Secrets over Sweet Tea (26 page)

He laughed, but she shook her head.

“Look where avoiding conflict got me, Zach. Worked out real well, didn’t it? I wish I had found my voice years ago. The voice that said, ‘No, this isn’t okay. No, we’re not doing it this way.’ But I didn’t. One of the best things that can happen to you or Caroline, at least I would think, would be for you to find your voice and not worry about making everyone happy.”

He sighed. “It’s all totally and royally jacked up.”

She leaned toward him. “But it’s totally freeing, right?”

He did that narrowing thing with his eyes again, the one that clearly communicated he was thinking. Then, slowly, a smile stretched across his face. “Yes, it is.”

They sat there for a moment. Silence surrounded them.

“I was tired, Grace.”

“I understand.” She paused for a moment. “You’re a good man, Zach Craig.”

The air came out of him in a puff. “I’m an adulterer.”

“Not anymore. And that’s only a piece of your story. I am certain this is not how your story is going to end.”

She saw what her words did to him. It was written all over his face. And she meant them. He stood, and the chair made a scraping noise against the tile as he did.

“Ooh, I’ll have to fix that,” she said.

“You just need those little felt pads to put on the bottom. Or the kind that slide. Either will work.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Handyman.”

“Thank you, Ms. Grace.”

They stood there for an awkward moment. Did they shake hands? Hug? What? Finally she reached out and hugged him, and he hugged her back.

“Thanks for the Frappuccino,” she said as he made his way to the back door.

“You shouldn’t thank me for that. That was gross.”

She was still laughing when he left. She grabbed her purse and keys and decided to head home. She had done enough damage for the day.

As she locked up and climbed into her car, she couldn’t seem to shake him from her mind. And she needed to. Blue eyes or not, Zach Craig was still married.

How did you feel like a stranger in your own home?

Until now, Zach had never thought that was possible. But he stood there on the Oriental rug in the foyer, sweeping his gaze through the small area, and it all looked foreign to him. Unfamiliar.

He had never noticed that pattern in the rug before. He had never noticed the gold scrolling on the antique console across from him or the way the shade flared out over a blue-and-white porcelain lamp. He picked up a framed photo that sat on the small side table next to the door and took in the faces of his family.
His
family. They all looked so young. So happy. Filled
with such illusion that life would be easy and doable. Now their lives were a disaster.

Adele was in the house. He heard her voice in the other room. “You’d better not let him get away with anything. You stand your ground. You are a Whittingham, and don’t you ever forget it.”

“I won’t,” Caroline replied in that familiar compliant voice. “I know.”

Had he known his mother-in-law was here, he would have chosen another spot to meet. But he hadn’t, and here they were. That woman was a classic. She loved to quote Scripture, but apparently she thought the piece in the Bible about the three-stranded cord not easily broken meant a daughter, her husband, and her mama. He’d done a terrible job of challenging that misconception. But no longer. He was ready to take that bull by the horns.

Caroline walked into the foyer tugging at her ear, trying to get her red hoop earring through that little hole. He still had no idea how she did that. Or why. But then she probably couldn’t fathom why he spent hours trying to hit a ball into another kind of hole.

“We can talk in the family room,” she said as she walked past him. She had agreed to meet with him tonight, while the girls were at the library. But her demeanor was as cold as the “breakup” letter he had gotten from yet another client yesterday.

She sat on an upholstered armchair across from the sofa. He had never realized how much red the floral pattern had in it.

“I’m not sure what you want to talk about, Zach.”

He lowered his body onto the sofa. “I want to talk about us, Caroline. In the past few months we’ve done very little of
that. It’s going to be the holidays before we blink. I just want to know where your head is and—” he paused and looked at her—“where your heart is these days.”

She folded her hands and brought them to rest on her designer jeans. He had been shocked when she first opened her store and he saw the price of those things. For a man who was content with the single pair he had in his closet, from a store he couldn’t remember, the idea of spending a car payment on little pieces of denim was simply preposterous.

