He’d never had such trouble walking through a door in his life.
Chapter Ten
“Oh, my goodness!” Hands clasped to chest, Penny McPherson slowly pivoted in her newly completed great room overlooking the bay, the seventies vibe given over to a symphony of burnished leather and quirky antiques against soothing pale teal walls. “This is...incredible. That’s the only word for it, Blythe. It finally feels like, well, home. It truly does.”
And that’s why I keep doing this, Blythe thought, bending to accept the middle-aged woman’s fierce, teary hug. Not for her own ego—too much, anyway—but to see the joy on a client’s face at the reveal. She was pretty damn good at this, if she did say so herself. And what she did was to dig around in her magic toolbox until she came up with exactly how home felt for each person she worked with. Which fed her soul in a way little else could, she suspected.
Like working with the kids on the website, where she could give to others what she never had herself.
Yeah, the self-pity fairy said in an overloud, nasal twang that sounded frighteningly like Rosanne Barr’s. I think that’s called living vicariously.
“I’m so glad you like it!” Blythe said brightly when the weepy woman finally let go. Unlike that fairy, which had planted her butt in a nice, comfy chair in Blythe’s psyche, ordering in Chinese takeout like there was no tomorrow and clearly not going anywhere. “But let me show you some things you might have missed....”
No, let me show you something things you might have missed...
Except Blythe hadn’t missed anything. Not the way her heart skipped a beat every time she’d see Wes’s interaction with his son, not his tender, unselfish lovemaking—which she could still feel weeks after the fact—not her near-panicked reaction afterward when she realized, despite her determination to keep her emotions in check, she’d fallen in love with the man. And how the hell that had happened, she had no idea.
But it had. And now she was in you-know-what up to her eyebrows.
You got that right, honey.
Shut. Up, Blythe silently ordered as she pointed out various details to her bubbly client, focusing on her work, on what paid the bills and gave her a reason for living and had saved her hide after Giles left and she was alone. Again. That she paid those bills thanks to a design philosophy not as much about aesthetics as it was about an emotional connection to the space. Her clients’ connections, that is. Not hers. Some wanted tranquillity, others to feel energized. Some sought to break out of a stylistic rut, others to unabashedly embrace the past through repurposing family heirlooms or using the colors they remembered from a favorite aunt’s house. She never judged, or questioned, their visions. But she did facilitate them.
Which led to her thinking, after she left the beaming Mrs. McPherson and was on her way back to April’s inn, about Wes’s house. About his late wife’s imprint on the space, how it glowed with safe choices and serenity and contentment. Of how Kym had celebrated her contentment by cocooning her husband and son in that manifestation of her love for them.
And that was great, really. It was a lovely home, one Blythe would have complimented the woman on if she’d known her. Would’ve probably liked her, too, in that way one can’t help liking genuinely nice people. But then there was Blythe’s place, that conglomeration of flea market finds and crazy color combinations that made sense only to her, of furnishings that shot right past eclectic to schizophrenic. How content she was there, in what to anyone else would scream chaos. Because to her, that was home.
Chaos? Really?
Yes, chaos. An apt word for her life, if ever there was one. Not to mention her personality. Nice was not a word Blythe would have used to describe herself, although she did try to be kind. And compassionate. But she was anything but safe. And, although she hadn’t said it in so many words that, even if Wes wasn’t looking for Kym’s clone, that’s what he needed, whether he understood that or not. Someone to once again bring order and stability into his and Jack’s lives, who liked things all matchy-matchy and neat. Not a crazy lady with Rosanne Barr parked in her brain, leaving goopy take-out boxes all over the damn place.
Sighing, Blythe pulled into the inn’s small parking lot, almost dreading—between both her cousins’ wedding jitters and April’s pregnancy jubilation—spending the night there. Peaceful, it wouldn’t be. However, since she had another appointment early the next morning in a neighboring town, it was expedient. And these days she was all about expediency.
