Secrets over Sweet Tea (23 page)

Zach needed coffee. The day had been brutal. Fridays could be like that. He spent hours in a divorce mediation with a client whose wife was trying to clean him out. She wanted the house, the retirement account, the cars, and the children. At one point he had to ask for a ten-minute break, and it hadn’t been for
his client’s sake. It was one of those odd moments when the reality of all that could be ahead for him sank in—or, more accurately, crash-landed on the nerve endings in his brain and overwhelmed him.

Besides, he had nothing to rush home to tonight. Caroline had insisted the girls stay with her that weekend because of school. He had spoken to the girls every night since their last visit. Their attention spans gave him two minutes apiece, max, but he made a point of not missing that phone call.

Sidewalk traffic had already picked up. The workweek seemed to be getting shorter and shorter these days. Everyone, it seemed, needed the weekend before five o’clock ever arrived. It was only four forty-five. By the time he reached the Starbucks at Five Points, he knew that whatever kind of coffee drink he bought, it was going to be cold. He could feel his undershirt wet against his back and under his arms.

He looked at the familiar menu. Since he moved out, it had practically become his pantry. He had Starbucks for breakfast almost every morning—coffee plus a breakfast sandwich or sometimes a pastry. He was sure he had gained five pounds. He was eating out for every meal, drinking sugary drinks like they were water, and didn’t have a huge desire to run. It was strange to think about how motivated he had been a couple months earlier. That almost seemed like a lifetime ago.

He ordered a grande mocha Frappuccino to go and sipped it as he wandered down the street, looking idly into windows. He walked more slowly these days. For some reason, even the hurry had left his step. And yet his senses seemed unusually acute.

That was something he had noticed recently. When life swallowed you whole, it did something to your perceptions.
There were moments when your senses were sharp, alert, when you caught the slightest nuance in a gesture or picked up a sound three streets down. And then there were times when you missed it all. The train wreck in your life could be such a force of energy that it blew away awareness of anything else.

He was in one of those acute awareness moments when he saw her. Grace Shepherd. Through the window. She was standing in the middle of an empty store.

He walked up to the window, and she looked up. Her blonde hair was piled in some semblance of a bun gone wild. She wore white shorts and a University of Tennessee T-shirt.

She gave him a huge smile. He returned it.

She came toward the front and opened the door, then poked her head out, her brown eyes shining. “Want to meet your new neighbor?”

He lowered his drink. “What?”

“Yeah. Come look.” She stepped back and opened the glass door a little farther.

“I can’t.”

Her face fell. “Why not?”

“I don’t associate with people who have such poor judgment in football teams.”

She looked down as if she had forgotten what she had on. When her head lifted, her smile had returned. Her beautiful smile. “Shut up. Who is your team?”

“I’m a Georgia fan.”

“Bulldogs are ugly.”

“Excuse me? What is a Volunteer?”

“A very fine person. Now come look.”

He scooted past her into the store. It was nothing but a
wide-open space. She walked into the middle of it and flung her arms open. “It’s all mine.”

He nodded and turned a full circle. “Wow. And you wanted all of this?”

She dropped her arms. “I quit my job.”

“You what?”

She laughed. He wasn’t sure he had ever heard her laugh. And he knew he had never seen her like this. Smiling. Younger. Freer. Alive. She covered her mouth. “I know, right? It’s crazy.”

He usually warned clients against making big changes so soon after a divorce. He must not have had that talk with her. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m opening a tearoom. A place where women and little girls can come in and put on hats and drink from fancy china and eat finger sandwiches and pretend they are in a London hotel or a charming English village.”

“Hm. Have you ever owned a business before?”

She twitched her nose. “No. But—” she raised a finger—“I have been owned by some painful stuff for the last ten years of my life. And I have decided I’m not going to do that anymore.” She stopped. Her shoulders dropped. “I am crazy, aren’t I?”

He saw it immediately. The self-doubt, the fear—all of it settled on her in that instance. He didn’t want that. He wanted the Grace of just a few seconds ago back. Here. With him. He touched her shoulder. “No, you’re not crazy. I’m proud of you.” And he was.

She smiled. “Yeah, me too. This is huge for me, Zach.”

He nodded. “I know.”

She paused and cocked her head slightly, kind of like Lacy did sometimes when a lightbulb was going off behind her eyes.
“You do, don’t you. You know all my story, every dark and ugly and painful detail.”

“I know I’m very glad you don’t have to live that way anymore.”

“Well, sometimes it’s just a different kind of torment these days.” She lowered herself to the dingy carpet and crossed her legs like one of his girls would do. She patted the floor in front of her. “Sit.”

He looked down and crinkled his nose. “That floor’s nasty.”

“It’ll wash off.”

He pulled at the pleats in his navy suit pants. He had shed the coat and tie hours ago. “So how are you doing?” he asked as he joined her on the floor.

She reached up to readjust her loose topknot. “You know, it’s crazy. The way I feel seems to change almost every moment. I’ll be with people and can’t wait for them to leave. Then I’ll be by myself and just want people around. Sometimes I’m panicky and I can hardly breathe. And every now and then, there is a moment where I feel really good. You know. Alive.”

She lowered her head and wiggled her red-painted toes in her flip-flops. “There are a thousand moments when I have to remind myself of all the things that got me here. And then there are those moments when I realize all the things
I did
that got me here.”

He raised his mocha. “Wait just a minute. I know your story. You didn’t do anything to get yourself here.”

“You’re sweet, Zach. But a well person would have never let her life get to the place I let mine go. I put up with too much and rescued Tyler from himself more times than I can count. And you know what? Honestly, I don’t think I did all of that just because I cared so much about Tyler.”

Zach raised his eyebrows.

