Pepper’s eyes flashed. “I’m telling her. She needs to know.”
“Interfering in their business is not a good idea,” Lisa said. “It will happen when and if they’re ready.”
“I call bull,” Pepper said. “Cupid needs to interfere.”
“You’re Cupid now?” Lisa asked.
“What’s going on?” Autumn asked.
“Trey’s in love with you,” Maggie said. “Everyone knows it.”
“Except for you,” Pepper said to Autumn.
Autumn looked from one of the women to the other. “No, you’re mistaken.”
“We’re right. Think about his actions,” Pepper said. “The amount of time he spends with you. Men don’t spend that much time with women they’re not into.”
“Trey and me?” Autumn asked. She was falling down a deep hole, unable to grasp what they were telling her.
“We shouldn’t have betrayed his confidence,” Pepper said.
“Except that it’s so hard to see him miserable,” Maggie said.
“He’s miserable?” Autumn asked. He hadn’t seemed miserable.
“He’s a man in love with a woman he thinks he can’t have,” Pepper said. “That means he’s miserable.”
Can’t have?
Was that true?
Autumn turned to look at Lisa. “Lisa? What are they saying?”
“What they’re saying—which they have no business saying—is that Trey’s feelings for you are stronger than just best pals. He’s loved you for a long time.”
“And everyone knows this but me?” Autumn’s eyes stung as embarrassment washed over her. “Like everyone?”
“Not everyone,” Pepper said.
“His friends, yes,” Lisa said.
“Only because he needed advice.” Maggie twisted a handful of her hair around her index finger. “He was feeling desperate.”
“All those coffee dates gave him a fright.” Pepper gestured toward town.
“Coffee dates?” Autumn’s thoughts careened with each new bit of information. Attempting to capture their meaning was like chasing a child’s tiny rubber ball that bounced higher and faster with each object it hit. “He was the one who encouraged me to try online dating.”
“Well, men don’t make sense half the time, now do they?” Pepper asked.
“Why didn’t he just tell me?” Autumn asked. But he had told her, hadn’t he? She’d brushed it off as a joke. Now, she could see the truth in his seemingly lighthearted question. How had she not seen the sincerity behind the words? Her chest ached as she thought about how hard it must have been for him to suggest, only to have her shoot him down immediately.
“He’s been too shy—too scared to tell you,” Pepper said. “He was certain you didn’t feel the same way.”
Autumn lifted her face upward, focusing on the wooden spokes of the outdoor umbrella to steady herself. Trey in love with her? How could that be?
“Do you feel the same way?” Pepper asked.
“I…I don’t know.” Autumn stood.
“You haven’t thought about him that way,” Lisa suggested, softly. “Maybe because you didn’t allow yourself to?”
“Maybe,” Autumn said. “I never thought he would ever think of me that way. He loves beauty, symmetry.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” An edge of impatience had replaced Pepper’s apologetic tone.
“She doesn’t think she’s symmetrical enough for him,” Maggie said.
“Autumn Hickman, you’re gorgeous.” Pepper’s cheeks flushed as she turned from Autumn to Maggie. “What’s she talking about?”
“She doesn’t think she’s pretty enough for him,” Maggie said, more emphatically than the first time. “It’s not that complicated. Even if her thinking is deeply flawed. Autumn, you’re no more asymmetrical than anyone else.”
“Not true. You’re all symmetrical.” Autumn pointed at them. “You’re stars. So is Trey, even though he’s not in the movies. Did you see that spread of him in the interior design magazine? He looked like a model. I don’t belong next to him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Pepper said. “You think just because you’re broken in places, you can’t be loved?”
“Not by someone like Trey,” Autumn said.
“I adore you, but that’s just screwed-up thinking,” Pepper said. “You need to think a moment about what you know about Trey Wattson.”
“What do you mean?” Autumn was hot now, irritated. Pepper could be so pushy sometimes.
