Chapter 17
“Why don’t you make these outfits in numerous colors? Every time I come in here, I see a dress or a pantsuit that I absolutely love, but it’s not in the color I’m looking for.”
Why did everyone want her to change? To be who they wanted her to be? “What color are you looking for?” Surry asked. After being dismissed from Ian’s office, Surry drove to her boutique and decided to work, hoping that would take her mind off her aching heart. But after two hours of dealing with customers and trying not to cry on their shoulders, Surry couldn’t take it anymore.
The woman picked up a navy blue dress and said, “This would be absolutely divine in yellow.”
“We don’t have that dress in yellow.”
The woman put her hands on her hips and demanded, “Aren’t these your designs? Can’t you just call your factory in China or wherever and tell them to make me one of these dresses in yellow?”
Surry exploded. “Have you lost your mind? No one is wearing yellow in the wintertime.” She snatched the dress from her customer, put it back on the rack and then told the woman, “If you want to dress like a banana, go down the street to Felt’s. They have all sorts of weird stuff in there.”
Brenda Ann rushed over to Surry and, while the customer stood in shocked silence, pulled Surry aside. “What are you doing?”
“I was trying to help this lady,” Surry announced as if she hadn’t just been rude to the woman.
“I’ll help her. Why don’t you go to the break room for a minute?” Brenda Ann didn’t wait for a response from her boss. She stepped over to the customer and began apologizing for Surry’s actions.
At first Surry was offended. She was Brenda Ann’s boss and could say whatever she wanted to these customers. But that was only if she didn’t want to have very many customers, she quickly reminded herself. She went into her break room, sat down on the sofa and bawled her eyes out.
“What’s wrong, Surry?” Brenda Ann asked as she stepped into the break room.
“I should have never come to work today. Thank you for helping with that customer.”
“I gave her a twenty-percent-off coupon. I hope that was okay.”
Wiping away the tears from her face, Surry agreed, “Yes, that was perfect. I just hope she’ll come back.”
“Can I do anything to help, Surry? I hate seeing you like this.”
“Thanks, Brenda Ann.” She stood up and grabbed her keys. “I just need to go home. Can you handle the store without me today?”
Brenda Ann nodded. “Just go get you some rest.”
Surry got in her car and instantly thought about the brownies and ice cream Danetta used to eat when she and Marshall had problems. She needed that sweet treat so badly right now, but she didn’t want to go in the store when she couldn’t stop herself from crying.
She picked up her cell and called Danetta. When her friend picked up the phone, she said, “I know you’re at work, but I was hoping that you could stop by my condo when you’re done for the day.”
“Let me check with Marshall and make sure that he didn’t plan anything for us this evening.”
“Okay,” Surry said as the tears formed again, even though she tried so hard to hold them back. “Do me a favor, Danetta. If you can come, bring those brownies you used to get. Oh, and don’t forget the ice cream,” Surry said with a sniff.
“Oh, sweetie, are you crying?”
She sniffed again. “Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay? I’d go pick up the brownies myself, but I don’t want to show my face in a store today.”
“I’m leaving work now. I’ll meet you at your condo in about an hour,” Danetta told her.
“But you have to work, and you haven’t talked to Marshall yet.”
“Girl, my man and I own this place. I can run out of here anytime I feel like it. And you need me, so Marshall won’t mind if I can’t spend the evening with him. Now, get yourself home. I can still hear you sniffling.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just falling apart.”
“I’ll see you in a bit. Is it okay if I call Ryla?”
“Yes, I really don’t want to be alone right now. So, please call her.” Surry hung up, realizing that for the second time in the space of a month she had actually confessed to needing someone. If her namesake was looking down on her right now, what would the woman think? Surry was no Sojourner Truth, that was for sure. But she was Sojourner McDaniel, and she needed to learn her own special kind of truth.
She drove home rubbing her eyes and trying to remind herself of her mantra. She was a woman and she could do anything just as well as any man could...well, maybe almost anything, because she doubted she’d be able to fix her broken heart on her own. All these years she had avoided love because her mother convinced her that it wasn’t worth it, that men only served to disappoint. And once she’d finally found a man she could give her heart to, he went and proved her mother right.
“That’s not true,” Danetta said when Surry expressed the same sentiment to her.
Brownies, ice cream, cherries, nuts, whipped cream and chocolate syrup were on the coffee table. Surry, Ryla and Danetta filled their bowls with the ooey-gooey goodness, and then the three of them sat on the floor in Surry’s spacious living room.
Surry was in her pajamas and was prepared to eat her way into a bigger size by nightfall. “It is true, Danetta. Just look at how things turned out.”
Ryla put her hand on Surry’s shoulder. “Surry, this is not as bad as you think. I know Ian cares about you. He has said as much to Noel, and he has no reason to lie to a friend of his.”
“You didn’t see the way he looked at me today, the way he treated me.” She was practically blubbering as tears ran down her face. “I never thought love was supposed to hurt like this.”
