Secrets over Sweet Tea (14 page)

That was it. No “What do you have going on? What will you do for dinner? Want to see a movie or maybe spend an evening at home?” There was nothing. Not one thing.

Zach walked into his office and sat in his chair, propped his feet up, and leaned back. He wouldn’t even bother to respond to that. He’d show her. Even though he knew she didn’t care if he responded. She did what she wanted when she wanted. It was all about Caroline. The rest of them simply existed in her world.

The text alarm sounded again.
What now? I’m sure you’re not about to ask my permission.
But it wasn’t Caroline.

You alone yet? Can I drop by? Or do you want me to go to that spin class he thinks I’m headed to?

A smile slowly crossed his face. Someone wanted to be with him tonight. Someone was willing to leave her family for him.

He texted back.
I’d love that. Still at office.

Be there in five.

And she was. Zach never bothered saying hello. The passion between them collided like killer waves on a sun-parched seashore, virtually consuming everything it touched. The intensity between them was so great that for an instant he wondered if this was about either of them at all. Or was it just the desperate desire to escape from what was their
normal
?

But he didn’t care. Not in that moment. He simply surrendered. Her presence was all he knew, her breathing the only thing he heard—until the door to his office opened.

Oh yeah, that he heard. And the words that fell from his wife’s mouth as he jumped from the sofa.

“What in the . . . ?”

Chaos ruled the next few seconds—expletives flying, Zach and Elise scurrying across the floor like ants on a demolished anthill.

“Elise?” Caroline said, finally recognizing the woman. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You? You’re having an affair with
my
husband?”

Odd that in the moment, Zach was more frustrated by the way she announced him as a possession than the fact that he’d been caught in a compromising position with one of the worship pastors from their church.

Elise was kneeling on the floor, her hands flapping across the carpet as she fumbled for her clothes. “Caroline, I . . . I can explain.”

Caroline’s green eyes seemed to be ablaze, reflecting the red of her hair. “Oh, do explain, Elise. Explain to me how you accidentally got intertwined with my husband on the sofa in his office.” She let out a sarcastic laugh. “I so want to hear that.”

“Elise, go.” Zach tried to keep his voice calm. “It’s best if you just go.”

Caroline’s head almost seemed to recoil. “Just go? You think I’m going to let this . . . this
home wrecker
walk away? Well, you two have another thing coming. You will both sit here and answer my questions.”

Elise looked at Zach, her eyes pleading. He longed to rescue her, to be a man in that moment and snatch her away, then deal with Caroline himself. But what remained of his masculinity had been stripped away when his wife opened that door.

“Sit!” Caroline screamed.

Elise stayed on the floor, tears now evident. Caroline stepped closer, towering over her. “Who do you think you are,
going after another woman’s husband? A man with children. And you—you’re supposed to be all holy, leading the worship at church. But you’ve made it clear what you really are, so here . . .” Caroline dug frantically into her handbag, pulled out some cash, and threw it at Elise. “Just a little payment for your work. So you can be a prostitute instead of just a slut.”

Elise jumped to her feet and grabbed her purse while Caroline continued to scold her like a toddler. “You should be ashamed of yourself! You should both be completely ashamed of yourselves!”

Zach sank onto the edge of the sofa, mutely watching Elise slide over to the half-open door and open it farther. Caroline slammed her hand against it, closing it with such force that the walls shook. Funny he could notice that since everything else was shaking.

“Please let go of the door.” Elise’s words came out in a whisper.

Caroline’s voice cut like a razor blade. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not going to tell me anything. You’re going to listen to what I have to say.”

Zach noticed Elise’s white knuckles wrapped tight around the handle. “I’ve heard all you’re going to say,” she told Caroline. “I know you’re angry. And I’m very sorry. And we can talk, but I’m not going to do it this way.”

She looked at Zach again. Caroline followed her glance.

“You think he can help you? He can’t help you now. He can’t even help himself. What you need to do is get your rear end home and figure out what you’re going to do with your own marriage once your husband hears about this.”

Elise jerked hard on the door and pushed Caroline back.
Caroline regained her composure, but not quickly enough to prevent Elise from leaving. In a few seconds Zach heard the stairwell door close.

Which left just the two of them. Zach leaned back and felt a brief release wash over him, a gratitude of sorts. The secret was out. The charade was over. There would be no more hiding, no more pretending. He found himself mildly surprised when Caroline ran to him, leaned down, and began beating on his chest like a wild animal. The tears that accompanied her anger surprised him even more.

“I hate you, Zach Craig! I hate you!”

He grabbed her wrists and wrapped his hands around them, pushed her back so he could stand. “I know.”

“You know! How do you know? I’ve never cheated on you. I’ve never so much as looked at another man. I’ve given you everything. Our girls.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, our girls. What will they do? They will be heartbroken when they find out.”

“I think you’re getting way ahead of yourself here. Only three people know about this—you and me and Elise. No one else. We don’t have to tell the girls. They don’t have to know any of this—especially right now.”

