All I Want (A Farmers' Market Story)

by Helm, Nicole

  “He left, but he was here?”

  Meg blinked, tried to find a blasé calm. “Yes.”

  “And he was cold to you in particular?”

  Meg sighed. “Yes.” Cold, total 100 percent asshole, and the worst part was some little part of her wanted to go after him, wanted to hold him, comfort him through whatever it was that had shaken him up so badly. But he didn’t want that.

  “It was our fault. I hope you know that. We...well, we asked for his help with our businesses because he was so lost with losing his job and everything. He was acting so strange, and I was worried about him, so I forced them all into—”

  “Oh, don’t martyr yourself over him,” Cara interrupted her sister. “They were pity jobs. But I’m the idiot who said that to his face, being all surprised he’d actually done a lot to help me this past month.”

  “His pride was hurt,” Meg murmured, understanding a little too clearly where all his talk of reality had come from. Reason. “Oh, that idiot.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Cara murmured, earning herself another little jab from Mia.

  “The point is, we need to find him and talk to him,” Mia said. “Apologize. Explain—”

  “It won’t work,” Meg said, not even sure why she was so certain, only that she could feel it. His pride was hurt, but more than that she thought...

  She thought of all the times she’d thought she was clean for good only to fall off the wagon. Because something bad had happened, because someone had said something that hurt her.

  Maybe Charlie wasn’t the same as her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that, well, he was actually a lot like her—if a little more straight and narrow when he imploded. He thought he’d had it all the past few months, finally found himself and his joy, and then they’d told him they’d done it out of pity.

  It shouldn’t matter, but Meg figured Charlie’s pride and his desire to fit in with his family would make that a pretty shocking blow.

  Mia looked so stricken, so Meg mustered a reassuring smile. “Apologies won’t work because he doesn’t want to hear them, you know? He’s hurt, I would guess. And, unfortunately, I think that means he shut it all down. Apologies and explanations won’t fix this lame epiphany he thinks he had.”

  “Then what can we do?” Mia asked, her eyes looking suspiciously bright and full.

  “I think we wait.”

  “Wait? For what?”

  That was a good question. “I think we let him have his little tantrum, then see what decisions he’s ready to make once he’s done stamping his foot.”

  Mia smiled, though her eyes remained a little watery. “Well, I think you’re a few steps ahead on this whole motherhood thing.”

  Meg reached and offered Mia a reassuring if slightly awkward pat on the shoulder.

  “You seem better,” Cara said. “Your hormones must have settled down.”

  That. Maybe partly. Or maybe it was as simple as facing the things she’d been so sure would fell her, and realizing they didn’t have that kind of power.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHARLIE FELT LIKE...Charlie again. He was wearing a suit. His laptop bag was arranged carefully at his feet, copies of his résumé enclosed should they be necessary. This was what he knew. Business. Even if he was in Chicago. Even if he checked his phone every five seconds to see if Meg had texted or called.

  It didn’t matter, because this was the man he knew he could be. The only man he was, really. He had no doubt at all that he would walk into that office and charm the interviewer. That he would make his case, talk of his accomplishments, and it would be impressive.

  So, why do you feel so damn depressed?

  It was the uncertainty. Realizing he’d wasted the past few months on things that weren’t ever going to be permanent or give him what he needed. Give his child what he or she would need.

  He or she. Anytime he thought that—the inevitability of having a boy or a girl, an actual child, a baby who would grow up before his eyes like Lainey had done—he missed Meg more than he’d ever missed his job, his suits, his old life.

  He missed her with a sharp pain and an ache that stuck there, in his chest, just...constant. But he wasn’t apologizing—especially on his knees—considering that even though he was being a dick, he was being a smart one.

  “Mr. Wainwright? Mr. Oakson will see you now.”

  Charlie stood and smiled, then followed the receptionist into Mr. Oakson’s office. It was an overused thought in his head, but it really was like coming home. To sit and greet and smile and charm. To talk business and sales strategies. He could tell the very moment Mr. Oakson decided to hire him. There was a little smile, just like that little smile customers got before they agreed to your terms.

  “We have a few more candidates to interview, and then we’ll decide if we need to conduct second interviews,” the man said, standing and shaking Charlie’s hand. “But you’ve got an impressive résumé and an impressive character, Charlie. I think any second interview might be a formality at this point.”

  Charlie shook the man’s hand. Smiled. “Thank you, sir. I look forward to hearing from you.” That had to be what he felt. Excited. Or happy and secure. It didn’t really matter.

  This was good. This was where he belonged. The issue of a move would be a challenge, but maybe somewhere new would... Maybe it would be good for both of them. To get away from New Benton and the fictional life they’d been leading for a month.

  They could pick out a house together. Research schools for Seedling. Be away from her parents, but not so terribly far from his that they’d struggle to visit or vice versa. This was the right choice.

  He told himself that, over and over, on the ride to the airport. As he waited for his flight to board. Everything he’d done the past few days weren’t just the right choices, but the only choices. He pulled the ultrasound picture out of his wallet and stared down at it.