“It does,” Danetta confirmed. “I’ve been where you are.” She held up her bowl of brownies topped with vanilla ice cream. “Whenever Marshall would start dating a new woman, instead of telling him how I felt about him and that I wanted us to build a life together, I would drown my sorrows in this.” She took a bite and closed her eyes to savor it. “Oh, how I’ve missed this. I think being pregnant entitles me to a double helping.” She got up and began filling her bowl again.
“You don’t have to use pregnancy as your excuse. Just come over to my house from now on, because it seems like the sorrows have just begun over here.” Surry scooped up a healthy heap of ice cream and plopped it into her mouth.
“Don’t you remember how distraught I was when Noel left me on our honeymoon? I couldn’t eat, think or do anything but sleep. But I pulled myself together and went and got my man back. And that’s what I suggest you do also.”
“No thank you, Mrs. Ryla Carter. You’re the one who got me in the situation. If I hadn’t listened to you about going to see Ian in the first place, I wouldn’t be here like this right now.”
“And you wouldn’t be growing your business, nor would you have just signed that multimillion-dollar deal you just signed. Think about it...” Ryla stood up and swept her arms about dramatically. “Because of me, you can now go on that show How I Made My Millions.” She pointed at Surry, warning her, “And I better hear my name mentioned as the friend who helped save your crumbling empire.”
“I promise that I will tell the world about how Ryla Carter got me involved with a man who broke my heart.”
Ryla collapsed back onto the floor. “I was trying to make you laugh, Surry. You are a wonderfully resourceful woman. Shouldn’t we be able to sit here and come up with a solution to a heart problem, just as we come up with solutions for our businesses?”
What Ryla was saying sounded so reasonable and so simple. But Surry had learned that nothing was simple when the heart was involved. She had trusted in Ian, and he let her down. This was her real
ity, and no problem-solving technique was going to fix that, as far as Surry was concerned.
But oh, how she had loved being in that man’s presence, kissing him, holding hands with him and just talking. Surry thought Ian Duncan was the man of her dreams, someone she could have children with and grow old with. All she’d wanted him to do was make peace with his father so that he could move forward in his career. But Ian had acted as if she’d spit in his face. “It will never work with me and Ian. He’s too full of pride,” Surry declared.
“Well, that makes two of you.”
“How can you say that, Danetta? I have swallowed my pride in so many ways.” When her friends didn’t offer her an amen, she began ticking off the ways she had lost her pride. “I went to Ian and asked him for help. And, might I remind you that he refused to help me at first, but when he came back later offering his help, I didn’t turn him down and declare I could handle everything on my own. I humbly accepted his offer.”
Ryla giggled at that.
“What? Are you trying to say I wasn’t humble about it?”
“Go on,” Ryla told her friend. “Please continue enlightening us with your humble qualities.”
“It’s not funny, Ryla. I am humble. I’ve started attending church with you two, I’m nicer these days and I even begged Ian not to break up with me.”
“Shut your mouth, girl. Now, you didn’t tell us about that. Spill it. What happened?”
Surry hesitated for a moment. She’d needed her friends to get through this terrible day, but she hadn’t wanted to confide everything, partly because she wondered if Ian had been right about her. And if he was right, then Surry felt as if she was doomed to a life of loneliness. She closed her eyes, silently prayed for strength and then trodded on. “I told you that Ian was angry because I called his father and then picked him up from the airport.”
They nodded.
“But what I didn’t tell you is that he said some awful things to me and even threw me out of his office.”
“That doesn’t sound like Ian,” Ryla said with a puzzled look on her face.
“Oh, so now I’m a liar, too, huh?”
Danetta rubbed her friend’s arm and consoled her. “Nobody thinks you’re a liar, Surry. But Ian’s actions do seem a bit off to us, so can you just tell us what he said to you?”
“He told me that I was just like my mother and that he wouldn’t live the rest of his life with a woman like that.”
“I do think that you worry too much about what your mother thinks, but you don’t act like her,” Danetta said and then asked, “Why does Ian think you act like her?”
Surry took a deep breath and then told everything. “He thinks that I don’t believe in him. My mother had said that his taking on a mayor’s race was like a demotion, so I thought that if he made amends with his dad that he might be able to get the campaign of his dreams back. The one where he was going to be working for a potential presidential candidate.
“But Ian is comfortable with the choice he made, and he doesn’t want to be with me any longer because he thinks I will just keep putting his choices down, the way my mother does my dad constantly.” She said the word constantly as if the thought of what her mother did to her dad was draining on her.
When her friends didn’t say anything, she looked up at them with fresh tears forming, as the truth of what she’d done began taking shape. “I messed up, didn’t I? I let my mom get in my head again, and I blew it with Ian.”
The three women hugged and cried together. Ryla and Danetta spent the next hour consoling Surry. But Surry could not be consoled, at least not yet. She dried her eyes and told her friends that they had to go home to their husbands.
“We can stay longer if you need us,” Danetta assured.
“No.” Surry shook her head. “I’ll be fine. I’m getting a headache, so I just want to take a pain pill and go to sleep anyway.”
