| |
MERCY
I’ve been sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen for over an hour, chatting with Kirsten, drinking hot chamomile tea with honey, and eating biscuits. They’re cold and two days old, and Kirsten nearly forbade me to eat them. But I convinced her that after spending a decade deprived of southern cooking, even a stale, cold biscuit would be heavenly to me. It’s strange being back here. Or maybe it’s strange how strange it isn’t. Even after all this time, part of me still expects my grandmother to come wandering into the room, chirping her hellos and rattling off chores we should all be doing. She won’t, of course, and I know that. But I still like that it feels like she could. Like she’s still here, part of The Rose Petal.
“Surprised your mama didn’t join you on this trip,” Kirsten says, curiosity crinkling the corners of her eyes.
“Are you?” I haven’t even spoken to her since before I attempted to board a plane to come here. She didn’t express much interest in coming, though to be fair, she was up to her neck in deadlines. She writes political opinion pieces for the New York Times, and politics are a hot topic these days. Half the time we talk, her mind is elsewhere and she has to call me back three days later, after finally registering what I’ve said. Come to think of it, she may not consciously know I’m here yet. “I guess I take for granted this was home to her too once. Just easy to forget when you see her in her element now.”
“She’s always been a force to be reckoned with, even back when she was still exploring her talent with the written word here at our little Lacey Gazette,” Kirsten says. “One day, I’ll make it out there to see her in action for myself.”
“It’s impressive. You should hear her when she goes off on random strangers disagreeing with her articles in public. You’ve never encountered a person more passionate.”
Kirsten laughs. Probably because my mother’s still my mother. Even if the setting has changed, the woman hasn’t.
“Are you sure I can’t be doing something more productive than just sitting here?” I ask for what feels like the hundredth time but is probably closer to seventh. Just seems wrong somehow to be enjoying our visit given the tumultuous circumstance that brought us back together.
Kirsten waves her hand, dismissing my efforts to help with something other than cleaning out her leftovers. “The boys will holler if they need anything. In the meantime, giving me a moment’s peace without worrying about all the things that need doing and fixing around here, is plenty productive.”
“What about your guests?” I insist. “Can I help with anything there? Laundry and cooking can’t be easy, given you’re running the house on a fraction of its usual power.”
Kirsten shrugs, but I know she’s downplaying how difficult things really are. “We make do. Besides, everyone here is a repeat guest. Some of them have been back so many times over the years, they’re more family than anything. Everyone’s been pitching in and no one’s complained about having to make do with what there is. It’s been kind of nice, actually. Being stranded out here through the storm, not knowing what’s been going on in town. Having folks here to keep us busy has made it easier in a way.” She sets down the mug she’s been cradling in her hands and sits up a little taller, excitement suddenly building on her face. “But enough about all the tragic stuff. I want to hear all the juicy bits of your reunion with Frank.” She wiggles her brows to emphasize just how juicy she thinks it’s been, and I can’t help but sigh knowing she’s in for a major disappointment.
“Kirsten,” I start slow, wondering if there is any way possible to avoid having this conversation. But her eyes are about to bug out of her head if I don’t give her something, so there’s not. “There’s nothing juicy to share...because there hasn’t been a reunion. Nor will there ever be one.” I’m not sure why I added the last bit. Except after the last two days maybe I needed to hear myself say it out loud to remember.
“Mercy,” she says, a softness to her tone letting me know she remembers just as well as I do. “It’s been so many years. People grow up. They change. You can’t hold mistakes people make as teenagers against them for the rest of their lives. It’s not fair. Not to him. Or to you.”
“I’m not holding anything against anyone,” I say, eyes locked on my tea. “I forgave and forgot ages ago. But I’m not about to make the same mistake twice either, Kirsten.”
“Neither is he.” Her hand moves across the table to find mine. She cups the outside of it with her palm and squeezes gently, urging me to look up and face her. “You can’t really tell me you see the same cocky boy when you’re looking at the man he is now.”
I shake my head. “No, you’re right. He grew up. He changed. But he’s not the only one. We both did. And what worked between us back then, it’s just not going to fit now.”
“How can you be so sure?” Kirsten clearly isn’t.
But it’s only because she doesn’t know yet.
“Because I’m with someone where it does. His name is Chase, and he’s great. He’s exactly the sort of man I grew up to want to be with. We fit. That’s how I know, Frank and I wouldn’t. Because the two couldn’t be more different.”
She nods, and for a moment I think maybe she’s ready to let it go for good. “I’m happy you’ve found someone who treats you well,” she says, her words slow and intentional. “But does he make you feel the way Frank did?”
