The Fable of Us (11 page)

I reached for my own glass of juice. Breakfast hadn’t even started, and I was already counting down the bites until it was over.

“My business just went under.” Boone took another drink, draining his glass. When he was done, he slammed his glass on the table like he was in some gunslinger bar and that was the way one asked for another drink. “So yeah, new within the past few weeks.”

My eyebrows came together as I processed what he’d just said. I hadn’t known anything about Boone owning his own business or what that business might have been. I hadn’t known that had been on his radar even. The fact that it had gone under so recently gave me fresh insight into why he’d so quickly taken the deal I offered him.

Desperation: what makes the world go round.

“What kind of business was that?” The forkful of ham stayed frozen in the air as my dad continued his interrogation.

When Frieda came up behind Boone after giving me a side of ham and poached eggs, she waited. Boone glanced back when he noticed her, his forehead lining.

“Your napkin, Cavanaugh,” Ford piped up. “It goes in your lap. It’s not used for wiping your ass like I know you were thinking.”

Beside him, Charlotte snickered, and across the table, Mr. McBride, who looked to have packed on fifty pounds in seven years and run his liver into the ground judging from the pale brown spots dotting his arms and face, popped off a single-noted laugh.

“Please, everyone. We’re at the breakfast table, and we’ve got a whole tableful of guests.” Mom patted the air with her hands, addressing the room like the debutante she’d been. “Now, Boone, you were telling us about the little business you started up . . .” Her hand flicked in his direction, giving him the floor.

I fought the urge to correct her for applying the word
“little”
to both Boone’s and my business ventures. In Freudian terms, that pretty much meant my mom thought we were a couple of fools to think we could or should think big enough to venture into the business world. She’d never understand, because to understand, a person needed to be wired with the understanding code.

She wasn’t.

Pinching his napkin, Boone simply moved it from his plate to the side of it. He didn’t put it in his lap, where it so-called belonged. In his own way, a way that wouldn’t earn him a reprimand from my mom, Boone was giving the finger to Ford.
“
I started a non-profit kids’ rec center.”

Guests in the process of eating their breakfasts stopped chewing. I’d been about to dive into my thick slice of buttered toast when I turned my attention elsewhere. A kids’ center? A non-profit?
Come again?

“What’s that?” Dad pressed, his mustache curling higher from his half-smile. “Like a daycare?”

Again, Ford choked on a laugh, though this time he didn’t seem to care about trying to hide it.

Boone grabbed his fork and cut into one of his eggs. My dad wasn’t the only one venting his emotions on the breakfast food.

“No, kids could come and go as they wanted,” Boone explained around a mouthful of egg, “but it gave the growing number of kids in our community who are being raised in unstable-to-volatile homes a soft spot to land for a few hours. A place where they could just be kids and get warm meals.” He finished with a shrug and stuffed the other half of his egg into his mouth.

No one had anything to say, not even my dad or the laughing hyena Ford. I didn’t even know what to say, because I couldn’t figure out how to think about what Boone had just said. He’d owned and run a charitable program for the underprivileged kids in the community? He gave them a safe place to play and a reliable place to eat a hot meal? He had the vision to start something like that, the knowledge to see it through to completion, and the composure to explain it to a roomful of judgmental strangers, even after that business had crumbled?

Who was the person sitting beside me? What had happened to the one who had turned his back and left me when I’d needed him most? How did that kind of a person go on to build a business that revolved around supporting others and being there when others weren’t?

It seemed Boone and I had more to get straight than just our fake story of how we’d reunited after all of these years.

“I take it this non-profit paid you a salary.’” Ford leaned forward in his seat, innocence pasted onto his face. Ford was so many things, and none of them included innocence.

Beside me, Boone blew out a slow breath. “Yeah, it did, and before you go and assume I was corruptly drawing six figures a year from it, my salary was twenty-four thousand.” The internal gasps from the majority of guests lining the table was so loud, it almost made me jump in my seat. “It’s a matter of public record. You know, just in case you don’t believe me and want to double-check.”

