Lyrics of a Small Town Page 23

  This was something that had needed to be said a long time ago but I hadn’t wanted to upset my mother or let her down. I put my coffee on the counter and then looked at her. It was time I told her the truth too.

  “Those were your dreams, Mom. That’s your boutique. That was what you wanted. Not me. I never wanted it. You just told me I did. I don’t enjoy fashion. I’m not good at it. But I am good at something else and you always acted like it was a hobby and I believed it was too. Until I came here and realized I could have a future doing what I loved. I can still finish college and in fact I intend to. I want my business degree. I just don’t want it so that I can own a boutique.”

  My mother looked at me as if I had just spoken another language that she didn’t understand. “What hobby do you think you can have a career at, Henley? I’ve built that boutique and the brand. It’s ready to expand and even franchise. We planned this. We worked for it.”

  I shook my head. “No. You planned it. Not me. And baking, Mom. I love creating new things. I love taking recipes and making them dairy-free and gluten-free. I enjoy the challenge to make it good. To make something people want.”

  She laughed then. A hard, cold laugh. “You are joking, right? That college degree you have worked for, you think you can use to bake cookies? Henley, that is insane. You can’t make a living doing something like that.”

  “Hillya does,” I replied.

  “Hillya bakes regular things most people eat and she makes coffee drinks. That is not the same thing,” my mother shot back, looking pleased with herself.

  “This past month I began making gluten, dairy, and nut-free things for Hillya’s shop. Every morning, they sell out. Every day, someone new comes in because they heard we have the things I bake. Hillya said that fifty percent of last month’s revenue was from the things I baked and the coffee drinks I created for allergy-sensitive people.”

  My mother sniffed and shook her head as if she didn’t believe me. She was running out of argument and I could see it on her face. She was difficult and headstrong. She was also vain and selfish, but she was mine. She was the only mother I would ever have and I loved her despite her flaws. I loved her despite the fact she lied to me.

  However, I could love her and choose my own path. I was done letting her decide for me because I didn’t want to upset her. The fact was my mother was always upset about something. It was just how she was. I had just given her something new to be upset about.

  “Your plan is to live in this house, work for Hillya and then what? Take over her place one day? That’s what you want?” she asked, some of her steam was gone.

  I shrugged. “Right now I don’t have a plan. I don’t know that I am staying here. All I know is that I don’t have to make a decision overnight. I have time.”

  Mother reached up and tucked a dark strand of her hair behind her ear. She fidgeted when she was upset or anxious. My changing things on her had done both. She liked knowing what the future held. It was the reason for her constant state of aggravation. Since she wasn’t a fortune teller.

  “I have a boutique to run. I can’t stay here and talk sense into you. Since Will died, you’ve been changing. This shouldn’t surprise me. But I will give you time. You’ll come to your senses. I think your gran passing has put more of a strain on you than I realized. I’ll just go back home and when you are ready to join me, I’m there.”

  I would never be ready to join her back there again. That much I did know.

  “Drive safe,” I told her. “And Mom, I love you.”

  She took a deep breath and stepped forward to give me a brief hug before moving back. “I love you too, of course,” she replied. My mother was so different than her parents, I often wondered how she came from them.

  She glanced at Rio again who was now eating his muffin. “I hope your grandparents are well,” she said. “I am sorry about your mother.” Her words were stiff, but she was trying. This was the best one could expect from Lyra Warren.

  Rio nodded. “They’re just fine,” he replied. “Thank you.”

  Mom started for the door and I wondered if I should ask her to stay the night but decided against it. The longer she stayed, the more she would want to try and convince me to come back to Chattanooga. I didn’t need to deal with that right now. I didn’t have the strength.

  She paused at the door and looked back, but she didn’t look at me. She looked at Rio. “You look like him and your voice. It sounds just like him,” she said.

  Rio turned to look at her.

  “Rebel that is. Your uh, father,” she added. Then she turned around and opened the door.

