Grace threw another bag of trash into the Dumpster behind her store. She was a little more than three weeks away from opening, and the place already looked amazing—everything she’d wanted it to be. The pink- and white-checkered tile floor matched the pink in the toile wallpaper. Light fixtures with large paper shades and dangling crystals hung in four different sections of the store. The kitchen was fully equipped.
With all the decorating basics in place, now she was into the fun stuff. Scarlett Jo had unpacked the gift items that had arrived—packaged teas, cups and saucers and teapots, gourmet chocolates. Shopping bags with her logo and the store name, Sweet Tea, would be there any day now. Each time she held an item, she felt like she was holding another new piece of her life.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t apologize anymore.” The voice she heard coming from nearby was familiar.
She peered through the slatted wood divider that separated her parking place from the building next to her. Zach Craig stood by his car, talking on the phone. His words came in spurts and sputters as if he couldn’t get through to the person on the other end of the line.
Grace leaned against the boards and listened, not to what he was saying, but how he was saying it. She knew that tone, the desperation in it. Why wouldn’t she? She had felt it so many times herself. She also heard exasperation. Weariness. All of it was so familiar. And she hurt for him. In spite of the mistakes he had made, she hurt for him in this moment.
“Were you listening to my conversation?”
She hadn’t heard him come up beside her. She jumped, and her hand flew over the Izod logo on her short-sleeved red shirt. “Oh, my goodness, you scared me half to death.”
“That’s what you get for eavesdropping.” His words weren’t angry, but they weren’t warm either.
Her hand slowly slid from her chest. “I wasn’t really eavesdropping.”
He put a hand on the beam that ran along the edge of the divider, the cuff of his blue button-down rolled up close to his elbow. “What do you mean, ‘wasn’t really’?”
She pressed her lips together. “I came out here to throw away some trash and heard you talking. But I wasn’t listening to what you said. I was listening to how you said it.”
His eyebrows lifted. She had never noticed how pretty his eyes were until this moment—all open and alert and completely focused on her. They were blue and clear . . . and clearly not happy.
She wanted to run and hide. She wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard anything. She wanted to do what she had always done, which was pretend. She stood up straighter, as if that would give her more confidence. “I know your tone.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
She was getting a little indignant herself now. “Yes, I do. I’ve had it.”
“And what tone is it exactly that you’ve had and you think I have?”
“Well—” she shifted slightly—“it sounds kind of desperate.”
He moved his hand and let out a puff of air. “You think I’m desperate?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
“Those were my words, yes. Not necessarily my meaning.” She was getting flustered, and he wasn’t helping. “I just mean I can hear what is underneath your words.”
“So now you’re a shrink.” The words came out with a bite. He noticed too. He ran his hands through his thick brown hair. “I’m sorry, Grace. I’m tired.”
She stuck her hands in her jeans pockets. “It’s okay. I didn’t handle this the best way either.”
“The thing is, you’re right. I am desperate, in so many ways.”
She pursed her lips and rocked slightly on the toes of her flip-flops. “Well, it takes one to know one. That’s why I could identify it.”
“Listen, I need some caffeine.”
“I’ve got tea, but we’re not really open yet.”
“I need more than tea. I’m going to Starbucks.” He started walking, then turned. “You coming?”
Apparently she had missed the invitation. “Sure. Yeah.”
She grabbed her purse, and they walked through the alleyway and parking lot toward the rear entrance of Starbucks.
He ordered some kind of hyped-up espresso drink, and she got a green tea Frappuccino. “That looks like baby poop,” he observed as they returned to the alley.
She pulled the straw from her mouth. “Well, you make me really want to drink it now.”
He laughed. “Sorry. But it does. It looks like one of those smoothies they’ve put spinach in. Something that looks that nasty has to be good for you.”
She talked through another mouthful. “It’s topped with whipped cream. Trust me. It’s not good for me. But I’m sure it’s better than that liquid speed you’re about to consume.”
“I confess. I’m an addict.” He took a long drink. “Look, I’m sorry about earlier. My tone and all.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’m not usually that forthright. Huge step forward for me.”
“Aren’t our friends lucky?”
They both laughed.
“How’s the new space coming, by the way? The brown paper on the windows keeps me from spying on you like you spy on me.”
She started to protest, then stopped. “I was so spying, wasn’t I?”
