Kiss your true love every morning to ward off bad luck for the day.
CHAPTER 21
THE LEGAL PAPERS LAY like a carcass on Tye’s bed. All they lacked was Claire’s signature to make them official.
It had taken three days to iron out the details of the dissolution of his marriage. Not the legal details, those had been easy. The difficult part was arranging matters so that he could leave town—leave Claire—without triggering the townspeople’s superstitions and ruining The Confectionary’s business all over again.
In order to preserve the legends of the Magical Wedding Cake and the Good Luck Wedding Dress, Tye had requested another interview with the doyenne of Fort Worth gossip, Wilhemina Peters. With a clever mixture of truth and fiction, he’d explained away the marriage by calling it a marriage in name only that Claire kindly and generously consented to in order to save the Blessings from a fate worse than death—going to live with their maternal grandparents. He’d heaped honest praise upon Claire’s name and cast wicked aspersions upon the Wests. He explained how the legend of the Donovan Magical Wedding Cake remained intact because Reid Jamieson had acted out of greed rather than love when he proposed marriage to Claire, and that an argument could be made that the cake had, in fact, protected her, leaving her free to someday meet her true love, her destiny. He’d enlisted the aid of Jenny and Trace, and by the time Wilhemina left Willow Hill, she was ready to declare Claire Donovan McBride the compassion queen of Texas and most eligible woman in the state.
Tye figured men would soon be lining up in front of The Confectionary with masculine versions of cream pies and chocolate cakes.
He could now leave town with a clear conscience. Too bad he couldn’t do it without leaving what functioned as his heart behind.
He set his valise upon the bed next to the annulment papers and started packing. He didn’t intend to take much with him. Experience had taught him physical reminders made the memories more difficult to handle. Somehow, though, the case filled up quickly with mementos like drawings and snips of pigtail ribbons and even a program from the night the Fort Worth Literary Society had hosted a spelling bee.
Tye shut the case and was buckling the strap as his brother marched into the room. “Are you sure you want to leave this way, Tye?”
Actually, he didn’t want to leave at all. “I have to go.”
“Do you know my daughters are downstairs bawling their eyes out? I never have taken kindly to anyone who makes my little Menaces cry.”
“Blessings. I told you, Trace, you shouldn’t call them Menaces. It might affect them as they grow up, make them think poorly of themselves.”
Sarcasm dripped from Trace’s reply. “Well we can’t have a member of this family thinking poorly about himself, now can we?”
“Let it go, Trace,” Tye said quietly.
“You’ve already let go, Brother.” Trace walked to the window and gazed outside. “You are making a huge mistake.”
“Look, you don’t know the particulars.”
“I know enough. I eavesdropped on your parlor conversation with your wife the day Billy was born. I think it’s likely I found it more enlightening than poor Claire.” Turning, he folded his arms and faced his brother. “Do you know you always intimidated me, Tye?”
“What?”
“It’s true. From the time we were boys. I used to tell myself I felt that way because you were older than me.”
“By all of a handful of minutes,” Tye drawled.
“In my heart I knew it wasn’t true. You intimidated me because you were my mirror image, but I wasn’t nearly as brave as you.”
“Brave?” Tye scoffed. “I hardly think so.”
“You were always the risk taker. You climbed higher in the trees, swam out farther in the ocean.” Lips twitching in a smile, he added, “The first to bed a woman.”
“I think that should be considered a tie. Mrs. Watson and her twin fantasy. I wonder what ever happened to her? Didn’t she go North before the War?”
Trace ignored the bait. “Somewhere along the way, you stopped taking risks. It didn’t happen during the War. You were the most foolhardy soldier in our regiment. I saw your back on every charge we made. Never had time to be scared for myself during battle because I was so busy being scared for you. I still to this day have nightmares about the time you went after that live grenade.”
“Get to the point, Trace. I have a train to catch.”
Again his brother ignored him. “I think it started after the War, when the memories started getting to you.”
