“What’s wrong? You find a shell?”
She shook her head. Peanut shells happened, but not in this slice. “I’m just wondering why you’re the generous one and I just sit around, receiving your gifts like the Queen of England.”
His brows went up and he shrugged. “Don’t they say not to look a gift horse in the mouth?”
She snorted. “That saying means you’re not supposed to find out how much your gift costs or you’ll be sorry, right? I mean that you’re the giver and I’m…” She paused. “Like a kid, getting presents every time her old uncle visits.”
“Old uncle? You want me to take the pie back? Because I can, you know.” His words were light but he looked uncomfortable.
“No!” She put the plate on the counter and came toward him. “I just feel like you’re the real adult and I’m just some sort of wanna-be adult.”
His eyes locked on hers, the lines of his mouth gone tight. He swallowed. “I don’t think you’re a wanna-be adult.”
“Well, that’s what I feel like. It’s hard when the rest of the world views success as a good job and I’m unemployed at home.” She knew she was pouting, but it was hard to stop. “I had lunch with Lexi Martinez, that girl from the Werlin’s party. And I realized that if I could do everything over, I might do it all differently.”
“As in?”
“I went to college because that’s what I was supposed to do. I got a good job, because that’s what I was supposed to do. Maybe I should have skipped college and just…” She waved her hands, lost for words, frustration spilling out. “Just traveled the world. Explored the country. Gotten drunk every New Year’s Eve like the rest of the population instead of having half a glass of champagne because a full glass would have given me a headache the next day.”
Brooks set his plate on the counter and held up both hands. “Wait, wait, I’m lost. You said you had lunch with Lexi Martinez and now you’re having some sort of mid-life crisis?”
“That’s just it!” She couldn’t help how her voice went up an octave and a half. “Mid-life crises are for old people! I’m twenty seven and I feel like I took the wrong path somewhere. I need to turn around before it’s too late.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Okay, take a deep breath and tell me again how this all started.”
She laughed, a crazy sound that was closer to crying than laughing. Absalom lifted his head and let out a soft whine. “Lexi is an artist who is going to college to study accounting. I’m sick of women being pushed into jobs just because someone told them they should be cautious and logical. God doesn’t want us to waste our talents. I don’t want to see her make the same mistakes I made.”
“But Finley, it’s a totally different scenario. Lexi needs some sort of trade that will pay the bills. Accounting will give her the breathing space to create her art, when she’s ready. I didn’t say anything at the party, but I donated the scholarship money that she won through the Thorny Hollow High School Honor Society. I think she’s making the right choice.”
Caroline stepped back, away from the warmth of his hands. “You- you set her up for a life of accounting?”
“I didn’t know what she’d choose. But it’s a scholarship for needy kids who will major in the applied sciences. Our town needs more careers that will support the economy here. You can’t imagine what’s happening, how kids are leaving school with useless degrees and twenty thousand in debt. They struggle to pay it off and end up worse than they started.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I told her to skip college and focus on her art.”
His mouth fell open. “You didn’t.”
“I did and I’m not ashamed of it. I think she’s telling her father in the next few days that she’s going to refuse that scholarship. She needs to believe in herself and her unique God-given gift.”
Brooks stepped toward her, eyes dark with fury. “Refuse the scholarship? Are you crazy? Her father runs a gas station, Caroline! This is her one chance to go to school and have a life that’s a little better than her parents had.”
“Maybe it’s her one chance to follow her dream! Did you think of that?”
“If you want to talk about what God wants, let’s ask ourselves if God would want Lexi to throw away a chance to support herself and her family.” Absalom shuffled over and stood between them, leaning first against Brooks and then against Caroline.
“But she won’t be happy. I don’t want her to wake up at my age and realize she’s spent the majority of her life serving pink lemonade.”
Brooks let out a bark of laughter. He looked like he was doing everything he could to keep his temper. “No, Caroline, she won’t be waking up and realizing that, because she’s not you. She’s not coddled and dressed up and introduced all over the county.” He pointed to the pile of knotted yarn on the counter. “She won’t be living at home, picking up projects and never finishing them. She’ll be stocking cigarettes and pumping gas because someone told her to follow her dream.”
“You’re saying this as if you know the future. Well, I hate to break it to you but just because you’re a professor, you don’t have all the answers.”
“Believe me, I know that.” His voice was low, the anger resonating deep in every syllable. Absalom lifted his head, worried eyes looking from one to the other.
“All that time I spent on Etsy searching for Regency costumes taught me something. We don’t live in a world where artists struggle just to eat. There are markets for everything now. I saw someone selling bottle cap necklaces for fifty dollars!”
“And some junk art for sale on the internet prompted you to tell a young girl to skip college.”
“See, right there! You say ‘junk art’ because it’s not something you make or buy. But other people do and will. She could put up her art and sell it, right now, without ever leaving her house.”