“He has the eye of an artist,” Lisa said. “Trey loves objects the way he does people. He’s attracted to the unique—the special. Think about how he chooses pieces for his designs. He doesn’t shop at a chain department store but from boutique shops. He buys pieces battered from time or abuse and restores them to their prime.”
“I can’t be restored,” Autumn said.
“Maybe not physically,” Maggie said. “But inside here is what needs your attention.” She tapped her chest. “You can’t see what’s right in front of you because of the damage to your insides.”
“You hide away because of your scars,” Pepper said. “And you’re missing out on your life because of it.”
No one spoke for a moment. Autumn’s throat hurt. Tough love seemed to be the special of the day.
Lisa, her voice tender, finally broke the silence. “If you could see yourself the way he sees you, then you’d know how special you are.”
“I need some time to think.” Autumn shifted from one foot to the other while holding on to the back of the chair.
“We’ve overwhelmed you,” Lisa said. “Or rather, these two and their big mouths have overwhelmed you.”
Pepper looked up with sorrowful eyes. “I’m sorry, Autumn. But Trey is such a good man, and I want him to be happy.”
“I know. I understand,” Autumn said as she clasped her hands together. “And you guys are right. I have a freight train’s worth of baggage about my appearance. Obviously, I’ve let my insecurity rule my thinking.” And blind her to what was right in front of her all along.
“Sweetie, we get it,” Lisa said. “All three of us. More than you could ever know.”
“I pushed Stone away for months because of my freight train,” Pepper said.
“We don’t want you to pass up what could be the greatest thing that ever happened to you,” Maggie said. “I had to say something.”
“You were right to do so. I clearly was blind to what was happening. Please, don’t tell him I know. I need time to think through all this.”
The other women rose to their feet. All three wore contrite expressions.
Trey had shared something very personal, and they’d just blabbed it to the very person from whom he hoarded his secret. Maybe they shouldn’t have. Yet they were nudging love along for two people they cared about. Surely there was no harm in that. He was such a reticent man. Shy and decent. Scared to love again. He’d gone to his friends for advice. About her. He loved her.
Autumn smiled at them, one by one. “It’s all right. You were trying to help two people find love. There’s no greater reason to betray a confidence. Don’t feel bad. I need a minute to sort through all this. I’ll be in touch later.”
With that, she crossed the patio and through the house to her car. Her legs trembled. Not because of fatigue but from wonder and anticipation of what was to come.
Trey loved her.
When she returned home, she went out to the patio. The potted flowers were wilting in the sun. She turned on her hose as her mind chewed through this new, unbelievable information.
What did she feel for him? Could she imagine his hands on her, his mouth kissing her? She’d done so a thousand times before pushing away the thought. The ladies were right. She’d focused on her detriments in an unhealthy way.
She traipsed around the patio with the hose in one hand, continuing to water. He was in love with her? This was like someone suddenly switching to a new language, one you never kn
ew they spoke.
When she was with him, the terrible loneliness lessened. Without him, it was as if there were too much space in the world. She was a lone entity floating around, looking for something, someone to fill that space. He fills that space, you little idiot. She thought of all the times they shared together, all the things they had in common, and how easy it was to be around him. Was that love? Romantic love?
She turned off the water and curled into one of the chaises and gazed unseeing out to the ocean, rocking back and forth. This was such a surprise. She wasn’t good with the unexpected. What did she do now? The thought of going to him seemed impossible.
An image came to her from the evening at the Mullens’ pool. The way he’d looked at her. She’d been right. She’d dismissed the idea so quickly, talked herself out of what had been so obvious. Her legs might be weak and scarred, but her eyes weren’t. When she’d shown him all of her, he hadn’t flinched or run away. Instead, he’d been encouraging, loving. Why couldn’t she see what was right in front of her?
