Secrets over Sweet Tea

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  “Miss Daisy! Baby, come to Mama. Oh, God, please help me find her.” Now panic was setting in. She walked quickly up the street, her eyes searching madly between the houses as she called Miss Daisy’s name. Every few moments she’d glance at the road, praying she wouldn’t see a squashed ball of fur. The last thing she needed today was to lose her baby.

  The tears began when she finished covering one full side of the street. She dashed to the other side and repeated her search, each section of sidewalk accelerating her fears that Miss Daisy might be gone. She could have been hit by a car, snatched up by anyone. She was yelling the dog’s name now and running wildly up the street.

  She didn’t see Scarlett Jo until she ran into her. The collision almost knocked her down.

  “Grace, honey, what is it?” Scarlett Jo’s big arms encased her, her own voice urgent.

  “It’s Miss Daisy.” She didn’t even try to conceal her heartbreak, tears, or panic. “My dog. I can’t find her. I’ve called and called, and she’s nowhere.”

  “Come on, sugar. I’ll help you look.” Scarlett Jo grabbed Grace’s hand and pulled her up the street. They both yelled Miss Daisy’s name as they ran, Grace in her bare feet and Scarlett Jo in the biggest pair of lemon-colored wedges ever sold in Franklin.

  It wasn’t until they rounded the curve onto Church Street that they saw her—nose buried in an azalea bush, oblivious to her name being called for the last ten minutes.

  “Miss Daisy!” Grace screamed.

  The dog lifted her head and trotted over. Grace fell to the ground and buried her face in Miss Daisy’s fur. Her body shook with heaves. She couldn’t help it. Nor did she care if anyone saw. She kissed Miss Daisy’s head over and over again, murmuring, “Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you, God.”

  She felt Scarlett Jo’s arm come around her and pull her from her knees. “Let’s get you home, sugar.”

  They walked along the street together, Miss Daisy snug in Grace’s arms. As soon as they reached the door, she smelled the burnt toast. She put Miss Daisy down and ran into the kitchen, yanking open the oven door. Smoke rushed out as if desperate for air. Grace grabbed the scorched piece of bread, burning her hand as she did. She hurled it into the trash, turned on the exhaust fan over the stove, and leaned against the kitchen counter.

  Scarlett Jo walked into the kitchen and looked at her with sympathetic blue eyes that all but lit up against the yellow floral jacket draping her body like a summer tablecloth.

  Grace wondered if she knew. This new friend she had made—did she have any clue what a mess Grace’s life had become?

  Scarlett Jo’s words came out quicker than even she had expected. “I watched the news this morning. I’m thinking your life has just exploded.”

  Grace stared at her. She didn’t say a word, but her expression made it clear she knew exactly what Scarlett Jo was talking about.

  “How long has he been drinking?”

  Grace’s body seemed to curl in on itself. She still didn’t answer.

  Scarlett Jo had wanted to be quiet. She really had. But when there was an elephant in the room, she couldn’t pretend she was a circus ringmaster. She simply had to get it out of the way. “I’m not judging him, sweetie. Just asking a question.”

  Grace’s shoulders fell slightly. Miss Daisy trotted out of the kitchen as if they were both an inconvenience to her day. Grace looked up and leaned against the edge of the black granite countertop. “Years.”

  Scarlett Jo started opening kitchen cabinets. When she found the glasses, she took one out. She pressed the rim against the water dispenser on the refrigerator door, then offered Grace the cool drink. Grace looked at the glass as if the water were a foreign substance.

  “Right. Something stronger.” Scarlett Jo dumped the clear liquid into the sink and returned to the refrigerator.

  “The tea,” Grace said. “Sweet tea—in the pitcher.”

  “Of course, dumpling.” Scarlett Jo pulled it out. “Sugar is your friend. Especially when your gingerbread house is crumbling.” She pressed the ice dispenser, added tea to the glass, and handed it to Grace. “Wanna sit?”

