Secrets over Sweet Tea (2 page)

He kissed her softly and rolled over. “That was just what I needed this morning.”

Her words brushed softly against his ear. “Me too.” She pulled the sheet around her and snuggled up under his arm.

“I’ve got to go,” he murmured. “It’s time to really get this day started.”

“No, not yet. This has been the perfect morning.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I know, babe. But I’ve got to get some kind of run in before I head to the office.” He moved his mouth closer to her face. “But we will pick up where we left off later. How’s that?”

Her lip poked out in a soft pout.

He walked into the bathroom and grabbed his running
shorts and T-shirt, which were haphazardly thrown over the side of the tub. After he slipped his running shoes on, he returned to the bedroom.

She looked beautiful lying there, her dark-brown hair scattered in waves across the pillow, the filtered sun lighting her flushed cheeks. He went to the side of the bed and leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were warm and soft and inviting. Her arms came up around the base of his neck, and he chuckled through the kiss.

“Seriously, I’ve got to go. If I don’t go now, I won’t have time to exercise today.”

“I hope you have a great day then.” Her words dripped with confidence, a certainty that he would never leave. He shook his head to dislodge his emerging thoughts. If he didn’t get outside right now and run, he wasn’t going to leave this house all day.

“You too, babe.”

He left the bedroom and headed through the kitchen to the door that led out to the small garden. He turned the knob and entered the warm May Tennessee morning. As he came to the edge of the fence, he looked quickly to see if any cars were on the streets. All was still quiet, so he jogged across and settled into a pace that was certain to produce a sweat fast.

The streets of downtown Franklin formed a grid of sorts. Main Street ran down the middle, crossed at regular intervals by numbered avenues. First Avenue, on the northeast end of town near the Harpeth River, bent around to form Bridge Street, parallel and north of Main. Third Avenue met Main at the town square, with its stately Confederate monument. And the entire downtown district came together southwest of the square, where Fifth Avenue met Main and a diagonal
street called Columbia Avenue to create Five Points. This star-shaped junction could take you any direction you wanted to go—Murfreesboro, Nashville, Bellevue, Thompson Station, or Brentwood. But it also invited you to stay because all of town life intersected at Five Points. A post office anchored one corner; a church sat on another. Then there was a Starbucks and an ice cream parlor, and the Williamson County Archives building finished it off.

This one little section of town could fulfill just about every need a person had—spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational. And yet Zach Craig had never felt so unfulfilled in his life. A bead of sweat dropped into his eye as he reached Main Street and turned east. Already the lift from his morning tryst—that
alive
feeling—was draining away. His run wasn’t helping much either. He couldn’t outrun the truth of what his life had become.

He and Caroline had been married for fifteen years now. The twins were almost fourteen, and the estrogen in his household was off the charts. The girls cried over almost everything, and when they weren’t crying, they were simply nasty. He didn’t know where his sweet little girls had gone. And Caroline wasn’t much better. With her, you never knew what you were going to get. Each morning you could throw a feather up in the air, and where the wind would take it was usually more dependable than Caroline’s moods.

A sneeze that tickled his nose almost forced him to stop running. Spring had arrived with a vengeance, and the allergies that had tortured him since he moved to Tennessee now bloomed to life with the flowers and the grasses. His other faithful companion, shame, was about to settle over him with a vengeance
as well. So he shifted his thoughts quickly to the cases that lay before him that day. He let them play through his mind as he continued down Main and skirted the square.

He had been predominantly a divorce attorney for the last five years—more out of necessity than choice. Title closings had been his real expertise, but when the real estate market tanked, he’d had to find something that was steady. And divorce certainly seemed a dependable source of income, especially in the Nashville area. He had actually read in a magazine that the city had been given the grade of D in marriage survival. Almost the worst grade you could get. Bad news—unless you made your living off those who flunked out.

He saw all sides of divorce—the ugly, the uglier, and the ugliest. One of his current clients was convinced his estranged spouse had just killed his dog. The man had come into his office sobbing, certain the dog had been poisoned. The vet was doing a necropsy now. That was a new one for sure. It never ceased to amaze him how minuscule the line was between love and hate.