“Shamelessly.”
“No, I was ashamed, but I was still spying. I haven’t done that in years.”
“I’m glad I can help you break out of your old patterns of behavior.”
He fiddled with the brown cardboard sleeve on his coffee. “Well, it’s not like I wasn’t having a rather loud discussion in the middle of a parking lot.”
She furrowed her brow. “True. So I wasn’t spying.” She took another big swig of her Frappuccino. “I feel so much better about myself now.”
He laughed.
“Do you want to come see how it looks?” she asked.
“What looks?”
She elbowed him. “My store.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, I’d love to see it.”
She unlocked the back door and took him in through the kitchen. They passed the restroom and her office. She pulled back the toile curtain and looped it over a scrolled iron hook that held it back. Then she studied his face as he took it all in.
“Wow.” His eyes widened and he lowered his coffee cup. “It’s . . . pink.”
“I know. Great, isn’t it?” She still couldn’t get over how good it looked. Every time she walked through the door, she smiled.
“Yeah, but it’s so girlie.”
“It’s a tearoom, goof. What do you expect?” This ease she felt with him was nice. “Guys usually don’t visit tearooms. That’s why there’s a pub a few doors down.”
“Yeah, for beer drinking and cigar smoking and crass conversations.”
“Yes, for men. Here we’ll have tea sipping, scone eating, and hat wearing. Plus, I imagine, a lot of women talking about girl stuff.”
Zach looked at her, studying her almost. She fidgeted beneath his gaze. “You look so happy, Grace. And I’m so happy for you.”
She smiled. “It’s true. I didn’t know this kind of happiness was even possible.” She paused, not sure if she should share what had just popped into her brain. The old Grace would have bitten her lip. Nodded. Thanked him for coming. But this Grace had something else to say—or rather, ask.
“Since now I’m an eavesdropper and all . . . how are things with you?”
He lowered his shoulders and set his drink down on one of the glass-topped tables. In a few weeks they would sport blue tablecloths over bold pink- and white-flowered skirts. “It’s not good. Caroline won’t talk to me. Well, let me rephrase. She talks at me, not with me. There’s so much that needs to be said, so much that we need to go through. But she just puts up this wall.”
“She’s got to be really hurting.”
He ran his hands through his hair again. “I know she is. And she has every right to hurt. But we can’t get anywhere if we can’t communicate. We’ve been separated for months now. She threatens divorce but doesn’t pursue it. But she doesn’t pursue me either. I’ve tried to get her to go to counseling with me. I’ve tried to get her to go to counseling by herself. But she won’t do anything.”
“Maybe she can’t. What y’all went through was huge. I mean h-u-g-e.”
“Yes, I get it, Grace.”
“Sorry. I’m just saying that sometimes that kind of pain can get you stuck.”
“Well, she’s got to get unstuck if anything is going to happen.”
“I really am sorry. And I do understand on some level. I understand your pain, and I understand hers too.”
“I just can’t fix this. I can’t. At least I’ve come to terms with that.”
“That certainly sounds like improvement. From one fixer to another, I’m thinking there’s some freedom in that for you.”
“There is.” He smiled. His teeth were white and straight, and his smile was kind. And genuine. “I’ve started shopping. By myself.”
“That’s a good thing?”
“I hadn’t bought my own clothes in ten years.”
She crinkled her brow. “What?”
“Caroline bought everything. Even my shoes.”
Grace was shocked at that. Tyler would never have dreamed of letting someone else buy his clothes. The problem was, he never knew when to quit buying them for himself. “You didn’t even buy your own shoes? Who lets someone else buy their shoes?”
“A man who has no idea who he is or what he wants or what he was created to do. But . . .” He ran his hands down the front of his outfit. “I bought this all by myself.”
She stepped back and studied him. “I’d say you never need to let a woman do your shopping again. You have done perfectly fine by yourself.”
“So what about you?”
“What do you mean? I buy my own clothes.”
“No, I mean, what are you doing that is different from what you used to do?”
Her eyes scanned the room. “I’m opening a business. And eavesdropping. And apparently beginning to say whatever is on my mind. I even let Rachel have it the other day. Not one of my better moments, but it was good for both of us.”
“That’s not the Grace who sat in my office—what was it, five months ago?”
