She studied him worriedly. “Are you sure you can live with us not having kids of our own?”
“Very sure,” he said solemnly. He waited a minute, then asked, “So, what do you think? Want to get married? We could do it skydiving over the Grand Canyon if you want.”
She blinked at the suggestion, then started laughing. “You surprise me, Walter Price! If I thought you were serious about that, I’d book us flights to Vegas tomorrow.”
He reached into a bedside table and pulled out two plane tickets he’d booked the week before. “Already done.”
She looked at the two tickets, then at the confirmation for the skydiving excursion. “Well, I’ll be darned.”
“So, what’s it going to be, Rory Sue?”
Laughing, she threw her arms around his neck. “What time do we leave?”
Hands on her hips, Carrie stood in front of Carter, eyeing him with disgust. “Please tell me you are not going to spend the rest of your life sitting around here drinking beer and pouting. It’s been ages since you’ve done anything besides work and hang out with us. Mandy and I are sick of it.”
Carter scowled at her. “I am not pouting. Two-year-olds pout.”
“Well, it looks that way to me, and believe me, I know pouting when I see it. I am the queen of pouting.”
He grinned despite his sour mood. “I certainly can’t deny that.”
“So, get a grip and fight for Raylene,” she said, her expression serious. “If you sit back and let her spend who knows how long trying to decide what she wants, she might figure out it isn’t you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he replied sourly.
Carrie made a face. “Don’t mock me. You need to be in her face while she’s deciding, so you’re one of the options. If you play this right, I still think you can be at the top of the list.”
“I think you spent too much time last summer watching soap operas or some of those hot new teen shows,” he accused. “This is real life. It gets complicated.”
“And you don’t think soaps are complicated?” she asked incredulously. “I could fill you in on some plots that would make your head spin. The point is, you want Raylene. She loves you. Sure, she has options now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be the one she chooses. How’s she supposed to figure that out if you’re over here sulking?”
“What do you suggest?” he asked, more out of curiosity than from any intention of following her advice. She’d barely turned sixteen, for goodness’ sakes. How wise could she be?
“I’m glad you asked,” she said, whipping a piece of paper out of her pocket and handing it to him. “Here are a few ideas for starters. Mandy and I agree they all sound pretty romantic, but what do we know? We’re kids. We would have asked Raylene for her ideas, but that might have given away the plan.”
“The plan?” he repeated, staring at the list of twelve surefire ways to get Raylene’s attention. That’s what it actually said in capital letters: “TWELVE SUREFIRE WAYS TO GET RAYLENE’S ATTENTION.” Clearly they’d given the matter a lot of thought and were pretty confident about their scheme.
He scanned the list. Some of it was fairly predictable—sending flowers, taking over her favorite foods as a surprise. Even sending a hundred balloons that said, I Love You, though over the top, was something any man on a mission might try.
It was the twelfth suggestion on the list that caught his attention: “Work in her garden. Don’t wear a shirt.” He laughed as he read it.
“You honestly think me parading around half-naked is going to do the trick?” he asked.
“You have a halfway-decent body,” Carrie said. “All my friends say so.”
“It’s late October. Haven’t you noticed it’s starting to get chilly around here?”
She shrugged that off. “There’s a warm spell predicted for this weekend, but even if it’s freezing, you should do it to prove how serious you are about getting her attention.”
“You don’t care if I wind up with pneumonia?”
“Not so much,” she said cavalierly.
Carter shrugged. He supposed it was worth a shot, though he wasn’t convinced that the sight of him showing off his abs was going to override all of Raylene’s doubts about the future.
Still, Carrie and Mandy’s list got him thinking. If a piece of paper with a few clearly stated objectives could make him view things in a different light, perhaps something similar would work with Raylene.
“I need paper and a pen,” he told his sisters.
Carrie’s eyes brightened. “You’re going to write her a love letter,” she said eagerly. “Great idea. We should have thought of that one.”
“Not exactly,” Carter responded, accepting the pen and stationery that Mandy had hurriedly provided. He winced at the pink paper, but what the heck? Maybe Raylene was partial to pink.
And if he got the words right, the color of the paper would hardly matter.
Raylene sat at the kitchen table, despondently sipping a glass of lemonade. It was the first pitcher she’d made in a while, but the unexpected arrival of springlike weather in late October had put her in the mood for it. She pursed her lips when she realized she’d forgotten to add sugar. She’d been doing that a lot recently, getting lost in thought and forgetting things. She couldn’t seem to focus, not since she’d sent Carter away and then told his sisters that it was over.
She’d been half expecting them to somehow intervene and stir things up, but as the days passed, they hadn’t returned, and there’d been no sign of Carter. Obviously, he’d taken her at her word and was going to stay away. What had she expected, that he’d fight for her?
Oddly, now that she was actually able to leave the house every day, at least for a brief walk into town and long enough to do a little paperwork for Travis at the radio station, she realized there was no place she really wanted to be, except with Carter and the girls. All of those big plans she’d hinted to him that she wanted to make for her future seemed unimportant compared to what she’d already found with him.