  “Bye, Mom,” I called out.

  She lifted her perfectly manicured hand and waved at me. “Bye, Henley.”

  When the door closed behind her, Rio let out a low whistle. “Jesus Christ, lord and savior, that woman is scary as hell.”

  I leaned against the counter and picked my coffee back up. “You have no idea,” I replied then took a drink and watched from the window as she drove away.

  Forty-One

  When the door to Signed Sips opened and Drake walked in, my stomach immediately knotted up. Seeing someone connected to Saul, other than Rio, was not easy. I had managed to get through the week after my face-off with my mother. I was still crying nightly in the shower mostly so that Rio wouldn’t hear me. I missed Saul and I hated that I did.

  “Hey,” I said to him, wishing someone other than me was out front to wait on him.

  “Henley,” he said with a crooked grin. “Just the girl I wanted to see.”

  That did not make me feel better. “Oh, okay,” I replied, trying to smile but failing miserably at it.

  “Don’t look so damn thrilled,” he teased.

  “I’ll try not to,” I replied, wishing he’d say what he had to say and leave.

  “Look, this isn’t my place and Rio told me to stay out of it but hell, I’m the one living with this shit. Rio put his fist in Saul’s face then packed up and left. Now it’s me and Saul and I’m telling you, I don’t think I can take much more.”

  Rio had hit Saul? I assumed they had words, but I didn’t think he had hit him.

  “Henley, he is a fucking psycho right now. Whatever you did, you wrecked the guy. I can’t even breathe hard in the house. He loses his shit over everything. Do you know how many things he’s broken? If I have to sweep up anymore glass, I am going to fucking scream. Unless you want another roommate, I need you to talk to Saul. Work this out, whatever it is.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t,” I whispered.

  Drake sighed. “Why? You love him, don’t you? Y’all were all over each other then BAM it’s done. I mean what the hell could have happened that was so bad?”

  He didn’t know and I couldn’t tell him. It was all back. The deep ache that made daily living hard. All the progress I had made was gone. Hearing Saul’s name and knowing he’s not okay either should have felt better but it didn’t.

  “Please, Drake. Just go,” I pleaded. “I can’t talk about this.”

  He studied me with a confused frown, but he finally nodded his head. “Fine. I’ll go. But whatever happened know he’s falling apart. Day by day.”

  I turned and ran to the back then. I couldn’t hear anymore. Pushing the kitchen door opened, I rushed inside just in time for the first sob to break free from my chest. Grabbing the side of the sink, I held on as it all exploded again. The top that I had managed to loosely hold it down with was gone.

  “Henley,” Hillya called out and then she was there beside me. I turned toward her and she held me as I clung to her and cried. She didn’t ask me why. She just held me.

  I heard Emily return from the store and ask what was wrong. “Go work the front,” Hillya told her. “She’ll be okay.”

  I used all my strength to pull myself together and wiped my face with the back of my hand. Hill
ya handed me a clean paper towel and I took it and dried up then blew my nose.

  “Go home,” she told me. “I mean it. You need time, Henley.”

  I simply nodded.

  She squeezed my arm. “Can you drive or do I need to call Rio?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. I promise.”

  She let my arm go. She didn’t promise it will all be better soon and I was glad. I didn’t think I could hear that right now.

  I didn’t go back to work the next day either. Hillya called and told me she didn’t want to see me back there for the rest of the week. She said I was welcome at her house any time but not to return to the shop. I knew she was concerned but staying home was not going to be a distraction.

  Gran had a box of photos sitting in her room beside an album that looked unused. I had noticed it when I first arrived and the thought of Gran buying the album and how she had never gotten the chance to use it. She wouldn’t be returning to finish that job. Going into her room, I picked up the box and the album and went to the living room to work on it. The photos weren’t old. They were pictures from her life over recent years. I could tell by the one on top of her and Betty posing behind a table at what looked like a yard sale.

