Take Me Back (8 page)

“Okay,” I say, because I know that’s your way of telling me you’ll try—you’re in for what needs to be done to make us work again. “I promise, too.”

I hear your inhale and exhale of relief. “I need to get to the boathouse. I’ll call you later.”

“Okay.” My chest clenches. “Merrick? I love you.”

“I love you, my Rachael.”

I hang up and hold my phone tight. We’ll be okay. This is just another crazy bump in the road that is loving you, Merrick Rocha.

Two hours after our late lunch, Mom has me helping her make her mini chicken dumplings. They’re my favorite, and I have a hunch she’s trying to make me gain ten pounds this week. If she bakes angel food cake and ices it with pink frosting, there’s no doubt I will.

“You know,” Mom says, and the way she says it with a tilt of her head makes me leery of what’s going to come next, “your Aunt Jan’s not the only one who can read you, Rachael. You and I are more alike than you’ve ever thought. I can tell when something isn’t right.”

She pushes a sheet of wax paper with squares of dough toward me, and I begin spooning the chicken mixture onto the center of each dumpling. “I know, Mom.” She and I are alike, but not as similar as Aunt Jan and me.

“I have to admit,” she says, leaning one pudgy hip against the counter to face me, “it hurts when you talk to her about things that are bothering you and not me.”

I drop the spoon. This is the last thing I need right now. “Mom, I’ve always gone to her with my problems, ever since middle school. Why is this a problem all of a sudden?”

“It’s not a problem.” She pushes her blonde bob behind her ear. “It’s just that I do have experience in relationships, you know. I was married for a long time to your father. If you want to talk about anything—about you and Merrick—I’m here for you.”

“I know.” I start spooning chicken onto the dumplings again, hoping this conversation is over.

“Ever since you met him, you’ve been so quiet and secretive about it. When you were dating Lance, you talked about him all the time—what you did, where you went, who you went with—now… not a peep.”

“Why does everyone want front row tickets to my life all of a sudden?”

“What?” She puts a hand on my arm. “I’m your mother. That honor comes with front row tickets.” She squeezes then lets go. “I like Merrick. He’s been nothing but generous to me and Jan, and I can tell he cares about you, but I don’t know him, Rachael. It’s not like I can have the two of you over for dinner. I need to know him through you, and if you’re not talking…”

I’m quickly realizing that I’m the one with the communication problem. First you, then Shannon, now Mom.

Well, there’s no way I can tell her the deep, dark secret about how you and I came to be together. But lately, I’ve been so wrapped up in Turtle Tear and the Weston Plantation and, more recently, Ingrid that I haven’t even called Mom for over a week.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re right. I guess, well, I’ve been lost inside my head lately. That’s why Merrick wanted me to come visit and leave everything behind for a few days.”

Mom takes the dumplings and pinches them closed, making tiny pouches. “So, living in your fantasy world is more stressful than you imagined?” She gives me a knowing smile, the one she’d give me when I was little and touched the iron after she told me not to.

“No, not stressful. It’s wonderful. Perfect. Any stress I have, I put on myself. Merrick knows that about me. He knows I get a bit… obsessive when I set my mind on something.”

She lets out a loud chuckle and turns the broth on to boil. “You sure do. Always have been that way. Remember when you were hell-bent on making a Barbie pool out of a shoebox? Took you three days to find something that wouldn’t leak to line it with, but you kept at it.”

“Only because I didn’t want you to buy me a real one.”

“Honey, I said I’d go to the store and get you one after I saw how determined you were to have one.”

I grip the edges of the counter. “But you’d spend money that needed to go to pay bills. I knew we didn’t have it to spend on toys, Mom.”

She wrings the dish towel in her hands. “That’s why you told me not to buy you one? I thought you just wanted to prove that you could make it on your own.”

“That’s why,” I say. If she wants to talk, I guess we’ll talk. “Same reason I turned Merrick down for the Turtle Tear job when he first offered it.” I take her hand. “Mom, you want to know about Merrick? He’s the one who taught me how to take what I want. That life’s what I make it and if I don’t make it what I want it to be, then nobody is going to care. I have to put myself first. That’s what he gave me with the island and the hotel… and his love. He wants me to be happy.”

