Scarlett Jo hadn’t walked before church this morning—quite honestly because she hadn’t wanted to. She hadn’t wanted to walk yesterday either, but Grace and Rachel had hounded her to death, and she was a sucker for those scones. Holding them in front of her nose had been downright evil.
Anyway, she had finally gotten out to walk after Sunday lunch.
She passed Fifth Third Bank and couldn’t help but wonder, as she did every time she passed it, what happened to the first, second, third, and fourth third banks. That name didn’t make a lick of sense to her.
She left the bank and its issues behind her and thought about her own. She realized she hadn’t really prayed through this current situation. She had cried out some accusations a few times, but she’d never tried to engage God in dialogue or even stopped to listen to what he might be trying to say to her. That was something else she hadn’t really wanted to do. She just hadn’t felt like talking to him.
“I’m a little peeved, you know,” she said to the October day, the air still warm in the dots of sunshine that filtered through the red and gold leaves overhead. “I hadn’t counted on all this. I thought he was gone for good, like a bad hemorrhoid or something.” She caught herself and chuckled. “Lord, have mercy. I wonder if you ever get tired of my crude analogies. If you had given me a girl, maybe I’d be a little more refined.”
She felt as if heaven laughed at that. She swatted her hand toward the sky and said, “I know. Wouldn’t have made a lick of difference.”
Her pink-and-white tennis shoes moved quietly across the solidness of the concrete. “I just didn’t realize I’d have to fight that battle again.”
Over and over. The words came like a flash to that quiet place deep inside her.
“But I want it to be done. Finished. Finito. Bon voyage. Arrivederci. Poo-poo.”
Nothing followed that.
“I tell my boys all the time how valuable their hearts are, how they need to fight for them and keep them connected to you and listen for what you’re saying. I haven’t been doing that for the last week or so. But I’m doing it now. So what are you saying?”
She walked in silence for a few blocks. Her heart desperately wanted to hear something from God. Anything. She read street signs, plaques on houses, historical markers—anything to try to get a “thus saith the Lord.” But she didn’t get a thing except more frustrated.
As she rounded the corner to Church Street, she caught sight of Caroline Craig headed for her front door. Her steps were determined across the brick courtyard. And she was obviously crying.
Scarlett Jo didn’t feel like checking on Caroline any more than she felt like staying up with Tucker and his stomach issues after a fish fry. But she felt that familiar tug.
“I’m not gonna do it,” she muttered back to the sky.
It tugged harder.
Caroline’s sobs grew louder. Or at least they seemed to.
“Oh, for all that is Southern and sweet, if she says one stupid thing, I swear I’m going to slap her.” Scarlett Jo marched to the gate and crossed the courtyard to Caroline’s front door. She and Caroline reached it about the same time.
Startled at Scarlett Jo’s sudden appearance, Caroline tried to stifle her cries. She sniffed hard, multiple times, then began to rummage through her purse. “Scarlett Jo, what are you doing here?”
“I have no idea” was all she could muster.
“Well, if you’re going to ask me to come back to that church of yours, you can forget it.”
Caroline finally fished out a tissue and blew her nose—rather unattractively for someone who acted so refined.
“Wow, that was loud,” Scarlett Jo blurted out.
Caroline’s brow furrowed. “If you’re here to insult me, I’m not in the mood. In fact, I’d rather spend the rest of my life without encountering you or that husband of yours who dishes out his two cents’ religion and psychobabble hogwash.”
Scarlett Jo started to bristle. Then she heard: Hurt people hurt people. She’d preached that to her boys a thousand times, but she was now hearing it for her own life, her own pain—and for Caroline’s.
“Your husband is a thoughtless jerk,” Scarlett Jo said.
That stopped Caroline cold. It was apparently the last thing she had imagined Scarlett Jo would say. She sniffed again. “Yeah . . . yeah. He is.”
“What if he’s always a jerk?”
Caroline dabbed her nose with the tissue. Her forehead wrinkled. She shook her head slowly, thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”
“What if he never changes? What if he continues to make decisions dictated by what’s in his pants?”
Caroline’s frown grew deeper.
“I’m serious. What if for the rest of his life he makes decisions that he shouldn’t, and there you are? What do you do then?”
Scarlett Jo watched Caroline’s eyes narrow and twitch and imagined her mind searching wildly to figure out what Scarlett Jo was trying to get at. “I don’t know.”
“What of that can you control, Caroline? Truly control?”
She watched as Caroline’s jaw started to pulse. She could see fury building.
“Get mad if you want. But get mad at what needs to be gotten mad at, sugar. And last I checked, I’m not it.”
Caroline started digging into her purse again, obviously looking for her keys.
“How long are you going to run?”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed into slits, and her words came out in an angry whisper. “I have nothing to run from.”
“Oh yes, you do. You have been running from yourself for who knows how long.”
