The Sweetest September (Home in Magnolia Bend) (26 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Four months later

C
ARLA
S
TANTON
ACCEPTED
the box from the FedEx guy with a heaviness she hadn’t expected. Yesterday, she’d signed the papers selling Breezy Hill to IM Timber Industries. She had no clue what a Portland-based company wanted with a sugarcane farm, but the company had agreed to her price and the deal had required little negotiation. Even though the sale had been cut-and-dried, Carla had cried all the way home from the attorney’s office.

Things weren’t supposed to end this way. Breezy Hill was the legacy she and Hal would hand down to their child and her children. But that reality had shattered the September day when John had come home to find Rebecca.

Poof.

Gone.

Carla had entered the new year depressed. After spending nearly two weeks in bed and struggling to even dress, she’d forced herself into going to Baton Rouge to join a new grief therapy group. It had taken her several months and a lot of tissues, but now she felt better able to face what she’d done. Grief and anger had created a monster inside her. Even though she did feel a sense of loss at selling Breezy Hill and treating John so shabbily, she knew it was the first step in moving forward. One day she would have to tell him her regrets.

When she felt stronger.

Taking the box to the kitchen table, she turned on the light. She hadn’t remembered ordering anything lately, but sometimes online purchases showed up later than expected. She glanced at the sender’s name and swallowed.

Shelby M. Beauchamp.

Hot anger flooded her before she recalled she had vowed to let go of her hate and forgive the blonde who had insinuated herself into John’s life. He’d married her. She was pregnant, proving Carla had been right all along. Giving a friend a place to stay, her ass.

She took several cleansing breaths and closed her eyes, stilling her anger, asking the Lord to fill her with the spirit of forgiveness.

There.

Grasping the edge, she pulled the tab and opened the box. Inside she found an envelope and the journal she’d given Rebecca the day before she married John.

Carla hadn’t forgotten about the journal. She assumed Rebecca, who’d always hated any kind of writing, hadn’t bothered with it. Unwrapping the leather cord looped tight around the button, Carla opened the book, a soft sound of gratitude escaping her when she saw the journal had been nearly completed, filled with the familiar boyish chicken scratch she’d teased her daughter about.

Turning the first page, she read the line in which Rebecca wondered if mothers were always right.

“We’re not,” Carla whispered, closing the journal and clutching it to her heart. “We’re just human, baby.”

Setting the journal down, Carla slid the flap of the envelope open, pulling out a handwritten letter. It was from Shelby, and the fanciful looping script was noticeably different from her daughter’s.

Dear Carla—

I know you aren’t expecting to hear from me. You’ve been quite clear on how you feel, but I felt moved to clarify a few things and to return the journal you gave your daughter long ago. It should rest with you.

By now you may know that IM Timber Industries is one of my family’s corporations. At first I know this may infuriate you, but I hope with my words you will understand why I did this.

Carla set the letter down. “Why that little—” She snapped her mouth shut, gritted her teeth and prayed like tomorrow may never come she wouldn’t march over to the rental house where a very pregnant Shelby lived with her new husband and snatch her bald-headed.

After a full minute of asking for grace, Carla picked up Shelby’s letter.

I read Rebecca’s journal. It was wrong of me, and I admit my mistake. But I’m not sorry I read it. When I first met John, I hated the faceless wife he loved. But once I “met” Rebecca, I grew to respect and admire her. Through her eyes, I grew to love the man she loved and the land she felt such a part of. At one point, she mentioned how much John loved Breezy Hill and how he fit the legacy her father had envisioned.

I know you’re still angry at John, but knowing Rebecca somewhat intimately, I felt she would have wanted John at Breezy Hill. I think she would understand his need to be loved and, I’m being presumptuous, but I think she would have liked me. I think Rebecca and I would have been friends.

I bought Breezy Hill, not out of spite, but rather because I love it. Rebecca helped me love the beauty of the sunrise over the Southeast field, the hand-carved banister on the staircase and the mantel salvaged from the fire. I do not, however, like the curtains in the kitchen, but beyond changing them, I want to preserve the house the Stantons lived and loved in for over a hundred years.

Lastly, through Rebecca I have seen the woman you truly are. She loved you so, and throughout the pages, I could see what an influence you were on her life. You were a good mother to her, Carla, the type of mother I hope to be to my own daughter.

