In a Moon Smile (9 page)

“Charlotte always has a point, Dad,” Chesney said. “It’s always a nicely sharpened point. And it’s always aimed at my back.”

“I have a concern,” Madelyn said in a tight, loud voice. “I’m realizing, dear, that your real estate purchase allows you to escape all the gossip about the cancelled wedding. You will simply move away to Bean Blossom and leave your father and me to survive the rumor mill.”

“I hardly think that’s fair to mom and dad, Chesney,” Charlotte said quickly. She never missed an opportunity to show their parents what a worthless idiot their other daughter happened to be. Charlotte turned a hateful gaze in Chesney’s direction. “I’m sure you’ve never considered how embarrassing this will be for the rest of us. But then again, running away is what you seem to do best.”

This accusation felt like hot oil on Chesney’s face. She never intended for her family to take the brunt of the break up. “I won’t move until spring,” she said in a low voice. “I will be responsible for cancellations, along with handling all the gossip.” Clearing her throat, she glanced at her father and said, “Of course I will also be responsible for lost deposits.”

“Lost deposits are the least of our worries,” Madelyn snapped. “Look at the position you’ve put us in again. We are again the laughing stock. And it’s all because you can’t seem to…”

“Get it right,” Chesney muttered as she stared across the table at her mother, the statue. “I just can’t get anything quite right, can I?” She stood and excused herself from the table.

“You should face the facts,” Charlotte’s voice trailed after Chesney like too-strong perfume. “Every time your heart gets hurt, you do something stupid.”

“Thanks for pointing that out to me, Charlotte,” Chesney hissed over her shoulder, still refusing to cry. She turned around then, returned to the dining room and kissed her niece on top of her blonde head, patted her mother’s shoulder then told the biggest lie of the afternoon, “It was nice to see all of you again.”

“You can’t leave yet, Chesney,” Madelyn said. “I haven’t served dessert.”

It was expected that Chesney pretend Charlotte hadn’t verbally punched her in the face during the entire dinner. She was expected to pretend to be oblivious about anything except the turtle cheesecake. It was sickening.

I don’t have to be the brunt of the family gathering any longer. I am leaving. Right now. And I don’t care when or if I see any of them ever again. Well, anyone except Piper.

“Chesney, you’ve caught us off guard with the announcement about Grace’s house,” Lyle said as he moved his chair away from the table. “You’ve caught us off guard about the wedding being cancelled, too. We aren’t sure what to think, honey.”

“Can’t I make decisions on my own?” Chesney cried.

“Your decisions always result in drama for the rest of the family, Chesney,” Madelyn growled. “Maybe you are oblivious to the gossip. But we happen to care about our reputation in the community. We happen to want people to view us with respect.”

“We thought you were settled,” Lyle said. “We didn’t know you were canceling the wedding. We didn’t know you were considering a move. You have shocked us with this news, Chezzie, that’s all. We thought you were…well…settled.”

“I haven’t been settled anywhere,” Chesney said. “It’s Charlotte who is settled, Dad, not me.”

“I’m settled because I’m a wife and a mother,” Charlotte broke into the conversation, just to remind everyone that she was the star daughter. The one who did everything everybody understood. Chesney faced her younger sister with a nasty sneer.

“What do you want, Charlotte?” she asked. “A frigging tiara?”

“You’re really quite aggressive,” Charlotte sat back in her chair, with every intention to now play victim. For effect, she grabbed at Cooper’s shirt sleeve as if to silently say that she feared her very unstable and aggressive older sibling.

“Your mistake with buying Grace’s house is the least of our worries right now,” Madelyn said. “We have to face all the headaches for canceling the wedding. And what about Jack? How does Jack feel about what you’ve done?”

None of you really know me
.
All of you
immediately paint me as the villain, and some of that is my fault. Some of it, however, is not my fault. No one here seems to think I am in pain. Why can’t I tell you the truth?