  Grace nodded and moved zombielike to the back door. She crossed the yard to the fence, latched the gate firmly, then returned to the porch and finally sank into one of the rockers. Scarlett Jo took the one beside her. They both stared in front of them at the wood fence and the three large magnolia trees that lined it. Miss Daisy came outside and plopped next to their feet.

  “Wanna tell me about it?”

  Scarlett Jo watched as Grace studied her. She knew the look. She’d been measured on this scale so many times—the can-I-trust-you? scale. People needed to know that their heart was safe, their story was safe.

  Scarlett Jo turned her face to the neatly manicured yard, pushed the heels of her fancy new shoes against the concrete of the porch, and set the chair to rocking. “Baby girl, you don’t have to tell me a thing you don’t want to. I’ll just sit here with you and watch the sun move across the sky if that’s what you want to do. Whatever you need today is what I’m offering you.” And then she waited.

  It took a while, but eventually Grace spoke. Almost everybody did sooner or later.

  “At first I didn’t know what it was. Tyler just started getting angry for no reason. It was like everything I did irritated him. I never knew what I would get when I’d wake up in the morning. Then I started finding liquor bottles. He used to hide them—in drawers, under the car seat, in the bathroom. I’d confront him. We’d argue. Eventually he didn’t bother hiding them anymore. He’d just go out and come home drunk. Eventually I got tired of confronting him. It didn’t seem worth it.

  “Then as I started to get more recognition at work and Tyler’s career had more challenges, things got worse. There were days when I wanted to quit my job. I thought if I wasn’t so well-known, then maybe he would stop the . . .” Her thoughts seemed to trail off. “You always think you can stop it.”

  She rocked for a bit before she continued. “But I couldn’t quit my job. Tyler’s a spender, and it takes money to keep up our lifestyle, so we needed everything I made. Needed it for houses too—and cars—and counselors. Except we didn’t actually have to pay that much for counseling, because Tyler decided the counselor was a quack and dropped him.” She smiled sadly. “It’s always someone else’s fault—especially mine.

  “That’s the really hard part, you know? The more I tried to help, the more he’d pull away from me. He puts up this big act about being loving in public—holds my hand, kisses me—but at home there’s no intimacy at all. He’s just not interested.”

  Scarlett Jo’s brow furrowed. “Like . . . no hanky-panky?”

  Grace never looked at her. “Like nothing. He doesn’t touch me anymore. I thought it was me at first, that I wasn’t attractive enough. But the more I researched it, the more I learned about alcoholism and what it does to a body.”

  “Oh, my side, don’t tell Jackson that. He might want to get me some Jack Daniel’s.” Scarlett Jo leaned closer. “People think Jackson must be really hot to trot, you know, because we have five children. But I will not tell a lie. It’s me. That man turns me on quicker than I can spot a pair of fancy shoes.” Scarlett Jo’s hand shot to her mouth as soon as the words escaped her. “Oh, Grace, I’m sorry. Sometimes my mouth gets out of control.”

  Grace smiled. “It’s okay. I like your mouth.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing because I can’t seem to stop spoutin’ off with it. But I’ve got to say, that stuff about alcohol and libido is news to me. I always thought it was the opposite. You know, people getting drunk and—”

  “Oh, they get drunk and lose their sexual inhibition, but that doesn’t mean they can, um, follow through. And after a while . . .”

  “My goodness, that had to be awful for you.”

  Grace nodded and blinked back tears. “He’s a good man, Scarlett Jo. But he has a big problem. We have a big problem.”

  “I’m not judg
ing Tyler.”

  Grace shook her head. “I know that. I can tell. Honestly, I can. I believe in the soul of me that he loves me as much as he is capable of loving anyone.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “He’s just . . . broken.”

  “Baby, we’re all broken. About the time we start believing we’re not, that’s when it all falls apart and we realize how bad off we are.”

  Grace placed her feet on the edge of her chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. Miss Daisy let out a heavy sigh as if she realized that meant they were going to be outside for a while. And that fluffy little thing was clearly not an outside dog—unless, of course, she decided it was a good day for a stroll.