“And you think I didn’t?” She pulls her hand away.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I didn’t let myself take what would make me happy, because I wanted you to be happy. You didn’t want me to move to Florida, so I turned down the job. Fortunately, Merrick’s not a man who takes no for an answer.”

I smile, thinking about you and how you’re such a huge force in my life. It seems like I wasn’t really living at all before you. I was waiting for life to find me.

“Well, if you’re happy, then I guess that’s good,” she says, wiping the counter with her towel.

“I am happy. We have our issues to work through, just like any other couple, but yes, I’m very happy.”

I really hope we can stop talking about this now, because the awkward level has reached an all-time high, and she’s closing off because she took offense to what I’ve already let slip out of my mouth. She’ll never understand how hard it is for me to stand up to her, how hard it’s always been.

She opens the pantry door and starts taking out baking ingredients. “I think I’ll make that angel food cake you love so much.”

“Can I help?”

She sets a bag of sugar on the counter and flips my hair back over my shoulder. “No. You go call your aunt. I think she wants to take you shopping tonight. She knows your style better than I do.”

The cake is her way of smoothing things over between us, and suggesting I call Aunt Jan is a forfeit. She knows it’s probably too late for she and I to be as close as she wants to be, but I’ll try. I’ll talk to her more. I wish I could promise what I might say won’t hurt her, but I can’t.

It’s Wednesday. I can’t stand it one more second. I hold my breath and hit the Send button on my phone.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Cleveland?” Joan says, answering.

I’ve stooped to new lows making an alliance with Joan, but my options are limited.

“I am in Cleveland. Have you been back to the plantation?” I pry the blinds apart and look out my bedroom window to the neighbor’s side yard.

“I’m standing in the great room right now looking at the plans for the greenhouse.”

And I’m here looking at dead grass and a rusting chain link fence. “Any more from Ingrid?”

“Not a peep since you were here.”

Damn. I guess it’s good. I can’t exactly leave here and go there and explain it to you. I told you I’d clear my head. Still, the thought of her stuck there and wanting to be back at Turtle Tear as much as I do is making me crazy. It only makes our bond stronger.

“Let me know if you see or hear anything, okay?”

She laughs. “Okay, Rachael.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“Only something supernatural could put us on the same team.”

“True.” I laugh, but silently. I won’t give her the satisfaction of knowing I thought her comment was funny.

“Bye, Rachael.” She hangs up, and my only physical connection to Ingrid is gone.

I drop my phone on my nightstand and collapse on my bed. I’m glad I left my tattered old quilt here. It was passed down through generations of my family and reminds me of the one I found in Ingrid’s trunk. Nothing compares to an old, handmade quilt.

I wrap myself in it and enjoy the dimness of my room with the sun blocked behind the shades. I stretch and yawn and am just about to go to sleep when I hear a knock at the front door.

It squeaks open and I hear Mom chattering with whoever it is. I should be polite and go find out and say hello, but I’d rather stay here and pretend I’m asleep.

A moment later, she shuffles down the hallway and stops outside my door. “Rachael?” She taps softly.

“Come in.”

She opens the door, and she’s holding the most enormous vase of roses I’ve ever seen. “I think there are three dozen here,” she says. “At least.”

I hop up, tangled in the quilt and almost trip, and rush over to take it from her. The scent is amazing. “Wow. They’re beautiful.”

I sit them on my nightstand, pluck the card off of the stick in the center and open it.

“From Merrick, I’m guessing,” Mom says.

“Yeah.” I smile and blink back tears.

“It must be love. You’ve only been gone a few days.” She comes in and sniffs the roses. “Your dad used to send me flowers. I loved getting them. It’s so old-fashioned, but always such a nice gesture.”

I lean in to the bouquet and inhale deeply. “It is nice.” I love the roses, but you could’ve kept them and just sent the card. It means the world to me.

I make Turtle Tear home to you.

You make it home to me.

“I should call and tell him thank you.” I pick up my phone from the nightstand.

“Tell him hello for me.” Mom shuts the door behind her.

I dial and it rings once before you answer. “Just the person I was thinking of,” you say.