Caroline dug harder. Scarlett Jo prayed she wouldn’t find the keys until she was through saying what needed to be said. “Caroline, you are one of the most beautiful women I know—on the outside. You are. But, baby girl, that beauty has been swallowed up by all the ugly you’re toting around on the inside. So how long are you going to wear yourself out trying to control everything?”
“I am so sick of this!” Caroline threw her purse down in frustration.
Scarlett Jo took that as an answer to prayer. “That’s good,” she said. “What are you sick of?”
Caroline’s hands clenched into fists as tears rushed down her face. “I’m sick of everyone trying to tell me what is wrong with me! What I’ve done wrong. What I need to change.”
“Okay. Good. What else?”
“Ooh!” she let out in an angry burst. “There’s nothing else.”
“Nothing?”
“My husband is an adulterer.”
“Yes, he is.”
“He cheated on me.” Her cries were coming out in waves.
“Yes, he did.” Scarlett Jo’s voice grew softer as Caroline’s anger gave way to grief.
“He hurt me. Humiliated me.”
“I know he did. In the deepest way.” Scarlett Jo stepped closer.
“I don’t know what to do.”
A little closer. “You can let go.”
Caroline raised her green eyes and looked at Scarlett Jo. She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know how to let go. I’ve always been the one to hold things together, make sure everything works the way it’s supposed to.”
“You like to be in control.”
Caroline’s defensiveness flared again. “I guess so. Nothing wrong with that.”
Scarlett Jo pressed in. “But why is being in control so important to you, honey?”
Scarlett Jo watched as Caroline made a desperate attempt to figure out the answer to that question. And then, slowly, revelation spread over her face. Her shoulders dropped. “Because my mom still controls me. And if I can control everything else, those are places that she can’t.”
“Yeah.” Scarlett Jo nodded. “Might be true.” She motioned toward the two Adirondack chairs on Caroline’s porch. “Mind if I tell you a story about a broken woman?”
Caroline shook her head and they sat.
For an hour Scarlett Jo shared her story, all the way down to her seeing Fred and having Grace and Rachel visit yesterday. When she was done, Caroline’s face looked like an interstate full of skid marks, she had cried so much.
“I’ve thought you were tacky,” Caroline offered after Scarlett Jo was finished.
“I know. I’ve thought you were a prissy pants and a control freak.”
“Prissy pants? You’ve got to be kidding.” Then Caroline laughed. “But control freak? I am so that.”
Scarlett Jo stood and pulled at the hem of her pink velour sweatshirt. “We can be friends if you want. I won’t tell.”
Caroline smiled. “I think I might want you to tell.”
Scarlett Jo snorted. She hadn’t snorted in over a week. It felt so good.
“And about church . . . well, I wasn’t going to invite you back. In fact, I didn’t even want to walk over here at all. But you should know we have a new worship leader. It’s a man. He’s single.” Scarlett Jo added the last two words with emphasis just in case Caroline now had a permanent fear of female worship leaders.
Caroline gave her own little snort-laugh. “Good.”
Scarlett Jo couldn’t help it. She reached out and gave Caroline a big old hug. Caroline took it pretty well, considering that she was Caroline. And for the first time since she’d spotted Fred Parton through that plate-glass window, Scarlett Jo felt like her old self.
As she rounded the corner of her street, she caught a glimpse of Sylvia and her granddaughter as they walked up Sylvia’s front steps. The body language communicated everything she needed to know—the girl’s hand on her rounded stomach, her lowered head, Sylvia’s wagging finger. That finger wagged until the door closed behind them. Sylvia had agreed to take the girl in, and that was enough to keep Scarlett Jo’s hope for her alive. But clearly Sylvia still had a long way to go.
Scarlett Jo took a full breath of the October air and exhaled loudly, stretching her arms out in a broad sweeping motion like they did at yoga. When she released her second breath, she thought of how this life never allowed a person the opportunity to take a respite. As long as she lived, she’d have to continue to fight for her heart—and for the hearts of others.
That was when she heard it—finally heard it.
That’s what I’ve been trying to say.
Zach picked up another scone and dipped it in the cream Grace had packed in his goodie bag. He sank down into his sofa and took a bite . . . and thought his eyes might roll back in his head. Now he knew why women loved tearooms, and he was finding it harder to figure out why men would rather have beer and buffalo wings than this. If Grace would put a big-screen television in her shop and show SEC football on Saturday, he might be able to get some of his friends in there. He laughed at the thought.
He jumped when he heard a knock on the door. No one visited him here. He got up slowly, contemplating grabbing something to protect himself. But he figured a burglar or murderer wouldn’t knock, so he was probably safe.
He looked through the peephole. It was Caroline. He opened the door. She looked beautiful, softer somehow. The rusty-orange sweater wrapped around her subtle curves and made her auburn hair more vibrant. Her green eyes looked slightly swollen, yet strangely bright.
