A Broken Kind of Beautiful (27 page)

One of the strings jerked.

Tossing the remainder of his peach in the water, Davis pushed himself up to crouching and wound the string around the dowel. “Ivy, could you get the net?”

Sara came to her knees. “Did we catch one?”

“We caught something,” Davis said, pulling up the line.

Ivy grabbed the net resting near the basket as a blue crab came into view.

“Bring it underneath it so we can scoop it up.”

She looked at the net gripped in her hand, then at the spastic crab. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s fun, Ivy, I promise,” Sara urged.

Ivy took a hesitant step forward and reached out the net. The crab plopped inside. Ivy squealed. The angry crustacean snapped its pincers. The net bobbed and jerked in her hands. “Davis!” She held it out from her body, like she might fling the whole thing into the water. Smiling, he tied another fish head to the string and returned it to the bottom of the marsh. Then he rescued her. He took the net and reached inside.

Ivy yelped and squeezed her eyelids shut. “Oh my goodness, what are you doing? You’re going to lose a finger.”

“Checking to see the sex.” Davis held the flailing crab in his hand the way Grandfather had taught him, so he wouldn’t get pinched. A male. He plunked it inside the bucket just as another string jerked. He reeled it in, only this time it was a female, so he returned it to the water. “We don’t want to keep the females. Not if we want to keep eating crab.”

On the third catch, he set the crab on top of the wooden planks. The animal scuttled along the wood. Sunny squirmed as Sara held him back. Ivy jumped behind Davis and gripped the thin fabric of his T-shirt.

Davis laughed. Sara joined. Before the crab scuttled too far, he scooped it up and put it in the bucket. Ivy let go of his shirt. When both buckets were
filled and the bait was gone, Davis balled the string and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Now what?” Ivy asked.

“Now we eat.”

“Phew, I’m hot.” Sara wiped her forehead and put Sunny’s harness back on. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a swim.” And before he could object, before he could stop her, she gave Sunny a command and both of them jumped off the end of the dock, where the water was deepest.

Ivy gasped.

Davis stepped to the edge of the dock, but quicker than he could dive in after her, Sara resurfaced, giggling and treading water as she held on to Sunny’s neck. “Aren’t you two hot?”

His fear morphed into a jolt of unexpected playfulness.

Ivy came to his side. “Do something before she gets eaten by an alligator.”

He hid his smile and peeked over the edge. “The gators around here are pretty small.”

“Says the man who’s not in the marsh. Are you nuts?” She flapped her arm toward Sara. “Your sister can’t see.”

Davis looked at Sara, laughing with Sunny, surrounded by sparkling water. He pulled his camera off his neck and set it on the dock. “You want me to go get her?”

“I don’t want you to stand here and talk about it, that’s for sure.”

A slow grin took hold of his lips.

Ivy took a step back. “What?”

“Why don’t you come with me?” And before she could protest, before she could take one more step away, he grabbed her around the waist and jumped in.

24

Steam rose from the shower as Ivy peeled off wet, mucky clothes and let them splat in a small pile in the corner of the bathroom. She stepped underneath the stream and watched black mud and gunk rinse from her legs and swirl around the drain. She’d never been so filthy or smelly in her life. She’d never had so much fun either. Maybe if she’d known how enjoyable crabbing could be, she would have listened to Marilyn’s encouragement all those years ago and joined the neighborhood kids. Ivy closed her eyes and let the spray cover her face, trying to forget the feel of Davis’s strong arms wrapped around her waist in the water and the low baritone of his laughter as she tried not to panic at the thought of crabs pinching her toes and alligators hiding in the reeds.

She didn’t know what was more disconcerting—the slick, foul-smelling mud sucking off one of her favorite sandals, or the way her insides wobbled when Davis pulled her out of it. She batted away her emotions and moved her focus to Vera Wang. She kept her mind centered on high fashion as she cleaned, shampooed, and toweled herself dry. The air conditioner rattled and blew from the vent near her feet, prickling her skin. She wrapped herself in a thin cotton robe and rubbed her arms.

I have called you by name, you are Mine
.

The words came uninvited, making her heart beat like a bass drum in the pit of her stomach. What would it feel like to belong to somebody as big as God, to hear the creator of the universe call her, Ivy Clark, by name? She picked up her wide-toothed comb and got to work detangling her hair. If only she could comb away the useless wish knotting in her chest. God wanted people like Sara—innocent and sweet and pure. God didn’t want people like
Ivy. With a mistress for a mother and an adulterer for a father. Someone who’d given away her virginity at the eager age of fourteen. Someone with scars and pockmarks staining her insides. She knew enough about Sara’s faith to know God wouldn’t want anything to do with someone like her.

Her cell phone chirped in the other room. Ivy padded across marble flooring onto plush carpet and swiped it off the nightstand.

Bruce.

She answered on the second ring.

“How’s my favorite niece?”

His only niece.

“Tell me, how are things going? Has Davis agreed to come back yet?”

His question dropped like an anchor through her body. “I’m working on it.”

“You’d better work faster. I talked to Juliette yesterday to agree on some dates. Sounds like she’s more obsessed with having Davis than she is about having you.”

“Gee, that’s nice to hear.”

“Just keeping it real. Do you think he’ll come back to do the shoot? Should I talk to him? Or maybe put him in contact with Jul—”

“No!”

Silence.