I remove my hand from her grasp and sit back against my chair. “Not everything he made me feel was wonderful.”
“I know.” Kirsten folds her hands in front of her, resting her arms on the table as she leans into them. “But you can’t honestly tell me, he makes you feel nothing now.”
I cross my arms over my chest, and it’s the first time I notice how truly uncomfortable I am talking about this, saying these things out loud. It would be so much easier to deny them if I were talking to someone who knew me half as well. But then, someone like that would hardly be asking these questions. They’d know I came back here with Chase and accept that I moved on. And I did. Every second of every day that I was moving forward, I was moving on. It was turning around, going backwards, that screwed things up. “He was my first love, Kirsten.” I drop my gaze to the table as if it holds all the words I need to say to her. “I spent more of my life loving him than I’ve been apart from him. It would be impossible to feel nothing.” I lift my eyes just long enough to catch the flash of hope lighting up her face. “But that doesn’t mean anything more than what it is, Kirsten. Frank is part of my history. And, for a few days, he’ll be a part of my present again, but...There’s never going to be any room for him in my future.”
“Because of Chase.” She couldn’t make it any plainer that she has doubts about Chase and me.
“No.” I shake my head, tasting the bitter truth on my tongue before I say it out loud. “Because of Frank.”
I can hear her take in air, and I fully anticipate another round of rebuttals, when a massive thud, followed by a crashing impact, stops her.
“What was that?” I ask.
Kirsten is already out of her seat and moving for the door. “Nothing good,” she mutters under her breath, worry increasing on her face.
I don’t need to ask any more questions. I’m on my feet as well, following her out of the kitchen and outside to the back of the house. What we find there is nothing short of comical.
The ladder, which I have to assume was once propped up against the house, leading to the roof, has fallen to the ground, and Frank, who must have been in the process of climbing it, is hanging on by the edge of the roof, feet dangling and cursing up a storm as he tries to fight the inevitable drop.
Kirsten is just at the ladder, about to attempt to hoist it up, when it happens. His grip slips and he lands smack in the middle of the rose bushes surrounding the back of the house.
“God. Dammit. Nettie!” he whines from inside the brush, moving around enough to ease any worry I might have had of him being hurt. “It had to be roses.” I see his arms flailing above the branches as he tries to get upright without resting his weight on any thorns. “Couldn’t have been something soft, like a fern or, hell, even bamboo would’ve been more pleasant to land on,” he rants on as the rest of him slowly begins to surface.
“You don’t really need anyone here to clarify the ‘why roses?’ bit, do you?” Tray calls down from the roof, kneeling on all fours as he leans out over the edge to see Frank down below.
Frank scowls, stomping his feet trying to shake loose the lingering thorns and twigs he picked up in his landing. “No. But I wouldn’t mind hearing some genuine concern being thrown my way. I did just fall off a roof and all.” He pats his pants down as one last measure to clear the rose debris before he straightens up all the way and starts for the fallen ladder which Kirsten abandoned after his drop.
“What are you two even doing up there?” Kirsten demands, both hands landing on her waist, face taking on a stern expression now that she knows the crash didn’t result in any injuries.
Tray shrugs. “Fixing stuff.”
The clang of the ladder hitting the drainpipe along the edge of the house draws my eyes back to Frank. He’s about to make the climb back up. “Maybe this time don’t shove me when you lose your balance though. Be a hell of a lot easier to fix things if none of my own parts are broken.”
“Told you to try to lead with something hard and fall head first,” Tray says, laughing at his own joke.
“I see your humor is about as on point as your roofing skills,” Frank mutters, clearly unimpressed with Tray’s efforts to be both funny as well as insulting.
“But was he joking though?” I chime in, just as Frank’s disappeared onto the roof.
His face pops back out to meet me. “Really? You too?” He shakes his head at me, briefly feigning disappointment in my act of betrayal before everything morphs back to his standard pompous ass half-smirk face, and despite my every effort to not give a shit, it happens anyway. I feel at home. Here, in this moment, at this house, with these people, with him, I feel like myself for the first time in forever.
––––––––
FRANK
The second attempt at sealing the leak is a lot more successful, mostly because I keep my distance from Tray, and we wind up finishing the job successfully within the hour. It’s not pretty and far from a permanent solution, but it will definitely keep everyone dry until Tray and Kirsten can get a roofer out here to do the job properly.
Once we’re back at ground level, Tray finds three or four more things for us to tackle before Kirsten calls us in for lunch.
My intention to avoid any more one-on-one interaction with Mercy is easily met thanks to the B and B guests who create a great buffer around her until the meal is over. However, the reprieve is short-lived because lunch marks the end of our visit. Clouds are moving in, promising a downpour, and we can’t chance getting stranded here past nightfall.
