He looked down and crinkled his nose. “That floor’s nasty.”
“It’ll wash off.”
He pulled at the pleats in his navy suit pants. He had shed the coat and tie hours ago. “So how are you doing?” he asked as he joined her on the floor.
She reached up to readjust her loose topknot. “You know, it’s crazy. The way I feel seems to change almost every moment. I’ll be with people and can’t wait for them to leave. Then I’ll be by myself and just want people around. Sometimes I’m panicky and I can hardly breathe. And every now and then, there is a moment where I feel really good. You know. Alive.”
She lowered her head and wiggled her red-painted toes in her flip-flops. “There are a thousand moments when I have to remind myself of all the things that got me here. And then there are those moments when I realize all the things I did that got me here.”
He raised his mocha. “Wait just a minute. I know your story. You didn’t do anything to get yourself here.”
“You’re sweet, Zach. But a well person would have never let her life get to the place I let mine go. I put up with too much and rescued Tyler from himself more times than I can count. And you know what? Honestly, I don’t think I did all of that just because I cared so much about Tyler.”
Zach raised his eyebrows.
“No. The more I dig into all my stuff, the more I realize that I didn’t want to hurt. So I avoided conflict. I avoided anything that would have exposed where we really were. I was never completely honest with anyone. I couldn’t stand the shame of having the whole world know what our marriage and our lives really were like. Shoot, I couldn’t stand knowing what it really was, so I wasn’t even honest with myself most of the time. I just kept running around, trying to keep all those balls in the air, never even questioning if that’s what I was supposed to be doing. And I regret that, Zach. If I hadn’t been so concerned with what people thought about me, who knows where I would be today.”
“Where do you think you’d be?”
She shook her head slowly. “I have no idea. But I have a lot of regrets, and that may be my greatest.”
“You shouldn’t have regrets, Grace. You did far more than most women I know would have. Caroline wouldn’t have—” He stopped himself.
Grace’s hand flew to her face. “Oh, Zach, forgive me. I’ve been going on about my pain and forgetting that you have yours too.”
“Don’t worry about me.” He shook it off. “I made my bed, gotta lie in it now.”
“But how are you?”
He bent his knees and let a hand fall across each one. The mocha sat at his side, incapable of staining the carpet any worse than it already was. “Oh, I’m all right.”
She tilted her head again. “Excuse me, but I was in church that day. So . . . bull. And I can add more to that if you’d like.”
He felt his shoulders sag. Why did he do that—insist on acting like everything was fine and that his life hadn’t exploded in front of hundreds of people on a Sunday morning? Force of habit, he guessed. He had spent his life being the one who asked the questions, keeping other people’s secrets and never having to reveal his own. Until Caroline revealed his for him, that was.
“Yes, and you still kept me as your lawyer after that—that’s a miracle.” He let out a soft half laugh. “But please tell me a beautiful Southern lady like you doesn’t talk trashy.”
She placed her hands on her hips. “I can if I need to.”
He laughed. “I’m pathetic, Grace. Living in a tiny apartment, drinking liquid sugar for dinner and having it again for breakfast. My wife won’t talk to me. My girls are complete wrecks. My mother-in-law, well, God alone knows what she has said or thought. I’ve lost three clients. I get looks from women I’m certain Caroline has shared our little secret with.” He used air quotes to highlight the word secret. “Oh, and each day I’m learning more and more how messed up my life is.”
Her words came out as soft as the nudge against his knee. “Isn’t it painfully beautiful?”
He let out a puff of air. “I’m not sure I’d call it beautiful. But painful? You’ve nailed it.”
Grace leaned in so close he almost felt he should lean back. “Zach, if you could do anything, anything in the world, what would it be?”
He looked at her in surprise. “That’s what Jackson Newberry asked me.”
“So what did you answer?”
He studied her face, realizing she genuinely wanted to know. “I’m not quite sure. Be a football coach, maybe? I loved football in high school and played some college ball. I’m pretty sure I’d be a good teacher. What I do know is if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be doing divorce law. But it’s where the money is, and money has always been a necessity in my family.”
