by Marci Bolden
When the counter was clean, she started on the refrigerator. Opening the door, she looked at the food inside. The fridge was stuffed with the uneaten Thanksgiving feast. She’d have to get rid of it all to make room for the food that was coming. Standing there, looking inside at all the containers, Carrie felt overwhelmed.
Reaching in, she pulled out a bowl and looked at what was left of the cottage cheese Mama had had with her lunch the day before. Carrie tilted the bowl from side to side, watching the contents shift for a moment before turning and throwing it with an angry grunt. The dish shattered against the wall, sending shards of glass and curds to the floor.
Turning back to the refrigerator, Carrie pulled out an uneaten pumpkin pie, and angry tears spilled down her cheeks. The pan slammed into the wall, denting the deep-red paint and splattering it with the orange insides of the pie. That was followed by a casserole dish full of homemade mashed potatoes.
Natalie ran into the kitchen. “What the hell are you doing?”
Carrie threw one last dish. She thought it must have been gravy by the way it splattered. She choked out a sob as clumps of food slid down the wall. “Cleaning out the fridge.”
Natalie looked at the mess of broken glass mixed with splattered food and frowned. “You could have asked for help.”
Chapter 24
Natalie walked into the kitchen as Carrie tossed her phone down. “Still no answer, huh?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Do you have any other way to reach him?”
“No.”
“What about Grant? I could give him a call.”
Carrie tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Why… Why do you have Grant’s number?”
Natalie widened her eyes. “Oh. Um. You know…when you were in the hospital and everyone was so worried…”
Carrie debated pressing her on the weak answer, but she didn’t have the energy. Closing her eyes, she rubbed them and realized how irritated they had become. “I wish I could sleep.”
Natalie walked to the counter and snatched up a bottle of pills. “The doctor called in a prescription for you. Your dad picked it up.” She opened the bottle. “Take one, for God’s sake.”
Carrie swallowed a pill, and then Natalie pulled her to her feet and walked with her upstairs. At her door, Carrie paused, looking down the hallway at the room where Mama had died sometime the night before. “The house is too quiet.”
“Enjoy it while you can. It’ll be a madhouse tomorrow.”
Carrie lay down, and Natalie tucked a blanket around her. “If Will calls—”
“I’ll wake you,” Natalie promised.
Carrie slept through the night, waking up the next morning amazed at how many hours had passed. Heaving a sigh, she looked out the window. The day was overcast and gloomy. She wondered if she could get away with taking another of those pills and sleeping through the day as well.
Though it was appealing, she knew if she gave in to the urge now, she might again, and weeks could pass before she managed to crawl from the bed.
One moment, one step, one day at a time, that’s what Mama had told her when Mike died. That was the only way to get through, and in this moment, she needed to get her butt out of bed. Pushing the covers back, she forced herself to get up and face the day. She was certain Will would have called her by now. She was eager to find out his plans for coming back.
That was the last thought she had before drifting off. When she woke, the sun was shining, and Carrie felt like she’d been in a coma for weeks. She felt hungover from the pill she’d taken. That was exactly why she didn’t take pills. She slept too deeply and wouldn’t hear if Mama called out to her.
She sat up and froze when she realized where her mind had gone. Mama hadn’t called out to her. Mama was gone.
Closing her eyes, Carrie let out a shaky breath and refused to let her tears form. There would be plenty of time for that. Right now, she needed to hydrate and get some food in her stomach to ward off the effects of the pill she’d taken. In the kitchen, she found Natalie already up, reheating a breakfast casserole that someone had brought the day before. “You’re up early.”
“Well, I didn’t sleep nearly as well as you did.”
“I didn’t think it was possible to sleep as well as I did. Even so, I don’t like feeling so out of it this morning.” She waited, but Natalie didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. “Did Will call?”
Natalie’s face said it all. “No, honey, he didn’t.” She frowned as Carrie sank onto a stool. “He will. You left him a message, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So he’ll call.”
She reached for a coffee mug and tried to smile. She failed. “I could use him right now.”
“Maybe you should call him again.”
Carrie looked at the clock. “He’ll still be sleeping.”
“I think this is a call worth waking up for.” Reaching into her pocket, she handed Carrie her phone.
Taking her mug with her, Carrie sat on the sofa in the den. She sighed in frustration when the call went directly to his voice mail. “It’s me again,” she said after the tone. “I need you to call me. As soon as you can. It’s important.” She hung up and dropped her phone on the coffee table. “Where the hell are you?”
Will wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in New York. His days were a bit of a blur. He couldn’t remember the last time his life had been so hectic. This was a good kind of hectic, though. This wasn’t the hectic of trying to find work, trying to reassure producers he was still a player in the movie business. This was the kind of hectic he needed his life to be.
