The latest foamy wave against the sand all but grabbed her enthusiasm and carried it back out to sea. She tried not to show it.
“And you cherish that level of privacy?” Freesia asked.
“It’s isolating, at times. But necessary, as evidenced by the article last week.” He cut into his wagyu tenderloin then dredged it through the artful smear of au jus on the plate. “I’m sorry if the mention added to your burdens.”
“A few more people taking photos of my dresses. I’ve been through worse.”
“Tell me. I want to know everything about you. You’re an enigma.” He placed his utensils in a parallel line on the plate, patted his cloth napkin to his lips, and sat back as if he was finished or couldn’t bear one more bite without hearing her story.
No way she was doing the same. Reminders of her mother’s struggle didn’t make her particularly ravenous, but she had only ever had French commoner food. A meal crafted by an eighteen-star Michelin chef—this once—was not to be missed.
“Not much to tell.”
“You’re being modest.”
“I’m being real. I never got a higher education. I rarely know where my next dime is coming from or where it will take me. I gave up a dream job that would have fixed all that for a woman who can barely stand the sight of me. I’m incapable of getting close to people, men in particular. And I doubt everything, all the time.”
“Even this?”
“Especially this.”
“Fair enough.” He propped both elbows on the table and leaned close. “But what if I told you that this place weaves a spell that erases all doubts?”
His voice, like this place, this night, was confidential. A salty-warm shower inside her.
He’s smooth, Free. Best be mindful.
“I’d call you a liar,” she said.
“Name one thing that worries you.”
The Caribbean curled through her ears, tapped at her senses. “I can’t swim.”
He frowned slightly, almost imperceptibly. “You grew up at the beach but can’t swim?”
Freesia shrugged.
“All right. Then anytime you’re near the water, I’ll be there. What else?”
“I worry that I won’t get a call from home if something happens.”
Jay leaned back, gave a barely perceptible motion to a man standing back in the shadows. George, she’d heard Jay call him on the plane. Head of his security team. George came close, took in Jay’s words then left.
“I have a satellite phone with me at all times down here. It’s yours if you want to carry it. The driver who picked you up this morning gave Charlotte the number. Your mother’s care staff has it, as well.”
Freesia took her last succulent bite and washed it down with a trickle of chardonnay from the Côte de Beaune in France. No way she was subjecting her heaviest baggage—that she plotted a way out of relationships before they even started—to an island’s juju. “Must I continue my confessions?”
“That depends. Is the spell working?”
Something was working—likely the wicked-exclusive fermented grapes slowing the area of her brain that had been in hypersensitive caregiver mode since she set foot on that Georgia beach. There was an honesty game afoot and talk of magic. She found herself emboldened.
“I worry that this is all too fast. That you’ll want to share my bed.”
If seconds were gold, he spent a fortune studying her face, choosing his words.
“The villa has five bedrooms. Take your pick.”
A gentleman. One more doubt. She wasn’t sure she deserved a gentleman.
“Most of all,” she said. “I worry that I might let you.”
At this, color as vibrant as the beaded pillow beside him teased his face, cheekbones to jaw. The same patches she had inspired in the past.
“I’ve never met anyone so honest.”
“There is a down side. Stoic, Alex calls it. A polite term for unemotional.”
“Is that accurate?”
She shook her head. “The emotions exist. They’re just hidden.”
“I’ve been known to treasure hunt.”
His smile accelerated her pulse.
Over a shared sliver of almond cake with strawberries, he asked how the puzzle pieces fit, her and Charlotte and ‘the surly one’—his polite term for Alex. Apparently, the day he came into the shop with a spray of flowers, Alex told him he wasn’t welcome there, not if he was going to hurt people she cared about.
Freesia called him a liar, then took it back. He had never been anything but honest with her. Still, her thoughts on Alex scrambled to find new spaces that weren’t already jaded. She told him the story of the two white people in the photo on the truck’s dashboard and how she came to Devon. It was the least extraordinary story she could think of, given her exotic tales of the Mediterranean and India.