“Where my heart is? That’s an interesting question coming from you.” Caroline raised her head, her eyes now fixed on him. But he could tell she was aware her mother was listening. “Since when did you decide to take
my
heart into consideration?”

He knew anger was a direct manifestation of her hurt. He had sat with couples in this same situation time after time. But apparently his experience hadn’t taught him much. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “Babe, I know this is awful for you. I know you feel betrayed. And I’ll tell you again: I’m so sorry. I am. I really do want to fix this. But you and I have created some really horrible patterns of behavior, and we can’t continue to do things the way we’ve done them in the past.”

“Well, I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up.” Her tone was biting. “So you’re saying adultery won’t be part of our future together?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m saying that my adultery isn’t the only poor decision I’ve made through the years. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made is shutting down my voice with you. I’ve been afraid, Caroline—afraid of arguing, afraid of telling you no, afraid of standing up to your mother. But not anymore. For us to move forward, which I truly want to do, some things
are going to have to change. And that includes your mother’s influence in our marriage and on your decisions.”

He didn’t care if Adele heard that.

Caroline pulled her head back. “Excuse me? Are you really sitting in this room telling me what has to change? What I need to do about
my
mother? I’m sorry, but last time I checked, I wasn’t the one who messed up this marriage.”

He’d known he would get resistance, but he didn’t know how else to say it. He softened his voice and leaned closer toward her. “It’s absolutely true that I’ve messed up. Big-time. But it’s also true that your mother has been in this marriage from the beginning. I watch you when she’s around. Everything you do changes. Like just a minute ago—I could hear it in your voice when you responded to her. It’s like you turn into this little girl, and the beautiful, strong woman that you are just melts away.”

He noted familiar signs of her growing anger—the straight back, the pulsing jaw, that tightly wound stillness—and fought the urge to back down. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. “For most of our marriage, you’ve been more concerned with her opinions than you have with mine. And if we’re going to stay married, I need you to be
my
partner, not your mother’s. It is time for this to be our marriage. Just us. We’ve got to do this thing together—raise our girls together, make decisions together about our money and our—”

“Let me tell you something, Zach Craig.” She bolted from her chair and started pacing. Her voice was loud, but Adele was not showing her face. “My mother has been there for me when you couldn’t be bothered. She’s held me when I cried over you. She’s been faithful when you couldn’t even spell the word. So you have some nerve, telling me my mother’s to blame for what
you
did. Jackson Newberry may be telling you to set boundaries or to start leading me or whatever it is you’re trying to do, but I can assure you that isn’t what is going to put our home back together.”

Zach was feeling a little frantic by now. “Caroline, babe, what I’m saying is neither of us have been living the way we were created to. Not me and not you. I’m doing everything in my power to change that on my end. But I just need you to see that the way we interact, the way we treat each other, the way we do life together isn’t healthy.”

“There is nothing wrong with the way I do life.”

He threw his hands up. “So what is your idea? You seem to have a reason why none of my ideas are worth talking about. What are your ideas? How do you propose putting our home back together?”

She walked to the other side of the chair and turned her head sharply. The ends of her red hair swung around to the side of her neck. “The first thing you’ll do is leave that church and stay away from the Newberrys. Then you won’t be at your office unless Darlene is there with you. And you’ll give me your phone bills every month and your e-mail password. And—”

He raised his hand to stop her.

She glared at him. “See, now who doesn’t want our marriage to work?”

He stood too. “I’m rediscovering my heart, Caroline. I lived with it closed up for years, and it wasn’t good for either of us, much less our marriage. The man who was married to you wasn’t a man. He was a coward. A shell of a being. Nothing like he was created to be. I will never be that man again. And part of no longer being that man means loving you enough to look at
you and tell you that things have to change. I cannot and will not live like we have lived in the past. So you can tell me all your demands if you want to, and I’ll do my best to do whatever is necessary to help you trust me again. But I will not let you put me back inside a box that I am fighting with all my heart to get out of. And I will continue to pray that you find your heart is worth fighting for too. Because this is a battle I will fight with you wherever it takes us. But I can’t do it for you.”

