There's a long silence, and I can just envision Dean's expression.
"Uh-huh," he says.
"You don't sound convinced," I say.
I scroll through my inbox, click on one of the emails, scan through it, and delete it.
"Well, you're not exactly known for being the warm and fuzzy one," Dean says. "You’ve never been enthusiastic about going back. Not since you were in college, anyway. The rest of the four of us have gone back home much more than you have. Which doesn't make any sense, considering how close you are."
"Why, Baby Brother, you make it sound like I have no sentimentality at all."
"You don't."
"Now, that's just not true at all." I open another email, this one from a potential client, and quickly jot back my usual response. "I am very attached to our hometown. And it will be so nice to reconnect with everyone there. Do you think Benjamina still bakes cakes?"
"Benjamina was 88 when she made your 18th birthday cake."
"And she didn't look a day over 70. It must be all the buttercream."
"Alright, alright," Dean says. "You're hilarious. Are you actually coming?"
I chuckle as I answer another message.
"Yes, I'm actually coming. And I really am excited about it. If nothing else, it will get me away from work for a while."
Out of the five of us, I'm the only one who stayed close to home. Where I live now and maintain the main headquarters of DreamMakers, Inc. is only about an hour away from Magnolia Falls. That hour, though, is enough to keep me out of the office. Hopefully I will be distracted enough with catching up with everyone during Homecoming that I can resist the temptation of going back to work while I should be relaxing.
"Good. Alright, well, I’ll let that client know he'll be hearing from you within the next few days. Thanks for your help, bro. I'll talk to you soon."
"Wait, what client? Dean? What client?"
The call drops, and I scroll through my email again. Just as I get to the top of the inbox, a new message comes in from Dean. It’s a forward of a request from a new client. He wants to pitch a game on a Major League field. Of course, Dean would send this to me, just to fuck with me. He knows I'm swamped with clients, and that managing Kurt's list has been so tedious it’s totally thrown me off my game.
I hate losing track of my schedule. My business is my life, and I take it very seriously. My brothers sometimes say I'm too serious. Dean, especially, bucks against me considering myself the head of the company. I'm the one who took our great uncle's idea and ran with it, turning it into an actual business rather than just the ramblings of an eccentric old man. I'm the one who started DM and nurtured it from its humble beginnings to the exceptional success it is today. Dean and Preston came in soon after, with Archer and Seth following a couple years later, but in the end, I'm still the one at the head. Keeping things running smoothly and making clients happy is my top priority.
And that means picking up another client and finding time to wedge his request into my schedule. Sports-related requests are my specialty. Over the years, I've collected several old stadiums and arenas, and had them fully renovated to state-of-the-art quality. Just last year I finished building a complex containing Olympic-caliber water facilities, basketball courts, tennis courts, two miniature golf courses, an 18-hole golf course, and a horse track. The horses live at a stable that Archer, my second youngest brother, operates about an hour from the track. He spends most of his time up at his ranch in Montana where he runs a farm and orchard, raises cattle, and trains horses. He oversees the stable here and frequently makes the trip to check on the facilities, and make sure the horses are healthy and well cared-for. He's the quietest and most reserved of us, but I wouldn't want to be the person responsible if he found out his horses were being mistreated.
I scroll through the message another time, then send a response to Dean.
"You fucking owe me."
After I contact the client he sent to me, I turn back to Kurt's list. Damn. I really need this vacation.
* * *
Emma
One week later…
I grip the steering wheel tighter and sit up as straight as possible, doing my best to focus on the road in front of me. My eyes are drooping, I have a headache, my ass hurts, and I haven't eaten anything since the soggy container of French fries I got from the drive-through four hours ago. But I'm alive and on my way home to Magnolia Falls.
Yay.
The fact that literally everything I own is stuffed into my car, and I'm driving back to the island and the life I left behind so many years ago, makes my heart tighten, and my stomach twist with nervousness. It's not that I don't love my hometown. It's a warm, nostalgic, memory-filled place for me. It also likes to swallow people whole. Most people who are born in Magnolia Falls spend their entire lives in the village. They grow up there, get married, have children, and the cycle starts all over again. A lot of the young people do leave and go to college in other states and cities, but the beautiful water, and the comfortable, cozy village life draws them back. Even the ones who say they are just coming back for a visit or stay until they find a career, partner, whatever, usually end up spending the rest of their lives here.
All my life, people assumed I was going to stick around. But I always knew there was more. At a young age, I knew I wasn't going to stay behind. And just like I planned, I moved away from Magnolia Falls for college. Soon after, I met Wyatt, a man I thought was charming and sweet and would make my life so much better. Within two years, we were married. It was supposed to be my dream. All my hard work and dedication to getting into school had paid off. I had my degree, and although I didn’t graduate at the top of my class, I was in the top quarter, and exclusive job offers were thrown my way. Then, I found a financially-stable man who wanted to take care of me and treat me like a princess.
Except this particular Cinderella story worked in reverse.
The wedding was a perfect explosion of sparkles, tulle, and sequins, and Benjamina made a wedding cake that was nothing short of a work of art.