  He was doing what was right. For this. He’d been ridiculous to think one curveball in his life should make him jump on one after the other. He should have gone with that first instinct. Control. Manage. Get married and get organized before the baby was born. Not get lost in things like belonging and love.

  He needed a real job, a real life. Even if he was irritated with Meg and she was furious with him, they did love each other. They would build a life together. A good life.

  Are you so certain this is love?

  That thought hit him right in the center of his chest, strong enough to feel like a physical blow. Almost simultaneously with his phone going off.

  He didn’t recognize the number, but it was a St. Louis area code and he answered it immediately, before worry and fear and the possibility of bad news could take root in his mind.

  “Hello.”

  “Charlie. Jeffrey Carmichael.”

  Charlie tensed. He might have told Meg her father wasn’t evil, and he might still have some thinking to do about how his connections might help their child, but that didn’t mean he particularly liked Jeffrey Carmichael, and he most certainly didn’t trust him. Even a little bit.

  “Hello.”

  “I was hoping you might have some time this weekend to sit down and have a little chat.”

  “Without Meg, I’m assuming.” It didn’t come out quite as condescending in his head. No, he sounded downright agreeable. Maybe an aftereffect of the interview and saying everything he knew the interviewer wanted to hear.

  “I think that’d be best, though if you’d want her there, that’d be fine. Just fine. But this is about business. Carmichael Grocery business.”

  Charlie stared down at the picture in his hand. It seemed somehow less real than it had that day, than it had the other morning when he kissed Meg’s stomach and felt a soaring kind of...

  Insanity. That stupid
feeling was insanity.

  “All right. I’m actually going to be near the airport around six.” It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to meet with Jeffrey. After all, the man had something up his sleeve. Something he was trying to do, and there was no way he’d gotten to where he was in business by ignoring what other people seemed to need.

  So Charlie was protecting Meg, all in all, by agreeing to meet with her father. Figuring out just what the Carmichaels were after with their sudden attention on him and Meg and the baby.

  “Let’s meet for dinner.”

  If it was a dinner with the devil, well, he knew enough to guard himself against it.

  * * *

  “IT’S MY TURN to wait on you, girly girl,” Elsie said, clucking her tongue as she fussed around Meg in the kitchen of her cabin.

  “I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”

  “And I’m cancer free, not a sick old woman. Guess we’re even.”

  Meg laughed. Elsie had a way of putting things that brooked absolutely no argument, and though Meg’s nausea seemed to have faded mostly to the wayside the past few days, she was finding herself more and more exhausted.

  It was nice to sit at the kitchen table and be waited on. Plus, she was starving. Pretty much all the time. Elsie’s dinner spread was fancier than their usual to-go from Moonrise. She’d shown up with a bag full of fresh fruit, brownies from a new bakery and the ingredients to make a stir-fry, which she was currently working on at Meg’s stove.

  It smelled amazing, and only the fact that Meg was avoiding caffeine and couldn’t have an ice-cold soda with it took away the pleasure.

  Liar.

  Okay, yes, she’d take Charlie in a heartbeat over a soda, but she’d tell him that precisely never.

  “So, do we tiptoe around the fact that your man isn’t here, or do you tell me what’s going on?”

  Elsie set a plate heaped with food in front of her, along with a large glass of ice water. It felt like love, and Meg wanted to dwell in that mushy feeling forever.

  “I’m not sure ‘your man’ is particularly accurate,” she said with a sigh, immediately shoving a bite of food into her mouth—both because she was starving and because she didn’t want to say any more than that. She wanted to enjoy Elsie’s surprise visit.

  “So you did have a fight?”

  Meg thought about that. It had been a fight. A nasty one at that, and she still didn’t understand it. Even with the insight into it after Cara and Mia’s visit...she didn’t understand why he wouldn’t tell her. Why was he so afraid to explain his feelings had been hurt?

  “I’m not sure men are worth the trouble, Elsie.”

  Elsie snorted out a laugh. “You say that to me again when you haven’t gotten any for a few months.”

  Meg let out a shocked little squeak. “Elsie!”

  “I’m just saying, chemo knocks it out of you. Then you get it back and—”

  “Oh, I love you and Dan, I do, but I want to hear zero about your sex life.”

  Elsie laughed, something close to a cackle, tickled pink with herself. Meg smiled, happy to have made this friend, to have this woman who cared and laughed, and she couldn’t wait to tell Charlie...

  Oh, damn him.

  “Go on now. Tell me what’s what.” Elsie took the seat across from her, where Charlie had sat most mornings for the past month, smiling at her over his coffee, pretending he wasn’t looking forward to milking the goats when she’d heard him starting to talk to them last week.

  Not like she did, the long, rambling conversations that made her feel less alone when she was feeling sad and isolated, but a few encouraging words, a few directions.

  He didn’t love the goats the way she did, but she’d started to entertain the fantasy he might learn to. Much like she’d entertained the fantasy he might love her always, as easily and happily as that month.