“Mind if I come in?” she asked.
For a moment it felt awkward. He wasn’t sure he wanted Caroline in here. In his space. His new, simpler world.
“Sure. Yeah,” he said. “Come in.”
There was an immediate awareness of the sparseness of his surroundings. The single sofa. The bare coffee table. The television that sat on the floor. The place was uncluttered. Spare. To her it probably looked downright primitive.
She walked in, her hesitancy apparent as well. “So this is it, huh?”
He swung his arms out, then dropped them at his sides again. “Yep, this is my humble abode.”
She turned quickly, tossing her hair to one side. He noticed tears had welled up in the corners of her eyes. “Zach, you were so stupid.” Her voice was full of emotion. Not anger. Just weighted emotion.
“Yes, I was.” He had nothing to hide. “Really stupid.”
“You broke my heart.”
He nodded. “I can see now that I did.”
That seemed to surprise her, at least for a moment. Then her shoulders dropped. “You didn’t think you mattered to me?”
He shook his head. “No. Honestly, Caroline, I didn’t.”
She walked over to the sofa and sat on the edge of it. The light-brown leather moved beneath her. He sat on the other end. She rubbed her hand across her jeans. Then she raised her face to his. He wasn’t prepared for what she said next because he wasn’t sure he had ever heard it before.
“I’m sorry, Zach. I am. I’m so sorry.” She didn’t even try to hide her tears now. “Today, when I saw you with Grace and the way you responded to me—you’ve never responded to me like that. And it just made me realize how much you’ve changed. You’re like . . . like you were when we first got married. All opinionated.” A little laugh bubbled out through her tears.
He couldn’t help but laugh himself.
“I’ve missed that,” she said.
Now he was confused. “How could I have known that?”
“I know it’s crazy because I just seemed to take over.”
“It was your way or no way. That’s how it got to be with you. And my sin was that I let you. Well, one of my many sins. I just shut down and hid and let you do whatever you wanted to because I didn’t want the conflict. But I’m getting better with handling conflict, Caroline, even if it is with you.” He laughed again.
“I don’t know what this means for us, Zach.”
But he could tell by the way she was speaking to him that she wanted to know. In her own way she was asking him to lead her. Maybe she had wanted that all along.
He scooted closer to her and took her hands in his. “Babe, I’ve done such a poor job of loving you well, and I’m so sorry about that. I’ve tried, in some seasons harder than others. But you’re a strong woman, and you don’t like to hear no. In fact, you fight pretty hard against it.”
She gave another little laugh. “I know.”
“We can’t always do things your way, Caroline. And when you don’t respect my opinion about what needs to happen, it clearly communicates that you don’t respect me.”
She hesitated, and a tear ran down her cheek. “Zach, this is how I’ve been for a long time. I don’t know how to do life differently or even how to figure it all out. But I can see I’ve hurt you, and I really am sorry for that. And I have no idea what comes next, but I’m telling you I’m willing to do whatever we need to do to work this out.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You are?”
She nodded. “Yes. I am. I don’t want to live without you. I don’t want the girls to grow up without you in the house.”
“What if it means making changes—changes that won’t be easy?”
“Like standing up to my mother?”
“Or allowing me to—whichever works best.”
Her tears fell harder. “I don’t know how to do that. I can’t imagine doing that. I love her.”
“I’m not saying she has to be out of our lives or that we want to hurt her. I’m saying we need some boundaries. And you have to let me lead you in this because that’s one way I can love you. And I do love you, Caroline. I do. I always did, even though there were days I forgot how much. But the love has always been there.”
She wiped the tears from her face, her words coming out as vulnerable as a child’s. “Even when you were with Elise?”
He shook his head. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about that. And honestly, that affair wasn’t about love or even sex. Not really. It was an escape from what we had become. I was just trying to get as far from our reality as I could. And my heart was so closed off by then—that was the only way it could have happened. But I’ve done a lot of work these last few months while we’ve been apart. When I look back at my choices and see the progress I’m making—I’m just not the same guy. I would have to really shallow myself out to go back there again. I’m not willing to do that.”
“And what about Grace?”
He hadn’t really expected that. He thought he had settled it. But he wanted to be truthful. Finally he said, “Grace is a wonderful woman. I know her entire story, and I’ve walked with her through a lot. But like I told you this afternoon, nothing is going on between us, and nothing is going to happen. I really hope you can believe that because it’s true.”
Caroline was watching his face closely. He watched hers too. Finally she gave a cautious little nod, and he continued. “Grace has been fighting desperately to heal, and she’s come so far. Watching her has shown me what it looks like to come back to life. And honestly, seeing how much she’s changed, how happy she is, is what convinced me we could do that too. She’s shown me what we could have together.”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know how to do any of that.”
