The Wishing Tree (5 page)

“I can’t do this alone,” she whispered in the silence of her car. “Please show me what to do.” She tried to focus on good times and happy memories, but they pounced away like the deer in her backyard.

She thought suddenly of the verse from months ago—the
one she’d seen the same night she’d spotted Elliott’s car, and again the next day. The verse had been coming to her mind off and on ever since as she puzzled over what it could mean: “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.” The only place she could think of taking a pilgrimage to was the home that still called out to her no matter how many years went by. But that was a dumb idea.

You can’t go home again
. Fitting that Thomas Wolfe was from Asheville. When she’d first moved there, she’d done all the touristy things—the Biltmore House, the Mast General Store, the Thomas Wolfe home. Elliott had taken her to all of it, helping her dig into her new home-that-didn’t-feel-like-home. She’d been determined to make Asheville feel like home, but so far it hadn’t. There was something still inside of her that hearkened back to that place she could never quite work out of her system.

Her heart stirred at the prospect of returning to Sunset. Just yesterday her dad had told her she could stop working so hard, go to Sunset and help with Shea’s wedding preparations. From the sound of things, her mom and Aunt Leah could use the help. The speedy timetable demanded by the TV people had put everyone on high alert. They would welcome her. They would be happy to see her.

And they would know nothing about what was going on with her and Elliott. Nor did they have to. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she thought it over. It could work. With her job done and the wedding only a few weeks away, she certainly had a good excuse to go—nothing to raise her family’s suspicions that anything was amiss between her and Elliott. She’d have to guard that
secret for sure. But if she played her cards right, she could take the time she needed apart from Elliott, feel useful as she helped out her family, and maybe even reconnect with her sister.

A smile filled her face. Maybe going home again—to her summer home—was just the answer she needed. An answer she’d asked for, and gotten, just when she needed it most.

She walked into her house with a sense of purpose, her mind focused on the packing list she’d started composing in her head as she drove from the church parking lot to her neighborhood. She was starting to warm to the idea of Sunset. It was May, and spring would be in full swing there, the first tourists starting to show their faces, the promise of summer in the air. The wedding was coming up soon, a mid-June affair that would air smack-dab in the middle of prime wedding season. Ivy could imagine all the wedding advertising the network was hoping to attract—their primary motivation no matter how much they gushed about being so taken with Owen and Shea’s love story and the quaintness of Sunset Beach. It didn’t hurt that Owen and Shea were such a striking couple either. The two of them could grace the cover of one of those wedding magazines her aunt had told her were lying all over the beach house as Margot and Shea schemed and planned at breakneck speed.

She was wrestling with the suitcase that was wedged under the bed when she heard Elliott clear his throat behind
her. She continued with the wrestling match as if he wasn’t there, tugging one last good time to free the luggage and nearly falling over as she did. Hardly the composed, self-possessed façade she was hoping to project.

Ducking her head to avoid his penetrating gaze, she hefted the suitcase onto the bed and busied herself with packing. Her careful packing list went the way of her confident demeanor as she opted for just getting out of there as fast as possible, getting away from the heat of Elliott’s gaze burning her back as she worked. She knew he expected her to come back and talk over what April had told her. But she had no intention of doing any such thing.

“Are you going to talk to me at all?” he asked.

She ignored him. Tossed in all the underwear in her drawer. Then added her stack of folded summer T-shirts.

“I take it you’re leaving,” he tried again. “You’re not even going to give me a chance to explain.”

She had to respond to that one. She turned and gave him the evil eye. “I don’t think you deserve that chance.” She turned back to the suitcase sitting there on the bed, so receptive, so open to whatever she threw at it. She could count on that suitcase. She walked over to the dresser and yanked open the drawer containing her shorts a little rougher than necessary. She reached in and grabbed the whole stack, marched over to the suitcase, and added those next to the stack of T-shirts. Then she stood back and pondered the items she’d included so far, thinking over how long she’d be gone and what she could possibly need. There would be the wedding and the bridesmaids’ luncheon and—

“Will you at least tell me where you’re going?”