Ford exchanged a look with my dad. From the looks of it, those two were still each other’s second-biggest fans—next to themselves.

“Oh no, Boone, it’s clear from those boots you’re still tromping around in that you were making less than the poverty line.” Ford’s dimple set into his cheek as he fought to suppress a smile when Charlotte laughed. “My question had more to do with why in the hell a man would open a business and welcome all the headaches that come along with that if he knew he would be making less than 25K. I mean, it’s an okay weekly sort of salary, but I thought there were labor laws protecting people from that kind of atrocious annual income.”

Of all the bodies at the table, only Avalee and myself were giving Ford an appalled sort of look. Probably because most of the people around the table were his family and friends . . . actually, I think just as many were members of my own family, albeit distant ones I hadn’t seen in years and couldn’t name if someone dangled a one-way ticket home leaving in an hour in front of my face.

Boone continued to work at his breakfast though, half of it already shoveled into his mouth. “Because maybe my kind of reasons behind doing things are entirely different than your reasons.” When he returned Ford’s stare, there was fire in Boone’s eyes. Fire was another word for contempt. “I could explain it, but you wouldn’t understand.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes as she continued picking at her eggs, stabbing at them until the yolk burst and pooled in the center of her plate. Knowing Charlotte, she was probably trying to lose another ten pounds before the wedding. She wore a size 25 in jeans and had been underweight by medical standards her whole life, but if you asked her, there’d never been a time when she couldn’t stand to lose ten pounds.

Me on the other hand? According to the devil—also known as the BMI chart—I was a perfectly average weight for my height, but according to my mom, my size eight was about four sizes too big. Being a non-underweight teen girl in this household had been hell. Even now, my mom couldn’t help eyeing my piece of toast every time I lifted it to my mouth. You know, since carbs were the enemy.

“Speaking of business ventures, what’s this I hear about your company expanding, Clara Belle?” Dad lifted his coffee cup in Frieda’s direction, irritation set into his brow. Frieda bustled over with the coffee pot like the lives of an entire continent were in her hands. “Making its way down into the belly of the country here? Are my sources correct?”

All heads turned in my direction. All of them save for Ford’s, who stayed focused on his plate as he cut into his ham like he was performing surgery.

“The business is thriving. Sales are soaring,” I said, feeling like I was explaining it to the whole table. “My goal wasn’t to just keep to California if this worked; it was to expand nationally. I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”

Boone set down his fork and angled in his seat toward me. “What kind of business, Clara?”

He realized his slip an instant after I did. His expression stayed flat though. The mistake only registered in his eyes, whereas my whole body and face went rigid with an
oh shit!
feeling.

“You don’t know what Clara Belle does?” Ford wasn’t focused on dissecting his ham and eggs anymore. “How long have you been seeing each other again?”

My dad pressed his forearm into the table and leaned forward. “Yes, how long?”

I took a sip of my orange juice, stalling. Boone stayed quiet, peaking his brow just enough to let me know he was heeding my warning to let me do the talking when it came to our relationship.

“Do you want to know about my business or about Boone and me?” I asked, circling my fork at my plate that had mostly gone untouched thanks to the Q & A firing squad. “Because I’d like to be able to take a bite of my breakfast sometime this morning.”

My mom’s eyes drifted to my half-eaten piece of toast. I knew that in her eyes, I’d already eaten enough to get me through lunch.

“Why don’t you just sum it
all
up for us, Clara Belle, since it seems there’s a whole lot of fuzzy area surrounding you, and we’ll throw in the clarifying questions if we have any,” Dad said.

Dad ignored Charlotte when she said something to him, no doubt trying to get his attention as she had for her entire life. What I’d come to expect was that the only thing that garnered our father’s attention when it came to his family was potential scandal and anything that might tarnish the supposed pristine Abbott name. Between the three of his children, I’d been the most “problematic,” and therefore received the most attention.

What Charlotte failed to realize in her jealousy was that there was a difference between good attention and
bad
attention.