Her jaw flicked, and he saw the tears well up. She didn’t want him to see, but she wasn’t quick enough to hide them. He moved close and put his hands on her arms. What did he have to lose? “It’s okay to hurt. You don’t have to be strong. You don’t.”

She stood there not moving, but her tears had a life of their own. They fell down her face in rhythmic bursts.

He pulled her toward him. “We loved each other once. We really did. That’s why we got married. And for a brief season, years ago, you trusted me to be your husband. We can get back there. I can be the man you married again, and you can be the woman I fell in love with.”

For a moment her body was soft in his arms. For a moment he could tell that what she wanted was something completely different from what she was saying. He could see it in her face and feel it in her body. Then he felt the rigidness slowly make its way back through her. She extricated herself from his hold and turned, glancing around as if concerned that Adele had seen her weakness. She tossed her words behind her as she left the room. “Show yourself out. Now.”

He walked out the front door and headed toward Main Street and his office. He was horrible at this. He didn’t know
how to connect with her. He didn’t know how to reach her. He didn’t know what it would take for her to let go, to accept that she wasn’t perfect and didn’t have to be, to be okay with falling apart.

He didn’t even know how to love her right now. All he wanted to do in that moment was shake her and scream. And he didn’t even want to put into words what he’d like to do to Adele. He found this especially frustrating because he was making such progress in other areas of his life. He was laughing. He was humming, for pete’s sake. He had bought his own clothes. He was playing golf. And he was paying attention to his heart. For the first time in a long time, he was paying attention to his God-designed heart.

His mind was still recounting its recent victories as he passed Grace’s tearoom. Her business name and logo had been stenciled onto the glass. Sweet Tea. It was official. Her dream had a name. His mind ran back to their conversation. No one had bothered to know him, to listen to him the way she did.

Caroline didn’t know him. Not really. Elise certainly had never known him.

Elise. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how she was doing. Jackson said she and Tim had moved back to their hometown in North Carolina. And Zach wished them the best. He really did. But he realized in that moment that she hardly ever crossed his mind these days.

Grace did, though. She crossed his mind more than she should. He wished Caroline was like her. He wished Caroline cared the way she cared.

He wished . . . he wished he didn’t think about Grace Shepherd so much.

Grace unpacked the last three boxes in the stockroom. The grand opening was in nine days, and then Sweet Tea would be in business.

Rachel and Scarlett Jo had been working nonstop with her to get the shop ready. Grace loved what they had produced. There was nothing Victorian about the place, nothing smelling of mothballs or dust. The atmosphere was vibrant and alive, just like Grace was starting to feel inside.

One small thing kept gnawing at her, though. She couldn’t get Zach Craig out of her mind. She had avoided him for the last two weeks. He seemed to be avoiding her too, and that was probably good, but it still made her sad.

Zach was the kind of man she desired. Well, the man he was
becoming was the kind of man she desired. The trouble was, he was married, albeit unhappily. He didn’t need her as a distraction, and she didn’t need him as one either. She shook her head at the thought and put a white teapot and teacup with the Sweet Tea logo up on the shelf with the others. And that was when the horrific crash happened.

Grace and Rachel came running from opposite doors—Grace from the stockroom and Rachel from the office, both headed toward the front of the store where the crashing noise had come from.

“I’m going to kill her,” Rachel said. “I swear that woman has broken more stuff. You’re going to run out of inventory before opening day.”

“I should probably quit letting her carry breakables,” Grace said as she followed Rachel.

“You think?” Rachel snapped.

As they entered the front of the store, the sun illuminated the beautiful toile-patterned walls, the antique red armoire that sat behind the beadboard hostess stand, the shelves of delicate teacups and teapots. Scarlett Jo stood in the center of it all as if she were glued to the pink-and-white tile beneath her. Shards of several bone-china cups lay forgotten around her feet.

