A Broken Kind of Beautiful (41 page)

Ivy shook her head, unstrapped her seat belt.

Marilyn unstrapped hers as well and hurried out of the car, around to the passenger side, opened Ivy’s door, and offered her arm.

But Ivy shrugged her away and got out on her own.

Marilyn hurried ahead and helped Ivy inside the house. Georgia greeted them with happy barks that did not match the mood. Marilyn nudged her away with her foot. “Do you need any pain medicine? Would you like to lie down on the couch?”

“I don’t want your help!”

Georgia stopped yipping.

Ivy glared, broken and bruised and shut away. Impossible to reach. Each smile Ivy had extended to Marilyn over the last couple of weeks had become treasured blocks of hope, one stacked on top of the next until a tall tower of them rose in her heart. God was doing great things. She could feel it. He was restoring all that had been lost. But now the tower tumbled and crashed. Ivy looked like she would never smile again. “I just want you to leave me alone.”

What else could Marilyn do but nod?

Clutching the small bag of medicine to her chest, Ivy walked up the stairs and disappeared. Marilyn sunk down onto the couch, her heart fissuring, every doubtful thought she’d ignored over the accumulating years seeping through the cracks. Rising to the surface.

What was the purpose of all this pain?

A long time ago, Marilyn had thought she understood. Nobody else did—certainly not James or her parents—but Marilyn knew God had a purpose. A story was unfolding. The moment she’d laid eyes on Ivy, it was as if God had said,
Woman, here is your daughter
, and all of a sudden, her barren womb made sense. God was going to take the ashes of infertility and betrayal and make something beautiful. But now all that remained was confusion. Why would God give her this burdensome love if all it would bring was more pain? What was the point in giving Ivy beauty if He was only going to snatch it away?

Marilyn felt like a tragic figure in a play, the last one to catch on that the ending would not be a happy one. The fool who had given her heart away and would never get it back.

But the whisper came … just as it had ten years ago when Ivy left for New York.

I am not finished
.

She gathered the words in her hands and grasped them to her chest as if the tighter she clung, the truer they would be.

Ivy felt mean as she walked up the steps. She didn’t want food or water. Despite her throbbing shoulder and pounding head, she didn’t even want medicine. All she wanted was to rewind time, go back and have a giant redo. Not just to last night, but all of it. Her entire Greenbrier experience, before Davis found a way into her heart.

She had told Bruce she didn’t want to see him. She had pushed Davis away as she had pushed every other man before him, but maybe, this time, this man wouldn’t let her. She had sat in her bed while Bruce walked out of her hospital room, hoping Davis would barge through the door and cup her face in his hands and whisper words of love and assurance. She was not a bouquet of dead flowers. She was not a snow globe. Her entire body had ached with the hope of it. Until Bruce came back into her room alone.

“He already left,” he’d said.

And whatever remained of Ivy’s heart shriveled into nothing.

Through the rest of her hospital stay, Ivy managed to avoid her reflection. Now, as she stood on the landing in front of the door that led to the guest apartment, the task barreled toward her like an unavoidable freight train. She twisted the knob. The door creaked open with an unenthusiastic squeak. Ivy stepped over the threshold, flicked on the light, and tiptoed across the carpet, her stomach clenching tighter and tighter with each step closer to the mirror.

She stared down at her sandals. Some flecks of blood had dried over her french pedicure. She squeezed her unswollen eye shut, filled her cramped lungs with a long, deep breath of stale air, and began removing the gauze from her face. When the dressings lay at her feet, she brought her hand to her cheek. Bumpy ridges pressed into her fingertips. She placed her palm over her chest as if the pressure might still her heart. Then she opened her eye. Brought up her head. And looked at her reflection.

The air in her lungs swooshed away.

The stranger staring back at her was half monster—purple and swollen with lacerations spidering across her cheek, climbing over her jaw, and dribbling down her neck. Deep, red, raw wounds laced with black stitching.

Ivy gasped.

The monster in the mirror gasped too.

Her fingers fluttered to her chin.

The monster in the mirror did the same.

Revulsion grabbed hold of her stomach. The doctor had said the swelling would go down. The purple welts would fade. The stitches would come out. But the scars? Ivy knew all too well that scars stayed. A cry clawed up her throat as ravaged and raw as her wounds. It bubbled from her lips and snapped whatever composure she’d clung to. A tsunami of grief and anger crashed through her body. She ripped the bouquet of dead flowers off the mirror and tore them to shreds, rage and sorrow possessing the beast in the mirror.

Her father never wanted her. Bruce only loved her for her beauty and the money she could make him. And for all Davis’s words, he didn’t want her either. Nobody did. She scrambled on top of the dresser, gripped the heavy mirror, and wrenched it from the wall, pain exploding in her shoulder as she heaved the mirror from her body. Marilyn’s box, with all her pictures, fell with it. The mirror crashed against the ground with a sickening crack. Shards of glass popped from the frame and tumbled on top of one another.

“You can’t hide from Him, Ivy. He sees you. He sees all of you.”

Ivy slid off the dresser and sank onto the glass-strewn floor. She wrapped her arms around her shins and buried her face in her knees. What did God see—an unwanted child? An unfortunate mistake? A woman who finally got what she deserved? “Oh, God, who do you see?”