After the wedding, however, it all went to hell. I had barely taken off my bridal makeup when Wyatt started to change. His personality shifted so fast, it was like I went on my honeymoon with one Wyatt, and came back with another. He was no longer sweet or attentive, and he stopped trying to make me happy. A few weeks after that, I found out Wyatt was nowhere near as successful as he had made himself out to be while we were dating and engaged. We had been together for more than a year before we tied the knot, and he had convinced me that he was excelling at work, and on the verge of a huge, life-changing promotion. I went along with it when he said he should handle our finances and budget. I felt completely blindsided – like some starry-eyed, love-struck idiot – when it all came crashing down around me. I never thought, not for a second, that anything was wrong. Wyatt spent money freely and easily, drove a nice car, and never seemed concerned about it.
I should have been more careful, more vigilant. Instead, I let myself get swept up by the romance of it all. I spent my entire life up to that point worrying about money. Scrimping and saving were all I knew, and the thought of not having to live that way anymore was tremendously appealing. I liked the idea of just being able to enjoy life as it comes, and let Wyatt deal with all the stress and frustration that money brings. I wanted to believe I had reached some undefined, fabulous tier of existence. Instead, I had been dazzled, manipulated, and legally tied down by the time I discovered Wyatt was actually up to his eyeballs in debt.
When I confronted him about it, my new husband didn't ask for my forgiveness, or tell me we were going to work through this together and build a life we could be proud of. Wyatt told me he didn't want me to work. That was the first of a long string of arguments between the two of us on the subject, and after a while, I gave in. Despite knowing it was incredibly stupid, I quit my job at the firm to make him happy. I wasn't afraid or intimidated by Wyatt. Instead, Wyatt manipulated me with the justificatio
n that he wanted to become the man he promised me he was, and give me the life I deserved. To him, that meant he needed to make the money and be the breadwinner. He said if I kept working, he wouldn't feel like a man, and wouldn't be driven to succeed.
The rearview mirror on my old, tired car might be a little smudged, but hindsight is definitely 20/20.
At first, I tried to be a good wife. I threw myself into it with the same zealous dedication I used to tackle school, work, and everything else important in my life. I was committed to our marriage, and the idea that things were going to get better between us. In my mind, frankly, there was no other option. It had to. Again, hindsight. After a while, I realized it wasn’t getting better; in fact, things were getting worse. Rather than feeling like Wyatt was trying to be a good spouse the way I was, he was just tightening his grip around me, and exerting total control over my life. I finally saw that he was trying to control me and keep me from having my own life. Not letting me work, chipping away at the contact I had with friends, and forbidding my family from coming over, were all different manipulation and control tactics designed to keep me from living my own life. I'm not proud of how long it took me to realize it. I never thought I was a person capable of getting lulled into a false complacency like that. I felt like I had happily slid down into what I thought was a nice hot tub only to find out my ass had become a matzah ball in a big bowl of you-fucked-yourself soup.
As it got worse, I decided to make things better for myself, and got a job without telling him. It was great – until Wyatt found out. That was the moment everything changed.
Wyatt was furious. He said I betrayed him, and that I went behind his back and humiliated him. The intensity of his reaction was something I'd never seen in him before. At that point, I didn't feel like I had a choice anymore. I quit the job I was really starting to love, and stayed with him even though I was scared, hurt, and angry. I know it was stupid, but I had given all of myself to the marriage, and didn’t want to give up yet. I'm stubborn as hell and wasn’t ready to admit that the shiny dream I was living in was a lie.
After the job debacle, things evened out for a little bit. It wasn't my idea of the perfect marriage – not by a long shot. Not even a good marriage. But, it was a relationship I'd seen play out countless times before, so nothing seemed all that unusual.
Wyatt seemed happier and more relaxed. Some aspects of the charming man from when we first started dating showed up again. This time it only took me a couple weeks to figure out what was happening – he was cheating on me. Stringing someone else along to make him feel powerful and manly. The cringeworthy – and graphic – letter I found crumpled up in his pocket, and the neon pink lipstick stains on his underwear tipped me off. At that point, he wasn't even trying to be discreet. I was the only one in the house who did laundry. Get it together, man.
Yet, he didn't own up to it right away. At first, when I confronted him, he tried me make me feel stupid – like I was crazy. After several heated arguments, though, he finally admitted it. Wyatt didn't even have the decency to seem remorseful, or like it mattered to him at all. There was no misty glimmer in his eye as he reminisced about when we were happy, or spark of motivation in him to fight for our marriage, or for me. He looked me right in the eye and told me he wanted a divorce so he could marry the younger, much easier to control, woman he had been dating behind my back.
Welcome to the cinders.
What followed was a nasty divorce. Then, I tried to move on with my own life. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone so well. I didn’t anticipate just how hard it would be to rebuild my life. I struggled for a couple years, got my teaching license, became a teacher... and realized I was running out of steam. The life I had been leading just wasn't mine anymore, and I couldn't keep going like that.
So, here I am, packed up and ready to hit the reset button on my life. I'm heading back to Magnolia Falls to accept a position at the high school, and get myself back on my feet. This isn't a forever thing. I'm only going to be there long enough to build up some money, get myself back into a good place mentally, and figure out what to do next.