  “We actually separated a few years ago. And when we got back together, I thought everything was going to be better. I thought it was the real thing. Tyler was finally honest about the drinking—and I know that when you get something out of the darkness, it loses its hold. We got counseling. We were going to church. We even renewed our vows.”

  For the first time Scarlett Jo heard anger beneath Grace’s words. She was okay with anger. Grace needed some fire in her belly.

  “But then it started all over again. He backed off from church. He left the counselor. And we went back to the charade that was our life. I shouldn’t have come home. When he told me not to expect him to be intimate with me immediately, I should have looked at him and said, ‘Then I’m not coming home.’ But I didn’t. I just let him convince me.”

  “So what did you go back to, Grace?”

  She watched the tears accumulate against Grace’s long eyelashes. The soft blonde hair framing her small face made her look like a child who needed to be cared for. One tear fell quickly before the back of Grace’s hand could stop it. “I went back to survival. To what I knew. To what felt safe. Manageable. Mine. But I’m never going back there again.” Her voice broke. “Even if I become one of those people. It’s over.”

  “One of what people?”

  “One of those failures. I’m getting a divorce, Scarlett Jo. I’m going to spend the rest of my life like all those other people with the big D stamped across their chests.”

  Scarlett Jo felt the thud in her gut that hit her anytime she heard that word. “Baby girl, divorce is a permanent step.”

  “I know.” Grace spoke softly now, her anger swept away with the first tear that fell. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? You give your life to something. You pray. You fast. You believe. You fight. And then you’re left staring at nothing but rubble. But this is where it ends.” She turned to face Scarlett Jo. “It’s this far and no farther. Tyler Shepherd has been a god in my life since I was twenty-three years old. I have let him dictate virtually every decision I have made in these last twelve years. But I’ve tried to play his savior too. And it’s all got to stop. We’re both going to have to be responsible to God for our own souls.”

  Being a minister’s wife, Scarlett Jo had sat across from countless women over the years. She’d heard all sorts of reasons for divorce: affairs, abuse, the ever-formidable and lame excuse of “I just don’t love him anymore.” And she had said to so many of them the same thing she said to Grace now: “Honey, you know you can release yourself from a marriage all day long. You can find more excuses to divorce a man than you can find cicadas in Franklin when they come out—and I hear that’s going to happen any day now. But what you can’t and never will be able to do is end a covenant. Only the good Lord himself can do that.”

  Grace’s brown eyes seemed to look through Scarlett Jo. “I know” was all she offered.

  And Scarlett Jo believed her. Unlike so many of the women Scarlett Jo had counseled in this situation, Grace Shepherd understood what she was doing and had an inkling of what she would lose. But what Grace Shepherd didn’t know yet was how hard she’d have to fight to reclaim her heart—that little-girl heart buried deep down inside that beautiful yet very old soul. She also suspected Grace had yet to realize how deep and rich God’s grace was for her. Divorce was sin—this Scarlett Jo knew. But she also knew God had a grace for the divorced heart, just as he had for every other form of human brokenness.

  A shrill screaming sound interrupted her thoughts as an enormous insect flew past her head. It landed on the arm of her rocker. She let out a scream of her own and jumped from her chair, flapping her hands so wildly that if she hadn’t been top-heavy, she might have taken flight. “What is that? What is that?”

  Grace didn’t move from her chair. Miss Daisy, however, sat up at the commotion. Grace calmly swatted the creature, which took off loudly. “That is a cicada, Scarlett Jo.”

  “So they’re here.” A chill ran through Scarlett Jo, and her entire body shook. She’d lived in the South all her life and never seen one before. “How long will those things be around?”

  “Five or six weeks.”

  She crinkled her nose and pushed up her lips. “They’re disgusting.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “They’re huge.”

  “They’re flies on steroids.”

  “Did you see its eyes?”

  “As red as the devil’s.”

  “You wouldn’t care if ten were sitting on you right now, would you?”

  “Not a lick.”

  Yep, that girl was as dead as you could get inside. But Scarlett Jo wasn’t worried. Not really. Because sometimes a person has to die in order to really live.

