Nowhere but Home (21 page)

It wasn't until I grew up a bit that I realized real love is more about the beauty of the everyday. It's not an accident that every love story seems to end with the couple walking off into the sunset together. I think about Everett and Arrow walking the Paragon land every morning and how I had no idea he did that. I know things about Everett only the most intimate connections yield and yet I have no idea how he spends his mornings.

I catch up to Cal as we finally begin to go down the hill. Our footfalls are syncopated as we begin our descent.

“So you're going to stay then? In North Star?” Cal asks, not looking at me. I stumble a bit, my feet tangling as I absorb what he's asked and what it took to ask it. I right myself quickly.

“I've definitely thought about it, but I don't know, sweetheart. I don't know,” I say, seeing Everett still heavy on my mind. Cal picks up the pace down the hill.

“I want you to,” Cal says, looking back at me now with those ice blue eyes. He gives a curt nod and looks away quickly.

Emotion chokes my throat. My breathing grows more and more shallow as he turns to see my reaction once more. I offer an ineffective smile and a nod, knowing if I stay it means that snow globe might as well be shattered. We run on in silence.

Cal and I get to the bottom of the hill and begin running through town. He smiles back at me, but then looks away. I smile, trying to breathe deep, deep, deeper.

We arrive home and the heat seems to have followed us down that hill. We eat and shower. There may have been a quick tantrum in there (by me) about having to go to church. When I get out of the shower, I find a bright orange short-sleeved sundress and some wedge-heeled sandals waiting for me on my bed.

“I assume you have undergarments,” Merry Carole says, leaning in my doorway.

“It'd suit you for me to go commando under this thing, right?” I say, toweling off my hair.

“Please don't embarrass me, Queen Elizabeth,” Merry Carole says. She's dressed in a demure outfit. Somber colors, high neckline, and hem past the knee. Her hair is high, yet reverent. Her makeup is respectful, with its more natural shades and pinkish-hued lip gloss.

“I'll try.”

Merry Carole closes the door after herself and I put on the orange sundress as if it's a costume laid out for me by the wardrobe department. Today, Queen Elizabeth Wake, you'll be playing the part of a respectable townsperson who is not an utter failure.

Merry Carole, Cal, and I walk into the town square in our Sunday best.

The town church sits in the exact center of North Star. The Texas Hill Country is known for its beautiful painted churches, which were built by the early Czech and German settlers. Our church is not one of the famed painted churches, but it is beautiful. Its white steeple rises high into the big sky, and the church looks just like you'd want a small-town church to look. The reverent North Star citizens stream in through the large wooden doors. I see all the familiar faces. Fawn and Pete. Dee and her brood. Shawn looks happy as he carries his youngest into the church. Whitney and Wes, their two kids, follow behind. As we near the church, I smooth my dress down, clearing my throat. It's gone dry all of a sudden. My legs are tired and sore from this morning's insanity, but I'm happy I went. Maybe just nuts enough to go again, if Cal will have me.

We walk through the big wooden doors, past the ushers, and down the main aisle of the church. Huge beams stretch and web their way across the barnlike ceiling. The simple design of the church and the pews is a nod to German engineering. Clean lines and function over form. Merry Carole stops and motions for Cal and me to go into the pew first. We oblige. I smooth my skirt again and sit on the hard wooden pew next to an older couple who smile at me as I settle in. I smile back and begin to scan the church, telling myself the entire time that I'm not looking for Everett.

Merry Carole's body is controlled and tight next to me. She's making eye contact with everyone and no one at the same time. Her posture is perfect and she keeps pressing her lips tightly together, smoothing her lip gloss from one to the other. When she's not doing this, her eyes are scanning the church as she anxiously bites the inside of her cheek. As I watch the circus that is Merry Carole's feelings, I see Everett, Arabella, and Felix Coburn settle into the pew just beyond Merry Carole's. They greet Florrie, her husband, and their brood as Gray smiles and charms his way through the bevy of adoring single ladies who've gathered around him. I lean forward in the pew just enough so that Everett can get a perfect bead on me. He does. He's caught completely off guard once again. I can see him see me, not really believe it's me, process that it is, and then look instantaneously drained. I remember this morning and seeing him unguarded as he walked along with Arrow. How beautiful it was to see him unencumbered with the weight of our relationship. I lean back in my chair, completely comfortable with using my fifteen-year-old nephew as a buffer.

