The Sweetest September (Home in Magnolia Bend)

by Liz Talley

  “I asked her to marry me,” John said.

  No words from his father.

  “She said no.”

  “Why?” Reverend Beauchamp asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably because she thinks having a baby isn’t a good enough reason to marry. Or maybe she doesn’t want to be tied down to me.”

  “What about love?”

  Shelby felt her heart rise in her throat. Reverend Beauchamp asked what she had been unable to bring herself to ask John earlier.

  “I don’t know, Dad. I can’t seem to stop comparing what I have with Shelby to what I had with Rebecca. Shelby’s different.”

  “Different isn’t bad.”

  “No.” Another long pause. “I want to do the right thing. Not bring shame on the family or embarrass you and Mom because I had one bad night. That’s not fair to you. Marrying Shelby would rectify that and she could take the job at the school. We could raise the baby together. Here in Magnolia Bend. Love doesn’t figure into doing the right thing.”

  Bring shame on the family? Keep her in Magnolia Bend?

  Shelby covered her mouth with her hand, not sure whether she wanted to scream or march in there and punch John Beauchamp in the chops.

  The tenderness they’d shared, the hope she’d nurtured shriveled up like a paper in a fire.

  Love doesn’t figure into doing the right thing.

  Shelby had hoped they could move toward love. Like some blooming idiot, she’d convinced herself she could make John love her, that she’d helped him heal. She’d envisioned them starting a life together. But John wanted, to quote the Southern phrase she’d heard last week at the post office, to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Martha Boudreaux had explained the expression meant to try to trick someone into thinking something not so great was mighty fine. Yeah. Shelby was a freaking pig’s ear.

  And it hurt.

  Searing pain shot across her stomach. Or was it her heart? She’d been so, so stupid in agreeing to stay here in Magnolia Bend. She’d been chasing a pipe dream created by an eleven-year-old little girl alone in her room after her brother got married, hearing the words her mother had said to a friend. Yes, I don’t know where Shelby came from. She’s not like any of us.

  In Magnolia Bend, she’d thought she found a place she could belong. Most of the people in town had been so nice. Oh, sure they may have been titillated she lived with John, and some of the old biddies who were Carla’s friends had tried to stir up stuff, but Fancy had quickly quelled their attempt at running the whore outta town. Shelby had also grown to love Breezy Hill. Through Rebecca’s journal she’d seen the old house in a new light—she knew the waffling the woman had done over the right paint color for the kitchen, the struggle to get John to put in the flower beds, and how Rebecca had secretly brought Freddy home, but told John he just wandered up. And after last night, she felt the final piece of the puzzle had snapped into place.

  She’d wanted to stay, but the whole marriage to fix this thing had zinged in from right field and smacked her in the head. Because at that moment when John proposed marriage, she knew she couldn’t make herself fit into his life if he didn’t love her.

  See? This was what eavesdropping and sneaking and reading journals got her—the truth. And sometimes the truth wasn’t much fun.

  “Shelby, where’s the tape?” Fancy called.

  Shelby jumped, swallowed down the emotion threatening to spill down her cheeks and scampered toward the other kitchen door. Pushing through, she donned a smile. “Sorry, I sneaked some pie.”

  And overheard the way your son really feels about me.

  Both Fancy and Abigail sat on the coffee table with their feet holding the box flaps down. Fancy’s hands rubbed Abigail’s shoulders, massaging them from an awkward angle. The intimate scene hit Shelby just as hard.

  This. This is what she’d never had.

  “There you are,” Fancy said, her green eyes smiling as she withdrew her hands, eliciting a groan from Abigail. “Eating pie, huh?”

  “Yeah, here’s the tape.”

  Fancy took it and handed it to Abigail. “Are you okay, Shelby? You look pale, sweetheart.”

  “Just tired. I need a nap.”

  Abigail snorted and gave her the “I know what you did last night” look.

  “Well, go on up to the guest bedroom and take a nap,” Fancy said.

  “Actually I’ll see if John can run me out to Breezy Hill instead. I’d like a shower, too,” Shelby said, wanting to get away from all the touchy-feely family stuff, wanting to get away from John, but not seeing a way that could happen.

  “I can give you a lift,” Abigail said, and taped the box, glancing up, her dark eyes probing Shelby, seeing beneath the surface. Maybe she knew Shelby’s earlier confidence lay in pieces. That’s exactly how Shelby felt. Shattered.

  “Perfect,” Shelby said, helping Fancy with her box. “John can finish watching football with his dad and brothers.”

  Five minutes later, Shelby rode beside an oddly silent Abigail. She’d told Fancy to tell John she went back to Breezy Hill. She hadn’t the fortitude to face him without betraying her emotions.

  They’d just turned out on the highway, when Shelby’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it thinking it was John, but it was a text from her mother.

  Texting, again?

  But there was also a picture.

  Shelby clicked on the small bubble and it enlarged, showing a beautiful christening gown of antique white lace. Underneath the pic her mother had written:

  Found your christening gown when the decorators went up to the attic. I’ll keep it out for the baby.

  And that’s when Shelby lost it.