He was moving beyond the mundane meetings and getting into the good stuff. Other than this trip to New York. This trip was all about the movie he’d filmed with Juliet Ramirez. They had several interviews and dinners lined up. He’d enjoyed promoting his work a lot more when it was work he had cared about. But he had to get through this.
Get through a few parties, a few questions, a few false smiles, and he could get back to focusing on what was important—his project and finding time to answer his damn backlog of phone calls. At the top of that list was the woman who had called yet again this morning.
Her voice let him know something was wrong. He was certain he knew what it was.
Carrie was furious with him. He hadn’t returned her calls. Hadn’t sent those flowers he’d intended to send. Only now, he was beginning to think he was going to have to buy out a florist to get back in her good graces. And he’d do it too. He’d make things right with her, but he couldn’t do it half-assed.
He’d find time. He’d make time.
Just as soon as he had a moment to breathe.
Chapter 25
Sensing someone in the door to the den, Carrie slowly opened her eyes. Natalie gave her a reassuring smile. Carrie knew she looked like hell. The black dress she’d worn to Mama’s funeral did nothing but highlight how pale she was and how dark the circles under her eyes had become.
She had considered caking her face with makeup, but that would only make her look worse. Streaked foundation and mascara had never been on trend.
“He’s still not answering.” Carrie dropped her phone on the couch and exhaled heavily. “I don’t know why I keep calling.”
Natalie had done an amazing job at not bad-mouthing Will until one of Mama’s friends mentioned a picture she’d seen on the front page of a tabloid. There were photos of Will with one very lovely Juliet Ramirez on his arm at several different events over the last few days. Quite a bit of buzz was brewing about whether or not the two were dating, and the friend had wanted to know if Carrie had suspected anything while the stars were staying at the inn.
Carrie had smiled stiffly, shaken her head, and gone straight to the office with Natalie on her heels. They had found the photos online, and Carrie had broken down in tears.
Several hours later, with an empty house, Carrie leaned back on the sofa and the photos ran through her mind again, only stopping
when Natalie stood over her looking concerned.
“I made you some tea,” Natalie offered. “That’s what Mama would do, right?”
Carrie’s heart grew heavy as she nodded. “Thanks.”
Setting the cup on the coffee table, Natalie frowned deeply. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”
“About the estate or about Will?”
“Both, I guess.”
“Well, I can’t afford the estate, so I guess I will sell the house and…if Will hasn’t dumped me without bothering to let me know, which I suspect he has, I’m pretty sure him going to parties with Juliet Ramirez while I buried Mama was a deal breaker.”
“I’m sorry, babe.” Natalie moved to the sofa and put her arm around her friend.
Carrie shook her head. “Don’t be. It’s not like we ever could have worked out anyway. He’d only been here a few weeks and wanted to go back to his real life. It’s better that he left now instead of, you know, five years of marriage and three kids from now.”
“There is no such thing as fairy-tale endings anyway.”
“No, there’s not. Thanks for my tea,” Carrie said, changing the subject.
“I’m here for you through this.”
“I know. And I am so thankful for that.”
Natalie gripped Carrie’s hand. “You’ll always have me.”
“Maybe I should marry you.”
“Maybe.” Natalie smiled. “Our children would be way better-looking than his.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. He’s pretty cute.”
“Hey,” Natalie protested, making Carrie genuinely smile for the first time in days.
Her smile faded quickly though. “I kept telling myself not to count on him, that we were too different, but I didn’t expect things to end like this. I expected him to at least tell me he was over me. I don’t know how to process this disappearing act of his.”
“Try not to dwell on it. You have so much else to deal with right now. And he’s not worth the heartache that you’ll find if you go looking for answers.”
“It was piss-poor timing on his part.”
“I know. But you have to deal with what you can handle, and you can’t handle everything.”
“So I should just get over it? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, but you need to recognize that some guy who would drop off the face of the earth without so much as a word when you’ve told him that you need him is not worth the effort. Let it go and deal with the things that can be dealt with.”
“Like selling Mama’s house,” she said in a strained voice.
“If you want to keep it—”
“I can’t. I could never afford the upkeep and taxes.”
“Don’t make that decision right now.”
“I made it a long time ago, Nat. I was able to keep her here. That’s what was important,” Carrie said as tears filled her eyes. “I can’t afford it. I wish I could. I’d stay here forever, but I can’t. The time has come. I have to let go.”
“I’m sorry.”
Carrie shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
Natalie dug in her pocket and produced the prescription. Carrie almost resisted, but she was exhausted, and even if she knew she’d feel like hell the next day, she held out her hand.
“Take this now and by the time you finish your tea, you’ll be ready to crash,” Natalie said.
Carrie chuckled. “I’m ready to crash now.”
“I know,” Natalie said as Carrie took the pill. “I can see it. I’m worried about you.”
Squeezing Natalie’s hand, Carrie wished she could reassure her. Instead, she redirected the conversation. Natalie’s job was a safe topic. Mama and Will had nothing to do with Natalie’s job. Within half an hour, Carrie was feeling tired enough to make her way upstairs.