“Scarlett Jo, why can’t you keep from breaking stuff?” Rachel scolded. “Can’t you make it through one day without your hands dropping something or your chest knocking something over or those hips of yours bumping into something? Just one day? I swear . . .”

Scarlett Jo wasn’t listening. She just stared out the window toward the street, where Fred, the window cleaner, was standing. Grace had hired him to do the windows before the store
opened. She’d felt it was worth the investment. But Fred wasn’t cleaning at the moment. He too stood frozen in place, his eyes locked on Scarlett Jo.

Moving closer, Grace noticed that Scarlett Jo’s hands were shaking violently. Tears flowed down her face. But she remained motionless, her eyes glued on Fred.

Then, in an instant, Fred was gone. Grace grabbed one of Scarlett Jo’s arms, and Rachel grabbed the other. “Scarlett Jo, sit. Baby, sit.” They maneuvered her over to a chair, and Scarlett Jo slowly sank into it. A soft cry came from her lips, and her tears flowed like a leak from a broken faucet.

“What is it?” Rachel asked. “What happened?”

Grace patted her leg. “Was it Fred?”

Scarlett Jo looked up at Grace, her eyes wide. “Fred.” The name came out in a whisper.

Grace turned to Rachel. “Go call Jackson. Then get her some water.”

Rachel ran from the room, and Grace knelt beside her friend. “Do you know him—the man at the window?”

Scarlett Jo nodded.

“Can you tell me about it?”

Scarlett Jo shook her head.

“You’re scaring me a little, honey. Has Fred hurt you or something?”

Scarlett Jo bit her lip, and that painful cry seeped out again.

“Okay. It’s okay,” Grace told her. “Rachel is calling Jackson, and we’ll get him to take you home.”

Rachel came around the corner with the water. “Jackson’s on his way. He was at Zach Craig’s office for some—”

Before she finished her sentence, Jackson and Zach rushed
through the front door. Jackson ran over and knelt beside Scarlett Jo. “Hey, baby doll, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Scarlett Jo looked at Jackson, her blue eyes still streaming with tears. She nodded slowly.

“Want to tell me what happened?”

Her words came out in a pained whisper. “It was . . . Fred. He was here.”

Jackson glanced at Grace, and his jaw twitched. Obviously he knew who Fred was—and wasn’t happy about Fred being there. He stood and took Scarlett Jo by the arm. “Okay, honey. It’s okay. Let me just get you home.”

Jackson looked at Zach when he finally got Scarlett Jo to her feet. “Make Grace lock the door.”

Grace stood too. “Jackson, what is it?”

Jackson turned to her. “It’ll be okay. She just needs to get home right now.”

“Okay. Sure.”

Jackson and Scarlett Jo walked out of the building. Zach turned toward Grace, deep concern on his face. “Grace, who is Fred?”

She felt flustered. “He’s just a guy. He washes windows.”

Rachel interjected. “She hired him to get them clean before the opening.”

Zach started toward the door. “I’m going to see if I can find him. What’s his last name?”

Grace followed, shaking her head. She knew it. She just couldn’t remember it. “I don’t know . . . It’s—” she searched her memory—“like a country singer.”

Rachel left the room and came back. “Here, Zach. This is his card.”

“I’ve never seen Scarlett Jo like that,” Grace murmured, tears now coming to her eyes. “I don’t understand what happened. One minute—”

Rachel just stood there. “Whatever it is, it’s got to be bad.”

“I’ve got to go now. I’ll be back later. But you lock this door. Both doors. Lock up tight and then go stay in the back.”

Grace protested. “Zach, that’s ridiculous. He’s a window—”

“Grace, don’t argue with me!” His hands were on her shoulders, his eyes anguished and urgent. “You’ve got to do what I said. Lock this door. If anything happened—”

He stopped himself. “Lock the door, Grace.” Then he was gone.

