“Ice cream sounds good to me, too. I’ll head in with you.” I pushed back my chair and followed her lead. “If you need ibuprofen, Leala probably knows right where it is. And be prepared for her to supervise you taking it.”
She laughed as we stepped into the four season room. She quickly scooped a bowl of chocolate fudge ice cream, doused it in rainbow sprinkles, and said, “Thanks for talking with me, Sadie,” before heading into the great room and toward the stairs.
“Anytime.” I was going to miss her when I left again and made a mental note to stop by to see her if I ever found myself in Indiana.
Leala gave me a smile from the couch in the great room, where she sat with a cocktail in hand and Tucker’s head on her thigh. He was sound asleep, Moo wrapped tightly in his arms, and I imagined that as soon as her cup was emptied she’d take him upstairs and tuck him in for the night. Will and Connor were chatting about the upcoming football season, and after having spent most of the day in the kitchen, I was happy to let them finish the cleanup on their own.
I filled a bowl with vanilla ice cream, then added peanuts, maraschino cherries, and M&M’S and stirred it all together. I topped it with homemade whipped cream and fudge sauce and sat in one of the rockers to watch the dance party.
A few minutes later, I heard someone clear his throat. Will leaned against the wall. “Mind if my dishpan hands and I join you?”
I nodded at the rocker next to mine. “Have a seat. You know, there are dish gloves in the cabinet under the sink.”
“Now you tell me.” He sat and stared at his water-wrinkled fingers. “I’m glad to finally get a minute alone with you.” He looked at me head-on, and the party lights lent golden flecks to his eyes. “I owe you an explanation, Sadie.”
Maybe it was the bourbon or maybe I just didn’t have the energy to pretend not to know what he was talking about. “Yeah, you do.”
“Sadie! Sadie, honey!” Mama shouted. “Could you be a dear and bring me some of that fancy water?”
I held in a groan. I’d known she’d try to interrupt us, but I hoped we’d have more time together before she had the chance. “Just a minute, Mama,” I yelled back, not taking my eyes from Will.
“I’ll just get it myself.” Mama hustled inside, Buzzy following close behind, like he was tangled in her wake.
So intent on each other, Iona and Uncle Camp didn’t seem to realize they had been left alone on the dance floor. It was as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist, and suddenly I was so very happy that Iona was staying here another week.
Mama poured herself and Buzzy some water and sat down across from me. “Whew, that dancing sure brings on a great thirst.”
Buzzy cast me a wary glance as he sat, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I’d been indulging my mama and her need to protect me all day, but now I really wanted to hear what Will had to say. I needed to hear what Will had to say. I put my ice cream bowl on the side table and turned to him. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
Mama jumped to her feet. “But, Sadie, there’s so much to do here still. Cleaning up, prepping for tomorrow. The dining table’s not going to set itself.”
“It can wait until I get back, Mama.”
She squared off against me. “No, I don’t think it can.”
“Enough, Susannah,” Buzzy said, his voice tight with barely restrained anger. He set his glass on the table and stood up. “I thought you might have changed but you haven’t. Not one bit. I don’t know how you sleep at night.”
She poked him in the chest. “Stay out of this.”
He stood firm. “I won’t. I kept quiet all those years ago, and it’s all but eaten me alive.”
Leala approached, Connor behind her, his hands resting gently on her arms. She said, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing is going on,” Mama said.
Buzzy ignored her. “Your mother is trying to keep Sadie and Will apart. Isn’t that right, Susannah?”
“Mind your business, Buzzy,” Mama warned.
With Nigel tucked into the crook of her arm, Teddy stepped onto the porch with concern flashing in her eyes. Iona and Uncle Camp continued to dance.
Buzzy wasn’t deterred. “It’s not right. It’s not okay. You need to let love run its course and not interfere with it again. Don’t you see? You can’t stop it. Love always finds a way.”
“Again?” I asked. I was so confused, trying to follow what was happening.
Buzzy faced me. “The night you fell in the lake, your mother’s wish was that you’d leave Sugarberry Cove, explore the world. She wished it because she knew you had fallen in love with Will and feared you’d end up marrying young and staying right here.”