Lyle bumbled across the dining room, wringing his hands. He loathed conflict. He felt certain that he should somehow take a side. He had a long history of passively watching his daughters lock horns. Secretly, he didn’t understand Chesney. Not at all. She was a strange little bird compared to his wife and younger daughter. Frankly, Lyle didn’t know what to do. But doing nothing probably wasn’t a good idea. After all, dinner was spoiled.

“We’re very concerned about your mental state, Chezzie,” he said as he timidly followed his irrational older daughter out of the dining room.

Chesney looked up at her dad as she wiggled her feet into her shoes. What?

“I’m confused that you would leave the place you’ve called home for all these years, to live in that horribly neglected old house in the middle of nowhere,” he continued. “I’m afraid that a stable person might not make that choice.”

“So now you think I’m a wing nut?” Chesney asked. “Is that what you’re telling me? I buy back the property that was in our family for a century. And because of that decision, you decide I should be weaving baskets in a padded room?”

Madelyn and Charlotte followed and lounged on the leather sofa. Cooper stood behind his queen, hands protectively on her shoulders. Madelyn barely blinked while her angel grandchild slobbered on her lap.

“I've been kicked out of my life,” Chesney said slowly. “But none of you can understand that since you don’t know very much about me.”

“You’re such a drama queen, Chesney,” Charlotte said briskly. “Chicago is certainly big enough for both you and Jack. And yes, we do know you. We know you’re always making problems for the rest of us.”

Ignoring her sister’s venom, Chesney hoped to appeal to Dad. “I need to be in Granny Grace's house. I need to be where I once felt happy and complete.”

“I’m sorry, Chezzie Girl. But I don’t think you’re being practical,” Lyle said.

“Neither do I,” Chesney laughed. “And I love it.”

“Your mother and I are very concerned about your judgment.”

“Don’t be,” she smiled. “I am fine.”

That is a lie, of course, too. I am not fine. My heart is broken. I frequently see Jack and Belinda in my dreams, savagely engaging in intercourse. But here’s another secret: I was deeply thankful to catch Jack screwing his assistant. I didn’t want to marry him but I didn’t know how to get out of it without a big drama. Now I force myself to see that I was willing to marry the man whore so I could avoid my family’s wrath. Not good. Not good at all.

“I’ll see you soon,” Chesney lied as she placed her hand on the front door.

“When?” Madelyn asked.

When you can treat me like a human being instead of a circus act.

Without answering, Chesney hurried out the door. She was deeply humiliated that her family had front row seats to witness her failures. They said hurtful things. They used her pain against her. Hell, they had even made her their entertainment. But in a strange way, Chesney loved the fact that no one understood why she wanted Granny Grace’s house. The house could be her secret way to heal, to get better acquainted with herself and to start again. She drove away, thinking about Grace’s house, her house now. When she could not trust the world or anyone in it, she had clung to childhood moments in that house. When she could not breathe another dream about the future, she took refuge in yesterday. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest option. But it was definitely the only place Chesney could turn right now. At a stop sign two blocks away from the family home,  she blew her nose.

If Grace was still in the world, her family would not have escaped a good tongue lashing for how they ganged up on Chesney. Grace understood Chesney when no one else appreciated her wild imagination, her spirit or her crazy knack at falling in love with the wrong men.

“The world belongs to you, little girl,” Grace said often when she and Chesney walked through the meadow behind the house.“Anything you can dream can be yours.”

Until she got older, Chesney believed Grace’s words. Even through college, she believed in her dreams. When she first began to stumble through bad relationships and disappointments, Grace’s words urged her on to the next beginning. Definitely, Chesney saw many of her dreams become part of her life. Her love for writing became a wonderful career and her life had been blessed with wonderful friendships.

But lately, she questioned Grace’s words.

