The Chocolate Garden (Dare River Book 2)

by Ava Miles

  “Rye hired someone to become close to Gunner Nolan, the tabloid reporter who broke the story about Rye paying Sterling one million dollars for our divorce.”

  “You think I leaked that tawdry item to some ratty tabloid? If your brother told you that, he is a liar of the lowest sort,” she spat out. “I would never share our family business with anyone, least of all the press.”

  “Rye never lies, Mama. He’s always brutally honest. You, me, Daddy, and Amelia Ann were always the ones who lied. Lied about how we felt, who we were, and what we wanted.”

  “Now you’re calling me a liar? To my face?” her mama snapped.

  “Mama, Gunner said one of Rye’s close female kin called him with the story,” she continued, refusing to show Mama any weakness by putting a hand to her quaking stomach.

  “Well, he’s either lying or your brother is, Tammy. I would never do that. Never. As it is, people talk behind my back about your divorce and how you’re living with your wild brother, exposing your children to God knows what in the country music business.”

  She made Rye’s profession sound like a profanity.

  “Who else could it be, Mama?” Tammy said, her voice rising from the messy emotions roiling inside her.

  “Who would have told them about something so scandalous? All of our relatives found out in the newspapers just like everyone else. And as for you thinking I would so such a hideous thing, well, it’s the last straw. I would never betray this family in such a fashion.”

  That word. Betray. It was like a shot to the chest.

  “How could I think it, Mama? Well, let me tell you. It’s all too easy for me to believe it when my own mama doesn’t love me, when she has always ignored who I am and forced me to become just like her, when she makes me feel things no mama should ever make a child feel.”

  Mama’s hand slashed through the air. “The way you’re talking I might as well sprout horns and become Satan himself.”

  “If the horns fit, Mama,” she said, her heart going numb.

  John Parker was right. Coming here had accomplished nothing.

  “Well, then, there’s nothing to say, is there? You think I’m Satan, the worst mama to ever spawn children. Do you have any other accusations you want to hurl at me?”

  “Why didn’t you love us?” she cried, unable to hold back the dam that was cracking inside her.

  “Love you?” Mama spouted back. “I’ve always loved you. I gave you one of the finest names in the county by marrying your daddy. You attended the best schools and the best clubs. Everything I have ever done was to keep this family accepted and esteemed in this community. Why do you think I endure so many luncheons? So many club meetings? So you will never know what it feels like to be unwelcome in this town.”

  Tammy had grown up with the understanding that it hadn’t been easy for Margaret Crenshaw to regain her rightful place in society. Her mama had been removed from polite society in Meade when Granddaddy Crenshaw left her mama.

  Still, it didn’t excuse her behavior.

  “That’s out there, Mama,” she said, gesturing to the windows. “What about in here? What about listening to us? Letting us become our own people?”

  “Your own people? You modern generation. What child truly knows her own mind? That’s why God gives you parents, Tammy Lynn.”

  Fighting with her was only showing how great a divide there was between their belief systems. Maybe part of their conflict was generational.

  “Rye knew his mind, Mama, but I was too scared to even…ask myself what I wanted. As a woman, my silence is my fault. But when I was a child…Mama, I deserved better. Every child does.”

  “Tammy Lynn, I have never imagined ordering you from this house like I did your brother, but I am telling you that you are no longer welcome at Hollinswood. From today on, you are no longer my daughter.”

  Even though she and her mama had been at odds this whole year, a part of her felt kicked in the gut by that stark pronouncement. How did any woman disown the child she’d carried inside herself, the one she’d labored to bring into the world, the one she’d held against her breast, marveling over his or her perfect little features, some of which resembled her own?

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Mama. I could forgive you a lot of things, but not betraying Rye and me to the press.”

  “For the last time, I didn’t tell anyone about that vulgar agreement. Now, get out.” Mama’s voice rang out in the foyer.

