by M. Allen
“Anything.” His eyes were pleading.
“Did you know she was going to come here today?” When he opened his mouth, she cut him off. “Don’t lie.”
He sighed and admitted, “Yes.”
“And you still asked me to make you pancakes.”
She slammed the door in his face and locked it, knowing he wore nothing more than his pajama pants and pancake mix. She pressed her back to the door and slid down to sit on the floor, her entire body shaking from head to toe. Then she let the dam of tears break free, each one hot and soaking as they coated her cheeks. In that moment, Magnolia knew this would be something she’d never forget. Some people say when you feel emotions so deeply there is a physical reaction to go along with it. Right now, Magnolia Reed felt like her world was coming to an end. With each heave, the aching in her chest became unbearable… eight years. Barely able to breathe past the ball in her throat, she uttered, “Dick!”
Chapter 2
“Oh, Momma, what am I going to do now?” Magnolia let her head fall on to the table with a smack.
At her side, her mother fluttered nervously. “Oh, baby girl.” She ran her hands through Maggie’s hair, petting her the way she had when Magnolia was a child. “I’m so sorry.”
Tension stole through Magnolia’s body. She shifted in the seat, letting her legs jut straight out while she slouched down with her head laying on the back of the chair. She stared up at the discolored ceiling. “My life is a mess.” Again, her cell phone buzzed indicating yet another call followed by two more texts. All of which she hadn’t answered.
Like Magnolia, her mother was a lady of the south. Both similar in looks, Magnolia had her mother’s deep chocolate locks, green-hazel eyes, and shapely frame. Unlike her mother, she usually let her hair fall in long waves and kept her bangs just short of hitting her eyes. Now it was balled at the top of her head in a messy knot. Hair was clearly not a priority when her life was falling apart in shambles around her. Even so, her mother moved to sit across from her, always impeccably dressed and never ruffled. With her short hair blow dried straight to fall at her chin, she gave Magnolia a steely-eyed gaze. “You don’t need a man to make your life. You’re worth so much more.”
It was amazing how one cheating husband could make her feel so small. Before all this, it had been a normal day just like any other, and Magnolia had felt how she’d felt for the past two years. Kind of content, forcing herself to fit into an existence she’d built based on what she pictured in her head. She went to college, met a man, married him, had a child, taking every step she thought she was supposed to. With each of those steps, she moved further from her home town, Briar Ridge, and in the opposite direction her parents had gone in.
Yet sitting across from her mother who lived in Chelsea for the past fifteen years, she realized she didn’t know what anything was supposed to look like from here. Again, her phone rang. She looked at the screen and rolled her eyes. “The last time he called me this much it was to ask what’s for dinner.” She slid her finger across the screen, declining the call.
Her mother motioned to the phone. “Well, I hope you went Carrie Underwood on him.”
“Carrie Underwood?” Magnolia pressed her hand against her forehead trying to massage away the headache. On the floor, Hayden played with the extra toys her mother kept, content and clueless.
“Yeah, you know, like that song. Did you dig your key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive?”
A chuckle burst from Magnolia’s chest. How, even in this state, could her mother make her laugh? “No, I swung a bat around like a crazy person. I think it was enough.”
“Oh, well, if you didn’t go Carrie Underwood on him, are you sure you even loved him?” She crossed her legs, giving Magnolia a deadpan look, while pulling her black cardigan tighter around her shoulders.
“I spent eight years of my life with him,” Magnolia responded automatically. But did I love him? Had she loved him enough? Was that why he cheated? Sure, things had been distant for awhile, but they’d still slept together, had meals together, but did she love him?
“Years don’t equal love. Your father and I are proof of that.”
When Magnolia was all of twelve years old, her parents called it quits. She never truly knew why. From the outside, everything seemed fine, but her mother had run to the city as fast as she could. Her father, on the other hand, hunkered down on their ranch, throwing himself into work and raising Maggie on his own. It wasn’t easy, but they did it, and Maggie had forgiven her mother… eventually. “Mom, how did you put yourself together after the divorce? I just feel so… broken.”