“You mean when the bottle started getting to me,” Tye said, yanking at the strap on his brown leather satchel.
“They beat you down, didn’t they? The memories. I heard your nightmares.”
“You lived them, too.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t haunt me the way they did you. You always felt things deeper than I did, Tye. I think it was part of that risk-taking edge of yours. You always lived just a little bit bigger than me. Half a step…more. I drank to forget, too. But I didn’t have quite as much to forget, so I didn’t drink as much as you. That’s when you started to change. I saw timidity in your character for the very first time.”
“Oh, yeah? I was timid as a mouse when I was breaking up barrooms in drunken brawls, wasn’t I?”
“You didn’t sleep for days on end. It wore you down. The War and its aftermath wore you down.” He exhaled in a deep sigh and added, “Then Constance finished you off.”
“Hell, Trace.” Tye feared his voice would crack. “Don’t talk about her. Please.”
“Those risks you took on the battlefield had nothing on the risks you took with her. You took the biggest risk of your life, you believed her lies about me despite your better sense, because you couldn’t bear to see a woman hurt. Not a woman you loved.”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. I knew you did. I saw it long before that night she did her best to steal your soul. So when you thought I was beating her, you took a risk and laid your heart out there for her to stomp on.”
“What I took, Brother dear,” Tye sneered, “was your wife.”
Trace smiled sadly. “What you did that night was give part of yourself away, that last little part that made you more than me.”
Tye blew a dismissing breath. “This conversation makes me think you’ve lost a chunk of your brain.”
“I had thought when you came here to Fort Worth, when you saved my Jenny from that damned Big Jack Bailey, that you had begun to reclaim that part you had lost. When I learned of everything you had done for my children, I thought you’d finally cauterized the wound. But then I listened to that rot you told Claire down in the parlor the day before yesterday. You haven’t reclaimed squat, Tye. You still won’t take a risk.”
He folded his arms and challenged. “You are still afraid. Not of love. I know you love me and my family. I know you love your wife. But you’re being a selfish son of a bitch. You, Tye McBride, are afraid to let us love you.”
Tye made a grab for the handle of his case. “Why didn’t you tell me that during your runaway years you took time to study psychology?”
“It’s plain as the nose on my face because I’ve been there myself. My love for Jenny required a leap of faith, and thank God when the time came, I wasn’t afraid to make the jump. But you apparently are. The risk-taker twin won’t take the same vault as his brother. That’s a damn shame.”
“I’m leaving now,” Tye said, a band of misery squeezing his chest. He had to get out of here, but his feet wouldn’t move.
Trace continued to talk. “But the worst part about it is the suffering your fear has brought to bear upon a very fine woman. I saw her, Tye. She was tortured, completely devastated by your rejection.”
Tye choked back a silent scream, his brother’s words whipping flesh already raw and bleeding. He grabbed the legal papers with one hand and hoisted his satchel with the other, then headed out the door. “I can’t miss the da
mned train.”
His brother followed him, his words echoing along the hallway and down the stairs. “You think you’re doing her a good turn, don’t you? You think there is someone else out there for her to love, someone who has never made a mistake. You are wrong Tye. She doesn’t want perfect. She loves you.”
At the front door, Tye paused. “She’ll get over it.”
“Maybe. But will you? I know you still feel bad about betraying me by bedding Constance. What you are doing to Claire is ten times worse than the hurt you caused me and you know it. You wear your guilt poorly now, Tye. Claire is a damn fine woman whose only mistake was to love you. Think of how heavy that mantle of guilt is gonna feel in years to come.”
Trace’s words replayed in his head like a nightmare all the way to the train depot. Tye tried his best to shut them out. He already felt bad enough. He didn’t need Trace making it worse.
At the station he bought a ticket then wandered out onto the platform to await the boarding call. A crowd milled, laughing and talking and hugging good-byes. Smoke puffed from the locomotive’s smokestack, as black as Tye’s thoughts.
A home, a family. Claire. His dream. Giving it up was damn near killing him.