Once inside what was now the bright, airy lobby, Blythe did some reveling of her own at the transformation she’d wrought with what had been Hoarder Heaven. It had been truly mind-boggling, all the stuff their grandmother had kept. Except, weirdly, relationships, Blythe contemplated as she crossed the patterned rug toward the partially open door to April’s quarters. From upstairs, she heard the muffled roar of the vacuum in preparation for the day’s new arrivals, but otherwise the inn appeared to be deserted—not unusual at one in the afternoon.
“Knock, knock,” she called, pushing the door open.
“Come on in, I’m in the bathroom!”
Blythe followed her cousin’s voice to her bedroom, where she caught a double reflection in the dresser mirror of April standing at the bathroom sink staring at herself, holding her stretchy top in a wad underneath her boobs, her other palm pressed against her still-flat stomach. In spite of yet another spurt of envy, Blythe laughed as she walked to the bathroom doorway. “A little early for that, no?”
“I know, I know.” Her skinny tortoiseshell headband no match for her humidity-frizzed hair, April grinned at Blythe in her reflection. “But I’m so excited!”
“You also have a very expensive wedding gown to fit into. So I suggest you tell Junior there to lay low until after the wedding.”
“Good point,” April sighed out, then tugged her top back down before pushing past Blythe into her bedroom, where she picked up a wedding invitation RSVP card off the small desk in one corner. “You might want to sit down for this.”
Her forehead pinched, Blythe took the card from April, only to nearly choke on her own spit. “How did you—?”
“Not a whole lot of Lynette Broussards in Harpers Ferry. And I only sent the invitation as a courtesy. So at least your mother would know what was going on in the family, even if she didn’t want to be involved.”
“I can’t believe...” Blythe looked at April. “She’s coming?”
“I know, I nearly fell over.” She cocked her head at Blythe. “You okay with that?”
“I...I don’t know what I am. She didn’t even come to my wedding.”
“Oh, sugar...” April grabbed Blythe’s hand to pull her down beside her on the matelassé-covered bed. “When’s the last time you two talked?”
“As in, did more than ascertain we were both still alive?” Blythe pushed out a short, dry laugh. “Never? I mean, I feel duty-bound to check in every couple of weeks, but...” Her chest seized, like a charley horse to the heart. Momentarily agonizing, but it would ease. “Does she even know I’m the maid of honor?”
“Yep. Since I told her.”
“And right now I don’t know whether to hug you or smack the snot out of you,” Blythe said, and April laughed, her hand going to her tummy. Blythe averted her gaze, leaning over to set the RSVP card on April’s nightstand. “So how’s Patrick doing? With the prospect of becoming a dad again?”
“Oh, Lord, you should have seen his reaction. First his eyes got all buggy—” she demonstrated “—then his mouth slid up into this real I’m so the man grin. It was priceless.”
Blythe smiled. His first wife having left Patrick and their little girl after he returned from Iraq severely burned, the war vet had found a real blessing in the bighearted April. “You tell Lili yet?”
“No, we decided to wait until I’m further along. Eight months
is a long time for a five-year-old to wait.” She giggled. “For us, too.” Then, eyes alight, April grabbed Blythe’s hands. “You’ll help me do the nursery, right?”
Their grandmother’s house had been an oasis of constancy for April, whose parents changed addresses more than some people changed their linens. So now, after buying out Mel’s and Blythe’s shares of Amelia Rinehart’s estate, she wasn’t about to let it go for anything, not even the man she loved. The plan was to add a wing to the old place, expanding April’s cozy digs into a spacious family apartment. A room for Lili had already been in the works; now there’d obviously be a baby’s room, as well.
“Absolutely,” Blythe said as the spurt eased into a slow, steady drip. Even though she’d told herself a hundred times since her and Wes’s après-dinner shenanigans that the constant, niggling pain was nothing compared with the inevitable heartache down the road had she not nipped things in the bud.
