A Broken Kind of Beautiful (22 page)

She untwined the rubber band and flipped through the stack. When she reached her second-grade picture—a photo of her sporting lopsided bangs due to an experiment with Mom’s salon scissors—she turned it over and found her mother’s familiar handwriting.

Ivy. 7 years old. 2nd Grade
.

She turned over the rest, brushing her fingers over the bubbly scrawls. Purple pen. Red pen. An occasional black Sharpie. Mom had sent these. So did that mean James asked for them? Ivy spread the magazine tear-outs on the desk. No writing, but somebody had taken care to cut them out nice and straight. She tried to picture James in his office, wielding a scissors as he flipped through
Elle
or
Cosmo
. Even though it was impossible to imagine, here was the evidence. In a box. In her father’s desk.

What did it mean?

A pocket of warmth expanded inside her rib cage. She pressed her hand against the unfamiliar feeling. Hope stirred like the fluttering of bird wings, slowly at first, then fast and feather light. She flipped through the pictures again, slower this time, stopping at the ones Marilyn had snapped—Ivy in a pedicure chair the first time she visited, a somber-faced Ivy with a giant plate of lobster in front of her, another of the two of them together—Marilyn smiling wide, one arm around Ivy’s shoulder, the other holding out the camera with the beach in the background. It was a smile that didn’t make
sense, a smile Ivy never quite trusted. As she continued flipping, she tried to imagine James tucking each photograph away in this box, pulling them out late at night, when Marilyn slept, brushing his thumb across her face.

Had James loved her after all?

The wings fluttered harder, faster. He had to, right? This was proof that he at least had cared about her. Why else would he bother cutting all these out and bundling them together?

Three quick knocks tapped against the office door. “Did you find the checks?”

Ivy jumped from the chair and swiped the pictures into a messy pile.

Marilyn stopped midstep, her gray-blond hair wet from her after-work shower, lips frozen in a crooked pose—as if stuck between a smile and an uh-oh. She stared at the opened box and the photographs scattered beneath Ivy’s arm.

Ivy stuffed them in the box haphazardly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean— I wasn’t looking— I, I needed a pen.”

Marilyn’s hands fidgeted. “Do you need me to sign the check?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Ivy scooted the check forward.

Marilyn removed a pen from a cup on top of the file cabinet.

A whole cup full of them.

How hadn’t Ivy seen them earlier? Besides, who put a pen cup on a filing cabinet instead of a desk? Marilyn scratched her signature along the line. When she finished, she handed over the check and wiped her palms down her yoga pants. “I hope you aren’t upset with me.”

“Upset with you?”

Her attention flickered toward the box. “If your mother minded sending me the photos, she never said so.”

The bird wings stuttered. “What?”

“Neither did Bruce’s assistant. She promised it wasn’t a problem”—Marilyn pointed at the tear sheets—“sending me copies of those magazines.”

A cold fist tightened inside Ivy’s gut. She wanted to shake her head. Plug her ears. Undo Marilyn’s words—words that tore away the burgeoning hope that had only seconds before been filling her up. “This is your box?”

Marilyn’s brow crinkled, and then, as if her faux pas dawned with the slowness of a morning sunrise, her face drained of all color. “You thought …?”

Ivy looked at the floor. Yes. Of course she did.

“Oh, Ivy.”

Ivy snatched up the box. “Can I have it?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Can I?”

Marilyn’s eyelids fluttered. “Sure. Of course.”

Ivy tucked the box under her arm, swept past Marilyn, and took the stairs two at a time. She hurried down the hall, flung open the door to her makeshift apartment, and slammed the box on the dresser. Her own personal reminder. Her North Star, guiding her to the truth. James never loved her. Of course he hadn’t.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the water. Maybe a scalding-hot bath would strip away the idiotic longing sloshing through her body. She uncrumpled the check from her fist, walked to her nightstand, and shut it inside her Billy Collins poetry book. She could deliver it tomorrow. Right now, she didn’t much feel like enduring Duncan’s beady stare. She sat on the edge of the bed and bent over her knees.

Why Marilyn? Of all the people who should care, why was it her?

20

“How do they train a dog to read?”

