Ivy loved her aunt Leah, who had managed to stay neutral in spite of everything that had happened. Leah had encouraged Ivy to mend fences, to forgive, to remember why she loved her family even though she was angry. But she’d also understood the hurt she felt and let her process all of it without pushing. She’d been the mediator who ultimately led Ivy to talk to her mother after several months of silence, the one who’d urged her to enter into business with her father as a way of mending the rift.
Ivy sighed heavily as she looked around the office at the things she would have to box up. Did that mean she should blame Leah for where she was now? She smiled at the irony and dialed the phone to the bakery, figuring that was where she would find her.
The Seaside Bakery was started by her aunt and mom after her parents’ divorce. Her mom had gotten a lot in the settlement and didn’t really know what to do with it, so she invested it in her sister’s crazy dream of starting a bakery in the place they all loved most—Sunset Beach. It gave Leah and Margot a chance to live there year-round and helped them become more a part of the community instead of mere summer guests. They were full-blown citizens now, even though her mom had become less and less involved in the bakery in recent years. The shop was her sister’s dream, and she’d been happy to fund it.
“Seaside Bakery,” an unfamiliar male voice answered.
“Umm, I’m looking for Leah?”
“Yeah, she’s around here somewhere. Hang on.” She heard his muffled voice calling out for Leah.
Leah picked up the other extension, the one in the kitchen where she was probably rolling out a batch of cinnamon rolls or icing some eclairs. Ivy’s mouth watered at the thought. “Hi, Aunt Leah, it’s Ivy,” she greeted her aunt.
“Ivy, I’m so glad you called! It’s been crazy around here and none of us could get you!” By “none of us,” Leah meant her and Margot.
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard but Dad had to close the Asheville office. So I’m pretty busy here with that.” The world doesn’t stop just because Shea gets engaged, she thought but held her tongue.
Leah was unfazed. “Yeah, I was sorry to hear about that, but actually the timing is kind of good, don’t you think? It’ll free you up to be involved in planning Shea’s wedding.” Leah was trying to sound confident, but Ivy detected the doubt in her voice even as she said it. Leah was engaging not in just wishful thinking, but wishful talking.
“Oh, Leah, I doubt I’ll be able to be involved from long distance. I mean, I’ll have to find another job.”
“Well, if it’s a job you need, I could use you here at the bakery. You always were my best employee.”
This was more wishing on Leah’s part, yet her words brought back the smell of sugar clinging to her as she left work each day, dashing out of the bakery and into Michael’s arms. She closed her eyes until the image faded away.
“Well, that would be kind of hard considering I live across the state.” She worked at keeping her voice light and carefree. She was just fine, all was well. The last thing she wanted was for her family to figure out how bad things were with Elliott.
“Ah, yes, but I can dream, can’t I? You know we’d love nothing better than for you to decide to come home.”
Home. The word struck her with its power. How long had it been since she felt at home somewhere? From Charlotte to Sunset to Asheville, she’d traipsed around the state of North Carolina, chasing love and happiness … and come up empty. She felt a pull toward the coast she hadn’t felt in a long while, just as sure as if Aunt Leah had tugged at a string tied to her heart that she hadn’t known was there. And yet, Elliott was in Asheville. Her home should be wherever her husband was.
“Well, I can’t very well do that, Aunt Leah. I have a life here.”
Her aunt laughed, but Ivy knew better than to think the matter was settled. Aunt Leah had an intuition where Ivy was concerned, and she knew that her offer to return home wasn’t offhand. “So you do, so you do.” Aunt Leah’s voice was nearly melodic. “Well, I called to tell you some news. I’m sure you saw the big proposal this morning.”
“Of course. Very exciting.” Ivy played along.
“The part you don’t know is that the producer of the show had some sort of flash of brilliance and decided that it would be wonderful if they followed up on the happy couple.” She was silent for a moment. “By broadcasting their wedding.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Apparently he was taken by the Southern charm of the location and the story of these two kids growing up together. He said it sounded like a storybook. So he asked Shea and Owen if they would consider, and apparently Owen agreed right then and there.” She snorted. “Men. He has no idea what it takes to pull a wedding together. There’s just not going to be time to do it when that show wants them to do it.”
Ivy could feel her heart begin to speed up on her sister’s behalf. “When are they talking about doing it?”
“Apparently they’re wanting to broadcast the wedding in June.”
“That’s less than four months away! And it’s a morning show. Do they expect them to get married that early in the morning? On a weekday?”
“No, it would be taped, then played back. If you ask me, it’s the last thing your sister needs to deal with. Planning a wedding is hard enough without the added craziness of putting the thing on TV.” Her aunt knew about planning weddings. She worked with brides on their wedding cakes all the time.
“How is she going to plan a whole wedding that fast? Don’t they know weddings take a long time to plan?” She felt a twinge as she thought of her own speedy wedding, but mercifully her aunt did not point that out.
“That’s what I told Shea. But she doesn’t want to make Owen look bad by declining the offer.”
“What about her students? Is she going to finish out the school year?”