Ivy flushed. She hadn’t meant to sound so dramatic, but that was exactly the wrong thing to do. “Trust me, Bruce, this is a sensitive matter. If you call him or Juliette calls him, he’ll never agree. Just let me work on it, okay?”

“But you can convince him, right?”

Ivy grabbed on to the tie of her robe, her skin warm with the memory of Davis’s hand holding hers, yanking her from the mud, laughing as Sunny shook and sprayed them both with mucky swamp water. The knotted wish in her chest pulled tighter. She’d planned on going crabbing because Davis was going, and in order to convince him to return to New York, she had to
spend time with him. What she hadn’t planned on was enjoying herself so much. She bit her thumbnail.

“Ivy? You there?”

“Yeah, I can convince him.”

“Good. Start working that magic of yours. The quicker the better. You only have a month and a half before the Vera Wang shoot.”

Her stomach turned a cartwheel. She nodded into the phone, then spotted something white tucked beneath the door that led into the hallway. She walked over and picked it up, the card crisp and heavy in her hands. She frowned at the
For You
scrawled in untidy letters across the front. “Hey, Bruce, since I have your ear, let’s talk about fashion week.”

“It’s in a month.”

“I know. Who am I walking for?”

He sighed. “Ivy, you’re not walking this year.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody wants you.”

She set the card on the dresser.

“Look, don’t focus on that, okay? Focus on Vera Wang. That’s your ticket.”

Ticket for what—another contract, an opened door? The shoot would wrap and then what? She’d be scrambling for another job, holding on even tighter. Soon she would turn twenty-five. And after that, twenty-six. Time kept marching onward. What was she supposed to do when it all ended? All of a sudden, it felt so futile. Like catching wind in a jar.

She mumbled a lame good-bye and set the phone in between the mysterious card and the new bouquet of flowers Marilyn brought her on Monday. So far, Ivy had three bouquets wrapped and hanging upside down in her room. Drying and dying. She ran her finger over the smooth curve of her Eiffel Tower snow globe, then spread her fingers over top of Marilyn’s cedar box. The one she’d foolishly hoped belonged to her father.

Ivy blinked at the card, then got to work opening it up. Inside, she found a short note written in a childlike scrawl.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1. God wrote these words for you, Ivy
.

Love, Sara

Redeemed
.

The first time Ivy heard that word was after her first day of second grade. Alarmed when Mom didn’t meet her at the bus stop like she usually did, she’d raced up seven flights of stairs, too worried to wait for the elevator, and found her mother in her pajamas, sitting in the corner of the couch with her knees drawn to her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched a beefy black man in a fancy black suit speak from their television set.

“You are redeemed! He can redeem! He will redeem!”

The more amens and hallelujahs that chorused from the crowd, the more guttural his voice became, and every time he used that word, Mama’s tears ran quicker.
Redeem
. Ivy sat on the couch by her mom, rubbing her back, handing her tissues until the box was empty and the man was finished and a commercial about Kentucky Fried Chicken took over the screen. It wasn’t until later, after her mother was tucked into bed, that Ivy found the word in the dictionary.

Redeem: to buy back; to gain or regain possession of
.

Her little-girl self wasn’t sure why a word like that would make Mama cry. All she knew was that the longer James stayed away, the sadder her mother became. And he hadn’t visited in a long, long time.

Ivy tucked Sara’s card inside Marilyn’s box. She closed her eyes, wanting darkness. Instead, the image of two butterflies swooped behind her lids. Try as she might, she couldn’t get them out of her head.

Young women of all shapes and sizes lined the front wall of Something New. Ivy sat in a chair sandwiched between two empty ones as Davis and Marilyn mingled. Ivy crossed her arms and legs and tapped an impatient rhythm against the floor. She had suggested putting an ad in the paper, calling for local models to walk in the show. Why hire out professionals for a local charity event? It would cost unnecessary money. Anyway, the more they could involve the people of Greenbrier, the more people would attend.

One small problem.

They only needed seven models, and half the town had shown up. At least the female half. And if there were any diamonds in the rough, they hid themselves well. She scowled at an old woman sporting gray roots, bubblegum-pink lipstick, a tattooed anklet, and a pair of aquamarine clogs. Seriously? Did the woman really think they’d dress her in one of Marilyn’s bridal gowns and send her stumbling down the runway?

Davis listened to a short blonde jabbering in his ear. She stood between a familiar young redhead—the girl Ivy had used to start the engagement rumor—and the bohemian Arabella. As if sensing her stare, Davis looked at her. His smile came with ease. Hers, not so much. He waved a temporary good-bye at the trio of women and took the seat next to hers.

“So guess what? Rachel Piper’s fiancé is Kipper Manning, an anchorman for the local news. She said she might be able to get him to run a story about the fashion show. And Connie West, she’s that blonde over there, wants to meet us tonight at the oyster roast and run a story in the
Greenbrier Tribune
. I think they just want to be in the show, but hey, if it gets the word out, we’ll take it, right?”

Connie West—as in Davis’s old sweetheart? No wonder the blonde was eying Ivy so suspiciously.

“Hey, you okay?”

She would be once she convinced him to go to New York with her. Two days after Bruce’s phone call and his warning still echoed through her mind. Vera Wang wanted Davis more than her. Ivy needed him to come. “We shouldn’t have put an ad in the paper. It was a stupid idea.”