Secrets over Sweet Tea (15 page)

Leo stopped midchew and dropped his scone as if his hand were in the cookie jar. “Y’all ain’t ever hath Grathe’th thconth?” he asked.

Scarlett Jo squinted at him as if that would help her make out his words. Her entire body seemed to follow her nose toward the platter of goodies. “No. She makes scones?”

Rachel moved around Grace and opened a kitchen cabinet to pull out more plates. “Does she make scones? Grace Shepherd makes some of the most amazing scones you’ve ever eaten.”

Grace leaned against the counter and watched as the entire room forgot she existed. Leo’s brow furrowed and he curled his arm around his plate in case the additional guests got any ideas of snatching something.

Rachel patted his arm. “Leo, you can keep your scone. I promise we’re not going to take it from you.”

He took another large bite.

Rachel and Scarlett Jo each fixed themselves a plate and started lathering cream on their scones. Then they both looked at Grace as if they suddenly realized why they were here. She saw their torture over engaging her in conversation and having to wait to take the first bite. She motioned toward them. “Eat.”

They quickly returned to the food in front of them, and she smiled at their delight. She’d always loved watching people
enjoy her food. It was one of the things she found dissatisfying about her job. She liked being a newscaster, especially working with Leo. But with television, it was just you and the camera. You couldn’t touch people. You only talked at them. It was so impersonal. You rarely got the gratification of seeing people respond to what you had done for them.

Grace jumped at the sound of Scarlett Jo’s hand slapping the countertop. She slapped it again as she chewed. “Oh, my side, that is the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.” Then she slapped Rachel.

“Ow. What was that for?”

“Because this stuff is slap-your-mama good. And since my mama is not here, you’ll have to do.”

Grace let out a soft laugh—and it hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her body hurt. Her head hurt. But that laugh felt good too. Watching her friends sit here and eat her scones felt good.

Scarlett Jo threw her head back in sheer rapture as she chewed. The sounds she made caused Rachel to raise a manicured eyebrow. Scarlett Jo looked at her, and a huge smile swept over her pink cheeks. She threw her arm around Rachel.

Rachel twirled her finger at her temple. “She’s cuckoo,” she mouthed.

Then Scarlett Jo threw her other arm around Leo.

Leo just smiled and stuffed another scone in his mouth. Rachel extracted herself from Scarlett Jo’s grip and gave Grace a you-can’t-be-serious look.

“Grace.” Scarlett Jo wiped her mouth. “Seriously, honey, how long have you been baking like this?”

Leo shook his head and patted his bulging belly. He’d unbutton his khakis in a minute. “This woman has been
cooking like this as long as I’ve known her. Ever tasted her cinnamon rolls? Her homemade pimento-cheese sandwiches?”

Scarlett Jo moved another scone from the platter to her plate. “Nope. Not yet, anyway.”

“Woman, then you have missed out. This girl makes the best stuff I’ve ever eaten.”

Rachel gently touched the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “She makes my kids’ birthday cakes too.”

Leo raised his hand. “Oh yes, FYI, do not forget my birthday is in two weeks.”

Scarlett Jo chewed with her hand over her mouth and nodded at the same time. “Shee’th dointh my nexth oneth.”

Grace took the container of Devonshire cream from the refrigerator and put two more big scoops in the bowl that sat by the now half-empty plate of scones. She watched her guests move quicker than paparazzi on a royal. When they had stuffed themselves, she told them about her conversation with Tyler.

It felt good to talk about it finally. But after a few tears, a few hugs, and a good dose of her sweet peach tea, Scarlett Jo stopped the conversation with one question.

“Grace, if you could do anything in this world, what would you do?”

The question sent her sifting through old memories but left her with no answer. She simply shrugged.

Scarlett Jo shifted her top as if all she had eaten had settled on her chest, then leaned on the counter. “So you’re telling me you have no idea what would make you the most happy.”

All she could do was shrug again.

“I’ll tell you when she’s the most happy.” Rachel leaned over
and crossed her arms on the countertop as well. “It’s when she’s in the kitchen. This is where Grace Shepherd comes to life.”

And that was true. “I do feel alive when I’m baking. But I feel even more alive when I watch people eat what I’ve made.”

“Well, good.” Leo seemed to dislike where the conversation was going. “Then you should get tons of joy watching me eat your cooking every morning when you come to work. At your job. At the television station where you work. ’Cause Lord knows nobody’s going to enjoy it like I do.”

Scarlett Jo got up and pushed her barstool under the counter. “Well, I’m going to say this to you. Whatever makes you feel alive, whatever helps you rediscover that carefree childlike heart I know is in there somewhere—” she reached over and tapped Grace on the chest—“that is what you should be doing. Sugar, you act too old for your age, and you don’t have to. You’re young. You’re beautiful. It’s time for you to assume freedom and not let all those fears and restrictions hold you back. There is this amazing world out there waiting for you, sugar pie. But you’ve got to choose to live in it.”