Grace didn’t move. She just stared at the door. Finally Rachel walked up from behind her and twisted the lock. Then she turned to Grace.

“Something strange is going on around here. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find out—starting with you and Zach Craig. Grace, I saw the way he looked at you. Are you going to deny it?”

Grace lowered herself into the chair Scarlett Jo had been sitting in and looked up into the eyes of her friend. A friend she had shared everything with. Until . . . well, until Zach.

Scarlett Jo drank an entire glass of water before she came up for air. This was crazy. It couldn’t have been him. But it had to be. She would never forget that face. Those eyes. Those eyes . . .

“Are you sure it was him?”

She shook her head wildly and stomped her feet on the kitchen floor. “Jackson Newberry, do not ask me that again,”
she said through her tears. Scarlett Jo was a soft soul. She wept easily at movies where dogs died or when her kids were sweet. But she rarely cried over her own pain. Now she couldn’t seem to stop. Seeing that man had dislodged something she thought was over. Dead. Dealt with.

“I’m sorry,” she said when the tears finally slowed. “It just seems so odd that he would be here. I mean, Mississippi is a long way from here.”

Her eyes suddenly widened as panic raced through her again. “What if he knew we were here, Jackson? What if he came here for me?”

His look made it clear he had already thought about this—which sent her fear soaring. Then he obviously realized what his expression had done to her. He pulled her into his arms. “Babe, that can’t be. I’m sure it isn’t like that. Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. But I can assure you, I’ll find out.”

She held tightly to his strong neck. She always felt safest in Jackson’s arms. He’d loved her back to life years ago. They had fought their way together through all of that pain. And they’d both thought it was behind them—until today. Until she saw his face in that window and all the fear returned—as real as the bile in her throat.

She released Jackson and ran for the bathroom. The sweets she had consumed that day were quickly expunged from her gut. She could only pray the fear would go with them.

The sun was getting low in the sky when Zach phoned Grace from outside her store. The front door opened, and Zach
instinctively wrapped his arms around Grace. He noticed she was shaking. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

“Did you find him?”

“Not yet.”

“Who is he, Zach?”

“I’m still not sure. Everyone I talk to says he has worked for them for the last six months and never done anything but clean windows really well.”

He heard the sound of someone clearing her throat, and Grace immediately removed herself from Zach’s arms. Rachel stood close by, her face stern.

“Hey, Rachel.” He nodded to her. “Listen, why don’t y’all close up shop for today and go home.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking home is good.” Rachel emphasized the word
home
. Zach figured she was making a point.

“I’ll check in with Jackson and see if I can get some more information. And if I need to go talk to some of my friends at the police station, I can.”

“You think he’s a criminal?” Grace asked.

“I think he’s something. Jackson was definitely worried for your safety, and he’s not prone to overreacting. He knows something about ol’ Fred the window washer.”

“My word.” Rachel shook her head. “Do we have to do background checks on everyone these days?”

Grace turned toward her friend. “Let’s go check on Scarlett Jo.”

“Grace, why don’t you just stay home tonight?” Zach asked. “Jackson has Scarlett Jo, it’ll be dark soon, and y’all don’t need to be out walking around.”

“Zach, I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl. I’ve lived virtually alone
for a long time. I can handle walking up the street to check on my friend.”

Rachel put an arm around her. “I can take care of Grace. I pack.”

Zach let out a soft laugh. “Of course you do.” Rachel had been by Grace’s side from the moment they met. “Okay, well, be careful. And I’ll let you know what Jackson and I find out.”

Rachel looked directly into his eyes. “How about you call me, and I’ll tell Grace.”

He picked up on the note of protectiveness in her voice. Was he that obvious? He hadn’t even realized how deeply he cared about this woman until just now. But apparently his feelings were clear enough that Rachel noticed them. And clearly disapproved.

“We’ll let you know” was all he offered. Women had told him what to do for long enough.