The Wedding Tree (36 page)

Matt sat beside me on the sofa. My hands shook. I pulled at the flap, then extracted a document. I scanned it. When I got to the part about what he bequeathed to Rebecca Elizabeth McCauley, the figure mentioned had more zeroes than I'd ever seen in one place. I showed it to Matt. “Is this for real?”

Matt look it over. “Looks about as real as it gets.”

“What did he leave you?” Gran asked eagerly. I passed the document to her. Gran's eyes widened. “Oh, my gracious!”

“I could buy a home!” I said, stunned.

“You could buy two houses and still have money left over to invest!” Gran clapped her hands together. “Oh, honey—I'm so happy for you!”

“Thanks.” I grinned, but the expression felt forced. Truth was, I didn't feel happy so much as numb. I could buy a condo in Chicago. I could buy a gallery of my own. I could . . .

The evening aide came into the room. “Time for your evening medicines, Miss Adelaide.”

Gran nodded. “I think it's time for bed, period. It's been a long day. But you two young people should go out and celebrate.” She turned to Matt. “Matt, dear, I don't know how you found Viola, but thank you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

“My pleasure, Miss Addie.” He kissed her cheek. I did the same, and we wished her good night.

“Want to go out for a drink?” Matt asked when we were alone in the room. “Peggy's watching the girls.”

“I think I'd rather just go out on the porch.”

Matt refilled our juice glasses, and we moved to the front porch swing. The day had cooled and a pleasant breeze lifted my hair off my neck. “So how
did
you find Mrs. Madison?”

“Through a private detective.”

My feet dragged on the porch, stopping the swing. A hard, hot knot formed in my stomach. “I asked you not to hire one.”

“I know, I know. But I already had.”

“And you didn't tell me?”

Matt rested his juice glass on his thigh. “After I learned how you felt about it, I called to pull him off the case. It turned out he'd already found Mrs. Madison and learned you had an inheritance coming. He said Mrs. Madison insisted on meeting you and Addie and telling you in person. She wanted it to be a surprise. So I decided to just let things play out.”

I knew it was petty of me; I knew I should feel grateful, but the thought that I
should
feel grateful for him going against my wishes made the knot in my stomach smolder like a coal. “So you just kept me in the dark, because you figured you knew what was best.”

“No. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to blow a potential bonanza for you.”

The knot tightened and burned. “There's no excuse for not telling me.”

Matt looked at me. “Whoa—what is this?”

“I want to make my own decisions about my life, that's what this is.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor. I hope you'd do the same for me if anyone ever shows up out of the blue wanting to give me nearly a million dollars.”

“You should have told me,” I said stubbornly.

“So you could do what? Contact her on your own? I was afraid that if Mrs. Madison didn't get to handle it the way she wanted, she might decide to wait until Adelaide was dead to give you the money. It would have been entirely within her rights. I was trying to look out for your best interests.”

His logic was sound, but my feelings weren't responding to logic. “You have no right to presume that you know my best interests better than I do.”

He held up his hand. “Wait a minute. You're actually mad at me for bringing in a woman who just handed you an enormous check?”

“No. I'm mad at the way you did it.” He was just like my ex—making high-handed decisions about my future without consulting me, acting as if I were somehow incompetent.

It punched my buttons—and not just because of my ex, I realized. It was how I'd often felt around my incredibly accomplished, brilliant, glass-ceiling-crashing mother.

“Know what, Hope? ‘My way or the highway' isn't usually the best strategy. Sometimes things work out best when you trust other people.”

“I tried that once, and it didn't work out so well.”

He looked at me, a look that lasered right through me. “So that's what's really going on here, huh? You're done with trust because of your ex? You've got such big control issues that you can't deal with any deviation from a plan?”

“Of course not.”

“You sure? Because that's how it looks from here.” He set his glass down on the porch railing with a final-sounding thump. “Well, I promise you this: the next time someone wants to give you a bank vault of money, I'll keep in mind that you don't want my ‘interference.'” He rose. “I think I should say good night.”