Stunned, my breath caught. She’d wished me to leave? My heart broke open, causing tears to gather in my eyes. “Mama, is that true?”
“So what if it is?” she said as defiant as ever. “Look at what you’ve done with your life, and it never would’ve happened without that wish. Look at all you’ve done with A Southern Hankerin’. It’s a bright spot this world needs! So, no, I’m not the least bit sorry for my wish. You never would’ve left otherwise. You’d have stayed right here and settled down.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, the words raw, strained.
“I surely did! I saw it in the way you looked at Will. I see it in the way you still look at him.” Her gaze shifted to Will. “I adore Will, I truly do, but you have so much more to explore in this world, Sadie Way. Being tied down will only stifle your creativity. You have too much to do still. Too many stories to tell.”
Suddenly dizzy, my head spinning, I could hear in my head Buzzy talking about how love had been the reason he and Mama had broken up. It hadn’t been their love. It had been my love for Will.
“Oh my God,” Leala murmured. “You haven’t been shielding Sadie from Will this weekend because of her broken heart; you’ve been trying to keep them apart because you want Sadie to leave again!”
Tears clouded my vision, and I felt someone take my hand, squeeze it. Will. I looked at our entwined hands. A Will and a Way. My gaze lifted to meet his, and the compassion in his eyes made me hurt all that much more.
“Not a word out of you,” Mama said to Leala. “You need to own your part in this. Getting married so young—giving Sadie ideas and almost ruining her chance to see the world, to be free.”
Leala looked like she’d been slapped. “Seeing the world is what you want, not Sadie! You want to be free. Of this cottage, of responsibility, of Sadie and me!”
I felt all kinds of a fool for ever thinking Mama had been trying to protect me, my heart. A tear fell, sliding down my cheek, and suddenly it felt like I was floating underwater, the words around me distant, resonant.
“Don’t you spin this around,” Mama snapped. “This is about Sadie and Sadie alone.”
“Exactly my point,” Buzzy said, his eyes filled with exasperation. “It’s Sadie’s life, Sadie’s choice. It’s wrong of you to use a wish against her.”
Mama swung her arms around dramatically, and the water sloshed out of the glass she held. “I’m her mama. I know what’s best for—”
Wincing, Mama abruptly stopped talking. She let out a low moan, and the glass slipped from her fingers and shattered on the porch floor. She grabbed her left shoulder and sagged lifelessly, and Buzzy caught her in his arms before she hit the ground.
Chapter
16
Leala
The scent of coffee coaxed me awake, and I rolled to see the clock on the bedside table. It was a little after six in the morning. Tucker’s small body curled next to mine, his breaths even and deep. Trying not to disturb him, I slowly sat up. Across the room, the sheet covering Connor had twisted around his body, leaving his back exposed. His usually tight muscles had relaxed with sleep. He had his head half-buried under a pillow, and a floor fan stirred the hair at the nape of his neck.
I wanted nothing more than to slip in
beside him, wrap my arms around him, and just be. I wanted to feel his warmth, his strength, and absorb it. Overriding all that, however, was my sense of responsibility. I’d promised Bree and Teddy a yoga class this morning, and though I had the feeling they’d understand if I canceled, I needed the class more than ever today. To center myself. To find balance and peace in all this chaos and confusion.
Connor’s alarm would wake him soon enough and then he’d head home to shower and dress for work. He couldn’t take another day off—his boss had made that clear when Connor had called him last night from the hospital. After being unavailable for the last three days, if Connor didn’t show up today, he was told he should consider looking for another position. It had been a warning, plain and simple.
And while I didn’t view Connor looking for another position as much of a threat, Connor had about come undone over the possibility of being fired. He’d worked too long, too hard, he’d said, to be walked out of the building in shame flanked by security guards.
As quietly as I could, I gathered my yoga clothes and tiptoed out of the bedroom and into the bathroom next door. I dressed quickly and brushed my teeth. As I combed my hair, pulling it up into a tight bun, I tried not to look in the mirror. There was too much sadness staring back at me, too many questions, too much everything swirling in the milky gray.