Zach’s legs burned as his feet pressed harder into the unforgiving concrete of the sidewalk. He ran down First Avenue and rounded the corner onto Church Street. A large moving truck sat on the opposite side of the road. More new neighbors, it looked like.

Franklin had become an attractive place to live for people from both coasts. Nissan’s decision to relocate its entire California operations to middle Tennessee a few years ago had helped the lagging economy, but not by much. Finances were tight for a lot of people these days. Even divorce attorneys.

Zach ran past the first few townhomes that sat at the corner of the neighborhood—his neighborhood now. The
brownstones at First and Church looked historic, but the entire community was actually less than a decade old, built to blend in with the quaint downtown. He stopped at a fenced courtyard and opened the gate. A large iron fountain flowed just as it had when he’d left it earlier that morning. The brick walkway and four park benches that circled the fountain pretty much made up his front yard.

Caroline had fallen in love with this “urban development” from the moment construction began back in 2005. The houses were at peak market value then, way past Zach’s budget. But Caroline was determined to own one. He resisted for two years, though it cost him a few trinkets in between. Then the market dropped a little and he relented. But he’d bought too high nevertheless, and he was still trying to figure out how to pay for his wife’s dream house.

He paced the courtyard for a few minutes with his hands on his hips, sweat dripping from his brow as he tried to slow his breathing. He raised one hand and rubbed at his face, the weekend growth rough against his palm. He walked toward the front steps and leaned against the wrought-iron rail. It was already warm beneath his touch. There were days when he wondered if Tennessee even knew how to cool off.

He turned the handle on the wood-and-etched-glass door and reentered his three-story world. He found the twins perched at the kitchen counter eating cereal.

“Morning, Lacy.” He leaned down to kiss her cheek.

She swatted at him. “Gross, Dad. You stink.”

Joy held up her hand before he even got near her. “Don’t even think about it, Dad.”

He laughed. “Good morning to you too. Where’s Mom?”

“She’s on the phone, I think,” Lacy answered.

“Want me to fix you some French toast?”

Joy dug a spoon into her cereal for one last bite and then hopped off the barstool. “We’ve got to go get ready.”

Lacy followed quickly. “Yep. See you, Dad.”

“Hey, I love you.”

“You too, Dad!” Joy hollered. He was almost certain that Lacy grunted as she headed for the stairs.

He grabbed a water bottle from the refrigerator and headed upstairs. He could hear Caroline going at it with someone over the phone. The peacefulness of his morning was obviously over.

“Well, you didn’t fix it.” She stood in the middle of the bathroom floor and scolded as if talking to a six-year-old. “It still isn’t working. So I want someone over here today, and I don’t want some four-hour time slot that you
think
you might be able to honor. I want to know exactly when you will be here. I am just as busy as you are, and if this isn’t fixed by the end of the week, I’m calling the Better Business Bureau.”

Zach leaned against the counter. When he left his wife sleeping early this morning, she had looked so peaceful and serene that he almost changed his mind about going out. No more. Her brow was furrowed, which was hard to believe possible now that she had started getting Botox. She was still two years from forty, and yet she’d thought she needed it. He hadn’t argued. Not because he agreed, but because he was simply tired of arguing.

“I’ll see you in one hour then.” Caroline hung up the phone. She looked at him and brushed at her bangs, which had fallen in front of her face. “You sure got out of here early this morning.”

He walked over to her and moved long strands of auburn
hair from the shoulders of her workout shirt. “Yeah, I knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get a run in.”

She squirmed away from him. “You stink, Zach.”

He moved back. “I’ve been told that already.”

“Well, I’ve got a busy day today. I’m going to drop off the girls and then come back to meet the electrician. Then once he gets through, I’m heading to the store. I’ve got two clients coming in to be styled for photo shoots, so I won’t get to the new inventory until tonight. I probably won’t be home until pretty late.”

He went to the shower and turned on the water. “Why can’t Kristin help you today?”

She turned toward him, frustration in her green eyes. He knew he was forgetting something, but he just couldn’t bring it to mind.