A full-time job? Maybe even a real career? Sure, it would be nice if she could define herself as something other than an agoraphobic at long last. Volunteer work of some kind? There was nothing to stop her from doing that, even if she were married and working. Travel? Well, what fun would it be to see the country or the world without someone to share the trip?
But even though she was reaching those conclusions on her own—okay, with plenty of helpful prodding from Annie and Sarah—she couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone and call Carter to tell him she’d made a mistake. She’d given him the freedom to move on. Now she had to let him do just that. If the path ultimately led back to her…well, she’d be waiting.
Carrie’s declaration calling her an idiot rang in her head. She probably was. In facing down Paul, she’d discovered that she was a fighter, after all. So why wasn’t she fighting for this, for the future she knew she wanted? What was stopping her? Fear? Hadn’t she had more than enough of letting fear rule her life?
Somehow she had to find the courage—and a plan—for going after what she really wanted.
When Raylene looked outside the next afternoon, to her astonishment she saw Carter working in her garden. Most of the flowers had died back and weeds had taken over since that fateful day when Paul had turned up. She hadn’t gotten around to buying any of the fall plants she’d intended to put in. What was left looked sadly neglected.
On this unseasonably warm day, Carter was shirtless and wearing a pair of jeans that fit like a glove. He made her mouth go dry. Then, again, he inspired that reaction pretty much whatever he wore.
She opened the door carefully, but it brought his head snapping around. His gaze met hers and held.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” she said.
He gave her a sheepish grin. “It’s been brought to my attention that I’ve been behaving like an idiot.”
She laughed at that. “Mine, too. Your sisters, Annie, Sarah
—all of them have expressed that at one time or another.”
He chuckled, but then his expression sobered. “One of the things they all have in common is that they’re smart. I have been acting like an idiot. I’m in love with you and I walked away from that just because you told me to. That’s exactly when I should have stuck around to fight.”
“So you came over here to fight for me?” she asked, her heart in her throat.
“I did,” he said, pulling a pink envelope out of his back pocket. The incongruous sight made her smile. “It’s all in here. Read it.”
He crossed the yard and handed it to her.
Raylene took the thin envelope and sat down. When she pulled out the single sheet of paper, she saw that it was a list of all the things she’d ever mentioned wanting to do if she got her life back. Beside each one was a promise.
“Whatever job you decide you want, I will support you in that a hundred percent. No matter how time-consuming it is, I’ll never complain, as long as you come home to me at the end of the day.”
She lifted her gaze to see that he was watching her intently. “Good start,” she said softly, fighting tears.
“Keep reading.”
“If you want to volunteer or help out in the community, I’ll be by your side,” he’d written. “We’ll both give something back in return for all the blessings in our lives.”
She swallowed hard as the words in front of her swam on the page. She tried to keep reading through her tears.
“Wherever you want to travel, I’ll do everything I can to make sure the trip is memorable. We’ll fill a hundred albums with all our memories so we can look at them again when we’re too old to roam.”
Now Raylene’s tears were flowing freely as she came to the next item on his list.
“We’ll have the family you wanted, starting with Carrie and Mandy and adding all the kids you dreamed of, raising them together with love, through good times and bad, from colic to acne and angst.” She smiled at that.
“And last,” he’d written, “we’ll grow old together and spend our evenings sitting outside with the scent of honeysuckle in the air, holding hands and remembering the wonderful life we built together.”
When she looked up, her eyes shimmering with tears, he met her gaze, then held it. She couldn’t have looked away even had she wanted to.
“Make that dream with me,” he said quietly. “Please don’t go off on your own, Raylene. Let’s do it together. Marry me.”
Raylene’s heart swelled at the sincerity she heard in his voice and the words he’d written on that ridiculously feminine stationery. It was all there, her hopes and dreams, the role he wanted to play in the rest of her life. All she had to do was take a few steps away from the house that had been her haven for so long and walk into his arms.
She’d conquered her fears weeks ago, all except this one, reaching for the dream that mattered the most. Now, once more, her heart was in her throat as she stepped off the patio and onto the grass. She walked slowly until she was right in front of him, close enough to feel his heat, near enough to reach up and touch his amazing face.
“I love you,” she whispered as she placed her hands on his warm, sun-kissed shoulders. She waited for the faint flicker of fear at the risk of embracing an untested future, but all she felt was yearning and need.
And then she was in his arms…where she felt safer than she ever had in her life.
Epilogue
Honeysuckle twined through the specially built arbor in the backyard, the flower’s sweet scent filling the air on a clear summer evening. There was even a sprig of the vine in Raylene’s bouquet to remind her of the day she’d first realized how thoughtful Carter could be.
She stood just inside the back door and thought about everything that had happened in the past year—Paul going back to prison, her slow but steady conquest of her fears, becoming a godmother to Meg, then standing up as one of Sarah’s bridesmaids when Sarah and Travis had married in the fall in a ceremony that had been everything Sarah had dreamed of and deserved.