The music, the pomp and circumstance, the ladies' fans, and the spoken and repeated words echo through the church as I stand, sit, and kneel in front of God and everybody. I catch glimpses of Everett during the service, but still force myself to seem unaffected. In the quiet of the church, I let myself relax and get swept away in it all.

As we file out of the church, Merry Carole guides us over to the edge of the front lawn. Cal and I oblige, but I wonder why we don't just go straight home. As I'm just about to ask, I see Reed Blanchard walk by with his two little girls dressed in their Sunday best. Reed and Merry Carole share what can only be described as a longing gaze.

“You could go over there,” I say, after Cal has excused himself to catch up with some of his friends.

“I just can't, but I will go see if I can find Fawn and Dee. I'll be right back,” Merry Carole says, and walks over to where Fawn and Pete are speaking with some other people Merry Carole knows I'd have no interest in spending time with. She falls quickly into conversation. I can see her exchange looks with Reed. It's heartbreaking. Their entire body language is a sigh.

“I didn't expect to see you here.”

Everett.

“You keep forgetting who my sister is,” I say. He laughs and it actually pains me. He's in his Sunday best, hair combed, clean shaven. A far cry from what he wore this morning.

“How are you?”

“I'm good,” I say, meaning it.

“Good. I saw you up at Paragon this morning,” Everett says.

“I went running with Cal.”

“I was wondering why he was a little late today. Now I know.”

“I wasn't that slow.”

A moment passes.

“Did you know everyone knew about us? Like everyone?” I blurt out, the sun hitting my eyes as I look up at him. The question comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I'm just as shocked as Everett.

“What?”

“Yeah. Piggy Peggy enlightened me in the Homestead the other day. Told me they all knew, Laurel . . . everyone,” I say, my voice robotic and calm.

“She did what?” Everett's eyes flare and his entire body stiffens.

“Yeah, she laid it all out for me. It was actually a pretty stirring tale of how I ruined the great Everett Coburn. Or at least that's what people say,” I say, placing my hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun.

“Right. Peggy can never just say something on her own. God forbid she has an original thought.”

“That's what I told her.”

Everett is quiet.

“Queenie, I'm sorry,” Everett finally says.

“I know. Me, too,” I say. The truth. I stare over to where Merry Carole and Cal are standing with Fawn and Dee. Everett stops me.

“Do you want to talk about it? We could meet up later.”

“We've been talking about this for going on twenty years, I just—”

“I waited for years for you to come back. I can't believe we're already over,” he says. It's not a mournful statement, Everett's pissed.

“We never started,” I say.

“Queenie—”

I interrupt him. “No. Enough.
Enough
. I saw you walking with Arrow this morning and never knew you did that. I pride myself on thinking I know everything about you, but the fact of the matter is, I don't. I know what a mistress knows. I've never even been inside your house.”

“You can come over tonight.”

“I just—after Cal and I ran this morning, I was brushing my teeth and there was this moth just circling, circling, circling the light. She just kept pounding herself against it over and over. Senseless. No thought for her own safety or mortality. She was dying—she was killing herself. So I turned around and shut off the light. And just like that, she flew away.”

“And in your mind you're the moth in this scenario,” Everett says.

“Of course,” I say.

“Of course,” Everett repeats, with a bitter laugh. He continues, “Let me tell you what happens when you turn off that light. The moth waits. In darkness. With nothing to live for. And when the light returns, he can't wait to hurl himself at it once more regardless of imminent death. It's worth it.”

“How dare you,” I say, tears welling in my eyes.

“How dare I what?” Everett's brow is furrowed and confused as he leans in closer.

“How dare you act like I had any choice in us being apart,” I say, wiping away a rogue tear. I continue, “Look around. These are your people, Everett. Not mine. No one stopped you in the Homestead, warning you about ruining poor Queenie Wake. No one ever casts you as the bad guy.”