Taken back by the question, her mother leaned in the chair, and pressed her fingers to her mouth as though thinking before she spoke. “Sometimes, honey, you have to know who you are without anyone else. I’d lost who I was. I became everything everyone needed me to be and forgot me. When we split up, I had to learn to like myself again.”
When Magnolia was younger, she always felt so headstrong, like she had a direction and knew which way she was going. Hell, she even dragged her friends along with her. Now, she questioned, had she lost herself? Thinking on all the things she’d sacrificed for Eric and his career, she couldn’t help but wonder maybe she had forgotten. She’d been plastering her smile on so often it became a habit. “Maybe I have forgotten.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, darlin’. But have you seen yourself?”
“Mom, I just found out my husband has been cheating on me and got his mistress pregnant.” She pushed back her bangs out of her face. “I didn’t have time for makeup.”
“That’s not what I meant. When you were younger, that small town couldn’t contain you. Now, well, you are everything New York perfect would expect. You wear the dresses and schedule Hayden for a million play dates. Hell, I bet you even use Pinterest.”
Magnolia rolled her eyes. “Everyone uses Pinterest.”
“Maggie, you are not a Pinterest mom. You used to run wild on the ranch, so wild everyone wanted to be behind you. And then when you got older, there was only one man who could run right beside you, and it wasn’t Eric.”
“Ugh, Mom, stop. Me and Dax were a long time ago.” Magnolia rose from her chair, took two steps, and was in the kitchenette. Pulling a bottle of water from the fridge, she popped the top and took a sip. Her mother had always loved Dax. Why? She didn’t know. That boy was always up to no good, and Magnolia had snuck out of her house on more than one occasion to be with him. Whenever things were difficult with Eric, her mother always brought up Dax.
Once again, Magnolia’s cell started ringing. “I can’t think when it won’t stop ringing!” She shoved it away then turned back to her mom. “Besides, you just said I needed to be single and figure out what I wanted.”
“I’m not saying you should run and find Dax because you’re single again. I’m saying you knew who you were and so did he. He didn’t try to make you fit this trophy wife mold.”
Dax, Magnolia’s high school love, was who she left behind when she went to college. But when Eric came into her life, offering her New York on a plate, she took a chance. No one ever married their high school sweetheart anymore. Magnolia’s secret fear was becoming her parents. Who would’ve thought she’d be going through exactly that right now? “Momma, I’m not single yet. I’m still married.”
Utterly appalled, her mother gasped, clutching her chest. “Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about staying with Eric?”
Another five text messages came through. “Who the hell can think with that barrage of messages.”
Her mom shrugged. “Just shut it off.”
“Shut it off?” Magnolia couldn’t remember the last time she’d shut off her phone. Always connected, always available to him.
“Well, if you’re not going to shut it off, then you need to go to the one place where you know for sure it won’t work.”
Magnolia shook her head so vigorously, pieces of her hair sli
pped from her bun. “Oh, no, I can’t go there.”
“Well, you can’t go to your house here.” She motioned to the two suitcases by the door. “Did you think you could stay with me?”
Magnolia cast her glance anywhere in the tiny apartment other than at her mother. “I thought… just for a little while.”
Her mother rose from the table and placed her hands on Magnolia’s shoulders, catching her eye. “Now, I love you, but I have a studio apartment. It’s one big room. Where did you plan on letting Hayden sleep?”
“I guess I could go to a hotel or something.” Magnolia shrugged. At her mother’s warning look, she continued, “I can’t go home. I haven’t been back in years. What if… what if…?”
“What if they’re all mad at you?” her mother finished for her.
She let out a puff of breath and sighed. “Yeah.”