Grace looked at her new friend and felt something in her shift. She
had
forgotten what it was to feel alive. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure what that meant. But one thing she did know. She had been dead for long enough.

Zach was a wreck. Caroline hadn’t talked to him since she stormed out last night. He had spent most of this beautiful Saturday holed up in his office, trying to figure out who he should call and what he should do.

He’d spent an hour on the phone with one of his attorney buddies who also handled divorces. His friend would set things into motion first thing Monday morning if he needed to. Zach hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But he’d been in the business long enough to know he couldn’t wait for Caroline to make all the moves. If he did, he could end up sleeping on the office sofa for the next year.

He didn’t have any other close friends to call because most of his friends were shared. Their wives were Caroline’s friends, and
until he knew what she was going to do, he hated to bring someone else in on it. He was just glad he had a bathroom down the hall and enough restaurants around him that he wouldn’t starve.

At seven o’clock he called Caroline again. She didn’t answer. He hadn’t heard from the girls all day, and not knowing what was going on made him stir-crazy.

He ventured out to McCreary’s, the Irish pub up the street from his office. He sat down with some fish-and-chips and a cold beer and watched a little baseball, but he never took in any of it—not the food, not the chill of the beer, not even the cracking of the bat on the ball. All he could think about was where his life had evolved to in a mere twenty-four hours—and how he had gotten here.

The thing was, when you lived the kind of life he’d been living, you could develop a sense of invincibility. The feeling that you’re good at your game, that you’d never get caught. It was a fantasy, an escape. Yes, there was also the guilt of it, the lying. That awful sense of shame when the realization of what you were really doing settled over you and you were desperate to wash it off. But that just made you even more desperate to escape your reality. More susceptible to the fantasy.

It was a sad and twisted mess, and here he was in the middle of it, all alone. He had no idea where he would end up. For the first time in a long time, he had absolutely no idea what would happen with the rest of his life.

He picked up his cell phone, which sat by his plate of picked-at food. He dialed. The familiar voice came on the other end. It brought both a peace and a dread.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, bud. How are you?”

Zach moved his fork across the crispy outer shell of the fried cod. “Not real good. In fact, I was wondering . . . any chance you could come to Franklin?”

His dad would be there in a few hours. And he had agreed with no questions asked.

Zach’s cell phone buzzed on the mattress in the Marriott Cool Springs hotel room he’d booked for him and his dad. He squinted at the display, trying to make out the name on the caller ID. It flashed in a blur. He wiped his eyes and squinted again. It looked like Caroline. He answered quickly.

“I want to meet at church.” His wife’s voice was flat but collected.

He sat up in the bed, his mind still not awake but his body shot through with adrenaline. Why church? His mind fumbled for answers, then realized it was Sunday. She wanted him to meet her at the church service. But why?

“Um . . . yeah,” he muttered. “Are you sure? What about the girls? Are they okay? Have you told them anything?”

“They actually left to spend the week at my mother’s. It was planned before this.”

He had no recollection of that, but then he never knew what she was planning until it was time for him to know—which meant whenever she deemed it necessary.

“Oh. Well, sure, I’ll meet you. But I need a change of clothes. I didn’t have anything with me at the office.”

“I’m leaving in a few minutes to go to the store and pick up some things. So you can come by the house after that and get your stuff. Then we can talk after church.”

“Okay. Yeah, I guess. Have you talked to Jackson or Scarlett Jo about this? Do they know what’s going on?”

“I haven’t said anything to them. I did, however, speak to Elise’s husband.” She said this in a way that let him know she was very much in control. “He informed me that he and Elise are going away for a couple days and he’s not going to say anything until they get back in town. Now I’ve got to go. Just meet me there. We’ll talk later.”

He ran a hand back and forth through his thick brown hair, the fog still heavy in his mind. “I’ll meet you there.” He paused. “Thanks, Caroline. Thanks for talking to me.”

She hung up without another word.

His dad rolled over in the bed across from him. “What did Caroline have to say?”

Zach scooted down under the covers and laid his head on the pillow with his face toward his father. “She wants me to go to church with her. She said we could talk after that. I’m figuring she’s already been in touch with a lawyer. She’ll go for the big guns too. Adele will make sure of it.”

His dad sat up and took his glasses from the bedside table, where they lay atop his Bible. He had shared some things from it with Zach the night before as Zach unraveled what had been happening. Now he fluffed his pillow so he could lean against it. “Son, I don’t know what Caroline is going to do. But at this point it really isn’t about Caroline. It isn’t about your marriage. It’s about you. You can’t fix the two of you until you’ve first taken care of your own heart.”

He knew that. His dad had told him that for years. It was sort of his standard spiel, one he said came from living with the
consequences of his own shut-down heart. “Once you’ve had one,” he always said, “you have no trouble identifying one.”