Now it was Raylene’s own turn, a day she’d never thought would come just one brief year ago. She was marrying Carter, and they were going to Bermuda for their honeymoon, her first trip out of the country, just one more step on her path to a perfectly normal life.
“You look amazing,” Annie said, straightening the short train on Raylene’s simple white dress. “You were made to wear that dress.”
Raylene shook her head. “I don’t need designer clothes anymore, or fancy china and silver, or expensive champagne with dinner. I discovered too late how little those things mean. I’m happier than I’ve ever been with the off-the-rack clothes from my little shop on Main Street, the plain white dishes I found at Crate & Barrel and a pitcher of sweet tea at the end of the day.”
“Face it, if you’re anything like I am with Travis, you’re so besotted with Carter, you don’t even notice what you’re wearing or eating,” Sarah said, radiating contentment. Or maybe the glow came from the secret she’d shared just a few days earlier. She and Travis were expecting their first child.
Sighing with satisfaction at how well things had turned out for all of them, Raylene glanced outside and caught a glimpse of her husband-to-be.
“I am definitely besotted,” she admitted.
Sarah followed her gaze outside, then laughed. “Thanks for letting Libby be a flower girl, but I hope you weren’t counting on her sticking with the program.”
Raylene spotted Libby already tossing rose petals in every direction. When Travis tried to take the basket from her, her face scrunched up. She looked about two seconds from throwing a tantrum. “Maybe it’s a sign we should get this show on the road,” Raylene said. “What are we waiting for? Where’s Walter?”
“Here he comes, right on cue,” Sarah said. “I still can’t believe you asked my ex-husband to give you away.”
“He might have been a lousy husband, but he’s been a good friend,” Raylene told her. “With my dad gone and my mother still sulking because I gave up what she considered to be the ideal life, who else was there?”
“We could have done it,” Annie said.
“You’re my matrons of honor,” Raylene said. “From the time we were little girls, that was always the plan. Maybe that’s why my first marriage was such a disaster, because the two of you weren’t there for the wedding.”
“I could say the same about mine,” Sarah said, her starry-eyed gaze seeking out Travis, who’d hoisted Libby into his arms as a consolation for not letting her toss any more rose petals before the wedding. “With you all as my witnesses last fall, along with all the Sweet Magnolias, I know this marriage will be a keeper.”
Raylene grinned. “You don’t think your faith in that has just a little bit to do with the man you married?”
Sarah blushed. “Well, sure, Travis does get some of the credit for making me happier than I’ve ever been.” She waved off the conversation and focused her attention on Raylene. “Enough about me. This is your day. And just like me, you not only have us, but all the Sweet Magnolias here to give it their blessing. That’s some powerful mojo going on.”
Raylene blinked. “Mojo?”
“Luck, magic, whatever you want to call it,” Sarah said. “It’s all on your side today.” She gestured around the yard. “Take a look. Have you ever known a more loyal group of friends?”
Raylene turned misty-eyed. “The Sweet Magnolias are pretty incomparable.”
Maddie, Helen, Dana Sue and Jeanette were all turned in their seats, watching the house, waiting for the start of yet another ceremony that would launch one of their own on a path to a lifetime of happiness.
“They look restless to me,” Annie proclaimed, just as Carrie and Mandy burst into the house, their expressions anxious.
“What’s taking so long?” Mandy asked, looking lovely and way too grown-up in her junior-bridesmaid dress.
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” Carrie asked, worry p
uckering her brow. She tugged at the top of her strapless dress. “If this falls down in the middle of the ceremony, I will have to move to another state.”
Raylene grinned. “It’s not going to fall down. You look beautiful. You both do. I couldn’t be happier that I’m going to be part of your family.”
“Then stop dillydallying,” Annie said. “Let’s get you married. I’m not sure how long Tom can keep Carter calm. He’s starting to look as if he’s about to come in here and drag you out.”
“I’m ready,” Raylene said, filled with a kind of confidence and serenity she’d never expected to feel again.
Walter held the door for Sarah, Annie, Mandy and Carrie, then turned to her.
“You look beautiful,” he said. “Carter’s a lucky man.”
“Rory Sue lucked out, too,” she told him. “I still can’t believe you said your vows in midair. Every time I think about it, I get chills down my spine.”
“Me, too,” he admitted. “I’m still shocked I didn’t black out.” He grinned at her. “Thank you for keeping your wedding on the ground.”
“That’s just who we are,” she said, her gaze going to each of the Sweet Magnolias before settling on Carter. “Two normal, everyday people surrounded by friends and with a whole wonderful lifetime of magic ahead.”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Raylene has been severely traumatized by domestic violence and willingly admits that she waited too long to leave her husband. Have you ever known anyone in an abusive situation? How did she, or he, handle it? If it was a friend or family member, did you encourage that person to seek help or offer a safe haven? Were you too quick to judge her or him for not getting out, or did you understand how difficult that might be?
What resources are available in your community for victims of domestic violence?
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