“What if you let all the balls that you’ve been keeping in the air all these years just fall?”
He shrugged. “I’m thinking I have. Last I checked, my mattress and box spring were on the floor instead of in a bed frame.”
She leaned back and placed her palms on the floor, stretching her long legs out beside him. “Well, all I know is that if you would’ve told me even six months ago that I’d be sitting here in a storefront that was going to be my very own tearoom, I would’ve said no way. I couldn’t do that. My job was secure, about the only secure thing I had left. I could have just kept on the way I was going.
“But I dropped the balls, Zach. And here we sit, in my future tearoom. I don’t have a paycheck. I barely have savings, and I’m in debt to my best friend. But what I do have today that I didn’t have a few weeks ago is a heart that feels something. Really feels something.”
“I’m very happy for you, Grace.”
She gave him a warm smile. “Thank you. And I want the best for you.” She nodded toward the plastic cup on the floor. “You’re welcome to quit drinking that stuff and come drink my tea anytime.”
He lifted himself up from the floor, realizing he needed to leave. It was a Friday night. His marriage was in a shambles. He was lonely. And this was one of the kindest, purest, loveliest women he had encountered in a long time. With his track record, not a great scenario.
“I may take you up on that,” he said as she got to her feet. “Once you get the place going, of course.”
“I’d love that.” She touched his arm as they walked toward the door. “Have a great weekend.”
“You too,” he said before he headed down the street again. But he wasn’t sure how good a weekend it was going to be when all he could think about was Grace Shepherd, and the person he needed to be thinking about was Caroline Craig.
Grace closed the door behind Zach and moved back into her space. Her space.
She danced around like a five-year-old, holding her hands out as if she held the edges of a flowing skirt. She twirled until she was dizzy, and that got her tickled. She leaned over her knees and laughed until she could finally stand up. She slowly raised her head . . . and let out a scream.
A man stood with his hands cupped against the window. Now she knew why people put brown paper over their windows when they remodeled—to avoid heart attacks. He had scared the living daylights out of her.
Then she caught sight of the squeegee in his hand. He held up a card, and she returned to the door. She opened it and stepped out onto the sidewalk, where people were heading to movies, dinner, or ice cream.
He handed her his card. “I’m Fred Parton. I clean a lot of windows around here and thought you might be interested.” He nodded toward the window. “I saw that the For Lease sign was gone. Didn’t know if you were the new renter or not.”
She studied the name, wondering if he was related to Dolly. She didn’t see any family resemblance, but then again, she wasn’t really sure what the original Dolly looked like. “Owner, actually,” she said. “I don’t like to rent.”
She had told the Realtor it was the only way she would take the space. The plan was for Grace to eventually buy out Rachel and become the sole owner. The Realtor’s wife had r
ecognized her from television. Gratified that she still had loyal fans, Grace had promised the woman special treatment when they opened.
“Well, I thought I’d leave you my card, in case you start needing your windows done. I’m living with an aunt over in Spring Hill, but I do windows in Franklin and Brentwood too. Give me a call, and we can work out a schedule.”
Right now she was still trying to figure out how to afford toilet paper. “Thank you, Mr. Parton. I will certainly remember that.” She looked up at how high her windows went. “I’m thinking this might be a job better suited for someone other than me,” she said.
His chuckle accentuated the deep creases in his face. The sun hadn’t been kind to Mr. Parton, nor had the years, it seemed. “Well, I do have everything I need to do a good job, and I’m real reasonable. So if you decide you need some help, just call.”
“I’ll do it. Thanks.”
He nodded and walked away.
She went back inside and found her little pad and pen. Buy window paper! she added to the top of her list.
Zach saw Caroline in the distance as he made his way up the street toward Baskin-Robbins. He realized he had two choices in that moment. Hide. Or seek. It took him a while to decide, but he chose seek.