Sara laughed, a refreshing sound in light of the past few days. Greenbrier and its lack of distraction made Ivy stir crazy. So did Davis’s disappearance. She hadn’t seen him in three days. Not since their afternoon spent venue shopping or that same evening, when Ivy found Marilyn’s box and made a ridiculous assumption.

“Sunny can’t read words. He reads cues. People. Situations. He listens.”

“Sara, he’s sitting and looking at the crosswalk sign like he can read it.”

The orange Don’t Walk flashed to a white Walk. Sunny lifted his rear off the curb and led Sara across the street. Weren’t dogs supposed to be color blind? Ivy stared after them, a bit in awe of the canine, then hurried to follow before the light turned green—the only light along a crowded Palmetto Boulevard.

“So, Frogmore stew? I have to tell you, it doesn’t sound too appetizing.”

“You can’t come to Greenbrier and not have a proper Lowcountry boil.”

“You promise there aren’t any frogs in it?”

Sara traced an
X
over her chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“I’m going to make a guess and say it’s not low calorie.”

Sara laughed again. “Not exactly. But one southern meal won’t kill you.”

Kill her? No. Make her bloated? Possibly. It was a risk she couldn’t take. Not with the shoot for Marilyn’s brochure on Monday. But when Sara asked her to lunch, Ivy couldn’t say no. Nor did she want to. Not only did she enjoy spending time with Sara—an odd sort of discovery—but she could use the time to her advantage and do a little Davis excavation, see if she
couldn’t dig up a little something to help her along in her quest. “I haven’t seen your brother in a few days. Have you talked to him lately?”

“I bumped into him this morning while I was rehearsing some songs at church. Sounds like Cornerstone’s keeping him busy. The air-conditioning unit broke down on Thursday, and he’s trying to install new cabinets in the nursery before tomorrow’s service.”

Right. Rehearsal. Sara led the singing every other Sunday. Maybe Ivy ought to rehearse with her. She couldn’t carry a tune, but at least she’d run into Davis. She needed to find a way to broach the subject of New York City again. The Vera Wang shoot was less than two months away, and besides Davis’s bizarre offer of friendship, she’d made zero progress. “I hope he’s ready for Monday’s shoot.”

Sara and Sunny walked along the brick sidewalk, under the awning of Gizmo’s Art Gallery and past large concrete flowerpots. Ivy matched her stride and opened her mouth to keep the conversation rolling, but her skin prickled in a familiar way, a way that said “Hey, somebody’s watching you.” She swiveled around in search of the looker and found a familiar man, only he wasn’t staring at Ivy. He was watching Sara. It was the guy who came to the rescue with his tow truck when she and Davis found themselves stranded on the side of the highway. He stood motionless across the street as a gaggle of camera-clad, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing tourists stepped around him. What was his name again? J-something.

He didn’t stop staring until Ivy caught his attention with a wave. He averted his gaze but not before Ivy caught the look in his eyes, one she knew well—desire. Her curiosity bubbled and frothed. Why would a man break up with a woman he still wanted? Mr. Mechanic jogged across the street and disappeared inside a shop, its display window blooming with every color of flower imaginable.

Ivy caught up to Sara and took her arm.

Sara stopped, skimming nothing in particular with unfocused eyes. “Something wrong?”

“Mind if we take a quick detour before lunch?” Ivy led them beneath the shop’s awning.

“A detour?”

“This thought popped into my head. Wouldn’t it be fun if our models carried flowers when they walked down the runway? It’ll highlight the dresses, don’t you think? And we need to round up some fun packages for the auction. What bride wouldn’t bid for a killer deal on flowers for her wedding? Mind if we take a quick peek inside a flower shop?”

Sara bit her lip.

“Do you have a problem with flowers?”

“What flower shop is it?”

Ivy bent backward so she could read the sign. “ZuZu’s Petals.”

“Oh.”

“Is there something wrong with that flower shop?”

“Mrs. Ludd owns ZuZu’s Petals.”

Ludd, that was it! Jordan Ludd.

“She’s Pastor Voss’s older daughter.”

Ivy’s simmering curiosity turned into a roiling boil. “You don’t like her?”

