by Helm, Nicole
Bully for her.
Unfortunately she had to face the guy. She brought the plates of toast out to the porch, handed him one, then put the other on her swinging love seat. Another trip to the kitchen and she retrieved two bottles of water.
“The cab should be here in about twenty. Hopefully.”
He nodded. “Thanks. For that. And for this.” He held up the toast and then took a careful bite. She guzzled some water and they sat in silence, only the sounds of insects and goats in the air.
A pretty spring morning, and she needed to get to work before the cab got here, but first she had to feel human. Or at least like her head wasn’t going to explode every time she moved.
After an awkward silent breakfast, Meg forced herself to stand and smile. “Um, so, I need to go milk the goats.”
“Milk the...? Right.”
“You can come watch if you’re curious.” She wasn’t sure where the offer came from. It would have made more sense to ask his name. But he hadn’t asked hers. So either he knew it and she was the sole uninformed participant, or he didn’t want to know hers. Which meant she didn’t need to know his. In fact, the less she knew about him, the better.
Fantastic idea inviting him to watch you milk the goats, then, yeah?
“Sure.”
She tried to smile at his agreement and not hate him for following her. Although hate was too strong a word. She didn’t hate him. Surprisingly she didn’t even hate herself. Sure, this was embarrassing and uncomfortable and stupid, but she’d done a lot worse. And in about fifteen minutes it would all be over.
Or so she hoped.
She went inside while he waited on the porch. She sped through changing into jeans and a sweatshirt and tried to ignore that that guy existed. But the sooner she got her goats milked and him out of here, the sooner that could be accomplished.
She went back outside, and there he was. She walked down the porch steps, realizing she hadn’t grabbed socks, but was too tired and nauseated to care. Besides, he was following her; there was no way she was turning around.
She collected the containers from her sanitation station outside the barn, then shoved her bare feet into the work boots she kept outside the doors.
Her stomach was still sloshing, her head still pounding, but the goats didn’t care. That was why she loved them. They needed her to be responsible. To do something the same way every day. It kept her on the right path. So, even with last night’s slipup, she hadn’t totally screwed herself and her life over.
She entered the barn with a shadow for the first time ever. What was she supposed to call him? Ugh, she didn’t want to call him anything. So she talked him through the process of milking: bringing the goat to the stand, offering it grain, cleaning, milking.
He watched, asked a few questions, and it was almost comfortable. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, talking about goat milking and the soap she made tabled some of the weirdness between them.
Just as she was loading up the containers to be refrigerated, a honk sounded from out front.
“If you go ahead and meet him, I’ll be there in a second.”
He nodded and she took the milk to storage, then hurried inside her house from the back to find some socks and shoes.
She walked to the cab, sliding her purse over her shoulder. A few more awkwardly silent moments and this would all be over. She would probably never see the guy again, and she could maybe even convince herself it had been a figment of her imagination.
Fall down seven times. Get up eight. How many times had Grandma said that to her? And yes, Meg was pretty sure she’d exceeded seven, but as long as she kept getting up, she’d be okay. Getting up was the only option.
Besides, she had some people to prove wrong. People who’d never have to know about this lapse in judgment.
CHAPTER FIVE
AS DAN’S CAB idled at the stoplight, Charlie could feel the man’s stare. He knew what had happened, and he was going to say something. Oh, not to Charlie’s face, but probably within earshot of someone related to him.
It was amazing—truly—how life could turn you around in a complete one-eighty. No warning, no clues how to handle it, just here—your life isn’t what you thought.
Now what are you gonna do?
He’d always known the next step. Since he’d been a kid. He’d known the exact next step to take to get what he wanted, to do what was wanted of him. He’d always known.
Now he didn’t have a damn clue, sitting here in a cab, after some bizarre one-night stand with a goat farmer. With tattoos.
He couldn’t decide what next step to take. The only thing his mind seemed capable of doing was recognizing the smell of lemon, on her skin, in her hair.
“That’ll be twenty-eight fifty,” Dan said through a mouth of chew.
The woman dug through her purse, some fringy thing that looked completely out of place against the jeans, ratty sweatshirt and frayed tennis shoes she was wearing.
“Tell you what, Meg, you just put together a nice soap basket for wifey and we’ll call it even.”
Meg. So she had a name. Meg. A simple name for an incredibly complicated moment in his life. And now that name would probably haunt him for years to come. Lovely.
“That’ll be fourteen twenty-five.” Dan’s eyes met Charlie’s in the rearview mirror as Dan brought a bottle to his lips and spat some chew into it.
Charlie’s stomach turned and he had to close his eyes to keep from losing it completely. Still, he dug into his pants, pulled out his wallet and handed over a credit card without meeting Dan’s accusing glance.
Dan wasn’t known in New Benton for his kindness. Small-town cab work wasn’t for the faint of heart. He’d had more than one brawl with a man over cab fare, to the extent that most knew not to mess with him. He might’ve been getting on in years, but he’d as soon bash you over the head with the Louisville Slugger he kept in the passenger seat as he would offer you a smile.