“Okay, but I’ll call you in the morning, and you better answer the phone or I’m going to come back over here and bust the door down,” Ryla told her.
“I’ll answer, I promise.” She walked her friends to the door, and once they were out she picked up her telephone and called her mother, something she’d been itching to do since she figured out why she lost her man.
Sylvia answered on the second ring. “Well, hello,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if I even had a daughter since I hadn’t heard from you since you left on Saturday. And by the way—” she trudged on “—don’t bring that young man back with you if he’s the reason you had to leave so suddenly. I expected you to spend the night.”
“You don’t have to worry about me bringing Ian back to your house, because he broke up with me.”
“What?” Sylvia sounded astonished by this news. “How dare that second-rate loser of a campaign manager break up with you.”
“That’s just it, Mom. Ian is not second-rate. He’s first-class all the way, but I allowed you to make me think that what he was doing wasn’t good enough. And I leaped right in and messed up another relationship.”
“You probably tried to help him and he took it the wrong way. Men are such idiots. You’ve got to lead them around by the hand or they won’t do anything right.”
Tears began forming in her eyes again, but this time they were for her mother—for all the joy in life that she must have missed because she simply refused to see anything other than the way she thought it should be. “Do you really believe that, Mother?”
“Yes,” she declared. “If I didn’t help your father, he’d probably be in a ditch somewhere.”
Surry clenched her teeth in anger. “Daddy is doing just fine, Mother. But you’ve never been able to open your eyes and see what is right in front of you. Yeah, sure we had some hard times when I was growing up. But he kept at his business and it is now doing well.”
“Your father should have accomplished this twenty years ago. We should be so much further along, but he can’t seem to do anything right.”
Surry was practically yelling at her mother now. “Not everyone can start a business with enough money in the bank to make everything happen at once. Success takes time. But you have never been able to give anyone the latitude they need to make things happen. You ran all of my boyfriends away. And now you’ve even ran away the man that I love.
“I don’t know how I’m going to forgive you for this, Mother. I love you, so I’ll be praying for the strength I need to forgive. But from this day forward, I need you to stay out of my head. No more talking Daddy down, or any man I choose to date for that matter.”
“Where is all of this coming from?”
“It’s coming from my broken heart, Mother. So, please, let me mend it and just leave me alone.” When she hung up with her mother, she prayed harder than she’d ever prayed in her life. She needed to change, and with God’s help, Surry had every confidence that her change was on the way.
Chapter 18
Sylvia had wanted nothing more in life than the little girl she’d given birth to almost thirty years ago. That Surry was upset with her was more than Sylvia could bear. It caused her to sit back and take a good look at herself. She didn’t like what she saw. She hadn’t started her marriage bitter. She’d been deliriously happy with Willy when they first married, but unpaid bills piled up, home repairs were neglected for lack of money and vacations were put off.
After a while she just began to see everything through a negative lens. Truth was, Willy had made progress in his business. And the rest of the truth was, the arthritis that claimed her hands had also claimed her career. She couldn’t sew if she wanted to, and that fact had a lot to do with her unhappiness.
Sylvia knew her reasons for being so miserable and unhappy all the time, but she’d been like this so long, she didn’t know if she could be any other way. But Surry still had a chance, a
nd if it was the last thing she did on earth, Sylvia was going to fix her daughter’s broken heart.
* * *
“Ian, what have you done to Surry?” Noel asked once he got his friend on the phone.
“We got into a big fight yesterday, and I’m still trying to figure out what I need to do about it.”
“Ryla kept me up until about two this morning talking about how hurt Surry is and how she’s never seen her like that. I’ve got to tell you that you’re on Ryla’s list, so I wouldn’t show your face around here for a while.”
“I just don’t know what to do, man. I was really feeling Surry. I thought that she and I actually had a future, but after what she pulled...” He let the rest of his thoughts hang in the air because he was simply sick at heart and didn’t want to tell another man that.
“Did you really throw her out of your office?” Noel asked.
“I asked her to leave.”
“Man, I sure hope you know what you’re doing, because Surry is sick over this. Ryla said that Surry has never been in love with anyone, but she’s told them that she loves you.”
“Let me talk to you later, Noel. I need to get back to all this work on my desk.” Ian quickly hung up. He wasn’t really working, because he couldn’t concentrate. He just couldn’t stand to hear that he had caused Surry so much pain. If things were different between them, he would run to her and try to make the situation better. But he couldn’t run to a woman who thought that what he was doing with his life was small.
Yes, she had brought his father back into his life, and Ian was grateful for that. What he was having a hard time forgiving her for was the reason behind what she did.
His phone buzzed. It was Janice, his secretary. Ian was tempted to ignore her because he didn’t feel like talking to anyone, but duty called. He punched a button on his phone. “What’s up, Janice?”
“You have a visitor.”
He glanced at his calendar. “I don’t have anyone scheduled today. Did you put someone on my schedule and forget to tell me?”
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