“Maggie, you need to go home.” She put her hands on her hips and stared her down. “The land will give you the strength you need to face all this. And, honey, sometimes you need space to think. Get away from Eric, get him out of your head. Give yourself time to figure out what to do from here.”
Between her phone ringing once more and her mother’s wise words, it was enough to make her decision. “Okay, I’ll go.”
Her mom clapped her hands together. “It’ll give you time.”
In truth, Magnolia knew she needed time to think. Eric could charm his way out of a bag, and after being with him for so long, she’d grown to value his opinion. One day, she turned to him for advice, and the next she had no one to turn to. Without him constantly being in her head, she might stand a chance of figuring this out on her own. “Eric says we should go to counseling or a retreat.”
“What’s that? Some garbage he learned in Hollywood? When in doubt go to rehab? That’s like all them famous celebrity men who cheat on their wives and say they got a sex addiction. You know they really don’t; they just like to stick it where they can.”
“Momma,” she paused then asked the question she’d been wanting to know the answer to for so long, “is that why you left Daddy?”
“Good Lord, no. That man doesn’t have a disloyal bone in his body. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, honey. We just weren’t right for each other. Your daddy and I wanted two different lives, and I guess we just weren’t happy anymore.”
“You really think I should go home?”
“Yes, and if you happen to run into Dax, tell him I said hi.”
“Mother, I am not going to look for Dax.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m going to avoid him like the plague.”
She patted Magnolia on the shoulder then turned away from her. “That’s right, honey. You stay far away from him.”
“I will!”
Chapter 3
After what should have been a five-hour flight but ended up being ten hours of travel, Magnolia arrived at her childhood home in Briar Ridge, Tennessee. As she sat in the passenger seat of the truck and knocked along the winding, tree-lined drive, she sucked in a breath. Magnolia hadn’t been home since leaving for college. Ten years later, and it was just as she remembered. Every bump and jostle in the road was like a welcome home. Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed Hayden’s head slumping forward in his car seat. With his touseled caramel hair and hazel-green eyes, he was the spitting image of what Magnolia used to look like as a child. “Thank you for comin’ to get me.”
There were two things Magnolia was absolutely sure about in this moment. One: Eric was a complete ass. Two: even after all these years, she was still her Uncle Mike’s favorite niece. She’d called him right when her flight landed and said one sentence. “Uncle Mike, I’m at the airport.”
Amongst the racket of him falling out of bed at six o’clock at night, she heard his muttered cursing then a solid yell. “I’m comin’.” And then the phone went dead. Now, here she was, and he’d barely uttered a word to her. When he arrived, he grabbed her bags, took one look at Hayden, and loaded them up in his old Ford pickup. As they rolled along, Magnolia wound down the window, letting in the cool, crisp air.
Beside her, her uncle smiled. “Smells like home?”
“Yeah. It does.” She reached out, patting his hand. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come back.”
Though his hair had thinned a little, he was still an attractive man, with full lips, a button nose, brown eyes and high cheekbones. He gave her a sideways glance. “Just glad you’re back. Even if it is in the middle of the night.”
“It’s only eight o’clock.”
“Yep, about time for a good meal and a warm bed.”
Magnolia could think of nothing more than wanting both of those, especially a bed. The farther they got from New York, the closer she came to having a breakdown. All this time she’d barely cried, barely let herself stop long enough to process what happened. After everything was said and done, the only thing she felt was exhaustion. Even her eyelids wanted to shut for days and block out the world.
When she sucked in the clean air, she tasted the first signs of fall on her tongue. Even the leaves had started to change colors. “Did you tell Dad you came to get me?”
Once Magnolia decided to leave Manhattan and come to Tennessee, she’d decided a surprise visit was the best form of action. Determined to get home, she jumped on the earliest flight out. No one knew she was coming until she’d already arrived. Uncle Mike shrugged. “I told him.”
“Well, what’d he say?”