Jay delighted in her recent history. Said it was her best yet.
She studied him, his kind eyes that never wavered in their attention. How well they must serve him in business. But the trust had grown disproportionate, largely one-sided.
“I can’t shake the feeling that you’re getting the better end of our pact,” said Freesia. “What are you hiding?”
He chuckled. “Ask me anything.”
“Why is it so important to you to fill your brother’s shoes?”
His expression sobered. “Except that.”
The firmness in his voice sent a rogue chill down her spine. How was it that she felt exposed and vulnerable, yet he chose to close himself off over a nip of after-dinner coffee? She glanced out at the moon to get her bearings, remembered Stella Irene’s words, how Freesia’s birthparents had been the sun and the earth and, she, left out as the moon, of little consequence but diddling with the tides. Jay had the position, the inexplicable influence to hurt her on a scale as massive as his life, the way he hurt Payton, likely countless others. Freesia had to even the exposure.
“What went wrong with Peyton?”
“Intimacy.”
Her insides fluttered. Not the answer she expected.
“Not just physical—though, that was certainly part of it. She belonged to a church that adhered to chastity. She insisted we not have sex prior to marriage. I would have respected that had there not been massive gaps in her belief system in college. I don’t want the marriage my parents have—separate beds, separate lives, probably separate lovers. There was an emotional disconnect too. She thought nothing of being dishonest. Mostly small, incidental things to keep up appearances. I pay enough people in my life to lie to my face. I don’t need my life partner—”
She heard it before he rose. A steady clicking toward the pinnacle-side of the island slip, in darkness. Jay was out of his seat, in pursuit, before Freesia could make sense of the noise, his reaction. She stood beside a member of the waitstaff, both of them in stunned silence, staring off in the direction in which he’d gone. Moments later, he returned, winded, and it made sense: a photographer. In this sixty-acre spread, where one could spend a week without seeing another guest, doubt had all but ambushed her—the second tumble of faith in as many minutes.
She shouldn’t have come.
Freesia walked away, disoriented, in the vague direction of their villa. Jay called after her, repeatedly. She reached the powder-sugar sand before he took her arm.
“I’m sorry. George takes care of that, but I’d sent him to get the phone.”
“So this is my fault?” She shifted out of his grasp and continued up the beach.
“No…no,” he protested, as if she’d slung a verbal arrow that had veered way off and crashed into the sea. “It’s no one’s fault. It happens. But we don’t let it change what we do.”
She was not part of his we. In fact, she had never felt more removed from his kind of we.
“I shouldn’t be here, Jay.”
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I’ll take you home. But you have to stop running. Talk to me.”
The pro
mise of reversing her poor decision slowed her. That he had given her all the power stopped her short. She turned.
“My entire childhood, when I needed my mother, really needed her, she always put a man first. And now, when she most needs me, I’m doing the same.” A swell of disgust rose up inside, consumed her. She stared at the moon, but her movement, the sloshing of wine in her belly, her runaway blood pressure brought no bearing. “I went all over the world trying to prove to myself that I was better, different. Turns out, I’m neither.”
“Take a walk with me.” He extended his hand. “After, if you still want to leave, I’ll call the pilot. You can be back with your mom by midnight.”
Freesia was no longer sure of what she wanted. She didn’t want her mother in her life, but she was chasing better, different. She didn’t want to trade powder-sugar sand for the wide, rough blades of grass in a place that didn’t feel like home, and she no longer wanted to feel like a stranger, a secret, in every interaction she had. She was chasing better, different, but standing still.
In a life-altering, never-to-happen again way, she nodded.
One walk. Then she would go back where she belonged.
19
Alex
Alex shifted Daddy’s Ford into park and turned off the ignition.