She remained silent, walked over to the closet, and pulled out a couple of sundresses without thinking too hard, except to note that Elliott was watching, and it would bug him to see her packing his favorite dresses to wear somewhere else. She pulled the sundresses off their hangers, folded them in half, and lay them across the top of the other clothes. Behind her, she could hear Elliott shifting his weight, crossing and uncrossing his arms as he watched her. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone, but she didn’t want to engage any more than necessary.

“If it’s any consolation, I’m sorry for what I did,” he tried again. “It was just hard between us. You were working and gone so much. Ever since your dad put you in charge of that business—”

Another statement she couldn’t not touch. She spun around and glared again. It hurt to look at him. “Don’t you dare blame my dad. Or my working.”

He took a step back, his back wedging up against the doorjamb. “I wasn’t. I was just—”

“Pushing the blame off on someone else.” She turned back to her packing. She needed pajamas, toiletries, shoes and walked around retrieving the items from their various places in the room.

“I’d like to talk to you at some point,” he said. “When you get wherever you’re going.”

She thought of the one thing that would worry him, would hurt him. Not as much as he had hurt her, but enough to make her feel just the tiniest bit better. She zipped the suitcase up and turned to face him. “Sunset,” she said. “That’s where I’m going.”

His face registered his surprise. He pressed his lips into a grim line, processing what she’d said. “I guess I’ve got that coming.”

She laughed even though none of this was funny. “That. And more.”

He crossed to the bed and she backed away. He held up his hands, a parody of an innocent man. “Was just going to help you carry your suitcase. It looks heavy.” Stubbornly, she hefted the huge suitcase with two hands and started to stagger forward. She dropped it after only a few steps, and just as she was getting ready to grab it again, she felt his hands take it from her without another word.

There was a time when just that one little gesture would’ve been enough to soften her. But not anymore. She followed as he picked up the suitcase, crossed the room, walked out the door, and headed down the stairs to her waiting car, where he stowed it in the trunk. He closed the hatch and walked around the perimeter of the car, inspecting the tires just as he always did when she was getting ready to take a trip of any length. Satisfied with what he saw, he came to stand in front of her, looking sheepish and uncertain.

She kept her distance, her arms crossed protectively in front of herself as he gave her his charming grin, though she didn’t miss the sadness behind it. She wouldn’t let him disarm her or dissuade her from leaving. Her attraction to him was what had started all of this, what had landed her here, in this driveway with this man she felt like she didn’t know at all, running back to the very people she’d once run from.

His smile faded away. “I hope you’ll decide to give me
a chance, to give us a chance.” His eyes filled with tears he blinked away. “I hope it’s not too late.”

She watched his arms raise slightly, as if he meant to hug her, then drop just as quickly as he thought better of it. It would be so easy to walk into his arms, to believe all that stuff that April had said about him wanting to work things out. But then she thought of all that waited for her at Sunset, of the people there. People who knew her, loved her, and had never betrayed her. If anything, she had betrayed them. A certain face popped into her mind, a face that had looked so wounded the last time she saw it.

She stiffened, setting her jaw as she looked Elliott in the eye and rose to her full stature of five foot four. “If it is too late, that’s not my fault.”

As she walked around to the driver’s side of the car and got in, she heard, but didn’t acknowledge, his response. “Of course it’s not.” She drove away trying to decide if he was being facetious or serious. But as she exited their neighborhood and headed back to the office to settle the details of her trip, she decided it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting to Sunset Beach, and all that waited for her there.

Ivy spent the rest of the morning back at her office. She made
the necessary phone calls, telling her dad she was taking him up on his offer to finish closing the office so she could help with the wedding, then calling her mom and sister to let them know she’d be coming after all. Her mother was ecstatic, her sister polite but distant. Her stomach clenched at the thought of spending so much time with Shea. But when she focused on the alternative of staying and dealing with Elliott, her “pilgrimage” sounded better and better.