The thud of his footsteps on the porch echoed in a hollow part of my chest. I knew I was being unreasonable. I knew I should admit it, that I should apologize, that I should thank him, but some stubborn, unreasonable, angry part of me resisted.

We were going to be over in just a couple of weeks anyway. All that would happen in two more weeks was that I would grow to love him more, and it would hurt that much more when I left.

Love.
Oh God. Was that what I felt for him? Despite my best intentions, had I fallen in love with Matt?

I knew the answer even as my mind formed the question. I loved him, and here he was walking away from me. I put a hand to my mouth, but it didn't stop the word from coming out. “Wait!”

He stopped, but didn't turn around.

“I—I know I'm being unreasonable.”

He slowly turned toward me.

“I'm sorry.” I rushed down the steps and into his arms. The solidness of his chest, the strength of his arms around me—it felt so good, so comforting, so terribly, awfully . . .
temporary.
Tears welled in my eyes.

His hand tangled in my hair. “It's okay.”

I nodded against his chest.

He pulled back and looked down at me. “You're crying. Are you still angry at me?”

“I don't know what I am,” I confessed. “Confused, I guess. This is a lot to process.”

He smoothed my hair back from my face. “Yeah, it must be.”

“Part of me wants to stay mad at you.”

“Why?”

“It'll make it easier to leave.”

“So don't.”

Fresh frustration welled up in me. “Matt, art majors wait their entire lives for something like this to open up. This inheritance is a lot of money, yes, but it's not enough to live on the rest of my life.”

He blew out a sigh. “Yeah, I know.”

“Besides, you and me—this is just temporary. Our way of getting over the hump and back into dating.”

“I kind of thought we'd moved beyond that.”

My heart gave an irrational jump of joy, only to feel like it had plunged off a cliff. “Matt—we both know a long-distance relationship isn't going to work. Your schedule is so packed you can barely carve out a full evening for a date, much less weekends away. And my new job is going to be really time intensive.”

A nerve worked in his jaw. “Let's talk about this later. I don't want to spoil the time we have left.”

I didn't, either. I reached up, looped my arms around his neck, and pulled him down for a kiss, only to see a figure standing behind an open curtain next door.

“We're being watched,” I whispered.

He turned and waved to Mrs. Ivy. The curtain immediately dropped back into place.

Our laughter broke the tension. He kept his arm around me. “Listen—Peggy and Griff want to take the girls to the beach as a beginning-of-summer treat. They're planning on leaving the morning after Miss Addie's going-away party.”

Leaving. Going away. Each phrase cut me like a razor. “Sounds nice.”

“So I was wondering if you'd go away with me for a long weekend in New Orleans.”

“That's the weekend I'm leaving.”

He lifted his shoulders. “It can be a send-off celebration. We'll get a room in the French Quarter and spend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.”

Three days of bliss in his arms. “Oh, that sounds wonderful!” I murmured before I had a chance to censor myself.

“Okay, then. We have something to look forward to.”

I immediately had second thoughts. Oh, God, what was I doing? A weekend of splendor, and then what? I'd be more in love with him than ever. It would make the inevitable good-bye all the harder. Tears trembled on the edge of my lashes.

“Hey—are you still crying?”

“No.” It was a ridiculous thing to lie about, since my cheeks were wet and my vision was fuzzy. “Not
sad
crying anyway. This is emotional, overwhelmed crying.” I looked up at him in the deepening twilight. “Know what would help?”

“What?”

“A visit to the potting shed.”

“You shameless hussy.”

“You've turned me into one.”

“Is that so?” His arm tightened around me, and he angled down a sexy grin. “In that case, I'd better check out just how good of a job I did.”

hope

I
was adding shadows to the mural in the back room of the coffee shop when the black plastic drape covering the doorway moved aside and a female voice squealed,
“
Oh my gosh—this is
ama
zing
!”