“Something like that. And nope, I’m not the same—not in the least.” She motioned toward two white folding chairs that sat on either side of a table. “Want to sit?”
“Sure.” He pulled out a chair.
She pulled the other out for herself and smiled as she sat. She was glad he had stayed.
He leaned forward, knees on elbows. “So tell me, how did you know?”
He must have noticed her puzzled look. “How did you know when it was over?”
She pulled her feet up onto the chair, wrapped her arms around her legs, and thought for a minute. How could she describe it? “It’s hard to explain. It was something deep inside, like I’d finally been released. Like God had released me. I didn’t make a move toward divorce until I was sure of that. I prayed some very specific prayers. And God answered them.”
“Like, just . . . answered them?”
She shrugged. “It’s not like I heard this deep voice from heaven. But yeah, he definitely answered. He knew what would release me. He knows me better than anyone.”
She paused, remembering. “I would have stayed, you know. If I believed that was what God was calling me to, I would have stayed with Tyler forever. But that wasn’t what needed to happen. It was clear. My marriage was over.
“No one has to tell me why God hates divorce,” she added. “I know. I hate it too. And there are still days when my heart longs for nothing more than for my marriage to be put back together. But Tyler has made it clear that he cannot or won’t deal with his stuff, and I can’t do that for him, and I can’t live the way we were living. So I am doing everything I can to deal with my own stuff and heal my heart and learn how to find my voice again, and I will trust God to write the rest of my story as he’s written the beginning.”
He looked down and ran his fingers along the sides of his cup. “I don’t know if I trust God like you do. I certainly don’t feel released, but I can’t see how Caroline and I can ever patch things up either. I just don’t know what I need to do next, where to go from here.”
“So what is the worst that can happen?”
He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know. I was outed in public by my wife—in church, no less. I am living alone. My children are broken. My wife is broken. I’m broken.” As he spoke, she could see the revelation in his eyes. “I just don’t want to see my girls grow up in a broken home. I know I don’t want that for them.”
“I’m sure you don’t. No one wants that for their children.”
“But I’m a better dad now. I do know that.”
She smiled. She couldn’t help it.
“What? What are you smiling at?”
“The way you said that. There is an innocence about it, Zach. About you.”
“Me?” He laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“No, I mean it. It’s like you are discovering so much for the first time. Just like I am.”
He leaned forward, the blue in his eyes even brighter. “It’s true that I’ve learned more about myself these past few months than I have in years. I think that’s one reason Caroline’s so worked up these days. She doesn’t know what to do with me.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“For her it is. She’s used to me giving in just to keep the peace.” He must have noticed her smirk. “Takes one to know one.”
She raised her hand. “My name is Grace, and I am a people pleaser.”
He laughed, but she shook her head.
“Look where avoiding conflict got me, Zach. Worked out real well, didn’t it? I wish I had found my voice years ago. The voice that said, ‘No, this isn’t okay. No, we’re not doing it this way.’ But I didn’t. One of the best things that can happen to you or Caroline, at least I would think, would be for you to find your voice and not worry about making everyone happy.”
He sighed. “It’s all totally and royally jacked up.”
She leaned toward him. “But it’s totally freeing, right?”
He did that narrowing thing with his eyes again, the one that clearly communicated he was thinking. Then, slowly, a smile stretched across his face. “Yes, it is.”
They sat there for a moment. Silence surrounded them.
“I was tired, Grace.”
“I understand.” She paused for a moment. “You’re a good man, Zach Craig.”
The air came out of him in a puff. “I’m an adulterer.”
“Not anymore. And that’s only a piece of your story. I am certain this is not how your story is going to end.”
She saw what her words did to him. It was written all over his face. And she meant them. He stood, and the chair made a scraping noise against the tile as he did.
“Ooh, I’ll have to fix that,” she said.
“You just need those little felt pads to put on the bottom. Or the kind that slide. Either will work.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Handyman.”
“Thank you, Ms. Grace.”
They stood there for an awkward moment. Did they shake hands? Hug? What? Finally she reached out and hugged him, and he hugged her back.
“Thanks for the Frappuccino,” she said as he made his way to the back door.
“You shouldn’t thank me for that. That was gross.”
She was still laughing when he left. She grabbed her purse and keys and decided to head home. She had done enough damage for the day.