In front of the entire family, Charlotte ticked off the list of Chesney’s lost loves. Everyone in the family was well aware that Charlotte graduated from college, married a successful engineer, planned a lovely pregnancy, gave birth to a beautiful daughter and never begins the day without make-up. Charlotte drives a tidy minivan with Baby Einstein on the DVD player. Charlotte attends pilates classes. Charlotte is an excellent cook, an immaculate housekeeper and a stay-at-home mom who still finds time to plan elaborate dinner parties. Charlotte lives a lovely life which is easily understood and admired by their parents and extended family, too.

Chesney, on the other hand, was the family storm cloud. Sometimes she moved around enough for the sun to gleam brightly, especially when she produced multiple best-sellers. But if she could not hide behind that accomplishment, Chesney’s shortcomings shined all over the place. In neon colors, she was weird, odd, eccentric. She was horribly messy. She didn’t know the first thing about decorating. And her cooking skills were limited to what she had time to nuke in the microwave. Chesney was known for tumbling in and out of bad romances, sometimes lasting a couple of days, sometimes a couple of years. But every single time she gushed about her newfound Mr. Right, the bottom always fell out of the love bucket.

She and Jack never had a lot in common. He was nice enough, handsome enough and thoughtful enough. But Jack was more passionate about a corporate buy-out than he was about building a life with Chesney. She knew the relationship would never last. She just didn’t want to admit it. She wasn’t strong enough to push the ring back in Jack’s direction. Even as he placed the diamond on her ring finger, Chesney knew she didn’t want to waltz down the aisle with him. Jack would have been tempted to keep his broker on his cell phone while they exchanged wedding vows. He would have had a quickie with one of Chesney’s drunken aunts. He would have happily invited the bridesmaids for an orgy. But somehow Chesney knew there was a dangerous flaw within her that would have tried to make Jack’s character defects okay.

She was very, very good at giving people excuses for treating her badly. She wanted to understand why she hung on to bad relationship. Was it simply so she could say she was in a relationship? Chesney had a dangerously high tolerance for disappointment. Her ability to make the bad look less than bad was a curse, not a gift. She even knew that every single romantic connection thus far had been duds, destined to fail. She knew it, but jumped right in there anyway.

I don’t know how to stop pretending I am in love when I’m not. Of course, I was broken-hearted when Jack cheated. But it wasn’t so much because I couldn’t live without a selfish, pompous ass like him. It was the realization that without the rock on my left hand, I didn’t belong to anyone. Without that ring, I have to admit to myself, and to all the world, that no one loves me.

And so, with her naked ring finger in full view, Chesney made that hasty trip back to Bean Blossom, Indiana. Leaving Chicago felt necessary. That nagging need to see Grace’s house again would not go away. During the drive, she occasionally asked herself why she hadn’t told one single person except Becca that she was leaving. Initially, she wandered the narrow country roads and panicked that she might not find it. She had nothing to worry about, though. She immediately recognized the stately old place and drove up the cozy lane, still embroidered by lush trees. Every step she made in the dry grass crunched loudly in her ears. She savored the silence. No car horns or crowded sidewalks. No subways. No neon lights. By spring, the neglected sunflowers would grow higher than her head. In a messy row beside the barn, the heavy blooms would bow. Wildflowers fussed for space along the path leading to the wrap-around porch.

Somewhere between the moments it took to peek through all the dirty windows, Chesney discovered that she needed this house. She needed to walk away from everything she knew. She leaned against the porch railing that day and smiled. “This is my new beginning.”

When she returned to Chicago, Chesney and Becca met at Delilah’s for some high calorie treats. As Becca entered the restaurant in her usual flurry, with her black hair tied back in a sleek, serious ponytail, Chesney took in a deep breath. Becca tossed her oversized bag on the floor beside her chair and leaned across the table. “What’s going on?” she asked. “I know the tone I heard in your voice today on the telephone. I know it means you’ve got something big to say.”

“There’s no drama,” Chesney said with a smile. “Calm down.”

“What’s wrong?” Becca’ serious, piercing eyes would not blink. “Did Jack call? Is your mother finally having an emotional meltdown?”