One Last Thing

by Rebecca St. James

  “Dear God. Please.” I heard a ragged breath. “No, Tar. The only thing I want to do is marry you.”

  He was sobbing again, and I was glad he wasn’t there with me because this time I wouldn’t have taken him in my arms.

  “That’s obviously not the only thing you want,” I said. “I can’t do this, Seth. I’m canceling the wedding.”

  “No.” He muttered something I couldn’t hear and then he said, “Please just let me come over.”

  I stepped off the curb and started toward my house. “No.”

  “Then don’t cancel. Please, not yet. Postpone—can we do that? Until I can get more help?”

  “Postpone until when? How am I supposed to know . . . I can’t just tell people to . . . What am I supposed to tell them?”

  If Seth panicked before, I didn’t know what to call the shrill cry that came from some dark, forgotten place in him now.

  “Don’t tell them about this,” he said. “Please, Tara, I’m begging you—tell them anything you want. Tell them I’m a jerk. Tell them—”

  “I’m not going to lie. You’re the one who lies so well—you tell them.”

  He was suddenly quiet.

  “You should be the one,” I said.

  “I’m not the one who wants to call it off. I’m the one who wants to try to make this work.”

  I sank onto the wet slate of my front steps, barely aware of the dampness seeping through my jeans.

  “I don’t know how to make it work,” I said. “And I can’t marry you until I know.”

  He started to cry once more, in soft gasps. “You’re not saying never.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Then if we’re going to have a chance at all, Tar, this can’t become common knowledge.”

  “I’m not going to out you,” I said. “If that’s all you’re worried about—”

  “It’s not. I’m trying to protect you too. Protect us.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed that. I wasn’t sure I even believed I was still Tara Faulkner who grew up with Seth Grissom in Forsyth Park. I closed my eyes—and there she was again. That black-haired woman hanging her mane over—

  “Tara?”

  “I won’t tell,” I said.

  I hung up.

  I expected to cry, but I didn’t. My mind was clear and cold and I knew what to do next. It was the only thing I knew to do.

  The house was quiet as I took the three flights to my room and found a pair of scissors in the bottom of a drawer and went into the bathroom. Grabbing handfuls of curls at a time, I slowly cut off my hair. Methodically. Watching each dark bunch Seth loved tumble onto the floor. Cutting with strong, slow clips until no strand was long enough to twirl around a finger.

  When all but a ragged bob was left on my head, I stood amid the cast-off clumps and stared at the person in the mirror. The Tara almost-Grissom who could never again pretend to be a princess. No matter what happened.

  I wasn’t lying later when I texted Mama and told her I was feeling horrible and the only thing to do was stay in bed.

  Of course she came to my locked door several times, and so did GrandMary. At the first few attempts I told them I was fine. After that I pretended to be asleep.

  But there was no sleeping. I didn’t even try. I spent the night alternating between staring out at the park from the window seat and sitting in the middle of the bed writing out what I was going to say to my father.

  He was the first person I had to talk to. Not just because he was the one who was about to lose serious amounts of cash to florists and chefs and photographers who didn’t refund deposits. But because he was the rock in our house. If he stayed solid, Mama would too. If he didn’t badger me, Kellen wouldn’t either. If he said the world as we knew it wasn’t coming to an end, GrandMary . . .

  I got hung up there. GrandMary didn’t need Daddy to tell her that. She was going to want to hear it all from me, and there was no lying to her. At about three fifteen a.m. it hit me. I could tell the truth, which was: I wasn’t sure I was ready to marry Seth. I wasn’t sure I could do life with him. And I couldn’t walk down that aisle until I was.

  Was it a lie not to tell them what all that uncertainty had erupted from?

  If it was, it was too late now. I’d made a promise to Seth. Whether I regretted it now or not, I’d promised.

  Even before the first pale light sifted through the shutters, I slipped downstairs to catch Daddy. I was fully aware that cowardice made me choose that time. He wouldn’t be able to linger long. I could tell him and he would leave for work and when he came home that night he would have it all settled in his mind.

  Clearly, I had lost mine.

  I didn’t even wait for him to turn from the coffeepot. I blurted out “the truth” to his back, and then I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the first expression on his face—the unguarded, unedited one.

  But it was still there when I opened my eyes to a whispered, “What?”

  I didn’t repeat any of it. He’d heard me. His eyebrows were so far up his forehead they almost reached the hairline that was no longer there. I thought his head might twist off, and his lips were still parted. But it was his eyes that made me look away—not because of what was in them, but because of what wasn’t. He didn’t understand.

  And it was the first time ever.

  “What have you done to your hair?” he said. “Tara—what is happening?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer but took me by the elbow and escorted me into the breakfast nook. I dropped onto the bench and stared at the holly-bordered place mat.

  “Unh-uh,” he said. “Look at me.”

  I did. He parked himself onto the edge of the table and shook his head. “I’m not buying ‘I’m not sure I’m ready.’ You are always sure—and you’ve been sure of this since you were sixteen years old.”

  Fifteen. But I didn’t correct him.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” I said. “I know you’ve spent a lot of money, and I’ll work to pay you back.”