In a month I will hopefully deliver a baby girl. She was conceived in grief, but will be born in love. I wanted you to know we plan to name her Lindsey Rebecca, after my grandfather and your daughter. You are always welcome at Breezy Hill. It is still your home and maybe one day you can forgive John and me, and be part of our lives. I hope you will find peace.

Sincerely,

Shelby

With trembling hands, Carla lowered the letter, dampness streaking her cheeks. She sat down so hard she scared Dim Sum, who flinched before rising up for a scratch.

“Down, Dim,” she said, covering her face with her hands. Her body felt so heavy, so very, very heavy.

She uncovered her face and looked at the letter and the journal and shook her head.

I hope you will find peace.

At the hands of a woman she’d hated, Carla may just have found a remnant of faith and hope she’d tossed away in favor of grief.

Maybe the mother Rebecca had loved so well, whom she had admired so much, had been so very wrong about so many things.

Outside the window a cloud scudded by causing a beam of sunshine to fall on Carla as she sat in her chair feeling like a failure.

The warmth of the light blanketed her, making her shiver despite the heat. She stared down at where her hands lay in her lap before looking up with a smile.

“I get it, honey. I get it,” she said to the sunshine.

* * *

S
HELBY
LAY
IN
the hospital bed, still nauseous from the medication they’d given her during the delivery, but too giddy to pay much attention to the feeling.

John sat in the rocking chair across from her, counting the fingers and toes of their new daughter.

“She’s so little,” he kept saying, his dark head bent over the now-squirming baby with the full head of black hair.

“Wrap her in the blanket,” Shelby said, her eyes lighting on her daughter as the baby opened her mouth and let out a squall.

“I can’t wrap it like those nurses do,” John said, rising and bringing the baby to her. Shelby took her daughter, nestling her to her chest, giving a little shush noise. Lindsey Rebecca calmed, but started immediately rooting to find Shelby’s breast, which John had dubbed the jackpot for any infant in the nursery.

“You just ate, piglet,” Shelby murmured, unhooking her gown, wanting to give the baby whatever she could to comfort her. Being born was not an easy task. For Lindsey or Shelby.

A knock sounded at the door, and Marilyn Mackey stuck her head inside.

“Mom,” Shelby said, still in awe she called Marilyn “Mom” and not “Mother” the way she had all her life.

“Oh, are you feeding her?” Marilyn said, looking disappointed.

Shelby reached for the pacifier, refastening her gown. “Actually, she ate not long ago. Let’s try this and maybe she’ll settle down so you can—”

Marilyn scooped up the baby, expertly tucking the swaddling blanket around her granddaughter while popping the pacifier into her mouth. Cradling the crying infant, Marilyn strolled to the hospital window, humming a James Taylor song, looking like a pro. Lindsey stopped crying.

Shelby mouthed “oh, my God” at John, but he just smiled. The fool hadn’t stopped smiling since his daughter had been born last night.

Another knock at the door.

“My family is going to drive us batty,” John said.

But it wasn’t a Beauchamp that walked in. It was the floor nurse, and she carried a gift.

“Something for the mama,” the nurse said, thrusting the gift toward Shelby. John stood to take it and place it with all the flowers blooming on the large windowsill, but Shelby snatched it.

“She said for the mama,” Shelby teased John, sliding another glance at her mother talking sweetly to her granddaughter.

Still so weird.

The nurse left with a wave and a promise to check back later, and John sank back into his chair, still smiling.

Shelby untied the bow and lifted the lid on the gold box.

Inside the tissue paper, she found a beautifully bound leather journal, with a leather strap to bind around a large pewter button. Carefully, Shelby lifted it from its home in the box.

Unwinding the leather strap, Shelby opened the journal. On the first page written in tasteful penmanship were these words:

To Shelby:

May you find yourself in these pages and may you chart the journey of a lifetime. May your Rebecca bring you the joy my Rebecca brought to me. Peace found.

Carla

Shelby set the journal back in the box, wrapping the cord securely around the button.

“What did you get?” John asked.

“A new beginning,” Shelby said.

John stood, glancing at the box, recognizing what the journal represented. He lifted his pretty green eyes, surprise reflected in them. “Carla?”

