Seth’s hand slid down my arm and closed on my hand and squeezed. “I’m okay now,” he said in a voice thin as tissue paper. “Just because you asked me that, I’m okay.”
I didn’t know what was happening physically and verbally behind me, but by the time Seth got control of the tears and I turned around, another chair had been pulled up to the table, making four, and Randi was sitting in one of them, staring as straight-lipped as one of her great-grandmothers at the coffee mugs. When I sat down, nobody offered to fill one for me.
“I want to talk to Seth alone,” I said.
Paul put a hand on Randi’s arm and nodded at me. “That’s up to Seth, but he wanted you here when he told us what he’s decided to do.”
I sagged a little with relief. At least Seth was the one who’d done the deciding. I cast a sidelong glance at Randi. With a mouth as hardened as that? She wasn’t happy about the reins being in Seth’s hands.
“When I was in the hospital,” Seth said, “and by the way, that was probably the best thing that could have happened.” He stopped Randi with a tearful look. “I know I freaked everyone out and I’m sorry. I really am. But while I was in there I talked to some people and got information about some programs. Really good programs.” He looked at me. “Better than any of the ones you and I talked about.”
I nodded him on.
“I signed up for one this morning after I talked to the director on the phone. It’s a six-week intensive that helps Christian guys who struggle with sexual addiction.”
“I still have trouble with you calling it an addiction,” Paul said, looking at me as if I had personally coined the term. “Just because—”
“Dad, I can’t sleep without watching porn before I go to bed. I need more and more all the time. I started doing things I don’t even want to tell you about because you’d throw me out of the house.”
Randi trained her eyes on me, her thoughts coming at me like bullets: nobody had told him about Evelyn’s evidence and nobody had better do it now. No wonder Evelyn hadn’t been included in this meeting.
“I leave Monday,” Seth said.
“Leave?” Randi said. “For where?”
“Colorado.”
“What about your job, son?” Paul said.
“They’re giving me a leave of absence. Without pay. But at least they’re holding my position for me.”
“What reason did you give them?”
I was surprised Paul would ask that. What else could Seth tell them but the truth?
“I told them I needed to go into rehab.” Seth looked down at his ravaged fingernails. “I didn’t say what kind and they didn’t ask. They were incredibly supportive.”
“You didn’t have to lie, then,” Randi said. “Good. That may come in handy later on if there are any issues.”
I stared from one of them to the other, until I realized I’d been doing the same thing for twenty-eight days: telling half-truths because apparently being addicted to illegal drugs or alcohol or prescription medications warranted support, but pornography, maybe not, so why take a chance? It was deceitful rather than discreet.
Paul looked around at each of us. “Then we still agree—”
“I’m not going to say anything to anyone,” I said.
“That includes your parents,” Randi said.
“Now, honey—”
“It’s okay, Dad. I don’t want Madeline and Dennis to know.” Seth looked at me, his former pleading back in his eyes. “If—although I’m counting on when—we do get married, I don’t want this to be a thing with them. For you or for me. Okay?”
So let me get this straight. Seth gets to come clean with his parents and relieve that pressure. Seth gets to go off for six weeks and put his life on hold while he gets help twenty-four/seven. Randi and Paul get to discuss it with each other and continue to come to the conclusion that I am somehow to blame for this. But I . . . I have to continue to keep my mouth shut and essentially pretend it never happened while Seth gets himself fixed.
My mind almost blew.
“I want to talk to you alone,” I said to him.
“That okay with you, Seth?” Paul said.
Dear God, please don’t let me slap this man.
I realized with a physical jerk that I’d just spoken to God. My arms felt strangely heavy. I couldn’t have smacked Paul if I’d tried.
“I want to talk to her too,” Seth said. “I’ll be fine.”
Randi telegraphed Do NOT upset him to me with her face but I returned that with a blank stare. No matter how this all turned out in the end, I might never be able to mend the rip that had gone down the middle of my relationship with Randi Grissom.
“We’re around if you need us,” Paul said and ushered Randi out of the room.
When the door clicked shut behind them, the great room was thick with silence, interrupted only by the soft, measured ticking of the grandfather clock in the far corner. Seth and Kellen used to tell me when I was little that it was alive. That was intended to scare me out of the room, but I was fascinated by the concept. The man in there became magical to me. Too bad I didn’t believe in magic anymore.
I turned quickly back to Seth. “Kellen came to see you in the hospital,” I said.
“He did.”
“Does he know?”
“About the—about my addiction?” Seth said.
He seemed comfortable with that word now, as if it was easier to say than pornography.
“No, he doesn’t know. I told him the same thing I’m telling everyone else. I need to go to rehab and get some things sorted out.”
“Is that what I’m supposed to tell people now?” I said. “Or do I have to keep saying the whole cancellation of the wedding was because I had second thoughts?”
Seth looked as if I’d given in to my urge and slapped him. “Cancellation? Not postponement?”
“That isn’t the point!” I closed my eyes and waited for Randi to fling the doors open.
“It’ll make a difference in my treatment if I know whether there’s a chance for an us when I come home. That’s what the director told me this morning on the phone.”