“Me neither. But I’m learning. And if I could pick anyone in the world I’d want to do it with, it would be you. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. We’ve lived this way for a long time, and I am certain we are going to prick each other’s painful places a lot.” He emphasized those last two words. “But I’m willing to work on it if you are.”
“Should we start with you coming home?” she said, the emotion in her voice almost more than he could stand.
He leaned over and kissed her on the head. She rested her head against his mouth.
“How about we do a little dating first? Maybe remember what it was like to fall in love and why we did it in the first place.” He thought for a minute. “I’d like to pick you up tomorrow morning after you drop the girls off for school and before you open the store and take you to breakfast. How is that for a date?”
She sat up, and he saw the heaviness that had sunk into her brow release. “Actually, the girls are sleeping over at the Conners’, so I’m free a little earlier. Do you still like to go running in the mornings? Maybe I could join you.” She gave him a soft smile. “I’ve taken up running too. Does wonders for stress. Now I know why you did it so much.”
He laughed. “Running would be good. And breakfast afterward.”
He walked her out to her car, kissed her again softly, then shut the car door. And reflected that a much bigger door had been opened tonight.
He hadn’t known that would ever happen. But it had. And he had no idea what was on the other side of it, but he was going to walk through.
Yeah, he was going to walk through.
“You’ve got to get home and get some rest.” Rachel rubbed her eyes as she stood in the doorway that separated the restaurant from the kitchen.
Grace wiped the checkout counter. “You want me to do that so you can get some rest.”
“Absolutely. Us beauty queens need sleep.”
“You won the Miss Watermelon Seed Spitting title. Does that really qualify?”
“Hey, sassy, I had a sash and a crown. If there’s a crown, then you are a queen.”
“Yoo-hoo, girls! Scarlett Jo is here.” The last word came loud and in multiple syllables from the back door.
“Oh, brother,” Rachel mumbled.
Scarlett Jo pushed against Rachel as she barreled through, depositing them both in the center of the restaurant. “I am alive, and I’m all yours.” She clapped her hands together. “So what do you want me to do tomorrow?”
“Retire,” Rachel offered.
Scarlett Jo punched her and snorted.
Rachel looked at Grace. “Slap me for saying I missed her. Please. I deserve it.”
Grace slapped her on the shoulder.
“That didn’t help. She’s still here.”
Scarlett Jo moved past her and toward the other side of the counter. “Yes, I’m still here, and I am ready to work.”
Grace walked over to give her friend a big hug. “And we are so glad you are. This has been waiting for you.” Grace pulled out a hot-pink apron with the Sweet Tea logo on the front and stood on her tiptoes to pull it over Scarlett Jo’s head of blonde curls.
Scarlett Jo looked down and immediately got emotional. She fanned her hands in front of her eyes and bounced lightly on her toes. “Oh, Grace, I love it. It’s my favorite color.”
“Who would have guessed?” Rachel retorted, eyeing the hot-pink jumpsuit under the new apron.
Grace ignored her. “I want you to be my hostess, Scarlett Jo. I have to help cook, at least for the next few months, and we need Rachel to facilitate orders and run the register. Besides, I think you’ll do a wonderful job greeting our guests.”
Rachel cleared her throat. “Grace, first impressions are everything.”
Scarlett Jo looked at Rachel and stuck her tongue out. Rachel reciprocated.
“Yes, they are,” Grace answered, “and Scarlett Jo makes wonderful first impressions. She will keep everyone smiling and happy.”
Rachel frowned. “Well, remember that they are here to eat, not for a Scarlett Jo therapy hour.”
“Sounds like someone didn’t take her happy pill this evening.”
Rachel muttered and reiterated her position. “Seriously. They don’t need a therapist. They need to be seated, and then the servers and I will do the rest. You are the hostess. A hostess seats them and leaves them.”
Scarlett Jo’s wheels were turning. Grace could tell by the contortions her face made. “Seat and leave,” she said solemnly. “I can handle it.”
Grace patted her broad back. “Of course you can. I am confident of it. Now, breakfast starts bright and early. Then we have lunch and afternoon tea, so it will be a long day. So you two need to go get some rest.”
When they had all the lights turned off, Scarlett Jo ran back into the kitchen, claiming she’d left her purse—though a bag big enough to stash a small child dangled from her arm. She reappeared with a petit four crammed in her mouth.
“I’m taking that out of your salary,” Rachel informed her.
Scarlett Jo stopped midstride. “I’m getting paid?” The words came out along with small flecks of cake. That led to an entire song-and-dance routine.
The whole way home, Rachel kept lamenting that she’d even mentioned it. She hadn’t known she had free labor. Grace just laughed as they walked down the streets of Franklin together. It was that deep-down kind of laugh that only alive people could do.