“You still haven’t told me why we drove all this way,” said Charlotte. “I gave Freesia my word that I’d be there for Camille. Ease her mind.”
“Can’t get any more eased than a full-time nurse by her bedside.”
“Pilar is sweet, but she doesn’t know Camille. She likes three pillows and those fuzzy socks with the penguins on them because her feet get so cold and that lamp over by the door, nothing more.”
“Let Pilar do her job, Evangeline. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’d already lost your hard-fought spirit for adventure.”
The nickname seemed to do the trick. Put them firmly back on that balcony beneath a carousel blanket, when Alex had named all the constellations and Charlotte trusted her implicitly. She’d need to lean on that trust this night.
Alex pulled the photograph from her purse. Elias and Stella Irene and another man in a place familiar, but not. The inscription on the back read Jaime O’Kelley, proprietor, November 5, 1989. Jaime was tall with a full thatch of reddish-brown hair, a trim beard, and an arm around Stella Irene that looked more friendly than casual. She had leaned against him, her head tipped against his shoulder.
By the neon light of a bar named Sullivan’s Hollow outside of Mize, Mississippi, Alex handed Charlotte the snapshot.
“Jonah found this when he was renovating the shop. I brought it home, thinking I’d have it framed and hung, tell the history of the building. I forgot about it until all this stuff about the trailer.”
Charlotte took her time with it. When she looked up, her face was as neutral as if the three were strangers. In so many ways, they were.
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” said Charlotte. “Why are we here?”
“After Mama and Daddy bought Jaime out, he moved here, to open a pub. Nash and Jonah made the trip out here last week. Same guy still runs it, every night.”
“I’m not following, Alex. Connect the dots.”
“It’s possible Mama and that man were…” God, how could she put this in Charlotte-speak? “…on more familiar terms.”
“Are you saying you saw this man’s penis?”
The truck cab was far too small for her voice. For someone who made such a big deal about cursing, she certainly owned that clinical term. She was wound up, and she was barely getting started.
“You told me Clement Grant all but admitted to the affair.”
“I just said ‘it’s him.’ He sweat a lot, but he never confessed anything. He’s a lawyer, what do you expect?”
“And now you’re saying you were wrong? Or that…Lord in heaven…there were more? That Mama was…easy?”
She was close to hyperventilating. Absent a paper sack, Alex grabbed the first available thing she could think of—a long canister for blueprints Jonah had left behind. Alex opened the canister and held it up to Charlotte’s nose.
Charlotte pulled a face. “Smells like a fart.”
Alex swapped the canister for her purse-slash-diaper bag.
Charlotte closed her eyes and breathed. “Lavender. Nice.”
She waited for Charlotte to recover, ever the dramatic one. Alex was usually the one who absorbed the stink end of life’s twists.
“I’m saying we should look at all possibilities,” said Alex. “Look at the way that man has his arm around Mama’s waist. And all the room between Mama and Daddy. It’s like Daddy’s not even a thought in her mind. And we know they opened the bridal shop as a second chance to put right what went wrong. Maybe this man is what went wrong.”
“I don’t know, Alex. I don’t think I can go in. What do we say?”
“Leave it to me.”
Charlotte wielded her index finger, all momma-like. “Don’t be rude. You picked up far too much of that in Boston all those years you were gone.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “I’ll be sweet as pie.”
Her sister’s frown was slow to fade. “So long as you didn’t say tart.”
“Or jelly roll.”
“Or éclair.” Charlotte flashed an impish smile.
“Charlotte Evangeline March, I do believe you have grown into a proper foul-minded Southern lady.” Alex fanned her eyes and wiped away phantom tears. “I’m so proud.”
Charlotte gave Alex’s shoulder a playful shove.