Who am I?

She hugged herself tighter and rocked back and forth, trying to squeeze the hopeless question away. A sliver of glass bit into her thigh. A sharp breath hissed through her teeth. She jerked her head up from her knees and
saw the mess she’d made. Pictures scattered across broken glass. Pictures of a stranger with her face. Marilyn’s box tipped on its side. And a card resting at her knee.

I have called you by name, you are Mine
.

A sob rent loose from somewhere deep inside her, followed by another and another. The words swept through her. She longed for them to be true. She ached for them to be true. But how could they be when nobody had ever loved her like that?

Except …

Her bedroom door flew open. “Ivy!”

And Marilyn came. Despite Ivy’s rejections, despite pushing her away again and again and again, Marilyn didn’t even hesitate. She moved through the shards of glass with bare feet and gathered a broken Ivy in her arms, holding her tighter than she’d ever been held.

Fragments of memory stirred and gathered in Ivy’s mind, impossible to ignore. It was Marilyn who brought her flowers. Marilyn who saw her when James looked the other way. Marilyn who did everything she could to make Ivy feel wanted whenever she came for those summer visits. It was Marilyn who collected Ivy’s pictures and Marilyn who gave her a home when her mother no longer could. It was Marilyn who tried to stop Ivy from going to New York, even though Ivy hated her for it. Marilyn who gave her a job when there were no more jobs to be had. And Marilyn with her Bible, forever on her knees, praying for her. Despite the humiliation Ivy’s existence must have caused. Despite being betrayed by the same man. Marilyn fought for her when nobody else would fight. Marilyn loved her even when Ivy threw that love back in her face. Marilyn had taken an unwanted child and made her into a beloved daughter.

I have called you by name, you are Mine
.

Everything collapsed. The walls Ivy had built. The fear that hounded her. The fleeting, temporary beauty she clung to with desperate fingers. It collapsed into rubble and left her contracting with pain. So much that she
was left gasping for breath, curled into a ball against Marilyn’s chest, hope ricocheting through her soul, breaking what wasn’t already broken.

Maybe, if Marilyn could love her like that, maybe if Marilyn could forgive James for such unfathomable betrayal, then just maybe the God she worshiped so fervently could love and forgive Ivy too.

Oh, God, if it’s true, You can have me. You can have every broken piece …

And while Marilyn helped Ivy birth the pain, somehow, some way, Ivy clasped Sara’s truth to her chest and made it her own. Slowly, slowly, the pain receded. Not every single bit, but enough to know that she was His. He called her by name.

37

When daylight turned to dusk, Marilyn let Ivy go. Together, and with an understanding that required few words, they cleaned the rubble of glass and pictures and gauze from the carpet. And when that was done, Marilyn carefully combed pieces of glass from Ivy’s hair. By the time Ivy had taken a shower and dressed in to her pajamas, her stomach grumbled and her shoulder and face throbbed. Marilyn gave Ivy her medicine and redressed her wounds. They ate big bowls of potato soup at the small table in the kitchenette. Then Marilyn helped her to bed. Ivy curled under the blankets and slept like the dead.

She awoke in the morning to a glass of water, her pills, and a handwritten note.

Breakfast is on the counter. Coffee is all ready to brew. The dress rehearsal for the show is this morning, so I had to leave. Please call if you need anything
.

Love, M
.

Love, M
. Funny how something that would have baffled, if not angered, a few months ago could lift her spirits this morning. Ivy sat up slowly, gave herself a moment to acclimate to being vertical, then took her medicine and headed over to the white bag on the counter. She knew what was inside before she saw it; she could tell by the delicious smell. Ivy pressed Start on the coffee maker, and the bag crinkled as Ivy pulled out a giant cinnamon roll. Whenever Ivy came to Greenbrier as a kid, Marilyn would take her to the bakery on Sundays and let her pick whatever she wanted. Ivy had always chosen a cinnamon roll.

Smiling, she pulled the gooey bread apart and ate half, poured herself a hot cup of coffee, and ate the rest. A silver lining. No Vera Wang shoot meant no more careful diet. When she finished, she licked the glaze from her fingers, cleaned up the mess with her good arm, and found herself sitting in front of the vanity in her bathroom, examining the angry lacerations with her unswollen eye.

Ivy inhaled a deep breath.

Her career was over. Her face would never be what it was, not even with plastic surgery. Yet somehow, despite the impossibility, Ivy knew she was going to be okay. Maybe not right away. Maybe not for a long time. But she’d get there.

The church buzzed with chaotic energy. Davis messed with the lighting while Marilyn directed models around the stage, and Big Bubba, their emcee, fiddled with the sound system. Jordan wheeled racks of dresses to the back rooms of the church. Sara greeted the hair stylists and makeup artists. And Pastor Voss directed Arabella’s kitchen assistant to the lobby, where they’d arrange meals and appetizers for tomorrow’s lunch. But despite all the motion and excitement, Davis couldn’t drum up any enthusiasm. After tomorrow, he’d put his camera away for good. And, of course, Ivy was nowhere in sight. Several times yesterday he’d picked up his phone to call her, but something stopped him every time. This morning had been the same.