“Summer internship in Paris, remember? I’ve only got Kelly and Amy available, and they need to work while I’m doing the styling.”

“By the way, why do our girls have school today?”

She shook her head in that way she had, as if he’d just spoken in a foreign tongue. “What?”

“Well, I have this, um, friend who took his kids to visit their grandmother. They didn’t have school today. Why do ours?”

She gave herself one last glance in the mirror. “It’s probably a private school, public school thing. Even their spring breaks are different.”

That made sense. “So the girls and I are on our own for dinner?”

She nodded. “You can take them out or something. They love that.”

“Yes, they do,” he mumbled as she left. “They enjoy their mother’s presence too.” She never heard that part.

Zach climbed into the shower and let the water wash over him, allowing his mind to retreat back to this morning: the shining dark hair, the deep, dark eyes, the desire, the longing, the actual awareness of his presence.

He decided he might take a run again tomorrow morning. Yep, he was pretty sure he’d run all week long.

Grace Shepherd slid the earpiece from her ear and pushed away from the desk in front of her, the wheels of her chair rolling back smoothly as she did. She stood and picked up the final pages of her pink notes from the desk.

Leo Tanner, her producer, burst out of the control booth, licking his fingers. Everything about him was accentuated by speed and volume. “Great job today, Grace. Great job.”

She stepped over the cord to camera number one and dropped her notes into the trash can on top of an empty Krispy Kreme doughnut box. When she moved from the bright television lights into the shadow of the studio, her body seemed to cool instantly.

“Thanks, Leo.” She patted him on his thick football-player’s
shoulder. He had been a linebacker at the University of South Carolina and still loved to go around shouting, “Go, ’cocks!”—especially now that he was a Gamecock in Tennessee territory. The man had given his life to sports and to broadcasting. Worked as a sportscaster in Columbia, South Carolina, for quite a few years, then moved to the Nashville market and worked here until his gut got too big for the camera. That was when the gold
Producer
placard took its place on his office door. Producing was a perfect job for him because he loved to tell people what to do.

He followed her out of the studio. “I told you to take the week off, Grace. It would have been okay.”

“Leo, if I took a week off every time we moved, I would run out of vacation time. And listen, you should lay off the Krispy Kremes. Honestly, you know what the doctor has said about your diabetes.”

He tucked in a corner of his blue button-down that hung beneath his navy blazer, the bottom three buttons of the shirt stretching across his girth. “You brought ’em. Though they’re nowhere near as good as your homemade cinnamon rolls, so I’ll be glad when this move is over and you can get yourself back in the kitchen. And don’t you worry about my diabetes. That’s why they have medicine. As for the vacation thing—you know you never take one, so you’re not about to run out of time. And you have to be exhausted.”

“I am.” She sighed and reached for the door of the ladies’ restroom. “I’ll take a nap this afternoon.”

“Think that husband of yours will let you live in this house for a while?”

She patted Leo’s dark-brown cheek, smooth beneath her
hand. “Thank you for your concern, but you know we do this for investment purposes.”

“Gotcha one of those foreclosures, huh?”

She smiled. She couldn’t help it. “We got a really good deal. Now I need to go so I can get home and unpack boxes.”

He took the door handle, opening the door for her. “You’re just as stubborn as me, Grace. Must be why I keep you.”

She laughed. “I’m sure that’s it. What are you doing today?”

“You mean aside from making the other networks weep by producing an amazing morning news show? Well, I’m going to a Rotary club lunch, and Sissy starts soccer this afternoon. Papa’s got a full day. Now, go sleep so you can get up in the middle of the night tonight and do it all over again.”

“Technically it will be tomorrow morning.”

“Grace, if it’s dark, it’s night. We work at night. Don’t fool yourself.”

She smiled. “Okay, well, I’ll see you tonight.” The restroom door closed slowly behind her as she walked past the three bathroom stalls and into the small dressing room at the back. She pulled the second door closed behind her and turned to study herself in the mirror. She straightened the red jacket that Tyler had picked up for her on his last New York trip. He’d said the color would be good on the air, striking against her shoulder-length blonde hair and light-brown eyes.