But he’d called this woman Meg and offered her a barter and a smile. Charlie was beginning to think she was a fictional creature. Like some kind of siren or goddess.
It’d make this premidlife crisis a hell of a lot easier if she was. But he was too practical to even allow himself the fantasy. She had a name. She was real.
Dan returned the credit card. No receipt offered, but Charlie started to push the door open anyway.
“Oh, and, Charlie?”
Charlie raised his eyebrows at Dan’s pleasant tone. “Yeah?”
“Added tip for ya.”
Tip probably meant doubled the fare. Charlie couldn’t bring himself to care, so he nodded. He’d consider this penance. He closed the door of the taxi behind him, breathing through the dizziness and blinking against the bright sun. His car was parked in the corner lot, the Shack looking particularly worse for the wear in the daylight.
The only other car in the lot was an old truck. No, not just old. Antique. But it was more recently painted a bright blue, the words Hope Springs Farm painted in red, with an illustration of a goat.
Seriously. Alternative dimension he’d fallen into.
It wasn’t one he wanted to face. He didn’t want to look at Meg, or offer a lame goodbye or lamer apology. He wished he’d never heard her name. He only wanted to go back to his downtown apartment and find normal again.
But as mixed-up as his world was, if he had anything left in this new version of his life, it’d at least be that he was a decent person.
He was a decent person, right? Maybe he’d been a little ruthless at times, a little hard, a little unbending, but...
“Well, it was certainly an interesting turn of events,” she said.
When he looked up, she was already inching toward her truck, forcing her mouth into some approximation of an awkward smile.
“That it was,” he replied, following her lead and taking a few backward steps toward his car.
“And, um, good luck with the job thing. I’m sure you’ll land on your feet.”
“Thanks. And I’m sorry for your loss.” Odd to find it wasn’t just a rote thing to say; he meant it. She was nice enough, and loss was always hard.
“Thanks,” she replied, her voice tinged with surprise. But then she lifted her hand in a little wave and turned away from him.
He found himself watching her. The confident way she walked to her truck, the way the tasseled, beaded colorful purse shimmied and glinted in the sun. She was a conglomeration of things that didn’t make sense.
He turned to his car but then just stared at it. Funny, it didn’t seem to make much sense either. It fit the man he’d thought he was, but wasn’t anymore.
Charles Andrew Wainwright. Oldest child. Successful businessman. Always in control, always responsible and always serious.
That felt like another person. A stranger. But he didn’t know what to do with that feeling when it was who he was, who he’d always been.
So all he could do was go home and hope the feeling would pass.
* * *
MEG WORKED HERSELF to the bone. She ignored her aching muscles, her pounding headache and her rumbling stomach and worked with the soap molds until she’d lost the light.
She’d made up more than a little basket for Dan’s wife. Part embarrassment, part because Meg was one of the few people who knew Dan’s wife was going through chemo right now.
Which oddly made Meg wonder about Charlie. Charlie. So odd to hear a name after the intimacies they’d shared if not remembered.
He didn’t look like a Charlie. Of course, he didn’t look like a Charles or Chuck either. She wasn’t sure what he looked like; she only knew that watching Dan scold him in a roundabout way had made her even more curious about him.
A man who so obviously belonged in her father’s world but had been born into this one. She didn’t know people like that. Her family, the people she’d grown up with, they’d all been the same kind. They hadn’t all been bad people, though she’d desperately held on to that belief as a teenager. It just had been a world she couldn’t get comfortable in.
Cleaning up her workroom, she frowned. Was it the world, or was it her? What was it about her family that kicked her back to a place where she’d lose herself? She wanted to blame them, and she couldn’t count them blameless, but she was too old to ignore her own role in this.
Grief and pain were hard, but that was life. She could build this goat farm and build her business, and grief and pain would still touch her. But if she allowed it to fell her every time...well, things could quite easily get worse than a bender and a beyond embarrassing one-night stand.
She couldn’t let things like loss do this to her, or she’d lose so much more. What was the point, really, when she could mourn Grandma in her own way? She didn’t need the Carmichaels’ permission for grief.
She didn’t need anyone’s permission to feel or act. It was easy to forget that when Mom was so intent on crushing her like a distasteful bug. Mom would never understand that Meg was made from a different mold; she’d always hold Meg at fault for her inability to shape herself into what a proper Carmichael was supposed to look like.
Meg was too old to let that knock her down, too far into recovery, into rebuilding her life. She had to be better than this, and she would be.
Workroom clean, she grabbed the fancy basket of soaps she’d made up for Elsie and decided not to wait to deliver it. The world was dusky, but it was early yet.
She forced herself to grab an apple so she’d at least have something in her stomach and ate it as she drove into town. Though she was embarrassed by the reason for needing to pay off Dan in soaps, she was glad for something to do tonight that would hopefully keep her mind off what she’d done last night.
When Meg arrived, Dan’s cab was in the drive and he opened the front door with his version of a smile. He ushered her in, and Elsie eased off the couch, where she’d been watching TV, to ooh and aah over the soap basket.