There was no perky motivational saying to lift my mood or bolster my spirit. There were no words right now to bring peace to my soul. I felt lost. Adrift. Floating in a life that didn’t feel like my own.
I walked past the closed door of Mother’s room, then down one flight of stairs, then another. Pausing on the lower landing, I was heartened briefly by the early sunbeams shining through the clear glass of the clean window. The sun had risen. Life went on. Today was a new day.
The sunlight accented the newly painted staircase wall, and for a rush job, I had to admit it had come out pretty darn well. The trim still needed touching up, but there was time. Plenty of time now that Sadie and I would be here at the cottage for a while.
“Morning,” she said from the kitchen, her voice low in deference to those still sleeping. “Coffee?”
“Please.” I came down the rest of the steps, noting the folded blanket and pillow on the couch. Sadie had declined to spend the night in Mother’s room without her there. “Did you sleep okay?”
Her silvery hair was swept back off her face and twisted into a long braid that had been pulled forward to hang over her right shoulder. Smudges of purplish darkness colored the skin beneath her blue, bloodshot eyes, and the pink in her cheeks told the story of too much time in the sun yesterday. “No. Did you?”
Smiling sadly, I took the mug she offered and poured in a splash of cream. The colors swirled together as I stirred. “No.”
The sliding door on the back porch was opened wide, and Sadie had a few of the windows open as well. Dewy grass sparkled, and sunlight glinted off the lake, promising a beautiful summer day.
By the time we’d arrived home last night from the hospital at nearly midnight, the dining table on the porch had been set, and there had been a batch of popovers and a coffee cake on the counter along with a sweet note from Teddy, Bree, and Iona. Banding together to prep for the breakfast service had been a kind, thoughtful gesture, and I was beyond grateful, even though Mother would probably have herself yet another heart attack if she knew guests had taken over running the cottage in our absence.
Holding a mug to her lips, Sadie spoke over its curved rim. “I called the hospital earlier. Mama’s stable. She’s running a low-grade fever but the nurse assured me it wasn’t anything to be worried about.”
Stable was good. Stable was great. Stable was not dead.
Swallowing back a rush of emotion, I stared into my coffee cup and blinked away a sudden wash of tears. Last night when Mother had collapsed, I thought she was gone, lost forever, but there had been a pulse beating faintly. So faintly. Sadie had run for Mother’s nitroglycerin pills, and I had tried simply not to fall apart. The wait for the EMTs had seemed endless, but eventually they arrived and whisked her away. I’d left Tuck in the care of Uncle Camp, and then Sadie, Connor, Buzzy, and I had rushed to the hospital. The trip had been a blur, as I fought tears and regrets the entire drive.
“I’m sure she’ll be bossing the doctors around in no time flat,” Sadie added on the tail end of a yawn.
Feeling like I carried the weight of the world, I sat heavily on a counter stool. Sadie had already dressed the peninsula for breakfast using Mother’s favorite runner, a brilliantly colored patterned cloth printed with blue, pink, and green birds. “No doubt.”
At the hospital, as Mother had waited to be wheeled away for an angiogram, she had been awake—groggy, but awake. Sadie had held one of her hands, I’d held the other, and Buzzy and Connor had hovered nervously nearby. Mother hadn’t said much at all in those intense moments, except to elicit a promise from Sadie and me to keep the cottage up and running until she could do it herself.
I’d have promised her the moon at that point—and would have found a way, some way, to give it to her.
When the tech had wheeled her away, my and Sadie’s I love yous had drifted in her wake, echoing in the sterile hallway, sounding hollow. I wasn’t sure Mother even heard them, but they’d been spoken. The emergency angiogram had turned into an emergency angioplasty when the doctor determined she needed two coronary stents placed immediately. Sadie, Connor, and I had stayed until she was out of danger and housed in a private room in the cardiac care unit. Hospital recovery for the type of procedure she’d had was usually only a couple of days; it was likely Mother would be home midweek.