Zach hadn’t exactly ignored those talks, but he’d pretty much brushed them off, thinking they didn’t apply to him. Now he wasn’t so sure. “Want to go with me?” he asked. “To church, I mean.”

“No, I think you need to do this with Caroline. Just go talk. See what she wants.”

“Wonder why she wants to go to church. . . . That doesn’t make sense to me, especially since the affair was with Elise. It seems like Caroline would just want to see me and let out all of her anger. Let me have it, maybe. And then tell me what she thinks we should do.”

“Don’t even try to make sense of it, Son. You’ve got to remember that Caroline is grieving too. She has a right to grieve, and grief like this doesn’t have sense. It doesn’t have a playbook. It just is. And there is no telling how Caroline’s grief will need to express itself. What you have to do is give her the freedom to do that, however she needs to.”

Zach sat up and slid his feet from the bed. “You’re right. I know you are. She said I could come by the house and get some stuff, so I’m going to head on out.” He looked down at his slept-in clothes. “I’ll shower and change while I’m there.”

“You go. I’ll wait right here until you get back.”

Zach leaned down and kissed the top of his father’s head. “Thanks, Dad. I might need that.”

Zach waited until Scarlett Jo’s neon presence at the door disappeared before he made a beeline for the church. The first
strum of music had begun, and he was grateful to know that Elise and her husband wouldn’t be here. Otherwise, he was certain there was no way in the world Caroline would have come. In fact, he figured that even if they stayed together, first on the agenda would be a new church.

He spotted her near the front, much closer than they usually sat. That struck him as a little odd. But he walked quickly to her row and scooted in next to her.

He glanced her way, not sure what to expect. She didn’t acknowledge him. He wasn’t quite expecting that.

As the young man on the platform strummed his guitar, soft worship music permeated not only the farthest corners of the room but, truthfully, some of the farthest regions of Zach’s heart. The words resonated.

He had listened to this song a thousand times yet never really heard it. It talked of how God was jealous for him. How God’s love was as intense as a hurricane yet full of mercy. He heard that message now, maybe because he needed it now. He closed his eyes, and for the first time in years, real emotion raged in his soul. It was foreign and real and frightening and beautiful. To feel something—really feel something—felt good.

He slid his hand over to try to touch Caroline’s. His finger grazed hers, and she quickly moved hers away. He brought his hand back and remembered his father’s words. Then he tried to give her permission to feel whatever she needed to. He also gave that permission to himself, and remorse seemed to be the river that was flowing freely.

Jackson came to the platform and began to pray. Other soft voices joined in from sporadic places in the sanctuary offering their agreement.

“I sense the Lord doing something in hearts this morning.”

Zach opened his eyes to make sure Jackson wasn’t staring at him. Did he know? Jackson’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Zach’s shoulders relaxed.

“I know we don’t usually do this, but I’m going to open the altar up to anyone who would like to come this morning. Something tells me that people’s hearts need to be ministered to. Encouraged. Healed.”

Zach watched as a few people left their seats and knelt on the concrete floor around the platform. Then he became aware of Caroline moving beside him. She pushed past him into the aisle, then began to walk toward the front. He wondered if he should follow. Pray with her, maybe. When she got to the front, he waited to see if she went to Jackson. Fear rushed through him again at the thought of her telling the pastor what he’d done.

But she didn’t move toward Jackson. Instead, she turned at the altar. And for the first time that morning since their phone call, she spoke. “I think my husband should be at the altar this morning.”

Zach felt the air leave his lungs in one fell swoop. He thought for a moment his knees would buckle. He caught a glimpse of Jackson’s face, which now was keenly aware.

Caroline went on. “Because he apparently finds it far more enjoyable to sleep with other women than with his own wife.”

Gasps bounced around the room like Ping-Pong balls on a hardwood floor.

“Yes, I caught him Friday night with a woman, and here he is, pretending to be a good Christian.” Her words came out like steel. If he were driving a tank, he couldn’t have made a dent in her anger. “Apparently he thinks that you can betray
your marriage vows and still be a pillar of the church. That a commitment to love, honor, and cherish is nothing more than a suggestion. Well, I have a suggestion for you, Zach Craig.” And that was when she looked at him. “You can stay here and face the embarrassment that you deserve for being the hypocrite you are.”

With that she marched down the aisle, right past him, and headed straight for the door. Zach’s eyes followed her disappearing form; then he turned to find every eye in the house glued to him. How could they help it? Freak shows were like bad car accidents. You had to look. And this was as good as a head-on collision.

Zach’s feet seemed stuck to the floor, his body heavier than a
Biggest Loser
contestant at the first weigh-in. He simply could not move.

Jackson spoke quickly. “I’m going to ask everyone to bow their heads. I think this is a time for some introspective prayer. Jared, please come back and lead us in that last song you were singing.”