  Where that came from I had no clue. Nor did I have any idea how I could ever make that happen. I hadn’t had a job since I shelved books at the library as an undergrad. Random thoughts were pinging like radar, and it was scaring me.

  Daddy lowered his head to look me straight in the eyes. “Do you really think that’s what I’m concerned about? You think I care about losing money when you are obviously miserable?”

  I swallowed.

  “Tara, answer me.”

  “I don’t know. I’m just so confused.”

  He slid into the bench across from me. “Confused we can work with. Let’s get Seth over here and we’ll all sit down—”

  “No!”

  Daddy’s eyes narrowed. “Then there is more to this than you getting cold feet.”

  “Do you want me to get married with doubts about whether I should?”

  “No, of course not.”

  I closed my eyes again and tried to find the monologue I’d written. But I’d already said all of that, and my father was feeding me lines I hadn’t rehearsed.

  “Look,” he said, “nobody is going to force you to go through with this if you aren’t ready. You postpone, cancel, do whatever you need to do. But—”

  “Thank you,” I said and extricated myself from the bench. “I’ll take care of everything. If people bug you with questions, send them to me. This is my responsibility and I’ll handle it.”

  I leaned over to kiss his wonderful head, and that was when I lost it. Daddy stood up and took me by both shoulders. “Talk to me, sugar,” he said.

  Everything in me wanted to. He didn’t understand because I hadn’t told him everything. If I did he’d get it. He always got it. And then I wouldn’t have to carry this around by myself.

  Just as with GrandMary, I might have, even though I’d promised Seth I wouldn’t, if something hadn’t stopped me. This time, it was a figure standing in the kitchen doorway, face a shade paler than pale.

  It was my mother,
unraveling like a tapestry.

  SEVEN

  I was right about one thing: Daddy was Gibraltar. He shooed me out and, I assumed, broke the news to Mama and stayed until she stopped coming apart. Meanwhile, I took a shower and faced the mess I’d made of my mop. Curly hair is forgiving, so with a few more snips it looked less like I’d had a close encounter with a weed eater. And more like it belonged to a crazy woman who was cutting off parts of her life.

  Even if I hadn’t whacked off six inches I still wouldn’t have looked like the girl I was two weeks before. No amount of makeup, not the right scarf or pair of gold hoops could restore that. I doubted even Calla Albrecht could have painted me back to the blushing bride.

  Calla.

  My stomach turned completely over. How was I going to tell her the fairy tale had taken a strange twist?

  But it was Mama I had to face first. She deserved to hear this from me. I was headed downstairs to find her when a text message swished onto my phone—from Randi Grissom.

  Meet me in my office in ten.

  I stared at it while every possible reaction flipped through my mind like a deck of shuffling cards—everything from my early childhood fear of her slashing me with her tongue to my current and unexpected fury that she would raise a kid who—

  Never mind. If I could get through this conversation with her, the rest would be cake. I mean, right?

  I didn’t bother to text that I was on my way. I just went.

  The law office building was so close to our house we could have heard all the business of Spencer, Groate, and Grissom if either of us ever opened the windows and disturbed our climate-controlled environments. I was there in five, and Randi’s secretary, whose name I didn’t know because her assistants never lasted long enough for me to keep up, just nodded me toward the double mahogany doors.

  Randi’s office was nothing like her home. Although the inherited house on Whitaker Street had state-of-the-art infrastructure, it looked very much the same as it did when her grandmother died and left it to her. It was furnished in nineteenth-century antiques, some from even earlier eras: dark and polished and restrained. I’d thought since I was little that even the dust must be old, that every time Virginia, the housekeeper, feathered it away, it hid somewhere and floated down again just as it had done for a hundred and fifty years. The place was both beautiful and stifling.

  Her office, on the other hand, reflected the hard, smart, flinty side of Randi Grissom, Attorney at Law. It was all black and chrome and glass—clean lines and sharp edges. The décor didn’t fit the Victorian-era building that housed it. But then, neither did Randi.

  In her pencil skirt and cropped jacket she was a total anachronism as she rose from the chair behind the glass desk and rounded it to come just within five feet of me. I’d seen enough legal thrillers to know this was the distance between the defense table and the witness stand.

  “I don’t understand the haircut,” she said.

  “Did you want to talk to me about something?” I said. That was my substitute for I don’t give a flip whether you understand it or not.

  She pointed to a black leather couch clearly stuffed with cement block and said, “Have a seat.”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “Is this the way you want to play it?” she said.

  I didn’t even know how to answer that. I wasn’t playing anything. Unless trying not to become the cowering suspect was a game.

  “Seth says you’ve postponed the wedding.”

  “We have,” I said.

  “That isn’t what he told me.”

  “It was mutual,” I said. “Based on the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “That’s between us.”

  “Really?” Randi’s eyes bored into me like drill bits. “Because I don’t think Seth knows what those circumstances are. He seems totally confused. Just like the rest of us.”

  She backed up and leaned against the edge of the desk. Her palms pressed the glass on either side, and she waited.

  Was this some kind of courtroom strategy? I was no longer trying not to cringe. I was trying not to pinch her head off.