“Thankfully, her principal is giving her a leave of absence the last week of school, so she’ll have two weeks to focus exclusively on the wedding. And she’ll need it. With her teaching schedule, she’s not going to have time to do much before the wedding. Personally, I think she’s going to live to regret it.”
Ivy was learning there were lots of things in life you could live to regret.
Leah continued. “So will you just call her? Offer your support, even if you can’t come home to help.”
Though she knew Leah didn’t intend to heap on the guilt, Ivy felt it anyway. “Yeah, sure. I’ll give her a call later.”
“Thanks. And I’ll tell your mom I finally got ahold of you.”
“Yeah, please do.” With any luck that would save her from yet another family conversation.
“And, Ivy? I really am sorry about your job. I hope everything else is going well for you. That you’re happy.”
“Oh yes,” she lied. “Going great!”
As she said her good-byes and hung up with her aunt, she felt bad for lying to her. But telling the truth would be admitting far more than she was ready for. She and her family might be back on speaking terms, but they were nowhere near the kind of openness they once had.
Four
Over the next months, the quick succession of business-filled days was a welcome relief to Ivy, who needed the distraction that closing up the office—and the details that seemed to multiply when she wasn’t looking—allowed her. It was much easier to fall into bed at night and let exhaustion overtake her than to face the fact that Elliott might be cheating on her. Somewhere in all the chaos, she fielded calls from her mother and aunt, had coffee with April weekly, and even managed a few brief but civil calls to Shea.
Her sister had asked her to be the matron of honor, and Ivy knew that obligation, not emotion, was behind her sister’s request. Once upon a time, she and her sister had been as close as sisters could be, regardless of the three years separating them. Perhaps that was what had made Shea ask—a tribute to their shared past. Because they certainly didn’t share the present. And with Shea married to Owen and Ivy married to Elliott
, there wouldn’t be much chance at the future either. Not with Owen still taking up for Michael the way he did, giving her that look that was a mixture of pity and disdain the last time they saw each other. She had to admit that avoiding Owen had also meant avoiding Shea.
Now Ivy looked out the window of her office at the empty parking lot. Her colleagues had been gone a few weeks now, and she had only a few more details to mop up before she shut down this office for good. She stirred her first cup of morning coffee absently, listening to the clink of the spoon echo in the empty office.
The phone rang and she picked it up, expecting her mother checking to make sure she’d given Shea the appropriate answer. With her mother, appearances were everything. Even if her girls were no longer close and the family barely resembled the family they once were, for one day she wanted to stand up in front of their friends and extended family and pretend. And now that television was involved? That only upped the ante.
Instead she saw April’s number, which was odd, considering they’d just seen each other the night before, when April had stopped by her house with her wild dogs. April hadn’t stayed long, rushing off to meet some girlfriends for dinner. After she’d gone, Ivy and Elliott had shared a laugh about the hyper puppies and how April had gotten herself into a mess but was unwilling to concede defeat. For a fraction of a second it had felt like old times between them, and she’d clutched at the hope the moment had given her. They’d even sat and watched a movie together. He’d held her hand, and she’d rested her head on his shoulder, crossing more emotional distance in those simple movements than it would appear.
April’s voice was odd when she said hello. “Do you have some time to talk?” she asked, her voice strained.
“Have you been crying?” Ivy responded. She wondered if something had happened last night while she was out. Maybe she’d run into an old boyfriend who was now engaged. That always got her down.
“Could you just meet me at my house?” April avoided the answer, a tip-off to Ivy that more was going on than she was saying.
Ivy looked at the time and calculated how much of her day an impromptu visit to April’s house would take. It wasn’t like she lived just down the street. April lived a bit outside of Asheville, working as the caretaker of a collection of cabins for tourists while living in one of them. The property was gorgeous, with a stream running through the landscaped gardens and wildlife frolicking all over the place. It was a place where Ivy could lose herself, and had many times, swinging on a porch swing while overlooking the water. April had given her a place to stay when she first moved to Asheville, and the locale had been a perfect place to start her new life. Other than Sunset Beach, she’d never felt more at peace anywhere.
“Sure,” she said. She hung up and surveyed the work on her desk. Some phone calls still to be made, a smattering of emails to be returned, and several contracts she needed to read through and sign. Only a few days’ worth of work, really. And just yesterday her father had called. “You know,” he’d said, “if you’d rather go help with the wedding, I can finish all of this. I never intended for you to take it all on.”
She couldn’t tell him what a relief the work was, what a welcome distraction it had been. She was nervous about the final paperwork being done, the remaining deals being closed, the door being locked behind her when the last day came in a few days. She worried about what she would do with herself then. And going to Sunset to help Shea did not sound like an appealing option. Maybe April would need some help out at the cabins. Maybe she’d let her stay in an empty one in exchange for taking one of the wild puppies off her hands or something.
A lump formed in her throat. Was she thinking about leaving Elliott? After last night that didn’t seem as likely. She pushed the question aside and grabbed her keys. First, she would take a break from work and go comfort April. It would be nice to worry about someone else’s problems for a change, answer her best friend’s questions instead of her own.