Our horses sense the turn in weather. They’re wound up and eager to move faster going back than they did coming out. I keep trying to move Dash into the lead, putting more space between me and Mercy to keep either of us from starting another conversation and risking yet another brush with the past we’ve both spent a decade trying to bury. But Buck is too high-strung from the wind and coming storm to accept falling in line behind us today.
I should keep my eyes ahead and my mouth shut, but she’s right here, beside me, and even from the corner of my eye I can see her repeated glances in my direction, as if she’s waiting for me to break this silence between us. Hoping so, even. And denying Mercy has been my weakness from day one. The elaborate schemes I’ve conjured up in the past simply to get Mercy to deny me instead serve as a testament to this.
Therefore, I don’t even question why I do what I do now. Because it’s what she’s asking for. And given my well-established weakness, it makes perfect sense to give in. To open my mouth, turn my eyes, and visit the past with her one more time.
“Kind of surreal seeing you back at The Rose today.” I’m not sure surreal even covers it. I can’t count the dreams I’ve had over the years where she’s made an appearance, and it’s always been tied to The Rose in one way or another. Part of me had accepted that my dreams were the only place I was ever going to see that scene play out ever again.
“Funny,” she says, “because being back at The Rose made me think how surreal the rest of my life has become.”
“You’ve come a long way.” There’s no denying she’s built a life for herself in New York grander than anything she ever would have thought possible if she’d stayed here. Even if I hadn’t heard from Kirsten often enough to confirm it, I’d have been certain of it.
“I know you’re just saying that to be kind.” She rolls her eyes. “But thank you.”
“You should know better than to think something like that,” I tease. “I don’t recall ever going out of my way just to be kind. If I say you’ve come a long way, I mean it. You have a lot to be proud of, Red.”
She frowns, as if she’s confused about something I’ve said.
“You keeping tabs on me that I don’t know about? Got secret spies hiding out in the big city?”
I shake my head, not sure if it warrants the chuckle I let pass over my lips, because it’s not really all that funny. “You really think I haven’t asked Kirsten how you’re doing at least a time or two in the ten years you’ve been gone? Even if you haven’t talked to her, your mama has.”
She shrugs, the undecided frown still lingering in her face. “I didn’t think you cared.”
“Guess I don’t need to wonder if you’ve ever inquired about me,” I say dryly, flicking the ends of my reins at Dash’s neck to swat away a horsefly. “But yeah, I cared. Still do.”
She’s apparently so stumped by this news, she accidently jerks the reins, bringing Buck to an abrupt stop. “Why?”
I slow Dash down, but I let him keep walking. We don’t need to maintain eye contact for what I’m about to say. “You know damn well, why. I loved you every day of my life leading straight up to the one you left. Those feelings didn’t all go away just because you did.”
I can hear Buck speed up again behind me. “And here I thought those feelings disappeared right around the time you decided to cheat on me with Shauna Stewart. Silly me,” she huffs indignantly, eyes casting daggers at the side of my head. I don’t even need to turn to see it. I can feel the burn of her glare on my skin.
“Think what you want,” I mutter, remembering at long last why I knew it would be best to keep my distance from her the second I heard she was in town.
“As I recall, you didn’t deny a thing. Not that you were all that forthcoming about your transgression to begin with.” Her nostrils flare with anger as she exhales a furious breath. “And for the record, I didn’t simply forget to ask about you. You weren’t so insignificant to me that I just couldn’t be bothered to inquire. I had to force myself not to. Because I couldn’t face the possible answers. That you’d moved on. Gotten married. Made a bunch of babies that weren’t mine. Even just thinking about it hurt too damn much. Because I did care. No matter how many years went by, and even after everything you did, I couldn’t ask. Because stupid me, I cared too damn much.”
Then she clicks her tongue loudly, urging Buck on ahead, leaving me in the dust and herself with the last word. Doesn’t much matter, either, because after everything she just dropped on me, I’m speechless anyway.
Once Upon a Time Under the Pear Tree...
So my very first official boyfriend and I were at my grandparents place. I had just given him a tour of the house and we were sitting out front on the new addition to the front porch. We were sitting close to each other, just talking. One of my brothers came running out of the house with a Bible and jammed it between the two of us and said, "No closer than this!" And ran off. We started laughing and I offered to show him the property itself. So, we walked around to the back half of the yard (I think the land itself was close to an acre?) where my grandpa's garden and fruit trees were. And as we stood under one of the pear trees, he leaned in and kissed me. 💚 We were 14.
~ Anna