“What a ridiculous plan.” His anger radiated outward like heat waves. “As if college is all about the degree. It’s about learning to live independently, to get along with other people, to see life beyond your own little town. You convince her to turn down this scholarship to sell her drawings on eBay and she may just never leave. She may be stuck in Thorny Hollow forever.”
Caroline felt the words reverberate in her head. Forever. He sounded like the ultimate failure would be to live here. Like her. Absalom nudged her hand, giving a few tentative licks, as if to say he still loved her, no matter what. “The world has changed, Brooks. We don’t have to spend four years learning something we don’t enjoy, just to survive. And it’s not all about eBay anymore. Artists have options.”
“And who’s going to help her set all this up? You? As far as I know, you’re not particularly skilled at selling on the internet.”
Her face went hot. She had no idea how a person went about starting an online business. But how hard could it be? “Of course I’ll be helping her, but Frank might have work for her, too.”
Brooks went quiet, eyes narrowing. “Frank said he’d give Lexi Martinez a job?”
“We talked about it.” Not too much of an exaggeration. She’d started to talk to him about it and they would have figured out something concrete if Lauren hadn’t shown up.
“I guess you and Frank can take responsibility for this train wreck of a plan, then.” He looked like he was struggling to find words, but then just shrugged. “I have to go. Absalom, come.”
The next moment they were gone and Caroline was staring at the empty doorway in the bright yellow kitchen.
“Well!” She grabbed her pie and thumped back in her chair. “If that doesn’t beat all.” Taking a bite, she chewed furiously, willing her heart rate to slow. She was so angry she couldn’t even taste the dark chocolate.
Setting the plate on the counter, she paced the kitchen. It would work, it had to work. She would show Brooks that he wasn’t always right about everything.
Footsteps came down the hallway and she knew it was him before he appeared in the doorway.
His face was tight with fury. “No, Caroline, it’s not. I just came back to say that even if you and Frank take responsibility for this fiasco, it can never make up for what you’ve taken from Lexi. If she chooses to give up her education and it doesn’t work out, no amount of cake baking or mitten knitting will fix it. She’s not some project for you to start and then discard when it doesn’t work out quite the way you want. She’s a human being.”
She stood there, speechless, throat squeezed closed. Then he was gone again, the kitchen echoing with his words.
"Pleasure in seeing dancing! - not I, indeed - I never look at it - I do not know who does. Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different."—Mr. Knightley
Chapter Fourteen
“I’m not sure why I need to be involved in this part of the planning.” Brooks slouched in his seat, legs outstretched and ankles crossed. Absalom sniffed the old barn in ever widening circles. Dust motes swirled in a shaft of sunlight and he tried not to inhale too deeply. He looked up at the rafters and watched the swallows and pigeons side-stepping their way across the thin beams. The place filled with ancient smells of horse and straw and stale beer from some other party.
“Because you’re stuck in that room too much of the time. It’s not healthy.” Blanche wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead. The cornrows were gone but she was still a bit tan. Her sunflower yellow shirt clashed mightily with a bright red pair of capri pants, a black fanny pack the only concession to her age.
“I’ve got a deadline.” He had been working on an article for Newsweek. If he were truly honest with himself, he’d been doing more brooding than writing. When his grandmother told him to get down to the old Wrigley barn off the highway, he didn’t really have any choice about the matter.
“My friends will be here any moment so let’s go check out the stage.” She trotted across the wide plank floor to the front of the barn. Brooks followed, stepping over clumps of what he hoped were dried mud. A small stage had been built sometime in the last few decades and aside from the dust, it seemed sturdy enough.
“Can’t you just see it?” Blanche clasped her hands together and looked out into the middle of the space. “Couples in their finest party clothes, courting the way couples have courted for hundreds of years.”
“How? With exposed cleavage and blatant mentions of wealth?”
She turned and glared. “No. Dancing. And not that writhing and grinding you young kids do now.”
Brooks snorted. He wasn’t young and he certainly wasn’t writhing and grinding. To his grandmother, anybody under fifty was in the prime of life.
“You see, when the dance begins and the couples face off, the scene for romance is set.” She swept her arm across the barn. “Men on one side, women on the other. It’s like waving a red flag at a bull. Excitement, anticipation, danger!”
Danger of having one’s toes smashed, maybe. Brooks squinted, trying to envision the scene.
“The music leads and the bodies follow. You’re giving up control, meeting your partner again and again, weaving through the obstacles just to find them. And at the end, the sweetest moment, the union of hearts.” She looked dreamily across the space.
He coughed. “Until you get partnered with Frenchy D’Auberg and he pinches your bottom. Not so romantic then.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “For you or me? I wouldn’t mind a little pinching. I’m a lonely old lady. When your grandfather was alive, we had such a thriving-”
“Oh, no.” Brooks pretended to plug his ears. “Remember I’m one of those innocent young people.”
“Ha! I said young, not innocent.” She paused. “How come you never bring anyone home to meet me?”
“Never found anybody I really liked, Grandma.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Truthfully, the girl he really liked already lived here, bringing her home wasn’t an option.