He also said the new house was a good deal, that buying it was the right thing to do. For them. For now. She reminded herself of that as if saying so would convince her.

She pulled gently at the skin around her eyes. They did look tired. And just thinking about the boxes that awaited her made her even more tired. But this was part of the job. Both jobs—news
anchor and wife. She began collecting tubes and brushes from the vanity, tucking them away in her cosmetics bag. She had been packing up makeup for the last ten years, ever since they upgraded her from reporter to anchor. The job had come the same year as her wedding. At the time, she’d been sure she needed nothing else. She had officially been granted the perfect world—a wonderful job and a good-looking, talented husband.

A soft burst of air that was half laugh, half pain came out of her nose. Like most fairy tales this side of Walt Disney World, that one had evaporated, leaving her with one less glass slipper and no sign of Prince Charming.

She dropped the Bobbi Brown mascara into her bag and tried to distract herself by thinking of all the viewers out there who thought she was like one of those major anchors who had someone to do her hair, brush her teeth, and wipe her nose. Wouldn’t they love to know that she drove herself to work at two thirty every morning, dressed herself, did her own hair and makeup, and wrote her own teleprompter notes? It had taken her three years of begging before Leo finally agreed to put makeup lights in here so she could actually tell what her face would look like on camera. Before that it had been a case of trial and error. Mostly error.

She stuffed the workout clothes she’d worn to the studio into a bag, grabbed her purse, and headed out into the morning sunshine. Most people were just getting to work about now. Her workday was over.

She yawned as she beeped her car open and strapped herself in. The drive from Nashville to Franklin would take her thirty minutes. She used the voice command to wake up her cell phone. Rachel would talk her home. She always did.

“I can’t believe you went in this morning.” Her friend’s voice sounded in her ear.

Grace was almost too tired to laugh. “It’s my job, Rachel. And unlike you, I’m not a big vacation taker.”

“Hey, hey, now. Play nice. I worked full-time with one kid and another on the way. I needed those days off.”

Grace and Rachel settled into comfortable best-friend chat as the miles sped by. After almost thirteen years, they could practically finish each other’s sentences. They’d met at the television station fresh out of college—but different colleges. Rachel took pride in being a Carolina Gamecock like Leo, though she had graduated quite a few years behind him. And she always pointed out she and Grace were friends in spite of Grace’s University of Tennessee diploma. But Rachel still refused to go out with Grace if she wore UT orange. She insisted that Gamecocks gagged at the color because it represented the two teams they hated most, Clemson and Tennessee.

Rachel had risen to producer pretty quickly and was a huge advocate for Grace’s getting the anchor chair. The two of them were called chocolate and vanilla around the station. Rachel’s smooth brown skin, raven-black hair, and matching black eyes next to Grace’s golden skin, blonde locks, and chestnut-brown eyes had heads turning wherever they went. When baby number two arrived, Rachel had opted to stay home. But she and Grace still talked at least once a day—and almost always on the drive home.

“I hope you didn’t bake Leo something.”

“I just moved, Rach. I haven’t even unpacked my pans. I brought Krispy Kreme.”

“The man needs a Krispy Kreme like he needs a comb.”

“It’s not nice to make fun of bald men.” Grace laughed.

Rachel did too. “So I’d offer to come help you today, but you wouldn’t let me.”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t.”

Rachel was silent for a minute. They’d had this conversation before. Finally Rachel asked, “How was Tyler this weekend? If he’s yelled at you once, I’m coming over there to slap him myself. And why you let that man make you move again is beyond me. A woman needs to nest. She needs to plant roots. She needs to—”

“You can breathe, Rachel. It’s key to survival.”

“Well, that man just infuriates me. How can one living creature infuriate someone so much?”

“Rach, stop.”

She could hear Rachel’s buff-colored nails tapping on her countertop. She knew they were buff-colored because that’s all Rachel wore. And she always talked on the phone in the kitchen near food. Rachel loved food. They both did. They claimed it was part of being a Southern woman—okay, any kind of woman. Women bonded over food. So Rachel felt they were closer if she was in the kitchen eating something while they talked.

“Tyler’s my husband,” Grace reminded her friend.