“That’s funny. I was just thinking of you.” I catch myself grinning in the mirror over my dresser.

“What were you thinking?”

I go with your teasing tone. “I was wondering how to break it to you that some wonderful man sent me a huge bouquet of roses. They’re the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen.”

“Hmm… he must be one lucky man.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the lucky one.”

I love the sound of your laughter. “You’re only saying that because you’ve been away from me for a few days.”

I lay back on my bed. “No, that’s not why. It’s like you said in your card. This isn’t home to me. It’s not where you are.” I stare up at the ceiling where I can still see the faint outline of glow-in-the-dark stars that used to be stuck there when I was ten. “I want to come home.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. I didn’t want to suggest you cut your trip short, especially since I’m the one who arranged it to begin with, but God, I can’t stand to be without you another day. I’m losing my mind. I can’t sleep. I’m driving Beck crazy. Maddie avoids me so she doesn’t have to hear me bitching and moaning about missing you. Mr. Simcoe just keeps telling me to quit wasting time and get you back here.”

“He’s a smart man.”

“He is. I’ll be there tomorrow to pick you up, and I have a surprise.”

I roll over to my side. “A surprise? Weren’t the flowers surprise enough?”

“No. This is better.”

“You spoil me.”

“I don’t give you half of what you deserve for putting up with me. I owe you my life, Rachael. You are my life.”

“You’re mine.”

We stay on the phone in silence, a comforting silence. “We’re sleeping in the tree house for a week straight,” you finally say.

“Do we really have to
sleep
in there?”

“Not until I’ve worn you out.” I hear the amusement in your voice and it makes me smile.

“I’m very energetic.”

“Oh, I know you are. I think I’m up to it.”

“You’ve never had a problem tiring me out before.”

You groan. “Okay, we have to stop talking about this. I’m going to explode.”

“Why don’t you come here tonight and spend a couple days? My mom was just telling me she hasn’t gotten to know you as well as she’d like to.”

“Are you sure? She won’t mind?”

I think about Mom and our talk, how we made some headway in our mother-daughter relationship, but will probably never be as close as she’d like us to be—as close as Aunt Jan and me. This is a step I can take in opening up to her. “She’d love it. How long will it take you to get here?”

“Give me four hours.”

I sit up and bounce on the bed. Private planes are the best invention ever. “I can’t wait. Hurry!”

“I’ll be there soon. I love you.”

“I love you, too!”

I hang up and dart from my bedroom. “Mom!”

“Kitchen.”

I find her slicing cake. “I was going to bring you a piece,” she says.

“Oh. Thanks. Merrick’s coming. He’s going to stay a couple days, okay?”

She lowers the knife and smiles at me, a real smile, not the mom smile. “He is? That’s wonderful. I’ll get to know the man who’s going to end up marrying my little girl.”

“Mom!” I grab a hunk of cake and stuff it in my mouth.

You and I haven’t talked about marriage, but I know it’s going to happen. My mom realizing it, though… that’s proof that it’s serious. Our relationship that started so surreal is altogether, irrevocably real and exists even far from Turtle Tear. There’s no ruining us, you said, and I believe you.

I will marry you someday.

“Come sit,” Mom says. “He won’t get here any faster because you’re standing there.”

I can’t move away from the front window. “I know. I just want to watch him pull up.”

She clucks her tongue. “You’ve got it bad.”

“Buy a vowel,” Aunt Jan says, her eyes glued to
Wheel of Fortune
.

“You’re sure he’ll like my dumplings?” Mom asks. She wanted to make something special for dinner, and sharing my favorite with you is something I told her I’d love, so we made them again. It was a good way to kill a couple of hours.

“I’m positive. He’ll have me making them every week after he tastes them.”

“I thought you had that fancy chef at the hotel,” Aunt Jan says.

“Only for events. We don’t keep him there all the time.” I peek out the window again. “Actually, Merrick cooks very well.”

“Does he?” Mom twirls her yarn around a crochet needle. “Where did he learn to cook? His mother?”

“No. His mom died when he was young. He was the one who mostly cared for his sister. Heidi. You met her opening weekend.”