Even as I repeat this mantra to myself, I know I'm lying. I'm exhausted, frustrated, and discouraged by life. My little hometown island tucked off the coast of North Carolina has grabbed onto my ankle, and is dragging me back with all its might.
Gripping the steering wheel even harder, I pull myself forward and sit up taller. I thought that maybe the pain in my back would help keep me awake, but the strategy isn’t working. I'm just too tired, and the raindrops that started hitting my windshield thirty miles back aren't helping any. I know I'm done. I am done with this drive, and I am done with today. I'm not too far from Magnolia Falls but getting onto the island and settling in is harder than just driving over a bridge. Mostly because there is no bridge, so I have to ferry over to the main dock of the island. Then go to the administrator's office and apply for a special permit to have my car; visitors and tourists aren't allowed to bring cars on the island, and residents are only permitted to have them for very limited purposes. After that, I can finally head to my mother's house, and that's an ordeal by itself. I just don't feel like I have it in me to do all that right now. It will be best if I take a break, stop for the night at a motel, and start fresh in the morning. Maybe I’ll feel better once I've gotten some rest.
There is a little roadside motel a few miles up the road that never has more than a handful of rooms filled at once. All I have to do is make it a few more minutes, and I can get some sleep. I reach forward and turn the radio up as loud as I can stand. The music blaring from the speakers sounds like something from the background of a road trip sequence in a bad ‘80s movie, but that fits the situation perfectly. I let the throbbing bass and energetic synthesizer power me through the last few minutes of the drive. Finally, I turn in at the parking lot of the motel. Just sliding into a parking space near the door to the lobby feels like a victory. The little neon vacancy sign on the door reassures me, and I turn off the car. As soon as the rumble of the engine dies down, and the music goes silent, the quiet closes around me and the soothing sound of the rain starts to put me to sleep again. I shake my head, release my seat belt, and brace myself for the upcoming sprint through the rain.
The short jaunt from my car to the door wouldn't have been so bad if I didn’t leap directly into a puddle, splashing cold water all over my legs. I tug on the door – only to find it locked. Shit. With no portico overhead, I stand in the direct downpour, shaking the handle wildly. By the time a concerned-looking elderly woman approaches from across the lobby, I'm soaked, my hair is plastered to my face, and I have become very familiar with what rain-melted makeup tastes like.
Failure. It tastes like failure.
The woman stands on the other side of the door for a few seconds, staring at me through the tinted glass. Even through the tint, I see the expression on her face, and know she's contemplating whether opening the door is going to be the beginning of her own episode of a prime-time murder investigation show. Maybe she's wondering who will be cast to play her corpse. Dejected, particularly when I realize I didn’t grab my overnight bag when I threw myself out of the car, I poke the glass over the vacancy sign. Her eyes slide over to it, then back at me, and she nods. She turns the lock slower than any human has ever unlocked a door, and steps back to let me inside.
I drip across the brick red tiles, using every scrap of hope I have left to will myself to stay on my feet rather than slipping. Finally, I make it to the desk, and the woman smiles at me from behind it like she didn't just make me stand out in the rain.
"Hello," she trills. "I'm Phyllis."
"It's lovely to meet you, Phyllis," I reply flatly. "I'm Emma. I’d like a room for the night, please."
"Emma," she says, turning to her computer and clicking a few buttons as she stares blankly at the screen. "It sure is raining out there, huh."
"I barely noticed."
Her eyes flit to me, and then back to the screen.
"Now, Emma, do you have a reservation?"
"No," I say. "I don't have a reservation. I'm just passing through."
"Well, welcome." I give her a tense smile. "What's your last name?"
"Barlow."
"Barlow," she murmurs, hunt-and-peck typing it into the computer. "Emma... Barlow." Suddenly her head snaps up from where it has been ducked down to focus on filling out the registration form. "Emma Barlow? Not from Magnolia Falls, by any chance?"
She's asking it in that tone people use to show how shocked they are by a question they already know the answer to.
"Yes. I'm from Magnolia Falls."
"I knew your grandmother!" she gushes. "Sweet lady. Made the best blueberry cake in the world." She leans forward to rest on her elbows on the counter, grinning as she sets her chin in her hands. "You know, I remember back when we were still young, and we went out into the woods right there, right along that edge of the water, you know, the tree line? We decided to go out there and look for wild blueberries. Your grandma had it in her mind she was going to bake a blueberry cake for a boy she was sweet on. Of course, we ended up getting lost, and got ticks all over us. Never did find any blueberries. I don't know if she made the cake or not."
Phyllis's eyes slide up and to the diagonal like she's looking for Gran to ask for confirmation for the story.
"Phyllis?"
She looks at me.
"Hmmm?"
"My room?"
"Oh." She straightens and continues filling in the registration form. "Just the one night?" she asks.
"Just the one. I'll be heading back to Magnolia Falls in the morning."
"That's so nice to hear! Are you just going for a visit, or will you be staying for a while?"
"I'll be staying for a while," I say.
"I heard you haven't been around much in the last few years."
Marriage Mistake Page 6