The Wedding Chapel (35 page)

Mercy, he was making her blush. “Yes, I remember.”

“I ain’t been with another woman since.”

Heavy tears washed her eyes. “No one?”

“Why? I was married to you . . . in my heart. But you ran off with Spice Keating.”

“Because of your letter.” The nail in the coffin. “That you’d changed your mind.”

Jimmy laughed. “You’re joking. Why would I write such a letter? Why would you even believe it?”

“It was in an envelope addressed to me. On the table by the door. The day you left for boot camp. I thought you left me a final love letter.”

“I was going to, but after our last night together, I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye again.”

They had not made love again but sat for hours in the Clemsons’ living room promising to wait for each other, to write daily.

“What did I say in this letter again?”

“That you’d reconsidered. You didn’t feel it was fair to make me wait. That I should move on. In fact, I still have it,” Colette said.

Jimmy pushed away from the table. “Why would I write such a thing? And you received no other letters?”

“None.”

“Did you write me? Telling me we were a mistake, that ‘our night’ should’ve never happened. That you were too young to settle for one man. The world was changing and the new decade offered women all kinds of possibilities.”

“I never wrote such a letter, Jimmy.” Colette felt punched. Mocked. And jerked about.

“Then we have a conundrum.” He tugged open a kitchen drawer and retrieved a yellowish envelope. He slid the letter across the table. “If you didn’t write this, who did?”

With a trembling hand, Colette slipped the single sheet with her smooth, angled handwriting, faded with time, across the page.

. . . was all a mistake. I realize that now, Jimmy. Please forgive me. Move on . . . I’m too young . . . Going away . . .

Colette stopped on the last line. The lettering changed, the pen slipping off the edge of the paper. When she was younger, she hated writing to the end of the page. It messed up her neat penmanship.

Colette whirled up out of her chair with a ping of understanding. “No, she wouldn’t . . . she couldn’t.”

“She? Who, Colette? Do what?”

Thinking, pacing, Colette tried to unwind the last sixty-four years. “She couldn’t have been that evil, that cruel.” But she was so bitter and so skilled at . . . Colette regarded the letter, turning it over to see her signature. Peg! Oh, that Peg!

“Jimmy, I did not write this.” She shoved the letter at him. “Look at the signature. I always signed with a curly
C
. This is a straight
C
. And I never wrote to the edge of the page.”

Colette sank back into her chair, hand to her middle, regret and sadness brewing there. How could she have been so blind? So ruled by fear? “Peg did this.”

“Peg?” Jimmy said.

“Yes, Peg. Now she’s dead and I can’t confront her.” A thin, sharp pang started around the back of Colette’s head. The one she had since she was a girl on the Morleys’ farm. “Remember? She was very proud of her copying skills. Used them to entertain the kids when we first moved here. Even tricked the girls into thinking she’d had tea with Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.”

Jimmy made a face. “Seems I remember her copying homework for someone or another, but why would she do this?” He waved the fake letter, then dropped it to the table. “I can’t think of anything more cruel.”

Colette met his gaze. “Exactly. Peg was that cruel. She wanted what she wanted and didn’t care who she hurt. She wanted you, Jimmy.”

“But she was seeing Drummond Branson when I left for boot.”

“And married him a few months later, but if you’d have whistled, she’d have come running.”

Jimmy ran his hand over his silver hair. “Well, now, that makes sense. She wrote me a few times, after I heard you’d took off with Spice, saying she’d wait for me, but I told her to find her a nice man in Heart’s Bend. It was too painful to hear from her, so I stopped writing back. Might have told her I met a Korean gal, just to get her to stand down.”

“Peg was a liar and manipulator.” Colette shook her head. But was she really any better? She’d been lying to folks for over sixty years.

“Then she came to the chapel once after I got back from the war, saying she’d run off with me if I wanted. And with Drummond’s child on her hip, no less. I steered clear for a long time. Though she was the closest thing in town to you, Lettie.”

“I never knew she was so twisted inside.” But secrets had a way of deforming a girl’s heart. Darkening and shadowing her view of the world.

“So you went to New York with Spice because she forged letters to the both of us. Surely we’d have figured it out over time. But you ran off so quickly.”

“I had to, Jimmy.”

“Had to?”

Colette sighed. Six decades and the news was no easier than the day she found out. “When Peg came to see you? That wasn’t Drummond’s boy on her hip, Jimmy.” Colette moved to the kitchen door, drawing in a fresh, cool breath. “That was your boy. Our boy.” She glanced back at Jimmy. “I left because of the letter and because I was pregnant. Drummond Branson is your son.”

JACK

Friday afternoon unfurled before Jack with long limbs of light as he drove Ford around Heart’s Bend looking for Colette.

They’d driven to Nashville, but Colette wasn’t at the hotel so Ford made him turn around.

Ford called Colette’s phone every other minute and bordered on panic.

“Pick up your phone, Colette.” To Jack he said, “Let’s stop by her sister’s grave. Or her aunt and uncle’s old place. Or by
that man’s
house, Jimmy. The coach.”

Jack navigated Ford’s request while navigating the white water of emotions roaring through him. He held on to the steering wheel, his jaw tense, his arms taut.

Rotten. Rotten timing. Returning to the house and bounding up the stairs just as Taylor voiced her honest, uninhibited feelings to Emma.

I agree, eloping was a stupid idea.