Then don’t do it. The notion whispered through his mind like the devil’s own temptation.
“I have to,” he muttered to himself. It was the right thing to do, the best thing for Claire.
Is it? Or could Trace be right?
A tiny kernel of hope penetrated Tye’s heart as his mind cracked open just enough to give his brother’s argument a moment of consideration.
You’re a selfish son of a bitch. She doesn’t want perfect. She loves you. You are afraid to let us love you.
Tye scrunched his eyes closed against the blaring glare of the sun. His chest grew tight and he struggled to draw a breath. Hell, he was confused. You are afraid. Was that what this was? Not guilt or distrust, but fear? Was he giving up on Claire and on the life she offered out of cowardice? Was he too damned yellow to risk being happy?
The engine’s whistle blew, yanking him from his reverie. The conductor framed his mouth with his hands and yelled, “All aboard!”
The ticket burned a hole in Tye’s pocket Leaving burned a hole in his heart.
Tye shuffled slowly toward the train.
***
EMMA BLEW into the depot ahead of Maribeth, who dragged Ralph on a leash, and Katrina, who carried Spike, both water and fish splashing back and forth in the bowl. They ran straight through the building and back outside to the platform. They stopped short.
The tracks were empty.
“We’re too late,” Emma cried, steepling her hands over her mouth. “The train is already gone. Oh, sisters, we’re too late.”
For a long minute, the three girls stood frozen, staring in horrified shock at the empty track. As if on cue, tears started falling from each girl’s eyes.
“I can’t believe he up and left without telling us goodbye,” Maribeth said with a sniff.
“He left. He really left. I’m so angry at Uncle Tye.” Katrina shifted Spike’s bowl to free one hand, then shoved her thumb in her mouth with a flourish.
Emma slowly shook her head. “I’m worried to death about him.”
Ralph started to whimper, and Maribeth reached down to pet him. “Em, you don’t think Uncle Tye thought we didn’t need him anymore because Papa and Mama are home, do you?”
“Uncle Th-ye’th not that th-upid,” Katrina sobbed around her thumb. “He knowth we love him.”
Emma nodded, wiping her tears with her sleeve. “And he knows we need him desperately. A papa is one thing, but an uncle is something else entirely.”
“That’s right,” Mari agreed, her silent tears spilling in wet circles on her blouse. “We simply can’t do without him. If Uncle Tye isn’t here, who’s going to give us candy when we shouldn’t have it? Who will buy us toys at the mercantile for no reason. And most important of all, who will help us hide our mischief from Papa?”
“We’ve got to go after him, sisters.” Emma insisted, angrily wiping at her eyes.
“But how?” Katrina wailed. “What do we do?”
Maribeth tugged a wad of paper from her pocket and blew her nose. “Does anybody know where he went?”
“Nowhere.”
The masculine voice sounded from directly behind them. The girls whirled around. Leaning against the depot wall, his suitcase on the ground beside him, stood Uncle Tye.
The two younger sisters gasped. Emma doubled up her fist and punched him in the stomach.
His eyes bulged and his chin dropped. “Emmaline Suzanne! I can’t believe you hit me.”
“Well I can’t believe you were running away!”
“It didn’t happen. I couldn’t make myself get on the train.”
“Well it’s a good thing,” she scolded. “Otherwise we’d have had to chase you down and drag you back by the pigtails just like our papa does us.”
Their uncle grinned and tugged at the ends of his hair. “Pigtails, huh? Guess I do need a trim.”
With him standing safe and sound in front of her face, Emma started to calm down. It took an effort. She kicked at a small stone beside her foot and said, “This was mean of you, Uncle Tye. Really, really mean. Do you know how worried we were?”
“Yeah,” Maribeth piped up. “You didn’t even tell us good-bye. Is this any way to treat family?”
“You even broke Ralph’s heart,” Katrina accused.
Tye glanced down at the dog. “I did? How can you tell?”