As she locked up and climbed into her car, she couldn’t seem to shake him from her mind. And she needed to. Blue eyes or not, Zach Craig was still married.
How did you feel like a stranger in your own home?
Until now, Zach had never thought that was possible. But he stood there on the Oriental rug in the foyer, sweeping his gaze through the small area, and it all looked foreign to him. Unfamiliar.
He had never noticed that pattern in the rug before. He had never noticed the gold scrolling on the antique console across from him or the way the shade flared out over a blue-and-white porcelain lamp. He picked up a framed photo that sat on the small side table next to the door and took in the faces of his family. His family. They all looked so young. So happy. Filled with such illusion that life would be easy and doable. Now their lives were a disaster.
Adele was in the house. He heard her voice in the other room. “You’d better not let him get away with anything. You stand your ground. You are a Whittingham, and don’t you ever forget it.”
“I won’t,” Caroline replied in that familiar compliant voice. “I know.”
Had he known his mother-in-law was here, he would have chosen another spot to meet. But he hadn’t, and here they were. That woman was a classic. She loved to quote Scripture, but apparently she thought the piece in the Bible about the three-stranded cord not easily broken meant a daughter, her husband, and her mama. He’d done a terrible job of challenging that misconception. But no longer. He was ready to take that bull by the horns.
Caroline walked into the foyer tugging at her ear, trying to get her red hoop earring through that little hole. He still had no idea how she did that. Or why. But then she probably couldn’t fathom why he spent hours trying to hit a ball into another kind of hole.
“We can talk in the family room,” she said as she walked past him. She had agreed to meet with him tonight, while the girls were at the library. But her demeanor was as cold as the “breakup” letter he had gotten from yet another client yesterday.
She sat on an upholstered armchair across from the sofa. He had never realized how much red the floral pattern had in it.
“I’m not sure what you want to talk about, Zach.”
He lowered his body onto the sofa. “I want to talk about us, Caroline. In the past few months we’ve done very little of that. It’s going to be the holidays before we blink. I just want to know where your head is and—” he paused and looked at her—“where your heart is these days.”
She folded her hands and brought them to rest on her designer jeans. He had been shocked when she first opened her store and he saw the price of those things. For a man who was content with the single pair he had in his closet, from a store he couldn’t remember, the idea of spending a car payment on little pieces of denim was simply preposterous.
“Where my heart is? That’s an interesting question coming from you.” Caroline raised her head, her eyes now fixed on him. But he could tell she was aware her mother was listening. “Since when did you decide to take my heart into consideration?”
He knew anger was a direct manifestation of her hurt. He had sat with couples in this same situation time after time. But apparently his experience hadn’t taught him much. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “Babe, I know this is awful for you. I know you feel betrayed. And I’ll tell you again: I’m so sorry. I am. I really do want to fix this. But you and I have created some really horrible patterns of behavior, and we can’t continue to do things the way we’ve done them in the past.”
“Well, I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up.” Her tone was biting. “So you’re saying adultery won’t be part of our future together?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m saying that my adultery isn’t the only poor decision I’ve made through the years. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made is shutting down my voice with you. I’ve been afraid, Caroline—afraid of arguing, afraid of telling you no, afraid of standing up to your mother. But not anymore. For us to move forward, which I truly want to do, some things are going to have to change. And that includes your mother’s influence in our marriage and on your decisions.”
He didn’t care if Adele heard that.
Caroline pulled her head back. “Excuse me? Are you really sitting in this room telling me what has to change? What I need to do about my mother? I’m sorry, but last time I checked, I wasn’t the one who messed up this marriage.”
He’d known he would get resistance, but he didn’t know how else to say it. He softened his voice and leaned closer toward her. “It’s absolutely true that I’ve messed up. Big-time. But it’s also true that your mother has been in this marriage from the beginning. I watch you when she’s around. Everything you do changes. Like just a minute ago—I could hear it in your voice when you responded to her. It’s like you turn into this little girl, and the beautiful, strong woman that you are just melts away.”