After lunch she joined the stream of cars on the highway. Six hours later, just after dinnertime, she pulled into the driveway of her mother’s house on 40th Street—the last street on Sunset Beach before Bird Island, a stretch of state-protected coastline, began. Behind the houses on 40th Street lay marsh and, beyond that, the windswept, undisturbed coastline.

She stepped out and closed the car door, stretching her cramped legs and inhaling the beach air, the smell of the sea filling her nose. She couldn’t believe she’d denied herself the pleasure of returning for so long. She twisted her wedding ring around on her left ring finger, thinking of why she’d stopped coming, and decided then and there that that had been a mistake.

Her eyes flickered over to the house next door. She half-expected to see two blond boys peering back at her from the front porch, eyes dancing as they concocted their next scheme that would land them all in trouble. She smiled. Whether it was putting crabs in unsuspecting relatives’ beach chairs or peeing off the deck, Michael and Owen had always seemed to know how to stir up some trouble. She looked away. With the wedding coming up, she could bet that Owen was staying there, and his parents too.

That had been the draw, once upon a time. Owen and his cousin Michael, the next-door neighbors every summer who became playmates for Ivy and Shea. And then they became much much more. Her heart beat a little faster as she dared to wonder if she would see Michael, when she would see Michael. At the wedding, surely. And probably at the rehearsal dinner beforehand.

She surveyed the front of the house, taking in the changes that had happened while she was away. Wind and salt air had weathered the house, which needed a new paint job. And her mother must’ve given up gardening because there were no flowers lining the walkway to the house anymore. She walked around to the other side of the car and retrieved her purse, checked her cell phone, switched to silence after
Elliott had called more than once. There was a voicemail from him. She deleted it without listening. Whatever he had to say, she wasn’t ready to hear it.

“Ivy!” She looked up to see her mom waving from the front porch. She slipped the phone into her purse and stood up, waved back, pasted on a grin that she hoped passed for authentic. Her job for the next few weeks was to focus on the wedding and keep everyone else focused on it as well, avoiding questions about Elliott until she was ready to talk about it, which might be never. She pulled her purse strap over her shoulder and headed to the house where her mom waited.

“So glad you made it!” her mom hollered.

She put her foot on the stairs and gripped the railing, focusing on her mother’s face and how nice it was to see her looking happy to see her. “Me too, Mom. Me too,” she said, meaning it with all her heart.

Ivy sat across from her mother, drawing lines in the condensation on the glass of Diet Coke her mother had poured her when they went inside. The two women regarded each other silently, each one struggling for topics of conversation that didn’t veer into unsafe territory. Ivy was starting to realize that being at Sunset wasn’t going to be quite the escape she’d imagined when the idea first occurred to her. So far she and her mother had talked about Shea (out having dinner with Owen’s family), the weather (mild but warming up a bit more each day), the wedding (they were so busy every day
and welcomed her help), her aunt Leah (staying busy at the bakery, planning to do Shea and Owen’s cake, as expected), and the closing of the business (expected but still unfortunate). They didn’t mention the past or her father.

Finally, with nothing left to ask, her mother brought up the one name Ivy didn’t want to hear. “How’s Elliott doing?”

“He’s fine,” Ivy said, unable to keep her voice from sounding clipped. “Really busy with work,” she reiterated, hoping that explained why she felt free to show up at Sunset for an extended visit, the question her mother didn’t ask, yet hung between them.

“Too bad,” Margot said, running her hands through her short frosted bob. “I’m sure he’ll miss you, though. What with the wedding still a few weeks away. I mean, you are staying till then, right?”

Ivy nodded, trying not to think about Elliott. She wondered if he would really miss her as he’d claimed or if he’d just console himself in the arms of whoever she was. She thought of April’s words that morning:
It happened only once
. Well, once was enough to turn her whole world upside down.

Darkness had fallen as she and her mother sat across from each other, but neither of them had moved to turn on any lamps. Margot had tried to feed her when she arrived but Ivy had no appetite. “I ate on the way down,” she lied so that Margot would stop trying to push food at her. Sipping on the Diet Coke was all she could manage. She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall, the same one they’d had all her life, little lighthouses dotting each place where a number should be. She wondered if it was too early to turn in for the night.