  Tammy took one long last look at her mama, and then she turned around, opened the door, and walked out of the house of her birth. This time she was sure it would be the last.

  Chapter 39

  Never let it be said Tammy wasn’t a glutton for punishment. Her skin felt like it was on fire, the flames dancing on her flesh like pinpricks. She cranked the air conditioner on high in the car, but her body couldn’t cool down.

  Seeing red had new meaning.

  Deciding she was too upset to see her daddy, she let her rage carry her down a road she’d taken a thousand times—to her old house with Sterling. Part of her had to face that part of her past too.

  As she turned onto the long driveway, her vision blurred, and she tightened her hands on the wheel. When she put the car in park and stared at the massive plantation house, all she wanted to do was throw rocks through the windows and burn it to the ground. This had been her prison, but the only lock keeping her there had been her own mind. It had held her children captive too, chaining them to her poor decisions.

  The waste of all those years of her life blew through her, and she forced herself to drive away. Vandalism wouldn’t accomplish anything, but for the first time in her life she understood how someone could be so angry with a physical structure that they actually took a sledgehammer to it or painted what they really thought of it on its walls.

  If she’d had a can of spray paint in her hands, she would have drawn one word over and over across the brick structure: Hell.

  When she came to the turn off to the highway that would take her back to Jackson, she found herself turning left instead, into the heart of Meade.

  She passed the store where she’d bought her groceries, the club where she’d played bridge every Wednesday, the tennis courts where she’d never once sprained her wrist, the beauty parlor where she’d gossiped about other people’s problems while prettying herself up like a Southern debutant preparing to be declared Miss Mississippi. What a shallow fool she’d been.

  Thank God, all of those years were behind her now, and she had chosen a new self, a new life.

  When she spotted Sterling’s law practice on Main Street, the gold-plated sign swaying slightly in the muggy breeze, she parked her car.

  Knowing she shouldn’t go inside, but still unable to repress the urge to say her piece to him, she grabbed her purse and headed through the glass doors.

  His secretary, a new number who looked fresh out of school and dewy—just like he liked them—gave her a polite smile, clearly not recognizing her as the boss’ ex-wife.

  “May I help you, ma’am?”

  Ma’am. Yes, she would look old to the young woman. “I’d like to see Sterling.”

  Her mouth pursed at Tammy’s familiarity. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No,” she drawled, “but since I know the way to his office, I’ll just announce myself.”

  It would be better this way. She took off down the hallway, her heels clacking on the hardwood.

  “Ma’am?” the secretary cried. “You can’t just walk back there.”

  Try me, she thought, and opened the door.

  Sterling immediately looked up, and shock rippled over his perfect features. “Tammy!”

  He was still marvelously handsome. There wasn’t a single flaw to his beautiful features, and she realized she’d taken the lack of his physical imperfections as Gospel when mama had first introduced them. Surely someone this perfect looking, she’d thought, would be perfect for her.

  Oh, how wrong she’d be
en.

  “Hello, Sterling,” she said with a voice of steel.

  “Sugar, what in the world are you doing here?” he asked, rising from his desk.

  Like a young lion finding its voice, she prepared to roar. “I came to tell you I flushed your family’s precious—and ugly—heirloom wedding ring down the toilet at a gas station outside of Nashville.” She paused. “So you won’t be getting it back. Sugar.”

  The venom in her voice felt good, like sparkling water coating her parched throat.

  He stalked toward her. “You flushed my great-great-grandmamma’s wedding ring down the toilet of some two-bit gas station?”

  “Yes,” she drawled, reveling in the fact that her feet felt anchored to the ground rather than shaking in fear, like they usually were in his presence.

  “You bitch!” he said, and before she could step away, he latched a hand onto her collarbone.

  She hadn’t imagined it could happen here. Not in a public place. Not with someone else just beyond the door. If she had guessed he was capable of it, she never would have come.

  His fingers dug into the skin there, meeting with bone, and she had to bend her knees to relieve the pressure so he wouldn’t break it.