The look on her face was a jumble of confusion, shock, fury, pain. Tears had dampened her cheeks, and her shoulders shook as more fell. She jerked her wrists free and ran a trembling hand through her hair. “What am I going to do? What do you do after something like this?”

Zach wrinkled his brow. This seemed to be truly affecting her. To be honest, when he played out this scenario his mind, he had never imagined her caring. In his deep desire to blame
Caroline for what he had done, he had somehow forgotten she might actually get hurt.

“I don’t know what to do.” His voice was so much calmer than he thought it would be—another difference from his imagined scenarios. He’d always thought he would be more freaked out than this. Had he wanted to get caught? Maybe that was why he’d been so reckless. Or maybe he was as narcissistic as he’d told himself Caroline was.

“Let’s just take things one step at a time,” he said. “I’ll stay here tonight, and maybe tomorrow we can find someone to talk to. I don’t know—maybe Jackson and Scarlett Jo.”

He regretted saying that as soon as the words left his mouth. Elise was Jackson’s praise and worship leader. This news could ruin her and Tim at the church. Tim would be devastated. Funny—until this moment he hadn’t thought about Tim at all.

Caroline sank down on the sofa, her tears falling freely now. Zach sat beside her. It was the first time he’d seen her cry like this in a long time. The first time in a long time he’d actually felt sorry for her. But when he wrapped his arm around her, she jerked away.

“Get away from me! Don’t touch me!” She stood and started for the door. “And don’t come home. Whatever you do, do not set foot in my house.”

With that, she slammed the door behind her. And Zach was reminded once again of how quickly open-and-shut doors could change things.

All kinds of things.

Grace climbed from the bed and put on her black slippers. She picked up her white sweatshirt from the end of the bed and pulled it on over her UT tank top, which matched her orange- and white-striped sleeping shorts. Rachel had felt so sorry for Grace, she’d even let her wear the orange and white at her house. But now Grace was home. She moved aside the curtains and opened the plantation shutters, then just stood there looking out, thinking how strange it was to wake up when the sun was shining.

Miss Daisy jumped off the end of the bed and walked out the bedroom door, then stopped and turned as if to let Grace know she needed to follow. Today Grace was almost glad someone was dictating what she needed to do.

“Want to go out?”

Miss Daisy continued down the hall, obviously glad that Grace had gotten the message.

She opened the back door, and Miss Daisy meandered down the steps in a slow saunter. She was so Southern. Grace followed her out and sat on the top step. “I’m watching you.”

Miss Daisy ignored her. Grace wrapped her arms around her knees. Her husband would never be back in her bed. The thought had swept over her last night when she crawled beneath the covers, resulting in black stains on her white pillowcase. Now it brought wet streaks down her swollen face.

Miss Daisy bounced up beside her and walked past, returning to the house. Apparently she was finished.

Grace mixed Miss Daisy’s food and poured herself a glass of sweet tea. Then she began to walk a small circle through the foyer and into the dining room, down the front hall, and back to the foyer again. Her slippered feet moved at a slow pace, and her prayers came out in fractured bursts.

“I’m really hurting here.” Past the dining room table.

“I need you so desperately.” The front hall.

“This isn’t how I pictured it.” Back to the foyer.

“Please help me make it through this.”

Then words passed through her heart and across her lips that never bothered filtering through her head because her head held no capacity in this broken state to even pray such a prayer. “And please, please, whatever I’ve done to get me here, get it out of me. I don’t ever want to end up here again.”

The prayer wasn’t passionate. It wasn’t a wailing or travailing
kind of prayer. It was gentle, calm, but so desperate. The hurt—this hurt—was far too painful to ever want to feel it again. If she had to go to the deepest places of her personal shame to come out alive, then she was willing to go. She just prayed she’d survive the journey.

She wiped her eyes, walked to the bathroom, and unplugged her phone from the charger. It rang as she picked it up. She checked the caller ID.

Tyler.

The call with Tyler lasted five hours. They both cried. And in the span of that time, they relived every pivotal moment of the last ten years of their marriage. He asked if she was sure about the divorce. She assured him she was. He told her he had done all he knew to fight his addiction, that he had no more fight in him. She reminded him again that he was worth fighting for, but she didn’t know if he would ever believe it. And now the fight was his to own.

He promised that when he got home, they could sit down and divide their lives like adults. Whether it would actually work out that way, she had no idea. She knew Tyler too well. But she could hope.

When they hung up, the emptiness of the house and the revelation of how it would be now moved in on her like a hurricane making landfall. It beat her from every angle.

When she was finally able to rise from its aftermath, she picked up the phone again and called her mother. Her parents would be there in a few hours. Then she dialed Leo. He’d be there in thirty minutes.

Zach shifted his body and almost fell off the sofa. He cursed the pain in his back as he tried to stand. He had never realized in his past moments spent on that sofa how uncomfortable it could be for a full night’s sleep. Maybe he should have thought about that before he got himself here.

Here. He was here, wasn’t he? He was here in that place where somehow secretly he had wanted to be. Yet now that he’d arrived, it was the last place he ever thought he would be.