  Zach’s office was quiet today. He felt it as he walked in the door, and he was grateful. The girls had argued the entire way to the school, and he’d found himself wishing that the Range Rover came with an Eject button. He also wished it came with a return-because-your-wife-convinced-you-that-you-needed-it-and-you-didn’t policy. He hated that car and everything it represented. Everything it attempted to represent.

  “Hey, Darlene.”

  His secretary looked up and smiled. Darlene Grant had been with him since he’d opened this practice seven years ago. She was sixty-nine now and embraced each one of those years as the gift it was. She’d let her hair gray and her figure soften, but beauty was so deeply embedded in her soul that it showed through every pore. She had retired briefly when she was sixty-two, just long enough to take care of her grown daughter after a tonsillectomy. But she didn’t like retirement or the one week she was home with nothing to do. Zach was the lucky recipient of her inability to retire. He hoped she never did.

  “You look a little tired,” she said to him this morning. “Did you take the stairs?”

  He laughed and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot she had already made. “Took the elevator this morning. But I am tired. My mother-in-law was in town for the weekend.”

  “Well, maybe you can relax a little today since you don’t have any appointments. Just let me know if I can get you anything.”

  He looked into her kind face, her hazel eyes soft above her mocha cheeks. If he could invent a mother for himself, it would be her. His own mom had died when he was in college, leaving a huge hole in his heart and a longing for someone to fill it. Darlene helped.

  “Thanks,” he told her. “Will do.”

  He spent the next three hours working on his caseload for the week and preparing a motion scheduled for tomorrow. Finally he put down the file and rubbed his tired eyes. His worn leather chair squeaked as he leaned back. He stretched, trying to let go of pent-up anxiety from the weekend. It escaped with a long, heavy sigh.

  His office smelled of old books and his late Friday afternoon cigar. His eyes fell on the small Bible perched near the edge of his desk. He wondered for an instant how he would have felt if he had noticed it yesterday when she was here. He tried to recall the last time he’d opened it—at least two months. There had been a brief season after his affair started when the angst overwhelmed him and he said he couldn’t see her anymore. Then home got worse, and he needed her. At least he needed something, so he chose her. Or maybe he felt he deserved her. He put his elbows on his desk and his head in his hands.
A knock on the door freed him from the train wreck of his thoughts.

  Darlene peeked in, her words a near whisper. “Could you see someone?”

  He sat up straight. “Who is it?”

  “Someone your pastor’s wife sent over.”

  He blew out a large puff of air. “Tell her I’m busy. Have you met my pastor’s wife?”

  “Zach, stop it. Scarlett Jo Newberry is one of the best people I know.”

  “You need to get out more.”

  She pushed the door open a little farther and stepped inside. “It’s one of the news anchors from the NBC affiliate in Nashville. I watch her every morning.”

  She still had to be crazy. If Scarlett Jo Newberry sent her, he was in for torture. But Darlene wasn’t leaving. “Okay.” He finally yielded, not trying to hide his frustration. “Have her take a seat in the conference room, and I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Thank you. And be nice.” Darlene closed the door behind her.

  He turned his chair around and opened the long credenza that stood against the wall beside his desk. File after file of divorce after divorce lined up in neat rows, a stark contrast to the mayhem the divorces themselves left in their wake. He pulled out an empty folder and grabbed a legal pad from his desk. He was at least grateful for the distraction.

  He walked through the door of the conference room and nodded to the two women in front of him. He recognized the petite blonde as soon as he saw her. She was something of a local celebrity. Caroline watched her every morning while getting ready for the day.

  What was she doing here? Oh yeah, Caroline had mentioned something this morning before their argument ensued. Maybe about a DUI? “How embarrassing,” Caroline had said.

  She stood when he came into the room. He extended his hand. “Zach Craig.”

  “Grace Shepherd.” Her name was as beautiful as she was. And being this close to her, you couldn’t deny her beauty, even with the red nose and puffy eyes. “Thank you for seeing me without an appointment.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “This is my best friend, Rachel Green.”