  “Take your hands off me,” she shouted at him, something she’d wanted to shout hundreds of times.

  He didn’t listen, only kept squeezing, causing her to cry out. “I’m going to take you apart for what you did to me, especially since I can’t touch your big-shot brother. I was the laughing stock of this community because of that tabloid article.”

  He shoved her to her knees, the pain from her collarbone making her cry out, “Help! Help me!”

  “Cry all you want, but Ginger isn’t going to do anything. She knows who’s in charge here, and I’m going to remind you what you seem to have forgotten.”

  The threat hovered between them, and then she punched him in the stomach with all her might, something she’d always been too afraid to do. His hold slipped for just a moment, but it was enough. She pushed away from him, making him fall onto his haunches, and ran to the door.

  It opened before she reached it, and in the frame, looking like one of God’s most avenging archangels stood her mama. Her gaze locked onto Tammy’s, and she ran her eyes over her body, taking in the place where her collar was askew.

  “Oh, my God!” Mama declared. “What you said was true.”

  Tammy was too shaken to nod. She put more space between herself and Sterling.

  “Now, Margaret,” Sterling drawled, pushing himself off the floor, “your daughter here has picked up some of your whelp of a son’s penchant for violence. She came in here to tell me she flushed the Morrison family wedding ring down a gas station toilet. I’m sorry to say it, but your daughter is nothing but trash.”

  “Trash? From where I’m standing, I’d say you are nothing but trash, Sterling, putting your hands on my daughter like some common drunk.”

  When Mama reached for Tammy’s hand and squeezed it, all Tammy could do was gape in shock.

  “My daughter told me you’d given her the bruises she was always blaming on tennis or dressage, and I had the poor sense to think she was lying, unable to imagine a man of your breeding capable of doing such a thing.”

  Mama squeezed her hand again, and it was like she’d created a new connection between them with that one touch.

  “It seems there’s been a great deal I haven’t been seeing straight, and for the moment, we’ll start with you, Sterling Lee Morrison.”

  “Ma’am?” he asked, clearly not following the shift in the conversation. Mama and Sterling had been allies since time immemorial.

  “For years, I knew about your runnin’ around, how you’d make time with every whore who’d spread her legs, but I was of the mind that at least you provided a good name and a good home for my daughter and grandchildren, providing them with status in this community. Now I see I was blind. In fact, you were abusing her and breaking every moral convention God has ever given to the covenant of marriage.”

  “Margaret,” Sterling said with one of his charming smiles, “I had some fun outside my marriage. Boys will be boys, you know.”

  She stared down her aquiline nose at him. “No, I don’t know. Did you ever hurt my grandchildren?”

  All the breath gusted out of Tammy’s lungs then and there. She was desperate to hear the truth.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I might have spanked Rory a couple of times, but that’s all. And you’re totally misunderstanding the situation with Tammy.”

  “Don’t lie to me, boy,” Mama said in her meanest, ugliest voice.

  Sterling wet his lips. “I only squeezed her a little here and there when she was testing my patience. A husband needs to show a wife her place.”

  The silence in the room was so thick Tammy could have choked on it.

  “Sterling, I can’t tell you how happy I am that I decided to come here and save you from an altercation with my daughter.”

  Well, that explained Mama’s presence.

  “Now I see what I had blinded myself to before. That you’re trash, the lowest kind of trash, the kind even the garbage men wish they didn’t have to take to the dump.”

  Sterling blanched. “Margaret—”

  “No, you’re not going to talk much anymore. You’re going to listen to me, and listen well. I want you to leave town and never come back.”

  Tammy swung her head to look at Mama, who was glowering at Sterling.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, I do. You think Rye’s a mean son of a bitch?” Her eyes gleamed like a fire-breathing dragon from the scariest fairy tale. “You forget who you’re dealing with. I’m Pop Crenshaw’s blood, and you know his reputation around here. Ruthless, tireless. You haven’t seen anything from me yet. I don’t want to see your pretentious seer-sucker-wearing ass around this town for even one more day.”