“I think she approves of the name.”

John looked back at his daughter, still cradled in Shelby’s mother’s arms. “Thank you for turning your rental car into Boots Grocery and giving me a second chance at love.”

Shelby took his hand and together they watched the CEO of a major corporation make a fool of herself with a baby.

It really was true.

A baby changed everything.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from THE REASONS TO STAY by Laura Drake.

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CHAPTER ONE

B
ILLY
J
OEL
IS
full of crap. Not only the good die young.

The low gray clouds seemed to settle on Priss’s shoulders as she walked between the graves, zipping her leather jacket against the chill air. Was it a sin to wear jeans to a funeral? Probably. But it was a long way from Boulder to Widow’s Grove, and Mona had overheated in Phoenix. If she’d stopped to change clothes, Priss would have been alone in this graveyard.

As it was, there were only two other people in the cemetery on the right side of the winter-brown grass. They stood beside the subtly Astroturfed dirt pile.

She stopped a few feet short of the open grave. Her mother was down there. Shouldn’t she feel something beyond tired? Hearing her heart thud in her ears, she listened for something else. Sadness, maybe, or loss? Regret?

A little late for that. Old wounds didn’t always heal—the deepest ones festered.

By the time the hospital had tracked down Priss and called, her mother was gone. Better that way really, for them both.

“Come, Ignacio. It’s time to go.” A meager woman stood at the foot of the grave, both her face and raincoat set in similar generic authoritarian lines.

Priss recognized a social worker when she saw one. Given her past, she should.

A kid stood beside her, head down, face obscured by a black hoodie pulled out of shape by fists crammed into the pocket across the front. Crotch-sagging jeans puddled atop untied tennis shoes that might have, in a former life, been white.

The woman touched his shoulder. The kid shrugged her off. One hand appeared from his pocket, and Priss got a flash of knuckles lettered with homemade tattoos before it disappeared beneath the hood.

She heard a muffled snuffle, and the boy swiped the sleeve across his face.

Priss felt a pinch in her chest, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

Shit.

The hood flew back and for the first time, she stared into the defiant eyes of her half brother. She stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “I’m Priss, your—”

“I know who you are.” Below the knit stocking cap, his almost delicate eyebrows drew together over narrowed eyes.

His hostility slapped her hard. She took a step back.

The matron spoke up. “Well,
I
don’t know who you are.”

Priss looked her over. “Who are
you?
”

She sniffed and looked Priss over. “I am Ms. Barnes, children’s social worker for Santa Barbara County. And you haven’t answered my question.” Her tone was haughty, but her glare was weak. She should ask the kid for lessons.

“I’m Priscilla Hart.” She tipped her chin at the grave. “My mother’s the one in the box.”

The Barnes woman tsk-tsked and her lip curled, as if she’d encountered a turd in a church pew. It was a response Priss was used to. She’d always been what her mother called, “outspoken,” but Priss didn’t know how else to be.

Her opinions were like a deposit of crude oil, buried shallower than most people’s. Others had regulators to control and filter to a civilized flow; hers were much more likely to spew. She never meant to hurt people’s feelings, but mostly the nuances of refined talk escaped her. Dancing around the facts to be polite made her head hurt.

She’d take her facts straight up, thank you.

The social worker reached for the kid’s shoulder again but at his glare, dropped her hand. “Come, Ignacio. We’ll get your things.”

“My name is Nacho!” His shout rolled away through the empty graveyard.

The woman pursed her lips and pink spread from her cheeks to the rest of her face. “Well, then...come with me.” She turned, took a few steps and waved her hands to encourage Nacho to follow her.

But the kid didn’t move, just stood looking at his sister. His defiant eyes had taken on a shiny cast and his bottom lip wobbled. The tough guy morphed into a scared ten-year-old.

Oh, crap.

When Priss followed the social worker away from the grave, Nacho was right behind her. “Where are you taking him?”

“To pick up his clothing at his home.”

Something old and lumbering stirred deep inside Priss. She was curious to see where her mother had lived. “I’m going with you.” She said it to Nacho, but Ms. Barnes stopped and turned.

“I’ll need some identification to prove you’re related to...” She shot a glance at Nacho. “Mr. Hart.”

The kid rolled his eyes.

