by Marci Bolden
She jerked her hand free and waved him off. “Go to the bar, John. Get drunk. But be aware that if I have to choose between paying the mortgage and bailing your worthless ass out of jail for drinking and driving, I won’t miss a mortgage payment. Ever.”
As she marched off, he climbed into his car and the door creaked as he slammed it. His car engine clicked and whined as it came to life moments before he peeled out of the driveway, but she didn’t look back. To hell with him. Useless bastard. She would get more done without him there anyway. Whenever he was around her parents, she spent all her time trying to keep everyone from starting a war. She didn’t have the energy to play peacekeeper at the moment.
At the front door, Caroline forced a fake smile, as if nothing was wrong. Her mom was still holding Katie, patting her little back and bouncing her to keep her content. When her mother faced her, Caroline could see that Katie was the only one content.
The scowl on Judith’s face was one of the many reasons John couldn’t stand to be around her parents. Caroline couldn’t really blame him for not wanting to be subjected to such blatant disapproval. She had been looked at that way her entire life, but he’d grown up seeing Frannie’s big smile. He’d never had to develop thick skin the way Caroline had. She could understand why her mother’s silent judgement ate away at him. After two years together, the calm and confident man who wanted to win them over was gone, and she couldn’t blame him for that.
But to hell with him for leaving to get drunk in the middle of the afternoon on their first day in their new home.
He could burn for all she cared. So could her parents. She was so sick of walking this high wire. Nothing she did was good enough for them. Or for John. Trying to please them all was exhausting. Trying to be the bigger person all the time was exhausting.
She was exhausted. Emotionally tapped out. She had nothing left to give them. She had a baby now, and everything she had left was going to go to her daughter. The one person who didn’t look at her like she was a huge mistake.
Why couldn’t they…
Why couldn’t any of them…
Caroline swallowed hard, trying to force the surge of emotion down. If she had learned anything in this life, it was that showing her parents the slightest bit of emotion would cause more problems. Putting on her best stone face, she looked around the room. “Where’s Dad?”
“Putting the crib together. As you asked him to.”
Her mother’s pointed words hit their mark, but Caroline didn’t react. She wouldn’t react. Doing so would give her mother a sense of twisted pleasure Caroline had vowed to never give her again.
“I’ll see if he needs a hand.” She knew he wouldn’t accept her offer, but she stopped in the doorway of the small bedroom she’d designated as Katie’s. “Need help?”
“No,” he said without looking up from the parts he was sorting.
She didn’t offer again. She turned away and went into the master bedroom, closing the door behind her. And then she went into the bathroom, closed that door, and let her tears flow.
The following afternoon, Carol carried three glasses of lemonade into the dining room to where her mom and aunt sat staring at puzzle pieces. The image of a rundown barn in an overgrown field was starting to come together. There were still a few hundred pieces to place, but Carol thought by the next afternoon, her aunt would have to find a new activity to distract them…unless they agreed to the idea Carol was about to spring on them.
“Mary texted me while I was in the kitchen,” she announced.
Ellen leaned back, leaving plenty of room for Carol to ease the glasses onto the table.
“Tobias’s family is on board for having the ceremony at the end of September.” Carol stood upright and looked at her mom. “What about you? Have you put anymore thought into attending?”
She didn’t realize how much she’d expected her mom to reject the invitation until her mom nodded, and Carol nearly laughed with surprise. “Really? You’ll go?”
“You’re right,” Judith said. “I should be there for Katie.”
“And for you,” Ellen was quick to add.
Carol glanced at her aunt, who was obviously, albeit subtly, urging Judith to say more.
“And for you,” Judith conceded. She took Carol’s hand and squeezed. “This will be difficult for you, and I should be there to help you through it.”
Though she hadn’t expected her mom to agree, now that she had, Carol felt a surge of sentiment rush through her. She didn’t hug her mom often, but she couldn’t stop herself from bending down and embracing her. “Thank you, Mom,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
Taking her seat, Carol clasped her hands together. Now that her mom had agreed to join her in Ohio, she had to discuss how they were getting there. This was going to be the hard part.
“You’re about to push your luck, aren’t you?” Judith asked flatly.
Another smile pulled at Carol’s lips. “I have a list of places I plan to stop between here and Dayton. If you would like to come with me, both of you,” she said, including Ellen, “I have room in the RV. We have plenty of time to make it to Ohio for the ceremony.”
Judith stared. Silently.
Carol fought the urge to laugh at the apathy on her mother’s face. “Have you ever been to Biltmore Estate?”
“Oh,” Ellen said excitedly, “we’ve talked about visiting there.”
“What about Washington D.C.?” Carol asked. “Katie loved looking at pictures of all the monuments.”
“Oh, that would be fun,” Ellen said. “Judith, wouldn’t that be lovely? We could finally take a nice vacation.”
“That’s not a vacation,” Judith said flatly.
Carol’s hope started to abate. “But it could be, Mom, if you let it. We can stop other places, too. We can visit museums or historical spots. We have time. We don’t have to rush. We can see things and enjoy the trip.” Her excitement dimmed when her mother’s interest didn’t pique. “If you’d rather, I can buy you and Ellen plane tickets. I’ll meet you at the airport and take you to a nice hotel. It’s okay if that’s what you want, but I’m going to drive so I can make some stops along the way.”