  Tammy was sure her eyes were bugging out, especially since she’d never hear her mama cuss before. She waited for lightning to strike her dead.

  “Margaret! But my practice is here. My whole life.”

  “Yes, too bad about that, but didn’t you receive a million dollars from my son? A million dollars you clearly did nothing to deserve.”

  “That was my payment for—”

  “Being so well cared for by my beautiful daughter here, who put up with your whores and beatings and gave you two of the most beautiful children on the face of this earth?”

  Her unexpected words moved something mighty powerful in Tammy’s heart.

  “Now that I think on it,” Mama continued, “you really should give that money back to my son.”

  His breath hitched then, and he totally lost what remained of his cool. “But—”

  “If you leave town right now, we’ll call it even. I want you gone, Sterling Morrison.”

  Mama’s words were like sugar spun with lava.

  “Margaret, you’re over-reacting here. My kin are here, my home.”

  “Not anymore, and I’m growing weary of you whining like a little boy. You will leave town, Sterling, and never contact anyone in my family again, or I will tell your fiancée that you have syphilis, something you picked up in your ongoing philandering with hookers and sluts. And that will only be the beginning of how I will sully your name.”

  At that, Tammy waited for the ground to open up. Mama had never spoken to anyone this way before. Her usual method of dressing someone down was to be cold and spiteful.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” he said, and even she could see his usually steely self was wobbling like the jello salad at a funeral dinner.

  “Try me. Get out while the going’s good, sugar. After what you did to my daughter, you’re lucky I don’t have you arrested.”

  “Now I know you’re bluffing,” he drew out, and there was a smirk on his face now.

  Mama looked over at her, and Tammy could have sworn there was smoke and fire emanating from her mama now.


  “Tammy, what do you think? Would you be willing to tell the police what Sterling did to you? I expect the boys in the Meade police department would take you to the woodshed, Sterling. Didn’t you graduate from high school with the sheriff, Tammy?”

  If it came down to it, she would tell the police what had happened. She realized she was strong enough for that now, and that realization helped her find her voice. “Yes, I did, Mama. Duane was always real nice to me growing up. Let’s call him, shall we?”

  A part of her danced inside, elated by how her words had claws.

  “Yes, let’s. Shame, Sterling will probably be disbarred if word gets out. And I can’t think of a single person in town who’d want to be represented by a wife beater.”

  Sterling held up a hand and hustled back to his desk, shoving files into his briefcase. “No, that’s not necessary. Dammit it all to hell, I’ll leave. Are you happy now?”

  “Delighted,” Margaret drawled, staring him down. “Right now would be ideal, honey.”

  Like a bully who’d been beaten up by the bigger kid on the playground, Sterling tucked his tail between his legs and hurried out.

  “And good riddance,” Mama said, releasing Tammy’s hand. She pulled her jacket down to straighten it, the only sign the situation had ruffled her feathers.

  Tammy wanted to fall onto the couch and just sit a spell. Let everything inside her settle. Her emotions were boiling like water on the stove.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?” her Mama asked, reaching out a tentative hand to caress the short curls near Tammy’s face.

  “I think I’m in shock,” she murmured, as much from the altercation as from the loving touch of her mama.

  “Let me see where he hurt you,” her mama whispered, and Tammy inched back her shirt a little more and looked down.

  The skin was already red and swollen, and there were fingernail marks dotting her skin like someone had taken a stapler to her.

  “Oh, dear God,” her mama breathed out. “I’m so sorry, Tammy. So terribly sorry. Please forgive me for not believing you.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and her mama’s arms wrapped around her. Mama started humming, and in those chords, Tammy could hear the same melodic pull of Rye’s voice. Funny how she’d never thought of his musical ability coming from their mama.