Secrets over Sweet Tea

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  As she hurried down the hall, he ran after her, his feet thudding heavily. “Grace, you’re in shock. It’s completely understandable. Go talk to Tyler and then get back here, and we’ll work this out. You know I couldn’t stand to lose you.”

  Her tone was biting as she grabbed the door handle. “Then make this go away.”

  Leo held the door as she started down the stairs. “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe this doesn’t need to go away? That maybe having to deal with the mess he’s made this time might be the best thing that has ever happened to Tyler?”

  She turned sharply as she opened the door to the parking lot. “It’s not just Tyler here, Leo. It’s me too.”

  She didn’t wait for a response. She ran to her car, climbed in, and immediately dialed Channel 2.

  Only after all three competing stations assured her they were definitely running with the story did she call Tyler’s cell. No answer. She called the Williamson County jail next. Tyler had been there. But his bail had been posted three hours ago.

  Tears blurred Grace’s vision to such an extreme that she could hardly make out the interstate signs for her exit. The last few years played through her mind like her family’s old eight-millimeter videos—jerky, silent, but vivid and real. The first time Tyler came home drunk. The angry rants and sullen hangovers. The spending sprees and bad financial decisions. The heartbreaking rejections in bed and the many nights when she wondered if he’d make it home at all. All those near misses with team management and the law.

  Each time she had grabbed hold of their lives in a desperate attempt to conceal all that they truly were because she didn’t want their truth to be exposed. She had hurt enough. She hadn’t wanted to hurt that way too.

  She pulled in to the garage. There was no sign of the Mercedes. Probably impounded. She had called Tyler’s cell phone ten times since she left the station. He hadn’t answered one of the calls. There was nothing left to do but wait.

  The house was as quiet when she entered as it had been when she left. She dropped her keys on the counter in the kitchen and walked toward the bedroom. She found Tyler snoring loudly, reeking of bourbon and smoke and something else—body odor, maybe. Miss Daisy snoozed at his feet.

  The sight sent her anger to a new level. Buried fury from deep and dark places rose to the surface with such force that both she and Tyler were caught off guard.

  She jerked the duvet off him, causing Miss Daisy to jump down. Then she grabbed Tyler’s arm and pulled with all her might, forcing his body to the floor. He jolted upright. “What the—?”

  Every blood vessel in her face felt as if it would explode. “You’re sleeping? The whole city of Nashville—maybe the whole country—is about to know you’re a drunk, and you’re sleeping? Have you lost your mind?”

  Tyler squinted at her through bloodshot eyes. “Leave me alone.” He yanked the duvet from her hand and climbed back into bed.

  Grace had nothing left to lose. And there was everything to say. “You will get out of that bed and face me. You are about to make a public spectacle of us, and there is no way you’re going to crawl into that bed and act as if nothing has happened. I am through acting as if nothing has happened!”

  He flung the duvet off his shirtless body. “What do you want from me, Grace?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Her arms flew up in the air. “What do I want from you? I want you to be a man, Tyler. I want you to own your stuff. I want you to get help—real help.” Her voice betrayed her as it broke. “I’d do anything—anything—if you were just willing. I’d walk with you anywhere to get you the help you need and to fix this marriage. Because we’re broken. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see how broken we are?”

  He looked at her without expression, a far cry from yesterday’s explosion. “I’m not seeing another counselor, and I’m not going to spend my life with you dictating it. If you don’t like it, you can get out. I’ve told you before that our marriage was a mistake. Maybe now you will believe me.”

  His words cut through her with the precision of a chain saw, leaving a wound gaping and beyond repair. The air rushed from the room.

  She had no words to reply to that. He had lied his way through separation, counseling, and rehab, but now there was a resolve in him. He wasn’t lying now, and the truth was enough to break her heart.

  She fled the room and climbed the stairs to the guest bedroom. Her body fell across the bed, and she made no attempt to quiet her wails. If he couldn’t hear them, it was because his heart was stone.