Judith gazed into her glass, swirled the lemonade until the ice clinked on the sides, and then frowned. “What does one pack for living on the road like a nomad?”
Ellen gasped, and Carol nearly jumped to her feet. Two wins in one day? She’d have to remember this as the day Hell had frozen over.
“Comfortable clothes,” Carol said around her smile. “And books.”
Judith sat back and shook her head. “You’re exactly like your aunt, you know that?”
Carol chuckled, more than happy with the comparison. “I have a map of all the RV parks. Let’s take a look so we can start planning our trip.” She winked at her aunt as she pushed herself up.
Carol was digging through her bag, searching for the journal that held her notes and the map she’d grabbed from her RV the day before, when a familiar sense of dread kicked her in the stomach.
How many times had she been excited like this, just to have her mother ruin everything with her sour attitude? She’d committed them to several weeks of living in extremely close quarters. There was no way this could end other than in disaster. All the strides she’d made toward having a good relationship with her mom would be obliterated by the time this little trip Carol had suggested came to an end.
Sitting on her bed, Carol closed her eyes and took herself to Tobias’s garden.
Part of getting out of this rut she’d been in all her life was recognizing that she was as guilty of ruining things as her mother. Focusing on the flowers in her memory, she acknowledged there would be stress over the next few weeks. She accepted short tempers and irritability were inevitable. Then she vowed to do her best to diffuse the situations rather than play into them.
This was an opportunity she never thought she’d have. She and her mother could take this time to heal or to further destroy ea
ch other. Carol wanted to heal, and she had come to believe her mother did as well.
Yes, there would be bumps along the road—literally and figuratively—but they could overcome them. They had to overcome them. Carol refused to accept the alternative.
Pulling her journal from her bag, she headed back to the living room, allowing her excitement to return.
Eight
Rather than spending their first night in the RV, Carol had selected a hotel two hours south of Biltmore Estate. That had been a shorter drive than she would usually do, but to accommodate her passengers, she planned to keep their driving time under eight hours a day, allotting for several breaks.
There was no need to rush. She was well aware of the time elapsing until the ceremony in Dayton—and not only because she was eager to see what the construction crew had done with the house. Dread lingered in the back of her mind. Every day was one day closer to her being a year without Tobias. Every mile was one mile closer to being with his family to remember the anniversary together. Every heartbeat was one more she’d survived without him.
She tried to blame her restlessness the night before on the unfamiliar surroundings, but the reality was, the anniversary of Tobias’s death was getting closer and her grief was becoming harder to ignore. She’d had to force her attention to stay on her mom and aunt as they’d eaten breakfast and waited for a shuttle to take them to the estate—which Carol insisted was easier than trying to find parking for an RV.
“Will you look at that?” Ellen asked from the seat in front of Carol. “That’s amazing.”
Carol leaned forward enough to see over the seat of the little bus they were riding in. Built in the style of the French Renaissance, the house was a brilliant piece of architecture. Though Carol had picked this spot for Katie and John, she realized in that moment, this stop was really for Tobias. This was a place he had wanted to see, and he wouldn’t have been disappointed.
“Why would anyone need such a big house?” Judith asked, earning a frown from her sister.
Carol smiled. True, her mother could dampen the brightest of days, but Ellen’s interference made the negativity tolerable and sometimes amusing. Judith might make a fuss now, but Carol suspected once they walked inside, her mother would have to admit she was impressed by the estate.
And she was right. Even more than the extravagance of the architecture, Carol loved watching her mom and aunt taking in the mansion. For every, “Oh, Judith, look,” she heard, “For crying out loud, Ellen, do you see that?”
Judith hid her expressions better than Ellen. Still, Carol could see her mother’s excitement beneath the surface of her incredulity at the extravagance. Carol was so happy she’d brought them with her. She would have taken the tour, she would have been awed by the magnificence, but she wouldn’t have enjoyed this experience nearly as much if she’d come alone.
The self-guided tour might not have been as informative as the more expensive tours, but about an hour in, Carol was convinced they’d made the right decision to go at their own pace, rather than try to keep up with a group. Ellen and Judith stopped to examine things longer than a tour guide would likely allow, and a little over an hour in, she could see her companions were starting to run low on energy.
Near the gardens, they found a table to sit and rest at for a while. The next bit of their visit would be to find a place to sprinkle ashes. Carol hoped they could find an out-of-the-way area in the garden, but if they couldn’t, she’d seen plenty of spots in front of the home on the long lawn that was open to visitors.
As they were discussing the history of the house from a brochure Ellen had picked up, a breeze blew, and Carol’s heart rolled in her chest. Salvia. The distinct scent of Salvia dorisiana touched her senses. She hadn’t experienced that scent outside of her imagination since leaving her house in Houston. Since leaving the home she’d made with Tobias.
This was one of those unexpected gut-punch moments that took her by surprise and tore her apart inside. Putting her hand to her chest, she gasped as shock rolled through her.
Judith put her hand to Carol’s arm. “What is it?”