“Guess I’ll bring in my suitcase and get settled,” she said.

Her mom stood up. “I’ll help.”

She waved at her mom to sit down. “It’s fine, Mom, I’ve got it.” She headed for the front door. This time there was no Elliott to help with the heavy suitcase.

“Ivy,” her mom called just as she was about to go outside.

“Yeah, Mom?” She turned to look at her mother, who had moved into the kitchen and was wiping down the counter.

Margot Copeland smiled at her, a real smile that said more than they’d managed to say up to that moment. “Glad you’re here. It’s nice to have both my girls home.”

She returned the smile. “Me too, Mom. And thanks for letting me come.”

Maybe someday she would confide in her mother. But they were a ways away from that.

When sleep eluded her, she threw back the covers and retrieved her cell phone from her purse, checking her messages out of habit, wondering when she’d be able to stop the reflex. She no longer had a job, and after her spur-of-the-moment decision to leave Elliott, she might not have a marriage either. Other than the occasional missive from April, that didn’t leave a lot of messages to check. Her caller ID showed several missed calls from Elliott. From the call record she saw that he’d called every two hours since the moment she left.

A flash of guilt traveled through the length of her body. Perhaps it’d been wrong to leave so impetuously. A good wife stayed and fought for her marriage. She tried to
remember the moment in the church parking lot, when coming to Sunset Beach had seemed like her best alternative. She didn’t need to start questioning the resolve she’d felt then. That could only lead to doubt and waffling. Right now resolution was her best friend.

She systematically deleted Elliott’s voicemails without listening to a single one, anger welling in her the more she thought of it. After months of silence and avoidance he suddenly decided—after she left—to pay attention to her. What about all the nights she went to bed alone? What about all the times she begged him to talk, to get off the blasted computer, to face her instead of the television? Where was he before?

Then she thought about his cowardly approach in telling April and letting her do the dirty work for him of telling Ivy. Her anger mounted as she thought about how, in effect, he still wasn’t really owning up to what he’d done. He hadn’t had the courage to tell her the truth, face-to-face.
He’s trying
, April had said. As if trying was enough when really it was too little, too late. He didn’t deserve a chance to talk to her, to explain whatever it was he’d done. There were no excuses he could offer her, no rationale for his abhorrent behavior. He’d committed the unpardonable sin. He’d broken their vows.

She hated him for what he’d done. That was all there was to it. Their love had been dying a slow, painful death for a long time. All she had done was deliver the final blow. In truth, it was a mercy killing, like putting a sick animal to sleep. She’d ended both their suffering.

And now they could both move on.

She held the phone in her hand and stared at it, the message blinking that told her she had no more voicemails waiting to be heard. She clicked on the icon that would take her to her waiting emails, and found, other than some work emails, several more messages from Elliott. One had “Since You Won’t Take My Calls” in the subject line. She checked the boxes to delete each one of them, not bothering to open them.

He had some nerve. Couldn’t he take the hint? She thought about it for a moment. If she didn’t want to hear from him, she’d have to do something drastic to get her point across. Something that would show him she was serious about taking the time she needed, serious about how angry she was. She scanned the remaining emails; all were business-related, except for a few from a church committee she’d volunteered for but never made time to follow through on. What was stopping her from just deleting her email account? Cancelling her cell service and buying a prepaid phone at the Walmart in Shallotte?

That would make a statement.

A smile crept over her face as she made a plan to let her business contacts know of her new email, one that only a select few would even know about. And it made sense in light of the business closing anyway. No one would bat an eye over the change, or suspect a thing. No one would guess that she was deleting her email account to dodge her husband. She powered off the phone and tossed it back into her purse, her mind running through a mental list of what she would have to do tomorrow to make it all happen.

She fell asleep debating whether this break with Elliott was temporary or permanent, reminding herself she didn’t have to decide right away. This trip was buying her time to decide, letting the answers reveal themselves in time. Beach time.