“You remember when I grew my hair out? In . . . what was it?”

“Eleventh grade,” I say. We both smile.

“I got such a talking-to about that hair that I finally had to cut it. ‘No son of mine is going to be walking around this town looking like a roughneck.' ”

“You never told me that.”

“Sometimes it's just as hard always being cast as the good guy.”

“I've never thought about it like that.”

“You think it's hard being a Wake, try being a Coburn.”

“I would love nothing more than to pick right back up where we left off, but we can't. Piggy Peggy was right.”

“Piggy Peggy is an idiot,” Everett says, his eyes flaring.

“Which makes it all the more annoying that she was right. You love your parents. I had a complicated relationship with mine—”

“To say the least.”

“Right,” I say, laughing. I continue, “But we're not them. We have to take what we want from our family and leave the rest behind. I'm not my mom—”

“No, you're not. I've always told you that.”

“I know. I know you have,” I say, tears now streaming down my face. Everett hands me his handkerchief and I take it. His face is flushed and those green-pinwheel eyes are now rimmed in red.

I continue, “But you don't see people as cut and dried, as your parents do. You saw me. You loved me despite my last name. Even Arrow, for crissakes. You saw the good in that dog when no one else did.”

“Not all the time. Trust me,” Everett says with a laugh that lets more emotion loose than he was ready for.

“I think you have to figure out how to be yourself and also be the man your parents want you to be. I won't be responsible for you turning your back on your parents. You'd be miserable, and I love you too much to ask you to do that.”

I can see him winding through every scenario until he arrives at the same one I did. He finally nods, his lips tightly pursed, his brow furrowed.

“We get to be happy, Ever,” I say. I dab at my eyes once more with his handkerchief, finally handing it back.

“Keep it,” he says.

“I don't need any more souvenirs from you that aren't actually you. It hurts too much,” I say, placing the handkerchief in his hand.

“Please,” he says, his hand pressing the handkerchief into mine. His hand lingers. He looks back at me. I give him a smile, a genuine smile for once, unguarded and vulnerable.

“Thank you,” I say, closing my hand around the handkerchief. I look up into his eyes and in the quiet of this hidden corner in the churchyard, the sun streaming down, I say, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He just looks lost. So sad it breaks my heart. I nod once more and try to keep myself together long enough to turn away from him. As I walk away, my legs almost giving beneath me, I dig through my purse and mercifully pull my sunglasses from its depths. I shove them on my red, blotchy face as the tears begin to stream down my face. I leave him standing there and join Merry Carole again. She wraps her arm tightly around my waist and pulls me close. Fawn and Dee are watching me like hawks.

“Queenie, you remember West,” Merry Carole says. I gather myself quickly, thankful that my sunglasses will mask my red-rimmed eyes.

“Good to see you again, ma'am. Cal says y'all went on a run this morning. I may just join you one of these days,” West says, offering his extended hand.

“I'd like that. I mean, I'd like it only if you're slower than Cal,” I say, embarrassed that my voice is a little shaky.

“He's faster,” Cal says.

“Then it'll be a shame you can't join us,” I say, calming down.

Cal and West both laugh. Shawn and Pete ask them how practice was this past week as I watch Felix and Arabella introduce Everett to a nice-looking woman dressed in her Sunday best. It's clearly a setup. Merry Carole looks from me to the little vignette and I can feel her whole body tense.

“I'm okay . . . in that kind of dead inside way,” I say in a hushed tone to Merry Carole, a beleaguered smile breaking across my face.

“Oh yes, I'm well acquainted with that feeling,” Merry Carole laughs. I can't help but join her.

“West, there you are!” Whitney says, inserting herself into our little circle.

“Hey, sis,” West says. Whitney's entire body deflates. Her smile falters and I can see her flinch at the word “sis.” Once again, despite all of her terribleness, not being able to claim this delightful boy as her son must kill her. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Even Whitney McKay. Merry Carole may have been blackballed, but at least her boy knows who his momma is.