“Oh, honey...” April pressed her hands to her cheeks, tears glistening as usual in her eyes. Honestly, the woman cried more than three other women put together. Certainly more than Blythe had since the day she realized tears weren’t going to accomplish squat. Not bring her father back, not make her mother not regret having her, not convince anybody to love her. “I didn’t think it was possible to be this happy! I really didn’t!”
Even so, Blythe had to blink hard as she yanked April into a hug. “And nobody deserves it more than you, cupcake.”
Snorting a laugh, April pulled away, wiping her eyes. “Everybody deserves happiness, Blythe. Even you.”
Blythe started, only to then remember that neither April nor Blythe knew about her little dalliance with Wes. Because she wasn’t a total fool. The dalliance itself notwithstanding. “What? I’m happy! What makes you think I’m not?”
April parked her cute little hands on her cute little hips. “Being reconciled to one’s lot in life is not the same thing as being happy. No more than loving is the same as being loved. Which you also deserve.”
And apparently the wedding crazies couldn’t hold a candle to wacked hormones. “And I’m going to let that one slide because you’re pregnant.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “The baby’s not in my brain, for heaven’s sake.” A finger jabbed in Blythe’s direction. “And deciding before you’re even thirty that you’re gonna stay single for the rest of your life is just plain dumb, if you ask me.”
“Not that I did. Ask you.” At April’s snort, she added, “And anyway, plenty of people choose to remain single—”
“Which is perfectly okay if it’s a real choice and not because they’re scared of getting hurt again.”
For the second time in less than five minutes, Blythe felt like she’d been clobbered. Maybe pregnancy hadn’t affected her cousin’s brain, but it sure as hell had affected her mouth.
“Where on earth is this coming from?”
“From you, where else?”
“But I never—”
“Came right out and said how much your husband’s leaving wrecked you? You didn’t have to. Oh, sure, you tried to act cool about it, like it was no big deal, but that doesn’t mean Mel and I couldn’t see through you. You spend ten summers with somebody, you get to know ’em pretty well, learn how they handle pain. I cry, Mel gets mad, but you...”
April pitched forward to clasp Blythe’s hands. “You tuck it all inside you. Just like you did when we were kids. The quieter you got, the more we knew you were hurting. Like you thought if you didn’t give voice to the pain, you could pretend it wasn’t there.”
“You and Mel—you talked about me?”
“Heck, yeah. Because we were worried about you.” April paused, then said, “And we still do. Because we still are. Since it’s pretty obvious you’re puttin’ up a front. That hasn’t changed, either.”
Dammit—the gentleness in her cousin’s voice, exactly like Wes’s...they were all going to be the death of her—
“...remember how I almost lost Patrick for that very reason.”
Oops. Blythe scrambled to pick up the thread again. “For what reason?”
A huffed sigh prefaced April’s tucking her legs up under her, the way she used to when Blythe would gather them together to regale them with her exploits. Except now it was April assuming the big-sister role Blythe had relished all those years ago, when she took such pleasure in lording it over her younger cousins. Of impressing them. Or at least scandalizing them. All of it an illusion, to be sure. But an empowering one.
“What’s going on with you and Wes?”
Blythe nearly wet herself. “What? Nothing.”
“That’s not what Quinn said.” Then April squinted at her, like she was trying to suck the truth from Blythe’s brain. Yeah, she was going to be a great mother. If a scary one.
“Quinn’s eleven,” Blythe said. “She’s puberty-addled. Besides, I haven’t even seen Wes since the day we all went on that field trip.”
Technically, not a lie. Since he’d even left her house before midnight.
More squinting. For a moment, Blythe almost pitied that little bundle of rapidly dividing cells in April’s belly. Then her cousin sighed.
“How come you used to be able to do that to Mel and me and we’d immediately spill our guts?”
“Maybe because you and Mel usually had something to spill your guts about. Well, Mel did. You, not so much. Me, not at all. Not this time, anyway.”