Or hey, maybe he’d finally happened across some serendipity. Because now he knew. Taylor believed their marriage to be stupid. If Ford hadn’t been in the car laying on the horn, he’d have duked it out with her.

But hey, this made his London decision easier. He’d make Hops happy. Perhaps this was all a blessing in disguise. He could put some space between himself and Taylor. And if she wanted out of their marriage, she could walk away. No fuss, no muss.

What a waste to have worried over the London decision. Or Doug Voss.

“Jack, slow down, there’s her car.” Ford rapped on the passenger window.

Jack slowed. Sure enough, the car formerly parked outside Granny’s
was in Coach’s driveway. But he didn’t turn in. Instead, he cruised on by.

“Jack, stop. Turn in. Please.”

“You’re not going in there.”

“I most certainly am. And in the vernacular of kindergarteners, ‘You’re not the boss of me.’ ”

“And you’re not the boss of me. Or Colette. And you’re certainly not the driver of this car.”

“I need to check on her. See if she’s all right. Now I demand you pull over.”

“If she’s with Coach, she’s fine. Leave her be. She must have something powerful on her mind to bug out of the FRESH meeting the way she did. If Coach built that chapel for her, then I bet they have a lot to say to one another.”

Jack turned around at the cul-de-sac and headed back to the main road, Ford sulking in the passenger seat. In the rearview mirror, Jack caught the pastoral scene of Coach’s lawn and for a second he yearned.

He’d always wanted a place out this way, to raise a family. To create something he never had as a kid.

But it was all vanity. From now on, marriage and family would be something he admired from a distance, like a fine painting.

“I demand you pull over and let me out,” Ford said.

“Leave her be.” He’d fight for Coach and Colette, if not for himself.

“Jack—”

Rolling through the stop sign, Jack turned right and gunned the gas toward Heart’s Bend proper.

His last thought boomeranged in his head. Why not fight for
his
marriage? Fight for himself?

He was letting his father, and every sour foster family experience
he’d ever endured, control his life. Wasn’t it time he became the man he wanted to be? Put his past behind him?

“Jack, I can’t just leave her,” Ford said.

“Tell you what, there’s a charming inn you’d love. A restored plantation home that has the best cooking this side of the Mississippi. I’ll drop you off—”

“Nothing doing. I won’t be stranded without a car.”

“Fine, then you drop me off.”

“Where? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to fight for something.”

“The FRESH account? Don’t worry about them. I can smooth that over.”

“
I’ll
smooth it over with them. This campaign will be a big hit. But for now, I’ve got something else to do.”

The more he contemplated it, the more his spirit unlocked. He was going to go all-out for love like he did for advertising. For his job at 105. For the FRESH account.

Jack pulled up to the Fry Hut, shifted into park, and stepped out. “The inn is just down First Avenue,” he instructed Ford. “All the way to the end. You can’t miss it.”

“What are you doing?” Ford scrambled out of the passenger seat, quick-stepping around to the driver’s side. “Where will you be?”

“Fixing stuff.” As he passed by, Jack gripped Ford’s arm. “Don’t go to Coach’s. Give them time. Text Colette to tell her where you are, then go to the inn dining room and have a nice dinner. The back veranda overlooks the Cumberland River. It’s storybook material.”

“I suppose she can call if she needs me.” Getting behind the wheel, Ford powered down his window and hung out his elbow. “Why do you care so much, Jack?”

He gazed at the Fry Hut, then over his shoulder toward Chelsea Avenue. “Because I might be starting to believe in second chances.”

JIMMY

“Drummond Branson is my son?”

“Yes, conceived that night in the chapel.”

“So you ran off without telling me?”

“You were in the army, and as far as I knew, done with me. I was scared, Jimmy. Embarrassed. How could I display my shame all over Heart’s Bend? It’s not the man who wears the scarlet letter but the woman. I couldn’t do it to Aunt Jean and Uncle Fred.”

“Why didn’t you write to me? Dad would’ve taken you in, Lettie. I know he would’ve.”

“I wanted to write to you, but Peg convinced me you’d only be with me for the baby. She said I couldn’t tell you I was pregnant when you couldn’t do anything about it. I told her we’d said our vows that night and she reminded me they were not binding. She reminded me of your letter and—” Colette shook her head. “I was ashamed, scared, and confused. By the time I knew I was pregnant, three months later, I’d not heard another word from you. Spice was heading to New York, so I went with him. His cousin had a job in television and he thought we could find work there. I imagined being an assistant or a secretary. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine she’d send me on auditions. Jimmy, I had to go. A town scandal would’ve killed Aunt Jean right where she stood.”

“I know, but . . .” He wrestled to understand, hearing her pain but not feeling it. But she was right. An unwed woman, in the eyes of 1950s society, brought shame on the family. He also knew that while their vows had been sincere, they’d not bound them publicly.

“Did Spice know? About my child?”

“I had to tell him. I was so sick on the drive to New York. He
helped me hide it for a few months. I even hid it while I had a six-week job on
Love of Life,
but when I was seven months, I just popped. Couldn’t hide any longer.”

Her voice faded. She looked tired, beat up. Sixty years felt like a moment ago, her shame was so rich and real.

“Why didn’t you marry him?”

“Because he also had a secret.” Colette lifted her gaze to his.

“What secret?”

“I think you know.”

Jimmy coughed. “So all that skirt chasing was a ruse?”

“Yes, so you see, we had equal shame to conceal. Of course today, those issues aren’t so scandalous.”