“Well, the business’s sales have tripled over last year and are expected to—”

“How about you start your summary with why Boone Cavanaugh is sitting at my breakfast table beside my daughter, whose heart and innocence he crushed a lifetime ago.” Dad held his smile for the other guests nibbling at their breakfasts in silence, no doubt feeling like a bunch of third wheels. “That is what interests me most at the present moment. I’d like you to look me in the eyes and explain to me why that boy is the one you chose to bring as your date this week.”

“My plus one,” I corrected automatically.

Boone gave me a sideways look, like I’d somehow just betrayed him.

“Pray do tell, just how long have you and your ‘plus one’ been reacquainted? Because the last time you were able to squeeze us into your busy schedule and fly back home, I was under the impression you’d forgotten the name Boone Cavanaugh, and certainly the man behind that name.”

A couple of conversations were starting to circle the table, and I was thankful I didn’t feel the pressure of two dozen sets of eyes aimed my way anymore. It made thinking on the fly much easier.

“I don’t know. It’s difficult to say, exactly, when we got reacquainted . . .” I fumbled for the right words to cut and paste together an airtight lie. “I guess we just sort of started talking a while ago, emails here and there, sporadic phone calls, that sort of thing . . . and you could say one thing led to another led to us sitting next to each other at your breakfast table this morning.” When I finished massacring that explanation, I picked up the other half of my toast and stuffed it into my mouth to shut myself up.

Dad’s forehead was creased with lines of confusion, as were Ford’s, Charlotte’s, and Mom’s. Even Boone’s forehead was creased, although his expression was less confused and more
what the hell?
I gave a just-detectable shrug, and he stabbed a chunk of ham and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing on it like he had a serious beef with his pork.

“So are you two just friends? Or is there more to it?” Dad pressed. “Because your mother tells me you two shared the same room last night, so that tells me there’s
something.
”

And how about that breakfast?

I felt like I was slowly slumping into my chair, one pointed question at a time. In a few more, I’d be falling out of it, and somehow, that sounded like the most appealing option.

“I think that’s difficult for either Boone or me to answer,” I said once I’d finished my toast. “So maybe we could move on to discussing something more exciting . . . like the big wedding coming up.” When I threw my hands in Charlotte and Ford’s direction, I got nothing more than a glare and a hair swish from my sister.

“Please, darling,” Boone’s voice filled the room, sounding a bit more game-show-host than backwoods-Southern-boy. This wouldn’t be good; the darling part gave that away. I slumped deeper into my chair. “You don’t have to go and understate what we have just because few people ever get to experience the connection you and I have.”

I tipped my head at him and forced a smile that was anything but benign. “What are you talking about Boone?” I added under my breath,
“Why
are you talking?”

He aimed a wink at me. “If you’re going to keep on with this modest approach, let me take over and explain how it really is between us.”

“Please don’t,” I muttered through clenched teeth, ramming my knee into his beneath the table.

He patted my leg a few times in return. “A few of you at the table know that Clara broke my heart when we were kids. Broke might be an understatement, but you get the idea. She crushed me.”

Ford exhaled sharply, shaking his head. My dad was doing the same thing.

Boone continued, ignoring the varied responses circling the table, “When we reconnected, I thought I’d give us another go and, if nothing else, see if I could repay her the heartbreaking favor.”

“What exactly do you call what you did to her back then?” Ford said, aiming a look at Boone like he was contemplating the quickest route to get to him so he could wring his neck.

Boone ignored Ford, holding his smile and staring at me like I was his whole world. My knee kept ramming his, but it was getting me nowhere besides a sore leg.

“But boy, did my plans for revenge backfire,” he said, almost cooing.

I felt sick. What had I done? What was I doing? Why didn’t I just stand up and admit to everyone what had transpired to bring Boone to my side this morning. The truth would have been ten times better than this story he was weaving.

Dad shoved his plate away and leaned in, his gaze leveled on me. “Just how serious is this?”