  I found myself enjoying the images from her life and seeing how happy she had been here. Even after Granddad’s death, she had continued to live and find purpose. I slid another photo of her at what appeared to be the same yard sale into the album and realized it was something the church had held.

  The pictures were mostly of church events and there was one with her and Wanda sitting in a garden with glasses of iced tea. She must have been visiting Wanda that day. I saw Lily’s face in the next picture and my chest constricted. It hurt to look at a reminder. Any reminder. I started to put the box away and stopped when I noticed something odd. Lily’s stomach.

  I reached for the photo and picked it up. This wasn’t Lily as a young woman but how she looked now, except her stomach was large and round. Lily was very pregnant. She was sitting in her penthouse, smiling at the camera with her feet propped up on the white sofa that sat in her living area. I stared at it confused.

  I turned the photo over because Gran often dated her pictures when she had them printed. There was a note on the back instead of a date. “For Keerly,” it said simply. Keerly?

  I turned the picture back over and looked at it again, searching for something to make sense of that. Then I checked in the box for another photo. Something else of Lily or possibly Keerly. Understanding was starting to click… and what I thought this meant… but if that were true… then oh my god. My heart began to race as I dug in the box, looking through the pictures. Then I saw it.

  I grabbed the photo and stood up as I looked down at the image in my hand. Covering my mouth on a cry, I shook my head as realization was dumped on me like a bucket of ice water. This could not be it. If it was then… oh God.

  I turned the photo over slowly, afraid of the words but hopeful at the same time.

  “For Keerly – April 15, 2018” were written clearly and I stood there putting it together. Every moment. Every single detail. It seemed impossible, but here it was.

  The picture was Lily in a hospital bed, looking exhausted and sweaty. In her arms is a baby wrapped in a pink and white blanket. A little girl born three years ago. To Lily.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered aloud.

  “Gran, why didn’t you explain this to me?” I asked the empty room.

  Sitting back down, I went through every picture in the box. There were six more with “For Keerly” on the back of them. I sat them all aside. Three were of Lily in different stages of pregnancy. One was of Isla and her husband holding the baby while Lily sat there in the hospital bed smiling up at them. Then the last one was of Saul holding the pink bundle in his arms. His younger face smiling at the camera.

  Forty-Two

  Rio sat on the sofa with the photos laid out on the coffee table in front of him. The same disbelief I had experienced mixed with so many other emotions. Guilt being the main one. At least for me.

  “Holy shit,” he said, lifting his head to look at me. “Why didn’t he tell us? Or me? Back then he didn’t tell me. Why?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean Lily is, what in her late forties? She was old when she had Keerly. I just… I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell me. When I yelled at him and accused him of having an affair with a married woman. Why didn’t he explain? Why did he keep so much from me?” I hadn’t thought the pain could be worse, but I had found that mixed with guilt and shame it was, indeed, much worse.

  “Saul has always been closed-off. It’s just this, he has a sister. He never told me. Not even when I went to the house and confronted him.”

  “Was that before or after you punched him in the face?” I asked.

  Rio winced. “Uh, before, and how did you hear about that?”

  “Drake,” I replied.

  He sighed and dropped his head into his hands. “This is my fucking fault. I assumed for years that woman was an affair. I never would have guessed the truth. An affair was all that made sense. I didn’t give him a chance to defend himself.”

  I sat down in the chair across from him. “He could have told me. Sure, I yelled at him, but I didn’t punch him. I stood there waiting and he just left.”

  Neither of us spoke for several minutes. My gaze was locked on the teenage Saul holding the baby girl in the photo. What had happened there? Why didn’t he tell me?

  “I owe him an apology,” I said. “But this doesn’t really change anything. I love Saul and if the roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have walked away. I would have explained. I would have begged him to listen to me.”

  Rio turned his head and looked at me. Understanding in his eyes.