Meg realized she needed to do more of this. Not just sell, but give. Not just build, but enjoy the moments of joy and simple pleasures.
Elsie fussed over her, though she was bone thin and gray. Meg did her best to allow some of the fussing, and curb some of it. She tried not to think too hard about what it might have been like to have parents like this.
“Now, Elsie, you’re worn to the bone.”
Elsie huffed out an irritated breath. “Get a little cancer and this tough rock of a man turns into a fawning worrywart.”
“It’s important to keep your strength up, though. I so enjoyed visiting with you, Elsie.” Meg patted her knobby hand, knowing Elsie looked and probably felt much older than she actually was.
Life was oddly harder here. None of the comforts of what Meg had grown up with. None of the luxuries. Dan and Elsie looked like they could be her grandmother’s age, but she was pretty sure they were only in their early sixties.
“I’ll walk you out, Meg,” Dan offered as his cell phone bleeped. “You get in bed, Elsie, so I can take this fare, or you’re going to be in big trouble.”
Elsie muttered something that sounded like a creative string of curses, but she took her basket and eased her way into the dark hallway.
“She seems to be in good spirits,” Meg offered as she walked outside their seen-better-days tiny postage stamp of a house.
“That’s my Elsie.”
Meg smiled. Dan was a crusty old codger, but the love for his wife always shone through and that warmed Meg’s heart.
“You know much about Charlie Wainwright?” Dan asked, his segue less than smooth.
Meg tried not to blush, but she couldn’t manage it. Though she’d been in far more embarrassing situations and faced them with don’t-give-a-crap aplomb, something about Dan and Elsie and the way they’d taken her under their old, withered wings in this tight-knit community made this humiliation burn through her.
“He’s slick, but he’s not a bad kid.”
Kid. Meg wanted to laugh. They were adults and people still called them kids.
“I like the Wainwrights,” he continued. “Good family.”
“Okay.”
He shifted, then spat. “But if he ever gives you any trouble, if anybody does, just know, Elsie and me, we got your back. Got it?”
Meg didn’t know why it hit her so hard. Maybe it was because he was mostly a stranger, an odd little friendship built because he thought his wife might like her soaps. “You’ve always been so nice to me,” she managed, her voice more than a little raw.
Dan shrugged, looking out into the starry evening. “You know Cornley House?”
Meg stilled. It wasn’t the recovery center she’d been in, but a friend of hers had ended up there. Was she that transparent? After all these years?
Still, what did it matter if Dan knew? If everyone knew. It was part of her, and she was healing. “Yes.”
“Our daughter is there now.” He nodded at Meg’s shoulder where a bright orange-and-yellow sun poured light onto the blue sky and white clouds of her forearm. “She’s got that same sun thing, but on her back, and her hair used to be just your color.” He shrugged and spat again. “You remind Elsie of her. But last time she was home she trashed the place, took all the cash we had on hand.” He let out a breath. “Elsie’s had a rough life. I think it’s good for her to see you and think Hannah’s got a chance. She needs some hope.”
Meg swallowed. So much pain and grief in the world. And people like her who did it to themselves, and their families—at least the people in them who cared. No, she wasn’t going to fall back into that. “I’d like to come visit once a week. Bring some soap, maybe some food. What d
ay would be good?”
Maybe she couldn’t make up for anything she’d done, and she couldn’t completely eradicate the feeling she was worthless, but she could put some good out into the world. She’d start here.
CHAPTER SIX
“YOU BETTER GET IT together before Mom calls a therapist.”
Charlie tried to grin and bear it, but it was hard. His acting skills were failing him. Hell, what wasn’t?
He’d been unemployed for a month. He’d grown a beard. He felt like a ghost of himself, and his family was tiptoeing around him like he had some kind of communicable disease.
But he didn’t know what to do. Who to be. He’d finished out his last two weeks at Lordon, ever the dutiful employee working to ease the transition for all those who got to keep their jobs.
He’d been offered interviews by a few headhunters. There were companies interested in his experience in sales, in his years as management.
He couldn’t muster up the energy to make the calls. A decade ago he would have jumped at the chance to move to Chicago, California, Denver. But sitting in the middle of his niece’s second birthday party, he thought relocating was the last thing he wanted to do.
The whole love of the farm thing might be Dell’s shtick, and Charlie might have moved downtown to get out of the small-town atmosphere of New Benton, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love his family. He wanted his mother close enough to make him dinner and tell him he’d land on his feet. He wanted to watch his niece grow up. He wanted to be here.
Lainey was running around dressed up like a princess. His baby sister was talking intently with Mia’s baby sister. Except Kenzie and Anna weren’t babies anymore. Both had graduated from college, Kenzie was going on to get her master’s and Anna was taking over her father’s dairy farm operation. Mia and Cara were fussing over a table full of cupcakes while Dad, Cara’s husband, Wes, and Mia’s dad were standing around the grill. Dogs ran all around the spacious green yard, yipping happily.