Priss restrained herself from doing the same, pulled her wallet from her jacket pocket and handed over her Colorado driver’s license.

The social worker inspected it like a Stop-n-Go clerk checks a twenty then handed it back. “I suppose you are also next of kin. You can follow me in your car.”

Deciding the clouds were window dressing for the funeral rather than rainmakers, Priss left Mona’s top down and pulled out behind the county Chevy.

When they reached the outskirts of town, Priss took in the fussy Victorians perched on manicured lawns, looking down their patrician noses at the traffic in the street.

She rolled to a four-way stop in the middle of town. A tall flagpole with a limp flag graced the middle of the intersection. Up the cross street, buildings crowded each other for space, cute wooden signs declaring them B & Bs, antique shops, art galleries, coffeehouses.

Her mother sure hadn’t lived in this part of town.

Following the county car, Priss took a left. Sure enough, the posh buildings were replaced by ranch houses, and after they crossed over a creek, single-wide trailers and ramshackle cracker-box houses lined the street. The stunted, skeletal trees did nothing to soften the dingy neighborhood.

After parking behind the Chevy, Priss cut the engine and waited as Mona went through the death throes the ’81 Caddy had been named for. Priss had seen past the scaly black paint and the rust-dotted chrome to the Glory of Detroit in Mona’s lines and under her hood. She’d bought Mona off a university student and since then had put every penny she could spare into restoring her.

Priss finger-combed her short stand-up black hair in the rearview mirror. The painful squeal of her car door cracked the quiet.

The squat one-story wooden building was set in a C, creating a courtyard full of weeds and wind-blown trash. It had probably been a Motor Lodge, back in the ’60s. But that heyday was long past. Its boards were warped and wavy, a faded barn-red. The hand-lettered wooden sign out front advertised rooms for rent by the week.

The familiar weight of poverty and want settled over Priss like a foul-smelling wool blanket. As she stepped out of the car, a shudder of
déjà vu
ran through her, helping to shake off a taint of despair. It wasn’t hers any longer.

But it is his.

Nacho stood on the cracked sidewalk, his face empty of emotion. When Ms. Barnes asked him a question, he dug in his pocket and handed over a key. She led the way to a door at the end of the derelict building.

Nacho walked in first, and Ms. Barnes followed, flipping on the light. She flinched slightly, but to her credit she didn’t wrinkle her nose.

Priss stepped in behind them. It wasn’t the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that brought it all back, or the tired room it illuminated. It was the smell. The walls exhaled ghosts of damp rot, untold cartons of her mother’s cigarettes and decades of starchy food, into her face.

Oh, yeah. She knew this place.

It was her past.

Priss glanced at the tinfoil-tipped rabbit ears on the TV, the sagging, sheet-covered couch, the dime-store painting of a rapturous bleeding Christ hanging over it. His suffering-crazed eyes had always frightened her—as if his hanging on the dirty wall was somehow
her
fault.

She shouldn’t have been curious about this place—her mom changed locations a lot, but “home” remained the same. Widow’s Grove was the final stop on Cora Hart’s rutted road in search of happy.

Priss had bailed off that road ten years ago, when public school set her free with an emancipation proclamation they called a diploma.

The county lady walked across the warped linoleum to the kitchen area. “Just pack a few changes of clothes. We’ll deal with the rest later.” She pulled open a sagging cabinet and peered in.

Head down, Nacho strode to the doorless room on the right. Priss followed. A small, rumpled cot with dingy sheets took up one corner of the eight-by-eight room. Nacho pulled a backpack from under the bed and stuffed it with clothes from a stack of plastic storage bins. Priss had had that same dresser, growing up.

He glanced at the schoolbooks lying on the bed, then shot a sly look at Priss. She just shrugged. None of her concern if he left them behind. He pushed past her, stopped in the bathroom only long enough to pick up his toothbrush and jammed it in the outside pocket of the backpack.

Outside the bathroom door he reached for a small, ornate iron cross hanging on the wall beside his head. He lifted the cross off the hook, dropped it into the backpack and snapped the bag’s flap closed. His eyes cut to her again. Sad, moist eyes.

She remembered that cross. According to her mother it had been passed down from her Spanish ancestors; it was her proudest possession. A gossamer wisp of nostalgia floated through Priss’s chest before she could quash it.