  “He doesn’t love me. If he did, he wouldn’t have let me go without a fight,” I said for myself more than anything. I needed to hear it and accept it.

  “Saul is different, Henley. You know that. He doesn’t react like normal people.” Rio tried to sound encouraging but he failed at it.

  “That may be true but if he loved me, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away.”

  I waited for Rio to argue and when he didn’t, I had to accept the truth.

  Rio didn’t leave that night to go see Saul. I knew he wanted to make things right with him, but he refused to leave me. I don’t know what he thought I’d do if left alone. I went to bed and stared at the ceiling for hours before sleep finally came, and when it did, the dreams were all of Saul. His clear blue eyes, dark curly hair, and his smile. I knew it would forever haunt me.

  The sound of a lawn mower woke me and at first I thought it was a dream. One created from my memory. However, the sound got louder, and when I opened my eyes, the sunlight streaming into the room made it very clear I was not dreaming. Sitting up, I swung my legs off the bed. My feet hit the soft rug and I walked over to the window to look outside.

  Saul was cutting the grass. I acted on instinct. If I sat here and thought it through, I was afraid I wouldn’t do what needed to be done. What Saul deserved. My fear of what looking into his eyes would do to me shouldn’t keep me from apologizing.

  I slipped on the cut-off shorts that I had left on my floor last night and slipped on flip flops then hurried outside. My heart was pounding from nerves as I walked down the steps. I had lain in bed last night, thinking about what I would say to him when I saw him. All of the well thought-out speeches left me though when I turned the corner and he stopped as his eyes met mine. The cowboy hat on his head shaded his eyes and I couldn’t see his expression to know how well my apology was going to be accepted.

  He cut the engine off the lawnmower, but he didn’t move.

  “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Want me to come back later?”

  I sho
ok my head.

  “The grass was getting high and I doubted you were gonna cut it,” he said.

  “I’m sorry!” I blurted out. Nothing like the big speeches I had orchestrated in my head.

  He said nothing and I wondered if I had time to fix this and try to do this more eloquently.

  “I accused you because it was all that made sense. You never told me. You didn’t even tell me then. You just left. And that’s fine. You would rather walk away from me. I just wanted you to know I was sorry I accused you. You deserved better. From both me and Rio. You didn’t have to come cut the grass. I know you do it for Gran, but this isn’t her house anymore. It belongs to me.”

  I was not going to cry. I was not going to cry. I was not going to cry. At least not in front of him.

  He didn’t respond and I realized he wasn’t planning on it. I turned and went back to the stairs. With each step I took away from him, my chest hurt. My eyes stung and I wanted nothing more than to feel as he did. Nothing.

  I stepped inside the house and listened for the lawn mower to start back up or perhaps his truck. Neither happened.

  When the door behind me opened, I turned around to see Saul standing there in his sweaty white tank, faded jeans and the cowboy hat he had been wearing in his hand.

  “I didn’t cut the grass the last time for your gran and I’m not doing it for her this time,” he said.

  I waited. He was talking. I was afraid if I started talking, he would stop. Possibly leave.

  “I did it for you then and I’m doing it for you now.”

  “Why?” I asked, my heart pounding so hard I was sure he could hear it.

  A half-smile touched his lips. “Because I love you. Pretty damn sure I’ve been in love with you since the first week.”

  “You just left me,” I said, as my voice cracked from the well of emotion building inside me.

  “Yeah, I did. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never been that vulnerable. Until that moment, I have never been so fucking terrified. I realized you could destroy me in a way I was unfamiliar with. I didn’t want anyone to have that power. So I left. I thought it would go away. This,” he paused and let out a hard laugh. “This overpowering need I have for you. To be near you, to touch you, to see you.” He took a step toward me. “It didn’t. Not for a moment. I’ve been lost. I can’t do this life without you and I was just fucking fine before you came, Henley. I didn’t feel much at all. But I do now. I feel too goddamn much.”