To my own utter astonishment, it was my turn to burst into tears. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed wretched, painful sobs. I felt Seth’s hand on my head and I shook it away.
Dear God, please don’t let me scream at him. Please.
Actually there was little chance of that. My throat closed on itself and the sobs wracked my chest until they gave up. When I stopped, Seth had moved to the chair beside me. He tucked a Kleenex into my hand.
“You’re probably right to let people think you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict,” I said.
“Well, yeah, Tar. If we’re going to have any kind of future at all, I need to have a job to come back to—”
“That’s not the reason. People get that. They forgive that. They don’t have images in their heads that they can’t erase. They don’t close their eyes and see a Seth who would—I can’t even say it.”
Seth’s eyes brimmed. “Are you talking about people? Or are you talking about you?”
“I was so scared when I thought you were going to die,” I said, sobbing again. “I want you to get better. And I want to trust you again and believe in you again.”
“I want that too. That’s all I want.”
“But can I unsee what I’ve seen? Can I unknow what I know? Can I get past that?”
He pulled back from me. His face paled and the very skin of his lips shivered, and I knew I’d pushed him too far.
But I was wrong. His voice when he spoke was like a flat piece of steel.
“I don’t know, Tara,” he said. “And I can’t do anything about that. I can’t erase your memory. All I can do is work on myself. You . . .”
He didn’t finish. He just looked down at his hands again. But the rest of it was there in the air.
You have to work that out yourself.
It was the first thing he’d said in twenty-eight
days that I believed.
“So,” he said. “Cancellation? Or postponement?”
The old grandfather ticked in the corner, and I wanted to go to him and imagine as I had twenty years ago that he was indeed a grey-bearded wizard who had all the answers. All the answers was what I needed. And not for Seth, but for me. In the meantime, there was only one I could give to him.
“I don’t know,” I said. Seth was visibly encouraged by that, as if my not saying cancellation was all he needed to hear. I didn’t ask. I just bolted out the front door even as Paul was saying, “I think we should all pray together.”
I holed up in my room for the rest of Saturday, and even when I went to work Sunday and Monday, my efforts to forget by throwing myself into customer service were in vain. I was barely holding back tears the entire time.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Wendy said to me Monday at a point when things slacked off, “but you can’t bring it to work. You have to be about the people who come in here for peace and quiet with their caffeine.”
If that was supposed to keep me from crying, it wasn’t working. I blinked like a person with an eyelash under her contact lens.
Wendy’s violet glare softened. “Look, I think of it this way. No matter how I’m feeling, if I can get that woman to smile, that’s the best part of my job.”
I followed her nod to the woman coming up the ramp. It was Gray.
“I have to find the connection or it’s just coffee,” Wendy said.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome.” The softness in her eyes faded, and I was once more at arm’s length from this enigma of a girl.
But then, I was at arm’s length from everyone. As for Seth, there were now several thousand miles between us. He was in Colorado, trying to change. I was in Savannah, staying the same.
And I just couldn’t let that be. How I was going to even begin, I had no idea. But I couldn’t stay the same.
THIRTEEN
Toward the end of my shift, Helen joined Gray at the now-usual table in the window. Outside, the light was dwindling and the streetlamps’ winking-on made stars on the glass. When Ike turned me loose I joined . . . what did they call themselves? The Watch?
“Start eating,” Ms. Helen said as I literally dropped into a ladder-back chair. She pushed a grilled chicken salad my way.
My stomach turned inside out but I picked up the plastic fork.
“No,” she said, and pulled a metal one out of her bag. I didn’t realize it was sterling silver until it landed, cool and heavy, in my palm.
“Who let that woman off the set of Project Runway?” Gray said.
I followed her point to the front door and let the fork go. It missed the table and clattered to the floor.
“Does the five-second rule apply here?” Gray said.
While she was retrieving the cutlery, Ms. Helen put her hand on my arm. “You okay, honey?”
I shook my head because the Project Runway escapee was Calla Albrecht, filmy sweater trailing out behind her like a royal train, hands flying as she talked to the African American woman who followed her. I knew if I looked away she might not notice me, but it was an inevitable train wreck. It was going to happen and I couldn’t stop watching and waiting for us to collide.
Sure enough, Calla’s ash-blonde head swung toward me and her gaze crashed into mine. Without missing a beat she headed straight for me, crossing the Piebald as she would her own boutique, as if anything and everything would make way for her. I actually glanced around for a table to duck under.
“Well, Tara. Sweetie,” she said when she reached me. Her voice was as syrupy smooth and thick as always despite the laser beams she was now using for eyes.
I felt both Ms. Helen and Gray stiffen and with good reason. Calla was hostile in a way only we Southern women can be. You can’t quite pinpoint the rudeness, but it is clearly there beneath the sweeties and the smiles as plastic as our American Express cards.
So much for being her favorite bride.
Her eye-shadowed look down at me was expectant.
“I should have come by and talked to you myself,” I said. “I know my mother did, but I should have. I’m sorry.”
“Tara sweetie,” she said. “I knew something wasn’t right the last time you were in, but I thought it was just the last-minute jitters. If you had said something then . . .”