“I know you’re lying—I can feel it in my bones.”
“And what is this? Payback for all those summers I bossed you and Mel around?”
“Hadn’t thought about that, but sure.” April crossed her arms. “You know, when I walked away from Patrick right before Christmas, I really thought I was doing the right thing. That I couldn’t be who or what he needed. ’Cause I knew he had issues he needed to sort out with his little girl, and I believed I was only getting in the way of that. But the truth was, I was scared. Of watching whatever we had fall to pieces, of getting hurt. So I ended it first. And praise Jesus the man came to his senses the same time I did.” She smiled. “Because otherwise I honestly don’t know if I would’ve had the gumption to try getting back with him.”
“And I’m thrilled for you. All of you. I really am. But my situation isn’t yours. Wes and I—”
Heat seared Blythe’s cheeks. Dammit. And the thing was, she could have still made the save, finished the sentence in a nonincriminating way. But no, she had to trip over that Wes and I and do a face-plant right smack into that deep do-do she’d been so determined to pretend wasn’t there.
And of course April was grinning to beat the band. “So there is a Wes and you?”
“No, April,” Blythe said on a sigh. “There isn’t.”
“But...there was? Or could be? Or what? Come on, help a girl out...and where are you going, missy?” she called after her when Blythe hauled herself off the bed and through April’s sitting room, past the furniture and artwork she’d chosen and out the door she’d had redone.
She fled through a side entrance out to her car, parked in the smaller, private lot in plain view of the bricked patio adjacent to April’s quarters. On which her cousin now stood, hands parked on hips.
“You even know where you’re going?”
No, actually. Which could prove problematic. But hell would freeze over before she’d give April the satisfaction of knowing she’d rattled her that badly.
Although, considering the way Blythe had stormed out of the house, Ms. Preggo had probably already figured that part out.
So, in a moment of real maturity, she yelled back, “None of your business,” before throwing herself behind the wheel, barely hearing April’s shouted, “Nobody ever solved a problem by running away from it!” as Blythe burned rubber backing out of the space, jerking the wheel hard to pull out onto the road.
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Even though she knew that no matter where she went or how long she drove, the truth was right there with her, like the little plastic Jesus that always hung off their grandmother’s rearview mirror.
You got that right, honey, Roseanne said.
Bitch.
* * *
Jack lowered his car window, letting in the tangy bay breeze as Dad drove him home the last day of school. And thinking. Listening to his thoughts instead of running from them, like that one counselor he went to after Mom died would tell him. Except back then, listening to his thoughts made him feel like crap, so he avoided them as much as possible. Now that he was older, though, he’d finally begun to realize that ignoring a problem only made him feel more confused, not less.
Used to be, he loved the summer, when he and Mom would hang out at one of her friend’s pools, or they’d go driving along the coast to poke around in the other little towns. Until the summer before Dad got elected and she was too busy working on his campaign to spend as much time with Jack. His eyes got all itchy, tempting him to think about something else. But he took a deep breath and let the memory play through, about the talk he and Mom had right before...right before the accident, when she’d said she felt bad about not being around as much, that she hoped Jack understood how important this was. That he’d see the “bigger picture.”
Back then, he hadn’t really understood what she meant. All he knew was, he didn’t like how everything had changed, that even though she was still around she didn’t have as much time for him. And Dad—he sneaked a look at the side of his father’s face, wondering if he realized how much he frowned these days—had basically disappeared, too. Even before the election. Then Mom died and Dad went to Washington and his grandparents moved in, and basically Jack felt like everything had gone to hell.
Quinn, though, had hammered into his brain that things changed, whether you liked it or not. Sometimes it was good and sometimes it sucked, but if you didn’t figure out how to deal with it you were going to be miserable the rest of your life. Quinn might be younger than him, but in some ways she was a lot smarter—
The Marriage Campaign Page 16