She had avoided him since that day at Jackson’s. When he went to pick up the girls, she was nowhere to be found. When he dropped them off, she was not to be seen. He left voice mail messages most days, and she responded in texts or ignored them altogether. And even though they both worked downtown, she had somehow managed to keep from bumping into him.
Until now.
She was in front of her store, struggling to drag a huge box through the door. He hurried to the other end and lifted it. She looked up, and for an instant her face said “thank you”—until she realized who he was and the “thank you” gave way to disdain.
She set down her end of the box. “I don’t need your help, thank you very much.”
He shifted his grip and picked up the entire box. “Desire and need are two totally different things. You may not desire me, but you do need me right now.” He carried the box inside and set it down in the back. “Why did they leave a box in the front?”
Frustration was evident in her tone. “New driver.”
She wasn’t going to make this easy.
He straightened. “Where are the girls?”
“Home.”
“Do you need help opening it?”
“No.” She just stood there.
“Do you want to grab a coffee? Ice cream?”
Her jaw pulsed. “No.”
“Want me to leave?”
He could have sworn he saw her eyes twinkle at that. “Yep.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded. “Okay, well, I can take a hint.”
“I wasn’t hinting.”
He let out a soft laugh, though it wasn’t really funny. He headed toward the front door, reached for the handle, then turned back to her. “I’m really sorry, Caroline. I wish I could rewind it all and put Humpty Dumpty together again. But we still need to talk, get counseling . . . do something.”
She offered nothing.
He turned and walked out the door. He might get the triple scoop.
Ten minutes later, the chocolate-mint ice cream made its way to the edges of the napkin wrapped around his cone as he started back to his office. He crossed the square and realized he had to pass Caroline’s store again to get there. He rounded the edge of the building and peeked inside the windowpane of the front door, just to make sure everything was secure and okay.
What he saw shocked him. Caroline sat on the floor in a heap. And from the way her body was shaking, he knew her pain was fierce and hard.
He wanted to ditch the ice cream and run inside. But Caroline wasn’t ready for ditched ice cream and extended arms. And honestly, if his healing was affording him any insight, it wasn’t his place to rescue her from what she needed to feel. The sad thing was, the walls inside her were as old and stubborn as the stone walls that lined so many of Franklin’s back roads. He didn’t know how long it would take her to breach them—if she ever did.
But seeing her there, weeping, took him back to when she had broken down right before their wedding. That had been a tense time. Her mother had dictated every detail of the planning, down to the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses, and her constant criticism of Caroline’s choices had finally been too much. He didn’t remember what the argument had been about—probably something small—but it had left Caroline in tears. Zach had held her then and suggested she appease her mom, that it was just a day and they would have the rest of their lives with each other.
That was now officially one of the dumbest things he had ever said. Who knew what would have happened if in that moment, before they were ever man and wife, he had stood up to Adele and said, “Here is the line. You can only cross it if we invite you.” But they’d both known that if things didn’t go her mother’s way, she wouldn’t pay for the wedding. Another thing he should have realized back then—money was a powerful motivator.
So here they were, fifteen years later, with Adele still telling them what to do and Caroline trying desperately to hang on to control. In all their years of marriage, he hadn’t seen her come apart like this, and he thought it was a good thing. Maybe it would help her come apart in a different way—break free from those old patterns that had robbed them of so much. He had to do that too. Because until they dismantled what had been put together so poorly, they could never hope to reassemble it the right way.
Scarlett Jo leaned over the open box and pulled out another china cup. She rubbed the lower part of her back. “If I weren’t so big on top, this wouldn’t hurt so bad.”
Rachel stood on a ladder on the far side of the room, holding a strip of pink toile wallpaper. She aligned the top edge of the wet paper at the ceiling, straightened the strip, then pressed hard with her smoothing brush. “If you weren’t so big on top, you’d be up here on the ladder instead of me. Don’t want to risk you toppling over or anything.”