The pause was once again expectant. What did she want me to say now? I am a complete loser and I shouldn’t even be showing my face in the city of Savannah?
“Your mama hasn’t told me what to do with the gown. Since it was custom made—”
“We’ll pay for it.”
Calla’s face clearly went into shock. Rule number one for being rich in this town: you didn’t talk about money and certainly not in public, among the commoners.
Her voice fell to an attempted sotto voce that wasn’t all that sotto. “That has been taken care of. I just wonder what I’m to do with the dress.” She tapped a french-manicured nail on the table. “But we don’t need to discuss that here.”
“Then why did you bring it up here?”
Calla looked at Gray. Actually, we all did, with varying expressions startled onto our features. Calla was clearly appalled. I knew I was gape-mouthed. Ms. Helen was barely concealing an I-wish-I’d-said-that smirk. Only the woman with Calla registered embarrassment.
“Calla,” she said. “Did you want to go ahead and get coffee?”
“Yes, Betsy,” Calla said, eyes still on me. “I’ll have a latte, two shots.”
The woman didn’t move. Calla raised her brows at her. I think Ms. Helen did smirk.
“I guess I’ll get it, then,” Calla said, and swished away with a flat-eyed glare at Betsy over her shoulder.
“Right behind you,” Betsy said. But she turned to me.
She was a beautiful woman. Tastefully voluptuous, stylish without being trendy. Skin the exact color of a caffè mocha with eyes to match. Her lips were rose-colored and full and they spoke to me, low and rich.
“I apologize for her,” she said.
“There’s no need,” I said.
“The heck there isn’t.” Gray then peered at the tines of the fork she’d rescued. “Sorry. None of my business.”
That was actually true, but neither she nor Ms. Helen took their eyes off of this woman and I was in no hurry for them to. I felt somehow vindicated with all of them there. Maybe Watch was the word.
“I’m not really apologizing for her,” the woman said. “More for Calla’s Bridal.”
“You work for her?” Gray said.
She gave an obviously reluctant nod.
“Too bad.”
The woman smiled. “It is, really.” She put out a creamy-palmed hand to me. “Betsy Turpin,” she said.
“You’re Betsy,” I said. “I heard Calla say something about you last time I was in there.”
“I’m sure you did.”
She glanced covertly toward the counter. Calla was gesturing at the chalkboard, no doubt telling Ike he needed to add canapés to the menu. Betsy turned back to me.
“Don’t think for a minute your cancellation set her back financially. What she charges for one wedding keeps that place in operation for a year.” She blinked her wonderful mocha-brown eyes. “Well, I’m gon’ have to quit now, aren’t I? I can’t be bad-mouthing my employer and live with myself.”
“I think I like you,” Gray said, straight-faced.
Ms. Helen lifted her chin. “You’re being paged, Betsy.”
Something hiss-like exuded from the direction of the counter. I didn’t look this time.
“You all right?” Betsy said.
“With this?” I said. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Okay, then.”
Betsy gave us a smile that stayed there even after she left the table. My gaze dropped to my wilting salad. No one asked me anything—there was no anticipation in the silence—but I still said, “I guess y
ou gathered I canceled my wedding. Postponed it indefinitely, actually. To Calla it’s the same thing.”
Gray gave a soft grunt. “It was a little hard not to pick up on that.”
“But we’re not going to pry further,” Ms. Helen said.
“Really?” Gray said. “Maybe you’re not, but I am. I mean, you know, if you feel like talking.”
“I might,” I said. “Sometime.”
Neither Ms. Helen nor Gray came in Tuesday or Wednesday, which may have accounted for some of my downhill slide that started on Thursday, January first. The Piebald was closed, and I stayed in bed until almost noon trying to forget how the Grissoms and the Faulkners always spent New Year’s Day together. Randi and Mama alternated years putting on the feast, which was, hands down, a bigger deal than Christmas dinner. This year it was supposed to be our turn, but of course no one showed up for the traditional three-hour meal of ham and turkey and oysters, yams, peas, fruit, rice, and biscuits.
I couldn’t begin to eat any of it. The centerpiece of apples and greens in a Christmas tree shape with a pineapple on top hearkened back to colonial days, which normally made me feel one with the Faulkners who had helped settle Georgia. That day it seemed to leer at me as if to say I wasn’t one with anyone. I left the table before the nuts and sugar-frosted fruitcake appeared and ran to the fourth floor and covered my head with a pillow. But I could still hear my mother’s quiet crying.
When I woke up before dawn on Friday, it hit me full in the face as if the sun were glaring into my room: that was the day Seth and I were supposed to leave for our honeymoon at the Abbeyglen Castle in Ireland. How many times had I envisioned us making love there, in every detail I could pull from my innocent reservoir?
I buried my face again until I couldn’t breathe, but the image wouldn’t leave me. It just became entangled with the ones on Seth’s computer screen and the picture Evelyn had painted of him on the sidewalk on Montgomery Street with one of the women the Bridesmaids and I had probably scoffed about after we passed them at some point. And somewhere within that snarled, knotted mess I saw me—standing outside it all in the white lace nightgown I’d picked out for our first night in Ireland, looking scrawny and flat-chested and unlovely.
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