  As silence finally came over her and the heaving stopped, Grace remembered her prayer from the day before. She now knew she had her answer. Her release. All the years she had fought to survive, had prayed for healing, had brought her to this one moment. The line was clear in her soul, the shift deliberate and sure.

  This was the end. She had given ten years of her life to a broken, childless, pretend relationship, and she had no intention of giving anything more. Not as long as things remained the way they were.

  If their marriage had to end for him to be whole, if Tyler’s rescuer had to be removed for him to figure out how to become a man, then that was what she would do. It was now Tyler’s time to rescue himself.

  Scarlett Jo stretched her feet over the side of the bed and slid them into her hot-pink fuzzy slippers. She did her best to stay quiet as she left the bedroom.

  She had been doing this for a week now, getting up before dawn so she could watch the news—the early edition, anchored by the local celebrity who had moved in down the street and was coming to their church. Scarlett Jo poured herself a glass of sweet tea and pulled a cinnamon bun from the box she had hidden in the top cabinet where the glasses were. She had picked it up for herself when she went to Merridee’s on Saturday to get the boys their own box for breakfast.

  She curled up on the sofa with breakfast and turned on the television. You would think she was watching a royal wedding, getting up like this. The news show started, but the woman staring back at her was not her new friend Grace Shepherd—unless Grace had become Beyoncé overnight.

  “Doggone it,” Scarlett Jo said to the still-dark living room.

  “We begin with breaking news this morning,” the young woman said, her white teeth almost iridescent.

  Scarlett Jo scrunched in tighter against the sofa and took a bite of her cinnamon bun. She loved breaking news.

  “Nashville Predators right defenseman Tyler Shepherd was arrested overnight for a DUI.”

  The gasp Scarlett Jo let out was loud. “Oh my stars!”

  A not-too-attractive mug shot of Grace’s husband spanned the full screen of her forty-two-inch television. “Oh, that is not a pretty picture,” Scarlett Jo offered to the unfamiliar anchor. “He looks drunker than Cooter Brown.” She had heard that old expression for years growing up in the South, but she had never learned exactly who Cooter Brown was. “You’d think at least they’d let you go to the bathroom and check yourself out before they put you in front of that camera. Lord knows, you’ve got to live with that picture the rest of your life.”

  “He was released on bail this morning. The Predators have yet to issue a statement,” the newscaster went on to inform her. “We will make you aware of more details as they become available.”

  Scarlett Jo took a long sip of her tea, then set her plastic tumbler on the glass-topped coffee table by the sofa. She opened the front door, walked onto the porch, and peered down the street at Grace’s new house. All the lights were off. If anyone was home, you’d never know it.

  Scarlett Jo would check on Grace after she got the boys off to school. But right now she’d pray. It was still dark as she made her way to the sidewalk, so she decided to just walk and pray in her hot-pink robe. If someone else was up at this ungodly hour, she figured they deserved to have to see her this way.

  Zach had helped Adele pack up her car. It had been his pleasure. She’d pulled out at six thirty that morning, lingering just long enough to t
ell the girls and Caroline good-bye before they all started a new week. He hoped it would be a while before he had to endure her again.

  As he skimmed a razor blade across his neck, he felt Caroline’s arms wrap around his waist from behind. He’d pretended for a moment the gesture was genuine, real. He swished the foam-covered razor in the sink as she peeked her head around his side. She watched him in the mirror. His words took the risk.

  “Caroline, honey, why do you let your mom dictate your life the way you do? I watch you when she’s here. It’s like you revert into this child who has no voice.”

  Her response was tender, not at all what he had expected. “I don’t know.”

  He let his body relax and brought the razor up for its next swipe. Such receptive moments had been too few and far between. He’d take this one. “Are you afraid of her?”

  She was quiet for a moment as she cast her eyes downward.