Pushing away from the wall, she sauntered to the kitchen area feigning untouchable indifference. “What happens to all this stuff?”

Ms. Barnes handed Priss her business card. “Anything of value will be sold to reimburse the State for her medical care.” Her pinched lips told Priss what she thought of that likelihood.

“Oh, I don’t know. A museum might want the TV.”

Nacho walked by her. “Museums don’t pay for things, stupid.”

She smiled. He sounded like her. “You’ve got a point there, kid.”

He stopped in front of the social worker who stood washing her hands at the sink. “I could stay here. There’s food, and I know how to cook.”

“I’m not sure I’d call what’s in that refrigerator food. You’re ten years old. You cannot live by yourself.”

“She could stay with me.” The thumb he threw over his shoulder pointed at Priss.

She backed away. “Oh, no. Uh-uh. I’ve been there and done that. Couldn’t afford the T-shirt.” Alarm raced along her skin, chasing the goose bumps.

It didn’t matter that she was grown, had a life of her own and some money in the bank. Her first instinct was that someone was going to force her to stay here. Forever.

Claustrophobia bloomed like squid’s ink in her brain. In a panic she rushed out of the apartment. Outside in the clean air, she pulled in deep, grateful lungfuls, exhaling the past.

Her ears buzzed. Exhaustion or
déjà vu?
Maybe both.

Nacho barreled past her, stopped in the weeds and chest heaving, looked at her, his eyes full of betrayal. “Don’t you think I know nobody wants me?” His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

The pain and animosity on the kid’s face brought it all back—a slap-in-the-face reminder of why she had never come back.

Ms. Barnes stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her. “Now, now, Ignacio. I understand that you’ve had an emotional day. But anger will not serve you well.”

“My mom’s dead. My dad’s in prison. And this one—” he jerked a thumb at Priss “—is useless.” He spit into the weeds. “Fine. Take me. I don’t give a shit.” He stalked to the car and stood with his back to them, shoulders square, head up.

Way to go, Mom. As usual, you bail and leave someone else to be responsible. Well, I didn’t sign up for this. It’s not my problem.

She strode to her car, got in, and peeled out, tires squealing as she made her way back to her life.

* * *

W
HEN
THE
GUNMETAL
-
GRAY
ocean rose in the horizon of her windshield, Priss realized she’d made a wrong turn. No surprise, since she couldn’t recall the roads she’d taken to get here.

Idling at the corner of whatever and Pacific Coast Highway, she stared at the moody water until a driver honked behind her. Her mind still churning, she pulled across the road to an empty parking lot on the deserted beach.

Memories banged at the door she’d locked years ago and her head pounded with the hammering. Jesus, the smell in that apartment. She thought she’d forgotten it but when she stepped inside that hole it was
all
there, waiting for her.

She switched off the engine and Mona settled with a wheeze. Opening the door, she stepped into the wind. It was much colder here than inland. Her eyes watered, so she closed them and absorbed the astringent scent of timeless salt caverns at the bottom of the ocean. Zipping her leather jacket, she floundered through the loose sand to where the waves pounded the beach smooth, making walking easier. She walked, watching the little bubbles that rose with each wave’s retreat.

She ached for the mindless drift of Colorado. Those days when Ryan was home and they’d make love in the long, languid mornings until her skin burned all over from passion and his beard stubble. Reading him the comics, tangled in the sheets and sunlight.

Ryan was fun-loving, and no more interested in ties than she. They fit.

She lifted her face to the wind. But Boulder hadn’t really been like that in a while, had it? Certainly not the sex part, anyway. She couldn’t exactly say when it happened, but things were off, somehow. Ryan was on the road more this spring, putting on skateboard tournaments, or filming them. And when they spoke over the phone he seemed distracted, distant.

Her temp office jobs felt mundane lately. And when she wandered down to the bar with her friends, the laughter there sounded forced, almost fiercely jolly—as if a sparkly facade would make happiness sink in and become real.

A bit cynical maybe, but you’ve been to your mother’s grave today. That’s bound to stir the shit on the bottom of the tank.

But Priss was the one who demanded truth above all. She couldn’t lie to herself. She
knew
what was wrong. Her perfect, shiny gold life was flaking away, revealing a cheap dime-store bauble underneath.