“Yes, he is. He is your husband. And usually I am an advocate for your husband, just as you are for mine. You know Jason always says you’re the best friend of this marriage. But when Tyler doesn’t value you like you deserve to be valued, Grace . . . well, it makes me angry. Anyway, I’m through venting. No more venting.”

“Good. Now, you have successfully talked me home. Can I go now?”

“You can go. But please, please be kind to yourself this week. I love you, girl.”

“You too,” she said as she rounded the corner and reached for the garage door opener. “Bye.”

Grace pushed the button to open the garage. Boxes were stacked floor to ceiling in the back. Tyler had promised to move some into the house so she could start unpacking this morning.

Not one had been moved.

Grace’s body ached just looking at them. All she wanted to do was get unpacked and back into some kind of normal routine. For a moment she was grateful she had waited to open the garage door until after she had hung up with Rachel. She was too tired for another comment.

Miss Daisy greeted her at the door. “Hey, beautiful girl.” Grace slipped her hand down into the champagne fur of her shih tzu and rubbed. Miss Daisy’s moans came out soft but clear. “Oh, I know. I know.”

The dog wriggled free from Grace’s hand and went to stand by her bowls. Grace followed her. Both were empty. “Didn’t Daddy feed you this morning?”

Miss Daisy looked at the bowls and then back at Grace, her meaning clear. Grace set her stuff down on the kitchen counter and filled the bowls, then left to the sound of slurping. She made her way down the unfamiliar hallway to the bedroom. Tyler was still sleeping. No surprise. That’s the way she found him most mornings lately.

At thirty-three, Tyler was considered old for professional hockey. Hockey wasn’t an old man’s game. Few players stayed around until their forties. Or rather, she should say, few were
kept
until their forties. About the time Tyler hit thirty, he’d
started getting yearly renewals in place of the multiyear agreements he’d signed before. The three years since then had been a spiral down to painful places.

Grace moved quietly to the closet for her pj’s and her black ballerina bedroom slippers. After she had changed, she walked over to the bed. Tyler never stirred. His sour-sweet breath seemed to fill the room.

Her feet moved slowly back to the kitchen, where she poured a large glass of sweet tea. Her mother had always made sweet tea so thick it practically oozed out. Grace didn’t think the recipe needed changing. Since turning thirty-five, she had thought occasionally about switching to an artificial sweetener, but then she’d decided there was enough in her life that was artificial. This was the one place she was going to let the real thing have its way. She didn’t care if it had its way with her hips as well; she wasn’t giving it up. Sweet tea was her liquid sunshine. And she needed some sunshine in her life.

She picked up a wadded napkin from the floor and opened the garbage can to toss it in. An empty Jack Daniel’s bottle lay at the bottom. She dropped the napkin in the can and closed it, then went to the garage and found a box she could carry. She had deliberately used small boxes to pack, knowing this would probably happen—a true sign of how low her expectations had dropped. She set it down in the kitchen and picked up her utility knife, expertly slicing the tape that sealed it.
Dining Room
was written large in black Sharpie across the side.

She could close her eyes and do this, she had done it so many times. She should be a professional mover. In ten years of marriage she had lived in two apartments, one town house, and three different houses—not counting all the remodeling
jobs she’d endured in many of those homes. She had the process down pat. That didn’t mean she liked it.

This was Tyler’s pattern—the same pattern he had with cars and electronics and new clothes. To her it felt like some desperate attempt to fill a vacancy in his soul with something new. When they moved the last time, she’d told him that was it. They didn’t need another house. They didn’t need another car. And she wasn’t moving again.

She
had
told him that, hadn’t she?

She put down the knife and wandered aimlessly through the rooms. This house was big—bigger than the two of them could fill up. But it had been a foreclosure, so they had gotten a good deal—something they really needed, considering their experience with their previous house. Tyler had been so excited about buying in a “high-end” gated community on the outskirts of town, going on and on about what a good investment it was. But he hadn’t considered the inflated market and the ridiculous mortgage. They’d lost more than Grace liked to think about when they sold that house. But it had been bleeding their retirement accounts dry every month, so at least this move had stopped the monthly hemorrhage.