  “Am I on trial here?” I said between my teeth.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you cross-examining me?”

  “Tara, I am not—”

  “Something happened that made me not sure that getting married is the best thing right now. That’s what I’m telling you, and that’s all I’m telling you.”

  I was stretched up to my full height, several inches taller than Randi, but she was apparently undaunted. The only thing that moved was her mouth, pronouncing each word with elastic lips as if to be sure the court recorder got it all.

  “Have you set a new date?”

  “What?” I said. “No.”

  “So the wedding is postponed indefinitely.”

  “I guess you could put it that way.”

  “What other way is there to say it . . .?”

  She all but added, “Miss Faulkner.” If she had, I might have smacked her.

  Except . . . what right did I have, really? She was as nonplussed as my parents, as stunned as everyone else was going to be. This was Randi Grissom for I’ve been knocked off kilter and that is not a place I like to be.

  Who did? I felt myself deflate.

  “I’m sorry, Randi,” I said. “I know this puts everybody in a bad position, and if there were any other way, believe me, I’d do it.”

  “The only person whose position I’m worried about is Seth’s. He’s clearly heartbroken. When did you first start having misgivings?”

  “Sunday a week ago,” I said. And then wanted to smack myself. I could see why she won so many cases. She wheedled.

  “Why didn’t you say something then?”

  “I did,” I said. “To Seth.”

  Again she waited. I stood with my arms at my sides and willed myself not to cross them over my chest in defensive mode. Not that it mattered. Whatever I was accused of, she was already convicting me with her eyes.

  Only . . . she wasn’t the judge now, was she?

  “I’m doing what I have to do,” I said. “So if we’re done here, I have a lot of people to talk to.”

  “Wait.”

  Randi straightened from the desk, momentarily unsettling the broom-straw-straight hair, and held out her hand. I looked at it blankly.

  “The ring,” she said. “I’ll hold on to it until indefinitely is over.”

  The fingers on my right hand went involuntarily to the diamond.

  “You can’t have it both ways,” she said.

  “It’s up to Seth to ask for it back,” I said.

  “I was the one who offered the ring to Seth for you. It has been in my family for generations.”

  I knew that. I also knew that for the first time since I was born, my place in that family was being questioned.

  It’s not my fault! I wanted to scream at her.

  A rush of resentment pushed through me. I knew this was only the first of the scenes I was going to have to endure because the girl with the black mane had a stronger hold on Seth than I did.

  I didn’t realize I’d let out a cry until I saw Randi’s face change. For an instant she was the Randi Grissom who taught me how to drive a stick shift on the hard sand of Jacksonville Beach and gave me the rules for assessing the intentions of guys before I went off to college. She was the woman who cared about me in the only way she knew and in a flinty way no one else was going to.

  It wasn’t hard to slide the ring from my finger because my hands were slick with sweat. I tucked it into her palm before the Randi-love left her face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.”

  She didn’t call my name until I was halfway out the door, but I didn’t stop. I was holding back sobs with my naked left hand.

  GrandMary was waiting for me in the parlor, as we called the small sitting room just off the dining room, a leftover from more genteel times.
She called to me when I crossed through the kitchen and I knew she’d been listening for me. Which also meant she had a goal for this meeting.

  If there was one person who could make me break my promise to Seth, it was GrandMary. I steeled myself and went to her.

  She was sitting in a cushioned cane-back chair near the floor-to-ceiling window with the morning sun playing on her hair as if it loved her. She motioned for me to join her in the other chair, and I sank into it and took the teal throw she offered me. It must have been obvious that I was freezing, despite the sun warming the alcove. I might never get warm again.

  “Where’s Mama?” I said.

  “She’s seeing people,” GrandMary said. “I told her she could cancel things over the phone but she insisted on doing it all in person.”

  I threw off the blanket and stood up. “She shouldn’t be doing that. It’s my mess to clean up, not hers.”

  “Let her do it, baby girl. It’s holding her together.”

  I dropped back into the chair and held the throw in a wad in my lap. “I hate this.”

  “I hate it for you.”

  “But I followed your advice,” I said. “I was having second thoughts and I faced them and I didn’t lie to myself.”

  I expected—or at least hoped—for the nod that would somehow make this okay. I didn’t get it. GrandMary folded her hands under her chin and delivered one of those clear-eyed looks that made me want to sort back through my words and figure out which one was wrong.

  “There are outright lies,” she said, “and there are lies of omission. I think it’s what you’re leaving out of your explanation that is making you do things like take the shears to yourself.”

  I wanted to swear.

  “Okay, you’re right,” I said instead. “But I promised Seth I would keep certain things to myself.”

  “Well, then, you absolutely have to, don’t you?”

  I blinked.

  “If you can’t trust each other, what do you have?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” I said.

  If she heard the bitterness in my voice, she didn’t comment. She just tilted the pixie head. “What concerns me is that this secret, whatever it is, appears to be eating you up.” She leaned toward me, blue-veined hands still neatly folded. “I’m not asking you to share it with me, Tara. In fact, I sense that you shouldn’t. But I think you need to tell someone.”