Her car tires crunched along the gravel as she ventured off the paved road and up the long winding drive that led to the cabins. A rustic handcrafted wooden sign pointed the way to the Mountain Stream Cabins, as if Ivy didn’t know the way. April had worked there as long as Ivy had known her. A few times she’d tried to hire her friend away, tempted her with a big salary and a position helping with scouting commercial property back when the economy was booming and the real estate market in the southeastern US looked unsinkable. Not unlike the Titanic, Ivy had often thought to herself in recent months. But April loved where she lived and said that even if the pay wasn’t great, the atmosphere was priceless.
Ivy parked her car, got out, and looked around at the sweeping mountain vista, forgetting for a moment all the stresses she had left back at the office. April was smart to stand her ground.
She pulled open the squeaky screen door of April’s cabin to a muffled cacophony of barking. But no dogs pounced on her at the door. April sat at the kitchen table, looking mournful, her hands resting on the tabletop. Maybe she’d decided to give the dogs away and needed to be told that she was doing the right thing.
Ivy edged into the room, keeping her eyes on April as she gauged the situation. “Hey, where are the dogs?” she asked, trying to keep her voice bright as she sat down opposite her friend.
April hitched her thumb in the direction of the closed bedroom door. “I locked them in the bedroom so we could talk.” As if on cue, Ivy heard one of them fling his body into the door with all his might.
“Not sure your bedroom’s still going to be standing,” she joked, searching April’s red-rimmed eyes for some indication of what was going on. Maybe the pastor had called and said he’d made a mistake, begged her to come to Michigan. Maybe she’d decided to go.
April looked at her and swallowed. “Elliott showed up here this morning,” she said.
As Ivy looked back at her friend, she understood. April wasn’t upset for herself. April was upset for her. She nodded. “Okay” was all she said.
“It’s what you thought a few months ago.” April’s voice broke and she pressed her fingertips to her temples, looking down. “He had an affair.” She said the news to the floor.
Ivy sat up taller, refusing to enter into exactly what April was saying, to watch from afar, as if this was happening to someone else. “So why’d he come to you?”
“He said you all had a nice night last night. That it made him feel so guilty he couldn’t go one more day without telling someone.” April looked back at her. “He knew if he told me, I’d either make him tell you or tell you myself.”
Ivy took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled loudly. “I guess I know which one you all decided on.”
“He’s waiting at your house. To talk. He wants to fix this.”
Ivy laughed. “Fix this? How exactly? How do you fix months of sneaking around, lying, betraying me—breaking our vows?”
“It wasn’t months. It happened only once, but he felt so guilty about it, he’s been avoiding you. A month ago he went to see a counselor at church, and the counselor told him he would have to tell you. Ivy, Elliott knows what he did was wrong, and he wants to work on the marriage with you.”
“Well, give the man a medal.” Ivy hated the sound of her voice, the bitterness that was there, waiting to escape at the first provocation. From behind the closed bedroom door, they heard the sound of scratching, dog toenails clawing into the wood.
“Did you tell him I suspected as much?” she asked, looking in the direction of the bedroom so she didn’t have to make eye contact. Though she knew that April would love her through this, she also felt a deep sense of shame. She couldn’t keep a husband.
April nodded. “I told him you thought something was wrong.”
A woman just knows. She remembered her mother’s words. She’d vowed she’d never end up in her mother’s position. And yet, here she was. She’d run from Sunset, from her past. But it had found her anyway.
Without warning she stood up and walked ou
t through the screen door to stand on the porch, gulping in the fresh mountain air as if it would heal her. She scanned the mountain range, and a verse came to mind: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?” She thought of a hand mighty enough to carve those majestic peaks, a power big enough to tell the tides at Sunset Beach when they could come and go. And yet that power felt powerless to her just then, as far away as the coast of North Carolina—her real home—felt. She had once believed that God had led her here to Asheville, had brought her Elliott. But what if he’d never been involved, and all of this—the whole of the life she’d built—was a mistake?
April had come to stand behind her. “I need to go,” Ivy said without turning around.
“I figured.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
April’s eyes darted away. “You just always seem to run when things get uncomfortable.”
Ivy ignored the remark because she couldn’t disagree with her friend. She turned around, her gaze falling on the cabin’s door, avoiding April’s eyes, which had come to rest upon her again. “What was her name?”
April shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I got the feeling it was someone from work.”
She wanted to scream, to run and run and run and never stop, just like April said, to climb that mountain in front of her and, at the apex, shake her fist at the heavens.
“But,” April continued, “he knows he has a problem. Isn’t that what they say? That admitting that is the first step?” Ivy could hear the defensiveness in April’s voice, the piece of their friendship she’d always feared coming into play. Elliott was her family. Was it right to ask her to choose between them? Yet how could she not?
Ivy laughed a bitter laugh. “Don’t hand me that Twelve Step stuff. That’s for alcoholics. For people who have actual addictions. You can’t have an addiction to screwing around on your wife. I’m sorry. That just doesn’t cut it.” From inside she could still hear the dogs, their barks reaching a frantic pitch as they heard the angry voices on the porch. She heard another thump as one flung himself at the door. “I’m a little disappointed in you, frankly,” she said to April. “It sounds to me like you’re taking his side.”
The Wishing Tree Page 4