She faked a smile as she lowered her hand. “Indigestion.”
Ellen wasn’t buying her story, and her mother didn’t look any more fooled.
Carol let her forced grin fade away. “A memory of Tobias hit me out of nowhere.”
Judith gave her arm a gentle pat. “I hate that.”
“And people say ghosts aren’t real,” Ellen said sympathetically. “Want to tell us about it?”
Inhaling deeply, she confirmed the sweetness still filled the air. “Do you smell that?”
They both sniffed, but neither seemed to notice the scent.
“When the breeze blew…I thought I smelled Tobias’s favorite flowers. They were all over our yard.” Lowering her face, she let out a deep sigh as realization sank in. She’d imagined the scent. Being so close to the gardens, feeling the wind dance across her cheeks, thinking so much about Tobias, had caused her mind to play a cruel trick on her senses.
Judith squeezed Carol’s hand briefly. “I suppose we have to find some of his flowers and see about leaving Katie there. I think they’d both like that, don’t you?”
Carol nodded. “I think so.”
They started toward the garden, and Ellen took Carol’s hand in what was obviously a silent show of solidarity. Widows unite. They walked without speaking, and guilt tugged at Carol for ruining some of the magic of the visit. However, she guessed that magic would have faded as soon as they started looking at the area, not in wonder but with the task of finding a place for the ashes in Carol’s pocket.
As they strolled the path, Carol searched for the telltale heart leaves and bright-pink flowers that Tobias had loved so much. She inhaled deeply through her nose, hoping to catch the fruity scent. The Salvia eluded her. Not to be found.
“This is beautiful,” Ellen said as they entered a walled area. The paved walkway led them around patches bursting with bright flowers.
They walked quietly, speaking in hushed voices as they passed the various plants as if they were in a church instead of a public setting. Approaching a small area filled with Camassia lilies, a sense of peace touched Carol’s mind. This was it. This was the spot.
Katie would love the blue, star-shaped flowers. She would have wanted to pick a stem to take with her. Carol would have had to tell her why she couldn’t, while John tried to explain why she could. The image played in her mind as clearly as if it had happened.
“Here,” she said.
Judith and Ellen moved closer, both glancing around. The garden wasn’t empty, but there was plenty of space in the area so no one was crowding around them.
With the container in her hand, Carol looked at her aunt. “You read the brochure. You tell her about it.”
Clearly surprised, Ellen said, “Oh. Um. Biltmore Estate has two-hundred-fifty rooms, forty-three bathrooms, and…” She skimmed the paper in her hand. “Three kitchens. It was built in the 1890s and remains the largest private home in America. There are more than eighty thousand blooms in the spring and more than two hundred varieties of roses. Holy cow, that’s a lot of flowers.”
“That’s a lot of flowers,” Judith said. “Katie liked flowers, didn’t she?”
“She did.” Carol twisted the cap off the container.
“Wait,” Judith said. “Is…John?” She lamely gestured at the container.
Carol nodded. “He’d like to be here with her,” she said, hoping her mom didn’t disagree.
“Well,” she said. “Then he’d like to know the Biltmore added vineyards in 1971. They now have more than twenty handcrafted wines.”
Ellen looked horrified, but Carol chuckled.
“Thanks for thinking of him, Mom,” Carol said before bending down and sprinkling the ashes into the mulch. “We’ll buy a bottle for you, John.”
“And your ex-wife will drink most of it,” Judith muttered.
Carol raised a br
ow as she gawked at her mother. However, the twitch of Judith’s lip let her know that her mother had been teasing her. What had gotten into that woman?
Smirking, Carol said, “You’re right. We should buy two bottles. One for me, one for everyone else.”
Ellen laughed and gently nudged Carol, but then her face softened. “Say something for Tobias while we’re here.”
Carol’s throat instantly tightened. She had to force herself to swallow. After taking the brochure from Ellen, she skimmed, looking for something that would fascinate Tobias more than the vast number of flowers planted on the grounds. “There are seven thousand solar panels. They offset the estate’s energy consumption by about twenty percent. That’s a lot of solar panels,” she added, mimicking her aunt’s previous astonishment.
Ellen smiled. “That’s a lot of solar panels.”
Rolling her head back, Carol looked up at the cloudless sky and voiced the thought that had been echoing in her mind since they’d arrived. “He would have loved it here. He would have been like a kid at a carnival taking all this in.” She imagined him pulling her along, flipping through a book he would have bought at the gift shop, telling her far more about a sculpture or a painting than she ever would have wanted to know. But she would have hung on every word because she had always found his enthusiasm so damned infectious.
Once again, her emotions caught in her chest. She had to fight to push the air out of her lungs. As she did, a miserable moan built. “Here we go,” she said as tears welled up and rolled down her cheeks.
“Come on.” Judith led her to a bench. The three of them sat, Ellen and Judith doing what they could to console Carol as she cried.
As soon as Carol started to drift from sleep, her chest felt heavy. Her eyes fought the need to open. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue seemed too large. Swallowing was difficult, but she managed somehow. When she did, she moved a little closer to consciousness and her sorrow started to return.
Tobias was gone.
Forever.