Scarlett Jo glanced down at her grimy smock. “Well, I say we all need a break. I’m craving ice cream.”
Grace came around from behind the counter that had been built last week. Constructed from distressed white beadboard, it provided just the girlie, shabby-chic look she was going for.
She raised her eyes to Rachel and waited. It wouldn’t take long.
Rachel scooted down the ladder, pressing the wallpaper strip firmly against the wall as she did until she got to the molding. She slid the razor across the bottom until she had the perfect edge. Grace had given her exacting friend the best job for her personality.
“I hate you, Scarlett Jo,” she said. “You know I can’t refuse ice cream.”
“Oh, I knew it.” Scarlett Jo jumped up in the air and clapped her hands together.
Rachel eyed her bouncing figure. “You jump much higher, you’re going to give yourself a black eye.”
Scarlett Jo made her hand a claw and swiped at Rachel while letting out a bobcat-style hiss. “Kitty likes to scratch.”
Grace laughed. “Rachel doesn’t always play well with others.”
Rachel went to the counter and grabbed her purse. She stuck her tongue out at Grace.
Grace rolled her eyes. “They’re so cute at that age.”
Rachel walked straight for the door. “Well, come on, you two. We don’t have all day. If you’re forcing me to go get ice cream, let’s make it snappy.”
Grace and Scarlett Jo picked up their handbags and snickered as they followed her out into the pleasant September night.
“So where to?” Rachel asked. “Baskin-Robbins or Sweet CeCe’s?”
Grace loved them both, though Baskin-Robbins’s plain chocolate was still her all-time favorite. That and the chocolate-dipped vanilla cone from Dairy Queen. Both of those reminded her of childhood.
Scarlett Jo raised a hand in the air. “I vote for Sweet CeCe’s. I want toppings!”
/> Rachel wrapped an arm around Scarlett Jo’s waist. “This isn’t Braveheart, honey. You’re not William Wallace leading your men to war. It’s just ice cream.”
Scarlett Jo put an arm over Rachel’s shoulder and pulled her tightly up under her, so tightly that Grace was concerned Rachel’s right shoulder might be permanently dislocated.
“Good grief, woman.” Rachel shook herself loose. “What do you eat in the morning? An entire box of Wheaties?”
“I’ve been lifting children since Jack was a baby.” Scarlett Jo flexed her bicep. “That’s how I got these.” Scarlett Jo gave Rachel a push, and she tumbled sideways, almost knocking Grace over. “You’re so jealous.”
Rachel laughed. “Yep, you found me out.”
They crossed Fifth Avenue when the little green man on the crosswalk sign told them they could and made their way to Sweet CeCe’s. “Please do not hurt the children on your way to the ice cream,” Grace said as she opened the door. “That’s all I’m asking.”
Rachel gently shoved past Scarlett Jo, who countered with a flick of her broad hip. “That’s cheating,” Rachel protested.
“All is fair in love, war, and ice cream.” Scarlett Jo laughed and reached for the stack of large plastic cups that sat next to self-serve frozen yogurt dispensers.
Grace loved the decor in this place. Everything in the room screamed childhood magic. The hot pinks. The bright greens. The big flowers. The Willy Wonka–style array of candies, nuts, and other toppings. It all invited you to feel free, like a child. Which was a good thing because the two women she had brought with her had no problem acting like children. She watched as Scarlett Jo dispensed a tubful of red velvet cake yogurt. Rachel followed behind, filling hers with the cake batter variety.
“Remember, Grace, assume freedom,” Scarlett Jo advised as she licked some ice cream from her finger.
Grace got herself a bowl. She pulled the nozzle down on the sugar-free chocolate dispenser and watched as a large swirl wrapped once around the bottom of her plastic cup and then began its second rotation. She stopped before it made its way fully around and then moved on to the vanilla. She let it make one full rotation, then stopped it. And then she assumed some freedom and let it make one more round. Scarlett Jo and Rachel were already casing out the toppings by the time she finished.
Secrets over Sweet Tea Page 24