“ ‘Cause he’s crying!” Maribeth yelled, showing him her fiercest scowl. “Just like Emmie’s crying and Kat’s crying and I’m crying. Mama’s crying, too, and baby Billy, although all he ever does is cry.”
“And pee and poop,” Kat added.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Papa cried, either,” Mari continued, putting her fists on her hips and glaring up at him. “And what about poor Auntie Claire? You think we’ve been crying buckets? You should see her. We’ve been watching her from the peephole. Why, she can hardly bake for all her crying. You’ve been very bad, Uncle Tye. You shouldn’t have made her cry. That’s not how you treat someone you love.”
Tye looked away. He stood without moving, staring out at the train tracks for what seemed like a very long time. Emma and Maribeth shared a worried glance. He had a funny, strangled sort of look on his face.
“You’re right, girls,” he said finally. “I have acted badly. This isn’t how you treat people you love.”
The three sisters sniffed and nodded sharply.
“I have one question, though,” he said, pulling his train ticket from his jacket pocket and tearing it into little pieces.
“What makes you so certain I’m in love with your Auntie Claire?”
The sisters looked at one another and rolled their eyes. Emma said, “That’s easy, Uncle Tye.”
“Simple,” Katrina added.
“A piece of Magical Wedding Cake,” Maribeth said with a grin.
“Oh.” Tye tossed the torn ticket into the air. “You mean you figured it out because Claire and I had a Good Luck Wedding Cake?”
“No, silly.” Maribeth snorted.
“ ‘A piece of cake’ is just an expression that means something was easy. I just added the ‘magical’ and ‘wedding’ parts because it sounded right.”
“I see.” He picked up his case. “So if it wasn’t the cake, how did you figure it out?”
Emma tucked her arm in his and stepped toward the street. “Like we said, it was simple. We asked Spike.”
***
CLAIRE WOKE up wrinkling her nose. The horrible odor hit her like a fist. What in the world was that awful smell?
It took her a few minutes to get her bearings. Only the fourth morning since moving into the apartment above The Confectionary, she sometimes woke up forgetting where she was. The nightmares that haunted her sleep didn’t help the situation any. Invariably she dreamed of being in T
ye McBride’s arms and she woke either crushed or angry or happy. Happy was the worst because reality was always right there waiting to dash her down.
Today, though, she woke up to something different. To a stink.
At first she suspected she was still asleep, still dreaming, and that the stench was the scent of her dreams going up in smoke. Wilhemina Peters had dropped by the day before with the news that she’d just come from the Texas & Pacific depot where Tye was preparing to depart on the afternoon train. Claire had smiled and continued her task of mixing molasses cookies. It wasn’t until she’d put them in the oven to bake that she realized she’d left out the Magic.
No surprise in that. Seemed like the Magic had been left out of a lot of things lately.
Claire’s head cleared and she frowned. She wasn’t asleep and the smell wasn’t her dreams; it was real, very real, and coming from downstairs. She glanced at the clock. Three A.M., still thirty minutes before her da arrived to help with the baking.
Thinking about Da, her tears welled up again. He’d been so sweet to her through this. Her whole family had been sweet. And supportive. Of course, it hadn’t been easy to convince the Donovan men to refrain from going after Tye and beating him to a pulp. But she’d managed to convince them this way was the best. They had listened to her. Her family had actually listened to her. She could take comfort in that change.
Claire threw off the sheets and climbed out of bed. Grabbing her robe, she tugged it on even as she started downstairs, pausing only long enough to gather up her keys.
Exiting into the Rankin Building vestibule, she halted abruptly. A light shined in the bakery’s kitchen. Had Da or one of the boys come in early? She doubted it. They were always on time, but they never, ever came in early.
Claire chewed on her lower lip and considered what to do. She left no valuables in the shop. Could someone be stealing the Magic? Maybe Reid Jamieson decided not to wait for Da to get the factory up and running. Or maybe it was simply some poor soul looking for something to eat. That might explain the smell. Perhaps this person had attempted to cook.
The Bad Luck Wedding Cake Page 36