  “It’s okay if you are.”

  She looked back into the mirror. “Maybe a little. I don’t know what it is.”

  “Do you need her approval?”

  She let out a cynical huff. “I don’t fight for things that don’t exist.”

  He met her eyes in the mirror. “Maybe you should stand up to her. Be honest with her about what you feel. Tell her that we can’t afford to expand the business right now—that you’re the owner and you’ll know when that time is.”

  She released him and crossed her arms; her gaze turned to a glare. “Expanding the shop is a great idea. My mother happens to be a very smart businesswoman. Look at all she has accomplished.”

  He steeled his spine as she went on. “Honestly, I think you’re just jealous. That’s why you play these mind games with me. But if it weren’t for her, I don’t even want to think about where we’d be right now.”

  He kept his hand on his neck to make sure he didn’t slice his jugular. “Did you have a question, Caroline? Or did you just want to pick a fight?”

  She moved to her side of the bathroom. “Do you remember the client I had to style last week?”

  He didn’t respond, and honestly she didn’t need him to. Most of the time her questions were simply information regurgitation.

  She continued talking through a second lipstick application. “Well, they live in that really quaint development, Westhaven. They’ve got a lot of houses for sale there, and so many of the kids go to school with the girls. And I was thinking—”

  “No.” His answer came out sharp and quick.

  Her hands dropped. “I knew you’d say that.”

  He kept his eyes on the mirror. “Where is the loving wife who snuggled up against me a minute ago? The one who offered me a brief moment of something real?” He didn’t try to hide his sarcasm. She paid it no attention.

  “This is the best time to buy. I took Mom yesterday to look, and she thinks we’d be foolish not to do it. She’s even willing to help.”

  He had to put the razor down, or it would be a matter of seconds before 911 had to be called. “Caroline, seriously. You had to have this house. Remember? You had to have this house. You wanted to live in the historic area of Franklin. We had a perfectly fine house. And now we have a house payment we can barely afford.”

  “Well, if your practice did better—”

  He stopped her immediately. “If my practice did better? I’m working my rear end off to make sure that we can meet all our demands. Your business brings in nothing. In fact, it has lost money this year, and you’re talking about investing another hundred thousand dollars into it that we don’t have. Where do you think it all ends?”

  She turned toward him, her angry eyes as green as envy itself. “We made the decision to start my business together, Zach. Don’t act like it was all my idea.”

  “Well, then let us make another decision together. It’s not going to happen. Not an expansion to the store and not another move. It may be a good time to buy, but it’s not a good time for us. We paid top dollar for this place. There’s no way we could even recoup what we’ve put into it. And we are not taking more money from your mother.”

  She jerked her three-hundred-dollar handbag off the counter. “You can’t tell me what I will and won’t do.”

  He took in a deep breath, trying to release the tension in his body and in the bathroom. “But why do you need another house? Why isn’t this one enough?”

  Her tone was still biting. “Because the girls can’t just walk to a friend’s house from here. They don’t have any classmates in this area, so we have to drive all over town for them to have any kind of social life.” She found the syrup again. He would avoid getting stuck in it. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they were right near their friends’ houses? This is the age where they are separating from us, and friends are the most important thing. Denying them something like this is just . . . it’s just selfishness.”

  He resisted the urge to laugh. And to scream. He resisted a lot of urges in that moment. He simply shook his head, turned back toward the sink, and picked up his razor again.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “How do I respond to that? You know as well as I do that if I move you into that house, in six months you’ll want another one. And another car. And another overpriced purse. It’s a never-ending cycle of ‘another.’ There is no response to that.”

  “You’re a jerk, Zach. How is that for a response? You only think about yourself. And I’m so sick of it.” Her heels clicked loudly on the hardwood floor as she walked out of the bedroom. Her hypocrisy, however, lingered behind.

  “Grace, wake up.”