He put on his pants and moved to the window. He stared at the street. Saturday activities were already in full swing, the sidewalks teeming with people who had no idea his life was officially in the toilet. They were drinking Starbucks and walking their dogs and reading the
Tennessean
and talking about things that didn’t matter. And he was a grown man who’d been caught with his pants down. None of it felt like he’d thought it would.

He went to his desk and picked up his phone. There were no texts, no voice mails. That never happened. Elise usually texted him multiple times a day, and Caroline did too. Now even his phone was boycotting him. He tapped the small green box in the top right-hand corner. Up popped last night’s texts in the order they’d been received, including the final two that had changed his life forever.

He touched Elise’s name, and a box for him to type in his message opened. His finger hovered over the screen, but he didn’t know where to start. What did you say on a day like this? “How are you doing? Does your husband know yet? Has your world collapsed yet? Are you alive, or did Caroline come over and kill you?”

The last thought might not play out well in court should that be where this ended up. What a stupid thought. Caroline was his wife. There was no doubt where this would end up. It would play out in the very courthouse where he worked every week, but now he’d be one of the Craigs in
Craig v. Craig
. And what a
versus
that would be.

His finger began touching the keys.
Do you need me to come talk to Tim?
He pushed Send before he had the opportunity to change his mind. Then he stared at the tiny screen and waited—for what, he didn’t know. For an all-capitals comment? For a response from Tim himself? For a blank screen to still be staring back at him after he had aged another twenty-four hours and twenty-four lifetimes?

I told him last night. We can have no more contact.

And that was all there was. He didn’t know what he had expected. But it wasn’t this. He hadn’t really expected her to tell her husband, and he definitely hadn’t expected her response to be “no more contact.” If anything, she had acted like she would leave Tim tomorrow if she could. And now, when she could, she was cutting Zach off instead.

There was a stab in his chest. Anger followed. He set the phone down and paced around his desk. In that moment he wished he kept a change of clothes at the office because his wrinkled dress slacks weren’t exactly what he wanted to be wearing right now. He wanted running shorts and tennis shoes so he could take off and go who knows where. He just wanted to get away from these feelings and this sense of being trapped and this . . . this
pain
.

He walked to the sofa, sat, and put his head in his hands. He felt the cool metal of his wedding ring press against his
forehead. And with that gentle yet real reminder of all that was now potentially irretrievably broken, Zach Craig wept. For the first time in years, he actually cried.

“I smell food,” Leo said as he stepped through Grace’s open front door.

“Of course you do. You are to food like a metal detector is to cheap jewelry.” Grace closed the door behind him and then led him into the kitchen.

“You look kinda rough.”

“Divorce will do that to you.”

He stopped in the middle of the front hall. “I’m so sorry.”

She tugged at his hand to keep him in forward motion. “Me too.”

She made him sit on a stool at the counter, then picked up a platter of apricot scones. She brought him Devonshire cream, a plate, and a napkin.

“Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore?” His eyes held the same pleading as a puppy’s after the fifth accident of the day.

She pulled up a stool beside him. “No, I’m not mad at you. I was hurt. I was scared. And I was really mad at Tyler, at our life, at all that had gotten us to that moment. At me. But not you, Leo.”

He looked at her, then back at his plate. She smiled but didn’t have the energy to laugh. “You can eat now.”

A big grin wrapped around his face as he plucked two scones from the platter and moved them to his smaller plate. The two piles of cream he placed beside them would be considered more
scoops than dollops. He crammed half a scone with cream into his mouth. “I’m so glad you’re not mad anymore.” The words came out as a jumbled mess, but she had spent the last ten years deciphering his words through his food. “Does this mean you’re coming back to work?”

She hadn’t really thought about work. For the past two weeks, she hadn’t thought about much of anything but surviving. She let the question settle on her for a moment. What else would she do? Broadcasting was what she knew. It was her source of income as well.

“Of course,” she told him. “But I think I might need another week.”

“Sure. Sure. You’ve got plenty of vacation time accumulated.” Small pieces of scone shot out when he said it. “You could take a year. Though for an on-air talent, I don’t think that would—”

The sound of the doorbell stopped him from finishing. Miss Daisy was already at the door, announcing her displeasure to the person on the other side of it. It took all of ten seconds to figure out who was there. The fuchsia reflection through the glass in the door gave it away. Grace had called her and Rachel after she called Leo.

She opened the door. “Hey, Scarlett Jo.”

Scarlett Jo scooted through quickly. “I need to get in here. I swear a cicada chased me the whole way.” She looked at Grace and wrapped her up in her thick arms. “How are you, sugar?”

“Alive.” That was the best she could do at the moment.

Scarlett Jo released her from the hug but still held her shoulders tightly. The woman could be a brute. Maybe that’s why God had given her boys.

“Tell me all about it,” Scarlett Jo commanded, pulling Grace into another bear hug.

Over Scarlett Jo’s shoulder, Grace caught sight of Rachel coming up the steps. “How about if I tell you both at the same time.”

Grace led them to the kitchen. Scarlett Jo spotted the scones before she spotted Leo. “Oh my, what are those?”