He noted familiar signs of her growing anger—the straight back, the pulsing jaw, that tightly wound stillness—and fought the urge to back down. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. “For most of our marriage, you’ve been more concerned with her opinions than you have with mine. And if we’re going to stay married, I need you to be my partner, not your mother’s. It is time for this to be our marriage. Just us. We’ve got to do this thing together—raise our girls together, make decisions together about our money and our—”
“Let me tell you something, Zach Craig.” She bolted from her chair and started pacing. Her voice was loud, but Adele was not showing her face. “My mother has been there for me when you couldn’t be bothered. She’s held me when I cried over you. She’s been faithful when you couldn’t even spell the word. So you have some nerve, telling me my mother’s to blame for what you did. Jackson Newberry may be telling you to set boundaries or to start leading me or whatever it is you’re trying to do, but I can assure you that isn’t what is going to put our home back together.”
Zach was feeling a little frantic by now. “Caroline, babe, what I’m saying is neither of us have been living the way we were created to. Not me and not you. I’m doing everything in my power to change that on my end. But I just need you to see that the way we interact, the way we treat each other, the way we do life together isn’t healthy.”
“There is nothing wrong with the way I do life.”
He threw his hands up. “So what is your idea? You seem to have a reason why none of my ideas are worth talking about. What are your ideas? How do you propose putting our home back together?”
She walked to the other side of the chair and turned her head sharply. The ends of her red hair swung around to the side of her neck. “The first thing you’ll do is leave that church and stay away from the Newberrys. Then you won’t be at your office unless Darlene is there with you. And you’ll give me your phone bills every month and your e-mail password. And—”
He raised his hand to stop her.
She glared at him. “See, now who doesn’t want our marriage to work?”
He stood too. “I’m rediscovering my heart, Caroline. I lived with it closed up for years, and it wasn’t good for either of us, much less our marriage. The man who was married to you wasn’t a man. He was a coward. A shell of a being. Nothing like he was created to be. I will never be that man again. And part of no longer being that man means loving you enough to look at you and tell you that things have to change. I cannot and will not live like we have lived in the past. So you can tell me all your demands if you want to, and I’ll do my best to do whatever is necessary to help you trust me again. But I will not let you put me back inside a box that I am fighting with all my heart to get out of. And I will continue to pray that you find your heart is worth fighting for too. Because this is a battle I will fight with you wherever it takes us. But I can’t do it for you.”
Her jaw flicked, and he saw the tears well up. She didn’t want him to see, but she wasn’t quick enough to hide them. He moved close and put his hands on her arms. What did he have to lose? “It’s okay to hurt. You don’t have to be strong. You don’t.”
She stood there not moving, but her tears had a life of their own. They fell down her face in rhythmic bursts.
He pulled her toward him. “We loved each other once. We really did. That’s why we got married. And for a brief season, years ago, you trusted me to be your husband. We can get back there. I can be the man you married again, and you can be the woman I fell in love with.”
For a moment her body was soft in his arms. For a moment he could tell that what she wanted was something completely different from what she was saying. He could see it in her face and feel it in her body. Then he felt the rigidness slowly make its way back through her. She extricated herself from his hold and turned, glancing around as if concerned that Adele had seen her weakness. She tossed her words behind her as she left the room. “Show yourself out. Now.”
He walked out the front door and headed toward Main Street and his office. He was horrible at this. He didn’t know how to connect with her. He didn’t know how to reach her. He didn’t know what it would take for her to let go, to accept that she wasn’t perfect and didn’t have to be, to be okay with falling apart.
He didn’t even know how to love her right now. All he wanted to do in that moment was shake her and scream. And he didn’t even want to put into words what he’d like to do to Adele. He found this especially frustrating because he was making such progress in other areas of his life. He was laughing. He was humming, for pete’s sake. He had bought his own clothes. He was playing golf. And he was paying attention to his heart. For the first time in a long time, he was paying attention to his God-designed heart.
His mind was still recounting its recent victories as he passed Grace’s tearoom. Her business name and logo had been stenciled onto the glass. Sweet Tea. It was official. Her dream had a name. His mind ran back to their conversation. No one had bothered to know him, to listen to him the way she did.
Caroline didn’t know him. Not really. Elise certainly had never known him.
Elise. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how she was doing. Jackson said she and Tim had moved back to their hometown in North Carolina. And Zach wished them the best. He really did. But he realized in that moment that she hardly ever crossed his mind these days.
Grace did, though. She crossed his mind more than she should. He wished Caroline was like her. He wished Caroline cared the way she cared.
He wished . . . he wished he didn’t think about Grace Shepherd so much.