  “Shelby?” Abigail said, swerving the car over the line as she reached over to cup Shelby’s shoulder as she launched herself forward, deep sobs welling up within her.

  But Shelby couldn’t talk, the hurt and pain and something she couldn’t name about her mother had erupted inside her and there was no way to stop the meltdown.

  “Shelby, what is it?” Abigail persisted. “Bad news? Do I need to stop?”

  Shelby shook her head, holding a hand over her mouth, wanting to stop the deluge, but unable. Rocking slightly, she managed to choke out “Just drive”. Finally after several minutes, Shelby leaned her head back on the headrest and swiped at her face.

  Abigail darted a worried glance at her.

  “Sorry,” Shelby managed, between sniffs. “I’ve been needing to do that for a while.”

  Abigail nodded as if she understood that sometimes the only thing that helped was a good cry. “Bad news?”

  “No, just an unexpected note from my mother. We don’t have a great relationship and she just—” Shelby’s voice trembled “—extended an olive branch of sorts.”

  “Oh,” Abigail said. “I was worried I had upset you earlier by saying John still loved Rebecca. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I try to control every situation. I overstepped.”

  Abigail made the turn into Breezy Hill and bumped up the road, slowing when she saw another car parked beside Shelby’s leased car.

  “Oh, it’s Carla,” Abigail said, pulling in behind the Lexus. “Wonder what she’s doing here on New Year’s Day?”

  Shelby didn’t think she could handle dealing with Carla today, but the sight of the woman nailing something on the frame of the door gave her pause. “Who does she think she is? Martin Luther?”

  Abigail shifted into Park and killed the engine. They both climbed out, and Carla, holding a hammer, turned to face them.

  “Hey, Carla,” Abigail said with caution in her voice. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing you need to worry over, Abigail,” Carla said in a no-nonsense voice, climbing carefully down the porch steps, a little winded. “Ju
st business with John.”

  Abigail brushed past Carla and jogged up the steps. “Wait a sec, an eviction order? Are you insane?”

  Carla didn’t stop walking. She passed Shelby without looking at her.

  “Carla,” Abigail called, parking her hands on her hips. “What is this all about?”

  “Dissolving the trust and putting Breezy Hill on the market as soon as possible. I gave him two weeks’ notice. I won’t need him after the harvest.”

  “What?” Abigail looked back at the paper fluttering in the breeze and then at Carla. “Why would you do this to him?”

  Shelby watched Carla carefully as she turned around. The older woman’s face was ravaged with guilt and grief. “He knows the reason, Abi.”

  Carla glanced over to Shelby and then got into her car. Abigail looked at Shelby, her normally calm, placid features twisted into disbelief, anger and a sort of understanding of what Carla’s words meant.

  “Stop,” Abigail called out as Carla started her car. “Don’t you dare do this.” She ran back down the steps, heading for Carla’s car.

  Shelby climbed the steps, her eyes on the paper. Eviction notice set for January 20. She pulled it down, her heart breaking all over again, and wadded it into a ball.

  Carla had taken John’s dream and crumpled it like the notice in her hand...all because of Shelby.

  Anger flooded her, along with a deep-seated sadness for the grief poisoning Rebecca’s mother.

  Shelby stood in a no-win situation.

  Abigail, having no success in stopping John’s former mother-in-law, tripped back up to the porch, looking incredulous. “I can’t believe she’s doing this.”

  “I can. She hates me.”

  “That’s crazy. John has been nothing but good to Carla. He’s taken Breezy Hill in a profitable direction, and he’s family, for goodness sake. What does she expect? For him to stay here alone for the rest of his life, clinging to a dead woman?”

  “Yeah, that’s about right,” Shelby said, pulling out the key John had given her over a month ago.

  “This is nuts.”

  “Yeah. Nuts,” Shelby agreed, wanting Abigail to leave. The woman must have sensed it because she didn’t cross the threshold.

  “I need to call John and then I have to go back to Laurel Woods. We have a full house. I hate to leave you here after a tough afternoon. Will you be okay?”

  “Of course,” Shelby said, lying through her teeth. Nothing was okay about today. Like a house of cards in the wind, her life had toppled. No more hoping for the best.

  “What about John and this whole eviction thing?”

  “Nothing you or I can do. John will have to handle it.”

  Abigail nodded. “Well, he can call our family attorney and see what might be done legally. I don’t know anything about trusts, but it doesn’t seem fair she can do this.”

  Shelby shrugged, and with a final wave, shut the front door, sinking immediately against it, closing her eyes.

  The solution sat in front of her, fat and full of tears.

  John didn’t love her, and even though they were amazing in bed, liked vanilla ice cream and would become parents in June, it wasn’t enough for her to stay and destroy his life. He deserved to keep what he loved, not sacrifice it to “do the right thing.”

  Shelby sighed, looking around at the house she’d grown to love. Beautifully simplistic, wholly warm, worn by time and care, Breezy Hill was not where she belonged no matter how much she wanted to believe it. No matter how much she convinced herself Rebecca’s spirit had intended it.

  Bunch of hogwash and wishful thinking.

  And now her mother’s text had given her hope for a new start with her parents.