  “I don’t really know. He’s...” Meg blew out a breath. He was like a hangnail. It pretty much always hurt when he wasn’t there. Pretty much always hurt that he hadn’t called or texted. It was this constant, nagging pain that she knew he was in Chicago interviewing for a job that would take him away from her.

  Because she loved him. Even this jerk-off version of Charlie, she loved. But she wouldn’t leave her life for him—not for his “reality” or “reason” or whatever else. Maybe, if it was for something important. If she hadn’t seen firsthand the difference between businessman Charlie and the Charlie of the past month.

  “Something happened that hurt him, I think. With his family. So he’s got it in his head he has to go back into business and take a job in Chicago and I’m just supposed to hop on that and go with him.”

  “And leave your goats?”

  “Thank you!” Meg shoveled another few bites of food into her mouth. See? Elsie saw it. How important this place was to her. How leaving wasn’t an option—easy or otherwise, best or otherwise.

  “So. What happened?”

  “I told him I wouldn’t move, and I told him he needed to tell me what on earth had gotten into him, and then...” Meg took a deep breath, then let it out. Her hunger left her in an instant. Suddenly she was too full. Too everything. “He looked me in the eye and told me my father wasn’t evil—which I get. I do. He isn’t evil, but Charlie stood there lecturing me. Wondering if a failure would send me running back to drugs. Just like...”

  Just like her parents always had. She was the foolish little girl. He was the smart, responsible adult.

  Meg closed her eyes against the wave of pain. She’d been ignoring this. Trying to drive it deep beneath being angry with him, but the fact of the matter was...yeah, it hurt.

  Elsie reached across the table and rested her hand on Meg’s. “He lashed out, then?”

  Meg huffed out a breath. “Oh yes. At first he was so calm and flat and reasonable, but he lost it when I argued with him. I told him to leave. And not to come back unless it was on his knees.” The memory of that bolstered her. She’d been strong. She’d stood her ground.

  Elsie patted her hand. “Good on you.”

  “Yes, good on me.”

  “But you’re still miserable.”

  She rubbed her hand against that frustrating ache in her chest. “I love the bastard. I hate that he’s hurt. I hate that he hurt me. I hate...all of it.”

  “Well, if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”

  “But he hasn’t apologized. Or called. He hasn’t done anything.” She glanced at the clock. “All I can think is he’s in Chicago or he’s already on his way home and he thinks he’s right. And I can’t do anything except wait.” Or did she give up? She didn’t know.

  Elsie was quiet for a long while, and the words give up echoed in Meg’s head. Was that the only option? Because she wasn’t going to pine after him. No way. Her pining days for love were over. Her parents didn’t love her. She was done wanting them to. Elsie loved her. And even if he was being a stubborn pain in the ass, Charlie loved her too.

  But was love enough?

  “I hate to always bring Hannah up, I do,” Elsie began carefully. “It’s just...when you’ve failed such an important relationship, it’s a constant. You play it over in your mind, again and again, trying to make sense of it. Find a cause, a blame, a reason. Sometimes there isn’t one, and sometimes the reasons you come up with are silly, but let me tell you this. I let her go. She stormed out and I didn’t go after her. I didn’t fight for her. I clapped my hands together and decided she had to figure it out on her own.”

  “But we do. You know.” Meg turned her hand so it grasped Elsie’s, wanting desperately to give the woman some comfort. The stories of her estranged daughter always pulled at Meg’s heart. “When you’re addicted, well and truly, no one can swoop in and fix you. Not a loving family member, not the right person. The addicti
on is in your head and your heart—and no one can erase that. Ever. My grandmother stood by me through three setbacks. No matter how much she believed and gave—it didn’t make me clean.”

  “Would you have ever got clean if she hadn’t been there all those times?”

  Meg could only sit there and stare. She’d never thought of it quite like that, but it hit a soft spot. Because...hadn’t it been Grandma’s steadfast love even in the face of her failures that had well and truly broken the cycle? That she’d come to accept, even when she failed, she could do better?

  That was partly her. Partly accepting she was in control of her feelings and her life, but would her mind and soul have been able to get there without knowing she had someone supporting her?

  Maybe. It was possible. Recovery had been all about personal responsibility and accepting you were the master of your own actions. So it wasn’t magic. Grandma’s love hadn’t healed her.

  But it had given her the foundation on which to heal. Just like giving her this place. Meg had been the one to make it successful, to care for it day in and day out, but Grandma had been the foundation.

  “I thought fighting drove her away, and then I was convinced letting her be was what kept her away, and in the end you know what the real problem was?”

  “Life blows?”

  Elsie smiled indulgently. “Part that. And part that none of us...said it. That we loved each other, that we needed something from each other. I tried tough love and unconditional love and no love at all. I tried everything. Except the truth.”

  “I demanded he give me the truth, to be the man I know he is. He wouldn’t.”

  “So you’re giving up, then?”

  “He has to come to the realization on his own. He has to realize he has to tell me on his own. I can’t make him.”

  “No, but you can let him know you’re here. You can, I think if you really love him, you can give him a few times where you stand up in the face of him being a man—translation, idiot—and tell him you’re here. You’re here when he’s ready.”