“I just want you to know, that whatever kind of lifestyle you live, I’ll still love you.”
He rolled his eyes. “So, because I’m not living with a woman, I’m gay?”
“Well, there must be some reason. A handsome boy like you must have loads of girls chasing him.”
“Right. Loads.”
“What about that nice-”
“Before we go down the whole list of candidates, let me just say that being a nerdy professor and the heir to Badewood isn’t as attractive as you think.”
“Why ever not?”
“It’s hard to explain, but sometimes I think it would be better to be poor and homeless, Then I’d know if a woman loved me for who I am, and not for my house.”
She paused, as if choosing her words wisely. Her bright orange lipstick feathered into the wrinkles when she pursed her lips. “If that’s your fear, then you’d better choose someone who has a home as nice as ours.”
He laughed, a sharp sound that echoed in the enormous cavern of a barn. “There’s nothing like Badewood around here. The only people who aren’t awed by the old place are the ones who’ve practically grown up in it with me, like-”
She waited for the rest of his sentence. “Yes? Like?”
Like Caroline, obviously. Every thought led right back to her, every time, like some kind of cursed boomerang. “Let’s move on to some other topic. Finding Brooks a wife seems to be at the top of everyone’s list lately. I’m almost glad we’re having this crazy party. Maybe it will take some of the heat off me.”
“If you think God wants you to stay single, that’s perfectly fine with me.”
Brooks sighed. “There’s a lot of talk about what God wants, isn’t there? Always speculation, never facts.”
She stopped on her way across the stage. “What does that mean? We’re supposed to ferret out God’s will for our lives.”
“Okay, true, but I also hear a lot of speculation on what God wants everyone else to do.”
“Is this a sensitive topic? You look ready to have a duck fit. ”
He shrugged. Kicking the toe of his old running shoes into the dust of the stage, he felt irritable, exhausted, twitchy.
“Your grandma has had quite a few more experiences than you have.” She smiled at him. “Just letting you know that, in case you’d ever like to bounce anything off my many years of living.”
“There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Maybe. But sometimes it helps to share the burden.” She walked to him, her white hair frizzed around her head, eyes bright. She barely reached his chest but she never seemed small. Larger than life, louder than doubts.
He thought of Manning and Debbie Mae. They had suffered for a whole year without leaning on anyone else. But sharing his unrequited love wasn’t something he was really aching to do.
A dove took flight from one of the rafters and they both turned to watch it circle the barn. It flew overhead and dropped its load with a splat, right on his shoulder. He grimaced.
“Now I’m afraid you’re dyin’ of a terrible disease. Bird poop should register more emotion than that.” His grandma was searching through her small fanny pack for some tissues.
It should, but it didn’t because it was just one more irritation in a week filled with irritations. He hated being at war with Caroline. Hated it more than anything he’d ever hated before. It was a dull ache that never lessened.
His grandma wiped off the mess as best she could, saying something about how a summer at home would make him happier. He wasn’t really listening. He felt so tired, so weary of holding on with an iron grip to something he knew was slipping away.
“You can’t make someone love you,” he said.
Her hand stilled for a moment, the dirty ti
ssue between her fingers. “True,” she agreed.
“Even if you love them so much you’d do anything, anything for them.” The truth of his words sunk in. Speaking about it wasn’t helping. It felt worse, like probing an open wound.
“Even if,” she said, nodding.
“Sometimes they pick another person to love, when you’ve been right in front of them the whole time.”
“It does happen.” Her voice was soft.
“And then there’s nothing left but to keep going as you were, pretending you never felt anything more than…”
“Friendship?” Her eyes met his and there was the faintest glimmer of tears.
“But I don’t think I can have even that, anymore.” His throat constricted at the thought. They hadn’t really spoken since the argument over Lexi’s scholarship.
“Why not?”
“I wish I was a better man, but seeing her with someone else makes me crazy. Especially since the guy is a jerk.”
“Maybe it will run its course and you’ll have your chance.”
He laughed, the bitterness in his voice loud to his own ears. “Grandma, don’t you see? If she didn’t choose me the first time around, she won’t choose me the second time.”
A sudden breeze blew open the barn door, gusting clouds of dust into the air. She patted his arm. “Sometimes a girl’s got to kiss a few frogs before she finds her prince.”
The thought of Caroline kissing Frank dragged a groan out of him. “Thanks, Grandma. Just what I needed.”
“Like you’ve never kissed anybody?”
“Well, of course I have, but-”
“Then you don’t have any right to begrudge her a few kisses on her way to finding out you’re the best man for her.” She flashed a big smile, as if everything was all fixed.
He nodded, more to end the conversation than anything else. He didn’t know if he could stand watching Caroline date someone like Frank. He didn’t know if he could watch her date anyone, really. The usual hugging and kissing and public displays of affection were annoying, but when you were in love with one of the participants, it was torture.
2 Emma, Mr. Knightley, and Chili-Slaw Dogs Page 14