  A baby changes everything. That’s what the commercial said. Maybe the thought of a new sweet life had moved her parents’ hearts. That could be amazing. But also a baby shouldn’t change everything about John’s life. He didn’t have to give up the land to be a good father. The child didn’t have to live here to know his or her father’s love. She could make the separation work. Somehow.

  It’s not like she hadn’t given staying in Magnolia Bend a try. She had. But things were too hard, and she wanted more than John could give her. She didn’t want him to give up his dreams. She wanted his heart.

  And that might never happen.

  Shelby climbed the stairs with no more tears left to cry.

  Sometimes life just sucked. She’d learned that long ago, and so she knew how to put one foot in front of the other.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JOHN SAT IN his father’s study feeling much the way he had as a child, ready to explain his way out of trouble, hiding from the shame of his actions. Some things never changed.

  His father sat in the cracked leather chair, Bible close at hand with volumes of discourse and stacks of legal pads holding down the desk corners. In the center was a framed picture of him and his siblings taken twenty years ago. This was the desk of a man who thought, worked and embraced his faith every day.

  “The reasons you gave are not reason enough to wed. Marriage is a sacrament—a selfless pledge of love.”

  “I know what marriage is. I’ve been married,” John said.

  Dan Beauchamp leaned forward, the chair creaking as he propped his elbows on the desk. “So do you love Shelby?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. She’s funny and makes me happy. I want her.” He cleared his throat. “I mean to say the chemistry’s there.”

  His father’s laugh made him straighten. “You act like your mother and I don’t have good sex. I’ll have you know—”

  “Please,” John interrupted, focusing on a pewter candlestick beyond his father’s head. “That’s not something I want nor need to know.”

  “Any more than I needed to know about your having drunken monkey sex in a bar.”

  “Monkey sex?”

  “A term I picked up from Jake.”

  “Good Lord,” John said, sucking in a deep breath, shame spiraling inside him at the truth in his father’s words—not about monkey sex, but about the drunken in a bar part. “I’m not proud of myself.”

  “Son, you’re a healthy, thirty-four-year-old man. You’re supposed to desire a woman.”

  John nodded. “But it’s not just about sex.”

  “Is it about not being alone?”

  “No. I mean, it’s been good having Shelby beside me, but what we have between us isn’t the same as what I had with Rebecca, so I’m confused.”

  “What if there were no baby?”

  “That’s a moot point because there is.”

  “What if she lost the baby? What if there were no other reason for Shelby to stay in Magnolia Bend?”

  John glanced out the window, turning over the thought of how he would feel if something happened to the baby. From the beginning, the thought of losing his child had hurt, but Shelby hadn’t been as much a concern. But now the thought of losing Shelby...crippled him.

  But how did he put a name to whatever it was that held them together? Was it companionship? Sex? Friendship?

  Or something more?

  “I would want her in my life regardless of a child.”

  “But you didn’t want her at first,” his father said.

  “I didn’t know her.”

  “But now you do? So that means what?”

  “I don’t know. You’re supposed to tell me. You’re my dad. That’s your job.”

  “My job, huh?” His father gave a dry laugh. “Okay, so how is what you feel for Shelby different than what you felt for Rebecca?”

  For the first time since her death, thinking about Rebecca didn’t hurt and didn’t flood him with guilt. Strange.

  He’d always felt safe with Rebecca. She’d been part of
him, soul mates from the beginning, fitting together like a zipper. Was that the way he was with Shelby?

  No.

  But a zipper wasn’t the only thing that held things together.

  “Can a man truly love two women the same way, Dad?”

  “Can a father truly love three sons the same way?” His father twisted his lips and lifted his dark eyes to the ceiling, carefully weighing his thoughts before he spoke. Finally, he nodded. “I don’t love you the same, but I love you as much. Love comes in many forms, a gift from our Heavenly Father. God doesn’t put Himself into a box, and so you shouldn’t put his gifts into a box. There are no rules when it comes to life or love.”

  “I know I loved Rebecca, but I think I love Shelby, too. It’s different, but not less. If something happened to Shelby...” He trailed off, the thought of losing her latching onto his heart, making his insides tremble.

  “I understand, son. Loving a woman is always complicated, and no love is the same, just as no two people are the same. It’s rather like a snowflake. You can’t prove a snowflake is a snowflake because everyone’s flake is different.”

  “So as long as the makeup is love, I don’t have to worry about what it looks like?”

  “Smart man. Just like your father.”

  “If you think talking snowflake analogies is smart.” John finally smiled.

  “Shelby suits you, son. She’ll be a good partner, making you laugh, helping you heal and teaching you patience. But of these, the most important is love.”

  John laughed. “Always bringing the scripture.”

  “Hey, it’s my thing.”

  Looking at the man who always seemed to know the answers, John’s heart filled with gratitude. Family could be a pain in the ass...or a shot in the arm. Either way, he was happy to be a Beauchamp. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Sure, and you will soon discover being a father doesn’t end when your child grows up.”

  John walked around the desk, embracing his father as he rose to his feet. Feeling the strength of his old man, internalizing the wisdom, renewing the intent to create something beautiful and real from the mess he’d started that night in September.