  The voice was distant. Grace tried to open her eyes. Her eyelids felt glued shut. She could almost see the swollen puffs beneath them. Sun trickled in between the tiny slats of the plantation shutters. She still hadn’t hung drapes in this room.

  “Grace, are you all right?” Rachel’s voice finally registered.

  “Yeah, yeah.” She rubbed hard at her eyes and sat up in bed.

  Rachel sat on the edge of the bed. “When you wouldn’t answer your phone, I knew it was bad.”

  Grace blinked and looked around the room. She didn’t even know where her phone was. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I just needed to know you were okay.”

  “I’m okay. I think. It’s just . . . Rach, I need you to do me a favor.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Rachel left to arrange childcare so she could be available later that day. And as much as she appreciated her friend, Grace felt relieved when she was gone. She needed the silence. For now.

  Miss Daisy popped up from the foot of the bed. She moved closer to Grace and stretched out luxuriously, waiting to be rubbed. Grace obliged, grateful that at least one of them was unaware of the harsh lines that would define their life from now on.

  Grace got up and walked quietly down the stairs, Miss Daisy at her heels. She was finally beginning to get a feel for where everything was in this house. She sighed. She passed the master bedroom, peeking in to see an empty bed. Tyler was gone. Must have had a buddy pick him up.

  This was how it always seemed to happen. Another new house, another hopeful fresh start, another quick revelation that it was nothing more than a new address. Then six months of trying to get all the bills to actually show up while living out the same old pain. Would she finally be changing the pattern?

  She noticed that Miss Daisy was trotting ahead of her in the hall. “Need to potty?”

  The dog’s tail wagged and her eyes seemed to bug out even farther, if that was possible. Grace followed her into the kitchen, wondering what time it was. She squinted hard at the numbers on the stove. Ten o’clock. She must have been dead to the world.

  She opened the back door to the fenced-in yard. “Go potty, baby girl.” Miss Daisy trotted off. Grace left the door open, went into the kitchen, and turned the oven on broil. She pulled a piece of wheat bread from the wrapper and stuck it in the oven. And that simple act triggered a memory of when she’d begun making toast this
way.

  During her separation from Tyler, Grace had spent a month at her parents’ house, then returned home to find that Tyler had taken the toaster. Her morning ritual was a piece of peanut-butter toast, and she’d been furious that he’d taken the one thing she used every morning. Then she’d gathered her ingenuity, stuck her bread underneath the oven broiler, and discovered she liked it much better that way, toasted on only one side. It had been virtually a declaration of independence. She’d never used a toaster again.

  She shook off the memory and went to the door to check on Miss Daisy. She noted that their wicker rockers on the back porch looked nice against the deep-yellow siding, but she didn’t see a puff of champagne fur anywhere. She ventured farther onto the porch and looked to her right. The fence ran up to the edge of the house, so there was really no place to hide. She stepped off the porch and moved toward the side where the gate was. Her heart dropped when she saw the gate pushed open wide enough for a small dog to get through. Someone had left it open. And Miss Daisy was gone.

  Grace’s heart pounded as she ran through the gate and into the front yard. She saw nothing but manicured lawns and neat houses, heard only the sounds of cars moving along Third Avenue. Her new house was way too close to the town square for her comfort with Miss Daisy on the loose.

  “Miss Daisy!” she called, knowing as she did that the dog wouldn’t come unless she wanted to. She never had. When Miss Daisy was a puppy, Grace had gone out one night to find her nose-to-nose with a possum. She had yelled at the top of her lungs for the dog to get inside. But Miss Daisy had just looked up at her, then back at the possum. Finally she’d decided the possum didn’t look too interesting and sauntered back into the house.

  “Miss Daisy! Come on, baby girl. Want a treat?” Grace was trying to keep calm. She darted around to the other side of the house, praying she’d find her there. No sign of her. She returned quickly to the front. Still nothing. By the time she’d covered every side again, her insides were screaming.