She looked at her phone one more time after changing and brushing her teeth but opted not to try Will again. She wasn’t going to continue setting herself up for that disappointment. Falling into bed, she stared at the ceiling, watching shadows play until she drifted off.
Sometime later, Carrie rolled over, cursing whoever dared to call in the middle of the night. Finally, when she woke up enough to recognize the ringtone, her heart seized in her chest. She weighed answering until it stopped ringing, sending Will’s call to her voice mail. She tried to swallow, but her throat was tight and her chest was heavy with anxiety.
She was still holding her phone, her hands trembling, when he called again. She hesitated but finally answered. “What?” she demanded, her voice shaking from a mixture of nervousness and fury.
He exhaled heavily on the other end of the line. “I know I’m an ass. I am so sorry that I haven’t called. I have been so busy. I tried to—”
“She died,” Carrie blurted out.
“What?” he asked, breathless, as if the air had been robbed from his lungs.
“Mama. She died.”
“Oh my God, Carrie. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.” He sounded every bit as sincere as he had all the times when he’d promised her that nothing would change between them. “What happened?”
“She died in her sleep. Sometime during the night, I don’t know when. She looked peaceful.” Carrie ignored the tears that started burning her eyes. She was used to how tears sprung up every time she spoke of Doreen’s death. “I think she’s finally where she wants to be. I like to think her mind is finally whole again and she’s with her family. As she should be. She was buried in the plot next to Mike.”
“I’m sorry. I should have been there.”
“Yes,” she stated bluntly, “you should have been.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well. You didn’t return my calls, Will. If you’d returned one call.” Carrie closed her eyes and silently chastised herself. She’d gone over and over in her mind a thousand times what she would say if she ever talked to him again. Every time she practiced it, she’d managed to stay calm and cool. However, the reality of hearing his voice twisted her anger into something that was out of her control.
“I know. I know. I could tell that you needed to talk to me. I could tell something was wrong, but I—”
“Had to take Juliet Ramirez to a few parties?”
He sighed again. “It wasn’t like that. I can’t ignore her when I see her, Carrie. We’ll have to work together to promote the movie when it releases.”
Carrie nodded. “And I had to bury my mother.” She closed her eyes against the silence, hating that she wanted to reach out to him, to smooth over the words she knew had stung him, but she remained silent as well.
“I’m almost done here.” He used that damned soft tone of his—the one that felt like his words were caressing her soul. “I’ll be home soon.”
“No,” she said with a hard tone that she didn’t recognize. “Do not come here.”
“Carrie.”
“You promised. You promised to be here, Will. You promised to help me through this, and when I needed you the most, you were off doing who the hell knows what with that woman who treated Mama like trash.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like, Will? Was it like when your father was sick?” The silence on the line was thick and heavy. Her arrow had struck the mark. She’d cut him deep. Good. He deserved it. “You let me count on you,” she said with a cool tone. “You let me depend on you, and then you left me. I needed you, and you weren’t here.”
“I know,” he whispered.
“No. You don’t know. You don’t have a clue, you selfish bastard. You should have just left me alone. You had no right to come in here and make me care about you, make me need you, and then walk away. You have no idea how cruel that was.”
“Carrie—”
“I don’t want you here. I don’t even want to think about you.”
“I know I messed up—”
The laugh that left her was so bitter, it was almost frightening. “You can’t even begin to imagine.�
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“You know what you mean to me, Carrie. What Mama meant to me.”
“Don’t.” She closed her eyes against his words. “I have to pack up this house, sell what I can’t keep, sell the house. I have to sell my home, Will. I have to leave this place where my only sense of family has ever been. I do not have the time or the energy to deal with you and your oversized ego.”
“Carrie,” he pleaded, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t call me again.” Ending the call, she dropped the phone on her nightstand and snatched several tissues out of the box, covering her face as a sob escaped her.
Will didn’t sleep after Carrie hung up on him. He didn’t even try. He spent all those hours replaying her words, the months he spent at the inn, and the long year before that. His brother had said similar words when Will had shown up for their father’s funeral. His brother had called him a selfish bastard too.
Coming to see his brother was right had taken months, and processing the guilt had taken longer. Hell, he was still processing it. Hearing those words from Carrie, the woman who had always been so understanding and forgiving, had been a harsh slap of reality Will had needed but would give anything to have not heard.
The anger in her voice, the pain and the suffering, had been so obvious. Even in her voice mails, he had heard something was wrong. Why hadn’t he called her back? Why had he allowed himself to put her on the back burner of his career?
Because that was how he was, he realized somewhere around three a.m. He was a selfish bastard who always put his career ahead of the people he cared about. He was a self-centered Hollywood elite who stepped on people to stay in the spotlight. That was another bitter pill his brother had forced him to swallow.