“No. The more I dig into all my stuff, the more I realize that I didn’t want to hurt. So I avoided conflict. I avoided anything that would have exposed where we really were. I was never completely honest with anyone. I couldn’t stand the shame of having the whole world know what our marriage and our lives really were like. Shoot, I couldn’t stand knowing what it really was, so I wasn’t even honest with myself most of the time. I just kept running around, trying to keep all those balls in the air, never even questioning if that’s what I was supposed to be doing. And I regret that, Zach. If I hadn’t been so concerned with what people thought about me, who knows where I would be today.”

“Where do you think you’d be?”

She shook her head slowly. “I have no idea. But I have a lot of regrets, and that may be my greatest.”

“You shouldn’t have regrets, Grace. You did far more than most women I know would have. Caroline wouldn’t have—” He stopped himself.

Grace’s hand flew to her face. “Oh, Zach, forgive me. I’ve been going on about my pain and forgetting that you have yours too.”

“Don’t worry about me.” He shook it off. “I made my bed, gotta lie in it now.”

“But how are you?”

He bent his knees and let a hand fall across each one. The mocha sat at his side, incapable of staining the carpet any worse than it already was. “Oh, I’m all right.”

She tilted her head again. “Excuse me, but I was in church that day. So . . . bull. And I can add more to that if you’d like.”

He felt his shoulders sag. Why did he do that—insist on
acting like everything was fine and that his life hadn’t exploded in front of hundreds of people on a Sunday morning? Force of habit, he guessed. He had spent his life being the one who asked the questions, keeping other people’s secrets and never having to reveal his own. Until Caroline revealed his for him, that was.

“Yes, and you still kept me as your lawyer after that—that’s a miracle.” He let out a soft half laugh. “But please tell me a beautiful Southern lady like you doesn’t talk trashy.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “I can if I need to.”

He laughed. “I’m pathetic, Grace. Living in a tiny apartment, drinking liquid sugar for dinner and having it again for breakfast. My wife won’t talk to me. My girls are complete wrecks. My mother-in-law, well, God alone knows what she has said or thought. I’ve lost three clients. I get looks from women I’m certain Caroline has shared our little secret with.” He used air quotes to highlight the word
secret.
“Oh, and each day I’m learning more and more how messed up my life is.”

Her words came out as soft as the nudge against his knee. “Isn’t it painfully beautiful?”

He let out a puff of air. “I’m not sure I’d call it beautiful. But painful? You’ve nailed it.”

Grace leaned in so close he almost felt he should lean back. “Zach, if you could do anything, anything in the world, what would it be?”

He looked at her in surprise. “That’s what Jackson Newberry asked me.”

“So what did you answer?”

He studied her face, realizing she genuinely wanted to know. “I’m not quite sure. Be a football coach, maybe? I loved football in high school and played some college ball. I’m pretty
sure I’d be a good teacher. What I do know is if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be doing divorce law. But it’s where the money is, and money has always been a necessity in my family.”

“What if you let all the balls that you’ve been keeping in the air all these years just fall?”

He shrugged. “I’m thinking I have. Last I checked, my mattress and box spring were on the floor instead of in a bed frame.”

She leaned back and placed her palms on the floor, stretching her long legs out beside him. “Well, all I know is that if you would’ve told me even six months ago that I’d be sitting here in a storefront that was going to be my very own tearoom, I would’ve said no way. I couldn’t do that. My job was secure, about the only secure thing I had left. I could have just kept on the way I was going.

“But I dropped the balls, Zach. And here we sit, in my future tearoom. I don’t have a paycheck. I barely have savings, and I’m in debt to my best friend. But what I do have today that I didn’t have a few weeks ago is a heart that feels something. Really feels something.”

“I’m very happy for you, Grace.”

She gave him a warm smile. “Thank you. And I want the best for you.” She nodded toward the plastic cup on the floor. “You’re welcome to quit drinking that stuff and come drink my tea anytime.”

He lifted himself up from the floor, realizing he needed to leave. It was a Friday night. His marriage was in a shambles. He was lonely. And this was one of the kindest, purest, loveliest women he had encountered in a long time. With his track record, not a great scenario.

“I may take you up on that,” he said as she got to her feet. “Once you get the place going, of course.”

“I’d love that.” She touched his arm as they walked toward the door. “Have a great weekend.”

“You too,” he said before he headed down the street again. But he wasn’t sure how good a weekend it was going to be when all he could think about was Grace Shepherd, and the person he needed to be thinking about was Caroline Craig.

Grace closed the door behind Zach and moved back into her space. Her space.

She danced around like a five-year-old, holding her hands out as if she held the edges of a flowing skirt. She twirled until she was dizzy, and that got her tickled. She leaned over her knees and laughed until she could finally stand up. She slowly raised her head . . . and let out a scream.

A man stood with his hands cupped against the window. Now she knew why people put brown paper over their windows when they remodeled—to avoid heart attacks. He had scared the living daylights out of her.

Then she caught sight of the squeegee in his hand. He held up a card, and she returned to the door. She opened it and stepped out onto the sidewalk, where people were heading to movies, dinner, or ice cream.

He handed her his card. “I’m Fred Parton. I clean a lot of windows around here and thought you might be interested.” He nodded toward the window. “I saw that the For Lease sign was gone. Didn’t know if you were the new renter or not.”

She studied the name, wondering if he was related to Dolly.
She didn’t see any family resemblance, but then again, she wasn’t really sure what the original Dolly looked like. “Owner, actually,” she said. “I don’t like to rent.”

She had told the Realtor it was the only way she would take the space. The plan was for Grace to eventually buy out Rachel and become the sole owner. The Realtor’s wife had recognized her from television. Gratified that she still had loyal fans, Grace had promised the woman special treatment when they opened.