Alex snickered. It felt nice, their comradery of late. Even though they were chasing unpleasant things, they chased them together. The bridal shop had been a joint effort, but they’d never agreed on much of anything about the business. But the truth about the past belonged to them both, equally. Alex was hard-pressed to remember a time when she’d felt as close to Charlotte. If she was honest, the chasm between them had nothing to do with Freesia. Charlotte and Alex had drifted apart long before that January day in Clement Grant’s office, back when Alex believed everything—and everyone—in Devon was undesirable.
“I’m not sure I want the truth anymore,” Charlotte confessed.
“The only way out of hurt is through it.” Alex should know. She had skirted pain for the entirety of her marriage. Dissolving her life with Michael, moving forward with his baby, was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “We can’t wonder for the rest of our lives.”
Alex took Charlotte’s hand and squeezed.
“I’m not sleeping on the truck bed if we get drunk,” said Charlotte.
Alex’s smile surfaced, warm and pleasant, despite the circumstances. “Come on.”
Sullivan’s Hollow was a famed stretch of Smith county where the Irish had migrated from back east—Alabama or the Carolinas—in the 1800s and sprouted roots from a family tree full of mischief. Pappy Tom spread his seed all over the county via two wives—one of them a native American named Polly, another with a sour disposition who hung from her frame like a wet rag from a shrunken head. Wild Bill was a particularly ribald one of the bunch, prone to copious drinking and fighting. Rumor was that Wild Bill’s kin still haunted the stretch of land on which Jaime O’Kelley’s bar now sat—as evidenced by the prolific photographs of paranormal investigators. Alex and Charlotte availed themselves of as much embellished history as they could stomach while they waited for patrons to clear the bar, leaving a much-aged Jaime with nothing but bar-wiping and chatting to pass time.
Charlotte drank midwadi, an orange-flavored cordial, to ensure safe passage home. Alex went for a gin and tonic. Daddy would have liked the pub, ordered a Bushmills on the rocks, but he hadn’t joined them—at least not that Alex noticed.
“We’re from Devon,” said Charlotte.
“SecondcustomersI’vehadfromthereinasmanyweeks.” Jaime’s Irish lilt ran words together at a delightful pace. “Used to own a place down there.”
“What made you leave
?” asked Alex.
He made tedious work of wiping a wet ring dry. Nearly buffed the mahogany to the grain. His beard was gone, replaced by brown and gray whiskers clinging to his top lip like a life preserver of youth. “Time to move on, I suppose.”
Alex and Charlotte shared a look. Alex placed the photograph on the bar and pushed it toward Jaime.
“We’re not here by accident, Mr. O’Kelley. The couple who bought your place? They were our parents.”
Jaime picked up the photo, decided his arm wasn’t long enough to bring the subject into focus, then pulled peeper glasses from his bar apron. He perched them at his nose’s bulbous tip, ripened pink, suggesting a lifetime of drink.
“Shoot yeah, I remember. Stella Irene.” A gurgling noise cluttered his throat, a hmm crossed with a gah. “And your pop had an odd name...what was it?”
“Elias.”
“That’s right. E-li-as.”
Maybe it was the whiny Bob Dylan song playing or the neck-beard patron down the way who made the hairs stand on the back of her neck. Or maybe it was the way Jaime enunciated all three syllables of their father’s name like it was a communicable disease. Alex’s patience tapped dry.
“Did you have an affair with our mother?”
Charlotte squirmed.
Jaime barked out a laugh like he’d knocked back a pint before they arrived. This time, the sound effect he made was closer to a throat clear. “That woman only had eyes for yer pop. Madly, I’d say.”
“Then why does she look so friendly with you in this picture?”
“I had just lost me Mary. Got to where I couldn’t step out of bed most days. Needed a fresh start. Yer mom was nothing but a lady, making it her mission to let me know that friends were the best way through grief. She spent a great deal of time there, sorting the wedding artifacts Mary had stored on the second floor.”
“So there was nothing…” Charlotte hesitated.
“Not so much as a wink.”
“Any other men you can recall who showed her attention?”
The Family Wish (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 3) Page 14