“It’s not that.” Sara fidgeted with Sunny’s harness. “I used to date her son.”

“So you broke his heart and now his mama hates you?” Best to play dumb.

“Not exactly.”

Ivy tugged Sara’s arm. “C’mon, Sara, nobody could hate you. She might not even be working.”

Sara resisted. Ivy tugged harder. Sunny did a back-and-forth dance on his paws. Ivy wondered what cues the animal was reading now. “No, really, Ivy. I’m not comfortable going in there. You go without me. We’ll wait outside.”

“Don’t be silly. Mrs. Ludd knows you, so that means she loves you. She
might say no to me, but she won’t say no to you.” Ivy looked in the window. Over the tops of the flowers, Jordan spoke to a plump strawberry-haired woman snipping leaves off flower stems. “We should have flowers for the fashion show. I’m sure of it.”

Sara pulled her sunglasses over her eyes. “Okay, fine.”

Triumphant, Ivy opened the glass door and stepped inside. Mrs. Ludd and Jordan stopped talking as Sara shuffled in with Sunny—her hair tangled into its usual wispy ponytail, wearing no makeup and a pale yellow top that did nothing for her. Ivy was certain Sara didn’t turn men’s heads, not ever. But Jordan gawked like she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

Mrs. Ludd’s scissors clattered against the counter. “If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes standing in my store.”

Ivy grimaced at the woman’s choice of words. Sore eyes? Really?

Sara stayed by the door and gave a small wave. “Hi, Mrs. Ludd.”

Mrs. Ludd gave Jordan a sharp nudge—one that seemed to say
Go on and say something
. But Ivy knew frozen when she saw it, and Jordan was definitely frozen. She stepped forward and offered her hand. “My name’s Ivy Clark.”

Mrs. Ludd gave it a firm, friendly shake. “You’re the gal my sister keeps jabbering about. She and her daughter saw you at Marilyn’s boutique a while back when they were shopping for a wedding dress.”

“Oh, right.” So Big Red was Mrs. Ludd’s sister. Thanks to her and her friend Pinky from the marina, word spread fast in Greenbrier. Maybe Ivy could recruit them for a little charity show publicity. “I’m not sure if you heard or not, but Marilyn’s organizing a charity fashion show on the twenty-fifth of September.”

Mrs. Ludd’s round face brightened. “Is she really?”

“And truly.”

“Oh, honey, this town’ll eat that right up.”

“That’s what we’re hoping. Since it’s a bridal show, we’d like somebody to put floral arrangements together for our models in exchange for some free
publicity for your store. And if you really want to go above and beyond, you could auction some flower packages for a guest or two.”

Mrs. Ludd looked over her shoulder and slanted her eyebrows at Jordan. Except for the subtle rise and fall of his chest, he hadn’t moved at all. His eyes remained fixed on Sara, who stayed by the door, clutching Sunny’s harness and shuffling her feet, lost in a world of blindness.

“Jordan, honey, could you go get me my calendar?”

The color drained from Sara’s face.

Jordan unstuck his feet from the floor and disappeared into the back room. Nobody spoke. Ivy looked at Sara, who kept her head down. Ivy looked at Mrs. Ludd, who stared at Sara. It was all so weird. All Ivy knew from Davis was that the two used to date. Jordan returned and handed his mom a planner.

Ivy slipped her hands in the back pockets of her shorts and rocked on her heels. “So, Jordan, do a lot of cars break down in September? We’d love your help with the show.”

Sara bumped into the door. The bell jangled.

Jordan’s attention volleyed from Sara to Ivy. “I’m not sure.”

“You’ve got a strong voice. You could emcee for us. Read off the dress designs. Accessories. Shoes. I bet you’d be fabulous.”

Jordan blushed. “I’m not too good with words.”

“Okay, then.” Ivy turned to Sara, hoping to draw her into the conversation. “What do you think, Sara? Maybe he could head up the cleaning crew. We’ll need help cleaning when we’re all finished.”

“I … I’m not sure.” She placed a hand over her stomach, like she might be ill. “I’m sorry, I need to get some fresh air.” Sara tightened her grip around Sunny’s harness and hurried out the door.