’, Em. People will do what they do.”
“Will they do what they do when they find out how you got your dirty little hands on my birth certificate? The real one? That’s a legal document, stolen from the State of Georgia’s records.”
Louella bristled, but she didn’t crack. “You can’t prove it was me.”
“I can’t, but that poor man who works down at Johnsonville Emergency surely can. The one you talked into doin’ your dirty work for you. The one who helped you steal that birth certificate? The one that’s married?”
Louella’s eyes shifted. “What does that prove?”
Em folded her hands primly in her lap. “It proves you were the one who sent me the birth certificate because when that poor, misguided man you lied to finds out you were only using him, he’ll be angry enough to dust it for fingerprints for me. Now, while you’re a smart girl, you’re not that smart, but I am. I watched Dexter. All seven seasons.”
Now she cracked—wide-open. “Spit it out, Em!”
“If you don’t stop diggin’ up things you have no right unearthing, if you don’t make your puppets dance to a different tune, I will go to a lawyer. I’ll show him the birth certificate and tell him you stole it from me. That nice lab man will back me up, too, because if he won’t, I’ll tell that nice forensic lab man’s wife all about you. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d do it to protect my children. These are some pretty serious offences, Louella. Isn’t that identity theft? Some even require jail time if you’re prosecuted. Won’t that be somethin’ here in lil’ Plum Orchard? A trial. Maybe you might even end up on truTV. Imagine the tagline. Bitter, older Southern socialite seeks revenge and finds herself in hot water after the man she loves jilted her for prettier rival.”
Louella’s eyes, always so hard and cruel, hardened. “You’d never be able to prove a thing. It’d be your word against mine.”
Em smiled and patted Louella on the arm. “Well, sure it would. But it’ll make your life miserable for a little while—maybe even a long while. You know, the courts bein’ so slow these days. And while we waited, all eyes would be on you, Louella Palmer, taking the heat off me. So let me say this loud and clear, you will never, ever say another word about Dixie, or my boys or me again. If my sons are harmed as a result of this spiraling any further out of control, if I hear people talkin’ about me at Madge’s, or anywhere, I’m holding you personally responsible, and I’m going to pick up my phone and call an attorney and drag the Palmer name through the mud. I’ll make YouTube videos with cute captions and music. I’ll start an online petition. I’ll devote an entire Facebook page to you and your heinous Plum Orchard crimes. In short, I’ll make you wish you’d gone off to your otherwordly resting place. Do we understand each other?”
Louella didn’t answer; in fact, she sat very still, but it was all the understanding Em needed.
She slipped from her place on the bench and looked down at Louella and almost felt sorry for her. What drove her to be so cruel? “You’re an awful person, Louella. I don’t know why you do what you do. I don’t know why you take such pleasure from hurtin’ people by publicly humiliating them. I don’t know why you don’t put all that evil to better use. But I do know this—you’ll die alone with the title Head Magnolia as your only purpose in this world if you keep goin’ the way you’re goin’. I hope you’ll think about that before you hatch another hateful scheme, and before it’s too late.”
For the second time today, she held out her hand to someone who’d created a great deal of pain in her life. “Now, we’re gonna walk back on over to the festival—together—and you’re going to put a fake smile on your pretty face and we’re gonna show everyone what a big girl Louella Palmer really is, or I’m going to find that microphone in the gazebo you’re so fond of and use it.”
Her lips tightened in an ugly purse, but she put her hand in Em’s.
Together, they walked back to the square where Dixie and the girls and Jax waited for them. Astonished gazes flitted past them as they walked. There was even a surprised gasp or two.
But Em paid them no mind. Nothing was ever going to keep her from living her life again. Not all the cruel gossip, not the stares, not her mother and certainly not Louella Palmer.
* * *
Dixie and the girls stood wide-eyed, mouths open, a reflection that mirrored every other Plum Orchardian. “What happened?” Dixie was the first to ask.
Em winked. “Never you mind, Dixie Davis. That’s between me and Louella Palmer. All you need to know is, no one’s going to keep me from stayin’ here in Plum Orchard.”
Dixie gathered her up into a hug and squeezed. “I’m so proud of you.”
Em squeezed back, catching a glimpse of Marybell, standing in the shadow of the tree by herself. Something was still off with her these days, despite her protests otherwise. She’d been so wrapped up in her own personal crisis, she’d let her concern fall to the wayside.
LaDawn tugged on a length of Em’s hair and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Now that the most recent Louella Palmer crisis has passed, I’m gonna go find Gareth and see if I can talk him into winnin’ me one of those teddy bears. You—” she tweaked Em’s cheek “—have yourself a good night.”
Em blew her a kiss before turning to Dixie
. “Have you noticed Marybell’s been actin’ strange these days?”
Dixie’s face was full of immediate concern. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, somethin’s just not right with her. Can’t put my finger on it, but it’s been buggin’ me since the party at your house. I’m gonna go check on her. You go see who you can slaughter at the apple-dunking booth, huh?”
Dixie’s eyes widened, the thrill of a possible victory in her eyes. “There’s an apple-dunking booth? How did I miss that?”
Em laughed. “Your competitive spirit’s gettin’ soft, Dixie Davis.”
Dixie gave her one last look—searching her eyes. “So, we’ll talk tomorrow? You know, about you bein’ my sister and all?”
Em nodded and grinned, giving Dixie’s arm a squeeze, and made her way to Marybell.
“Mama?”
She found Clifton Junior not far from Marybell’s spot under the tree. “Hi, honey. How was your day?”
Clifton surprised her by hurling himself at her and giving her a hug. “I’m sorry I was so mean to you,” he said, muffled against her arm, hiding his face.
Em reached down and cupped the back of his head, almost afraid to move for fear this would all disappear. “Oh, Clifton, I know you didn’t mean it, but you know, no matter what, I love you, right?”
Clifton nodded. “As big as the whole wide world, right?”
Her heart tightened and twisted in her chest at the familiar phrase. “Bigger,” she confirmed. “Now you go find your daddy and spend some time with him. Maybe you can see if he wants to give Aunt Dixie a run for her money at the apple-dunking booth?”
Clifton leaned back and smiled up at her. “Nobody can beat Aunt Dixie at anything.”
Em laughed, sharing the first easy moment with her son in ages. “She’s unstoppable.” Grazing a thumb over his cheek, she sent him off to find his father.
Marybell, her spiked hair glowing under the twinkling lights of the tree, her shiny bracelets and eyebrow piercings all in place, smiled at her. “You go, Em. I’m so proud of you for going after what you want.”
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