Her mother and Kyle had left her. Her inability to recognize Trey’s feelings or allow herself to love him was because of her abandonment issues. The idea was too simple, really. But there it was. People who are left by those they love the most never fully trust again. The part of them that assumes love lasts forever, breaks. That section of their heart never repairs, doesn’t rejuvenate, not even when the people return. From the moment she and Trey first met, the spark and connection had been strong. However, both had been abandoned before. They could not let the strings of their hearts interweave. They’d cut them off before they could wrap together into a cohesive knot.
She had not allowed herself to love Trey. But now? Now that she knew, all the repressed emotions rose to the surface, like bubbles in a glass of champagne.
I love Trey. He’s the one. Right in front of me this whole time.
The front door pinged. With the new security system, a high-pitched alert sounded anytime someone entered or exited the front or back door. She looked over her shoulder to see Valerie entering the kitchen, carrying grocery bags. Autumn went inside to greet her.
“Hi there,” Valerie said. “Since it’s my last night here, I thought we’d celebrate. I stopped at the store and bought ingredients for spaghetti and meatballs.”
“I love spaghetti and meatballs.”
Valerie lifted a package of ground beef from the bag, then a package of dried spaghetti. “I know. It was your favorite when you were a little girl. You called it ‘getty and balls,’ which always made me smile. Back then, I didn’t smile often.”
Autumn leaned against the island and bowed her head. Spaghetti and meatballs had been her favorite when she was little. A memory came, sudden and sharp. They were seated around their Formica kitchen table. Her brothers, and Valerie, smiled as she blew out four candles on her pink birthday cake. The pink frosting had been teased into little waves. They’d had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. She remembered red sauce boiling on the stove and the scent of stewed tomatoes and garlic. She’d stood on the footstool and watched as her mother stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. Her fourth birthday. Soon thereafter, Valerie had left with the man in the shiny car.
“You made them for my birthday,” Autumn said. “Homemade sauce, too.”
Valerie nodded. “That’s right.” She placed a loaf of bread near the cooktop, then smoothed the paper bags one on top of the other.
“Then you left.”
Her mother looked up at her with pained eyes. “Yes.”
“I’d forgotten about that birthday until just now.” She placed her hands flat on the cool countertop. “Before you came back, I couldn’t remember anything about you.”
“I remembered everything about you.”
Autumn bit the inside of her mouth to keep from crying out in sorrow, Then why? Why did you leave? Why didn’t you come back? Come on now, they’d been over all that. Depression. Unmedicated depression. Valerie Hickman hadn’t been able to function. She knew this, but still it hurt. Wasn’t her love for them enough of an antidote against depression?
“Do you want me to tell you about that birthday?” Valerie asked.
“I guess,” Autumn whispered.
“I cleaned an extra house that week, so I’d have enough for hamburger meat and cake mix and a doll I knew you wanted. There was this little toy store in town. In the window, a baby doll with a pink dress had caught your eye. You’d stared and stared at it one afternoon. You said to me, ‘I want that baby.’”
As she told the story, Valerie’s gaze averted away from Autumn to the wall behind her. “And I had to say, as I always did, ‘not today.’ I had to tug you away from the window. You never kicked or cried or anything. Not that day or ever. Kyle and Stone sometimes would if they didn’t get their way, but not you. Instead of crying, you just let out a long, sad sigh and took my hand. As we walked the block to my car, you craned your neck to look backward at that doll. We went off to my next job.” She paused and dipped her head. “You used to come with me when I cleaned houses. Do you remember?” She glanced at Autumn. “No, of course you don’t. You just said that.