Buzzy had stayed with Mother, promising not to leave her side until he was convinced she’d be just fine or she threw him out, whichever came first. I was personally surprised that kicking him out hadn’t been the first thing she’d done since he’d ratted her out, but she’d seemed comforted by his presence. Sadie and I were going to visit her tonight, and when we did, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say or how I was going to say it.
At the first sounds of the loon’s morning lament, Sadie and I rushed to the window over the kitchen sink, watching and listening in silence as she glided past the dock and out of sight. I felt like crying right along with her this morning, all my emotions floating too close to the surface.
Mother and I didn’t have the best relationship, but I loved her, and when she’d collapsed last night, I couldn’t bear thinking that was how we ended, with sharp jabs and biting remarks and hurt feelings. If she had died, I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself.
Yet now in the light of morning and reality and truth, I didn’t know how to fix what was broken. Years and years of wounds had to be patched up, stitched together, healed. It seemed an insurmountable task, and I had no idea where to begin. With a heavy heart, I sat back down.
Sadie continued to stare out the window, lost in her own thoughts. After Mother’s collapse, there had been no more talk about the wish Mother had made eight years ago. There had been very little talking at all as we drifted, lost in a sea of worry.
But now—now there were things that needed to be said. Things that should’ve been talked about a long time ago. Holding the warm mug between my hands, I swallowed back all the reasons I’d ever kept quiet and said, “It was me, Sadie. It was my wish that made you fall into the lake that night. Not Mother’s. Mine. It’s why I had trouble looking at your hair initially—because it was a constant reminder of how utterly selfish I had been. I didn’t think of the repercussions of my wish—I just made it. Don’t blame Mother. It’s not her fault, even if Buzzy thinks it is. I’m so sorry.”
As Sadie turned toward me, the overhead light caught on the sparkles in her hair, making it seem like tiny fairy lights had been woven into the strands. She sighed deeply. “It wasn’t your wish, either. It was mine.”
I shook my head. “No, stop that. It was mine. Just let me own up to it, Sadie Way.”
She sm
iled at the usage of her full name. “You weren’t the only one utterly selfish. I wished that you and Connor wouldn’t get married the next day. I wanted to stop the wedding any way possible. And because I was in the hospital, you two postponed the wedding and ended up eloping. It was my wish that came true. I’m sorry, Leala Clare.”
Her words wound through me, remarkably painless since she’d already confessed her jealousy of Connor and our relationship. I’d known then that she hadn’t wanted me to marry Connor. “That wish truly doesn’t surprise me. That night on the dock, I sat with Connor feeling so lost in the world, that the people I loved most were being so hateful and hurtful. I wanted you and Mama to love Connor like I did. And that night, as you kept your distance and Mother was so passive-aggressively civil, I imagined my wedding, walking down the aisle to Connor’s side, with you walking ahead of me, snarling, and Mother standing with a fake, strained smile on her face, and I wished—” I took a deep breath. “I wished that you two wouldn’t be at the wedding. I realized I didn’t want you there. I didn’t want to get married surrounded by such hate. So, you see, my wish came true, too. Because Connor and I did elope without you two there. But I never, ever, in my wildest dreams imagined my wish would cause you harm. I’m sorry, Sadie.”
A tear leaked from the corner of her eye as she held my gaze, and I stood up and met her at the end of the peninsula for a hug, and it felt so natural and strange at the same time. We hadn’t hugged like this in years.
“I’m so sorry that I didn’t realize how hurt you were by my relationship with Connor. Looking back, I can see now that I’d distanced myself. I didn’t know it then, or maybe I just didn’t want to admit it. You had every right to be angry.”
“Maybe not that angry,” she said lightly. “Forgive me?”
“Only if you forgive me, too.”
“Deal,” she whispered, then pulled back and wiped her eyes. “Maybe all our wishes came true that night—yours, mine, and Mama’s. A triple whammy of selfishness. All this time I’ve been wondering why I’d been saved, but now I wonder if it was to show us just how precious life is and to not take each other for granted—but we were all too caught up in our emotions, in our selfishness, to see it back then.”
The Lights of Sugarberry Cove Page 17