“You know your father. He was a mite angry you didn’t call him to come get ya. But he figured you had your reasons.”
She did indeed have her reasons. A nervous ball settled in the pit of her stomach. She’d always had a complicated relationship with the man. They loved each other, that much was sure, but at times they didn’t understand one another. She could only imagine what he’d think when he heard about what happened between her and Eric. Before she even got on the plane, she decided to tell him face-to-face, and here she was... Surprise! But the closer they came to the ranch, the more she questioned the surprise approach.
When they came over the last small hill, Triple R Ranch came into view. Though it was night, the lights from within the large ranch-style house lit up the area around it. The house was everything she missed about living in Tennessee. A long wrap-around covered porch broken up by dark wooden posts adorned the front. It was lined with rocking chairs, and at the very end was the swing she sat on to think. Inside, there were five large bedrooms and bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen accompanied by a living room, dining room, and office where her father spent most of his time. If he wasn’t working the land, he was working in that office.
A few hundred yards away stood a smaller house, almost an exact replica of the Triple R original home, just a bit smaller. It was utterly charming and looked brand new. “Uncle Mike, what’s that house for?”
He cleared his throat. “Your dad took on a managing partner a while back. He lives there now.”
“A partner? Daddy gave up some control of the ranch? I don’t believe it.”
“Well, you ought to. The man does a damn fine job. Keeps Triple R in the green all year round no matter what.”
“I can’t wait to meet this partner.” In all her time at home, her father never gave up one ounce of control over the ranch. It would have taken a miracle for him to do so, so what had changed?
When the truck rolled to a stop, Maggie reached for the handle with shaking hands. She paused a moment, catching her breath before she faced her dad. What was she going to say to him? I left home, married a lying piece of shit, and never came to visit. But now that my world is crumbling, I’ve come home. Please let me stay here, even though I’ve been an ass.
When she was about to hunch back into her seat, she felt her uncle’s gentle touch on her arm. He gave her a half-smile. “You were right to come on home, Maggie. He’ll be happy to see ya.”
A breath she hadn’t realize she’d been holding left her lips. Coming home shouldn’t be s
o hard. Maybe she was overthinking things. Her father had always been there for her, even when her parents had divorced. So why was she questioning seeing him now? Deep down, she knew the answer. Because she’d stayed away too long. Scraping together what little backbone she had left, she pulled open the handle and stepped out on the dirt drive. Though she wore her black and tan leather riding boots, her feet immediately sunk into the ground. When she wiggled her toes, she felt them suck into the mud. “Lovely.” She wiggled her hips from side to side, trying to dislodge herself from the squishy mess.
When the front door swung shut with a bang, she expected to see her dad waiting for her. Instead, when she snapped up her head, she froze in shock. “Dax?”
“Magnolia?”
Oh, God, she’d recognize that voice even in a crowded room full of strangers. It was like rumpled bedroom sheets after a long night, like bourbon on ice. Rough and deep but a soothing balm to her skin. She’d forced herself to forget him, forced herself to move forward without him. Shit. How could she have?
Her boot slipped free of the mud, and she pinwheeled her arms wildly, trying not to fall. Failing miserably, she tipped back, catching herself on the open passenger door. Her legs slipped out from under her, and she hung there for a moment clinging to the door. Here she was, looking like shit run over twice in front of a man who looked like an ad in a magazine. Perfect, just perfect. Add this to the list of shitty situations she’d been in this week.
In her mind, if she did run into Dax, she would’ve been all put together, maybe in a sundress and cowboy boots, not fresh off ten hours of travel with a three-year-old. Not after finding out her husband was cheating, and definitely not after returning home with her tail between her legs. When she’d hopped on the plane, she hadn’t even brushed her hair. The messy knot was still firmly in place, and she wasn’t the type to make it look cute like other girls. No, it was a swirl of greasiness that topped off the blotchy face she’d given herself from stressing. Makeup hadn’t even been a thought.