“There were a few clients who had children’s rooms, and the women whose children were at school said it was all right if you looked at books while I cleaned. I’m not sure why, but sometimes kindness makes things worse for a person like me. I let you do it, but it made me mad to be the recipient of pity. There was this one house—real fancy—the husband was a lawyer. The Morrisons. She was from the South and had this rolling accent that made her seem genteel. Mrs. Morrison was a nice person. I can see that now, looking back. At the time, I hated her for her nice manners and kind way she had toward you. She’d look at you, super sorry like, and offer you a cookie and tell you that she’d left a stack of books in Carrie’s room and would you like to look at them while your mother was busy. You’d nod and smile, so sweet. Prettiest smile I’d ever seen. People commented on it all the time. I knew back then that if you’d been born to another family, you would have been able to move up in the world. Anyway, they had all these hardwood floors and she liked them to be polished by hand. I had this one rag that worked just right on them, but that’s neither here nor there. I guess I mention it because I want you to know that no matter how humiliated I was by our life, I still had pride in my work.” Her mouth curved up in a bitter smile for a split second before she continued.
“That day we had to walk away from the doll, I got up from polishing the hallway floor and saw you with your head bent over a book in that little rich girl’s room and I…I was so bitter, so angry.” Valerie paused as her words caught in her throat. Her face contorted with the effort not to cry. She waved her hand in front of her eyes. “Here was my perfect, beautiful little girl in old clothes and shoes with holes sitting in an all-pink room with fluffy pillows and everything lace this or sparkly that, looking at a picture book I was too poor to buy you. What did I have to offer you? Nothing.”
You. You offered you. Before you left me.
“I vowed right then and there—I was going to get you that damn doll for your birthday. I asked Mrs. Morrison if she had anything special that needed doing so I could earn a little extra money. To this day, I’m not sure if this was true or if she took pity on me. She said she was having a party over the weekend. Would I like to clean Saturday morning, so it was perfect for her guests? I agreed, of course, even though I had three other houses that day.
“After I cleaned that Saturday, she paid me in cash like always. I came home and stashed that money in my secret hiding place and fell asleep. Next morning, it was gone. I knew right away your father had taken it and blown it at the bar. He was passed out on the couch to prove it.” Valerie looked up at the ceiling, shaking her heard. “I howled with rage—woke up your hungover father with my crying. He was sorry, like always, but it didn’t matter. Not this time. I couldn’t get my girl the baby doll she wanted. I felt like my heart had broken in half. By that time in my life, I
didn’t want much. I’d already given up. But I wanted that doll for you. I wanted that.”
“I remember that doll,” Autumn said. “I had her forever. Her name was Hillary.” She’d slept with Hillary every night. After her accident, that doll had been her only comfort during those long, desolate nights. “How did you do it?”
Valerie took in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “I washed my face and drove over to Mrs. Morrison’s house. It was Sunday, and all the good people in town were coming home from church. The Morrisons were good people. Mr. Morrison took his family to church instead of curing a hangover with a few beers like my husband. I sat on the top step of their porch and waited. There was the remnant of a slug on the bottom step. Someone had put salt on him, and he’d dried up. That’s how you kill them—cover them with salt and they dehydrate into nothingness.”
Autumn did know this. She’d always thought it was a terrible thing to do.
“A few minutes later, they drove up in their BMW. She told the kids and her husband to go inside and sat next to me on the steps, even though she wore a pretty yellow dress the color of butter. She was the type who’d look real carefully into your face, and she must have seen I’d been crying. She said, ‘Tell me what I can do.’ Not a question, mind you. I told her flat out. My husband drank up the money I’d earned from cleaning her house and now I couldn’t buy the doll you wanted for your birthday. I was crying by then, all slobbery and pathetic. I’d been poor all my life, but I’d never begged—never asked for something I hadn’t earned. Doing so made me feel like the life was seeping out of me. I was the slug and my shame the salt. Mrs. Morrison didn’t say a word, just nodded and opened her purse and took out three twenties, which was twice as much as she usually paid me to clean her house. I said, ‘I’ll pay you back.’
“She said, ‘No need. I grew up in Mississippi without a daddy. My mother had to tell us no a whole lot more than she said yes. Birthdays and Christmas were right up there with funerals for her. Just take it. Give your little girl a nice birthday.’
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