I looked up to see Freret standing in the doorway separating the main coffee shop from the new addition, bouncing on her ballet flats.

“Shhh,” Kirsten said. She was standing on a ladder, hanging photos on the opposite wall. “What are you doing back here anyway? You're not supposed to see it until the surprise party.”

“It's not
my
surprise party. It's Miss Addie's,” Freret said, walking into the room and staring at the mural. “Which I'm not sure is a good idea anyway, given her age. A surprise like this might kill her.”

I'd worried about the same thing. “I checked with her doctor, and he said she should be perfectly fine,” I said. “Besides, he'll be here.”

“I want the unveiling to be a surprise for the whole town,” Kirsten said.

“News flash: since the whole town is donating pictures, they already know. Here are mine, by the way.” Freret handed Kirsten a stack of photos and stared at the mural. “Hope, you've done an incredible job!”

“Thanks.” I still had some spots to fix, but I was pretty proud of the way it had turned out.

“Hope is astounding. Look at the pen-and-ink of her grandmother's house she did as a going-away present for Miss Addie.” Kirsten held up a five-by-seven I'd sketched from one of Gran's photos.

“Oh, that is so gorgeous! I'd love to have one of my parents' house to give them for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Could you do that?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just give me a photo of it.”

“Really?” Her face brightened. “You know, I can think of about a dozen people that would pay top dollar for house sketches. You could make a whole career out of doing this. Are you sure you don't want to change your mind and stay in Wedding Tree?”

“Actually, I'd love to.” The answer surprised me as I heard it come out of my mouth. “I love it here. But this job—well, another one like it is unlikely to come around.”

“Excuse me for saying so, but men like Matt don't come around every day, either,” Freret said.

The mention of Matt made my heart flutter. “Things aren't like that between us.”

“I've heard reports from Mrs. Ivy that say otherwise,” Freret said.

Kirsten snickered.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“No,” Kirsten said. “We don't.”

“It's a short-term thing. It's not forever after.”

“If you hung around, it might be,” Freret said.

“Well, I can't blow off one of the best jobs in the art world for something that may or may not happen with a man who may or may not be over his late wife.”

Freret's eyebrows rose. “So Christine's the issue?”

“Not
the
issue, but I guess she's
an
issue,” I said. “The biggest issue is that I have a great new job in Chicago.”

The bell over the front door rang. Kirsten stepped down from the ladder. “Well, my issue right now is tending to the customer who just walked in.”

“And I need to get back to the bank,” Freret said.

“Thanks for dropping off those photos,” Kirsten said.

I drew a breath of relief when they left. But the mention of a future—or was it the lack of one?—with Matt left me restless and unsettled.

hope

T
he next ten days passed in a frenzy of activity. Eddie and Ralph flew in and set to work making the house look like an HGTV makeover. They put the furniture I wanted into storage, shipped the furnishings they and Gran had selected to California, and filled in the gaps with rented modern pieces and paintings, which gave the place a hip, eclectic look.

“This place looks absolutely stunning!” Lauren said when we took her on a tour of Gran's home so she could photograph the place for the real estate listing.

“You can thank Hope for handling all the decluttering, packing up, and repairs,” Eddie said.

I swept my hand toward Eddie and Ralph. “And these two are the maestros of design.”

“There's only one little thing you might want to fix.” Squinting, she held her thumb and index finger about a half inch apart.

“What is it?” Eddie asked.

“Well, there's a missing section in the fence between your yard and the neighbors'. It's hidden behind the shrubbery and I don't think it'll make or break a deal, but it's a little . . . odd.”

Eddie looked at Hope. “It wasn't there when I was growing up.”

“I don't remember it from my childhood, either, but it was there
when I arrived this spring,” I said. “The neighbor's daughters use it to visit Gran.”

That night at dinner, Eddie asked Gran about it.

“Oh, that.” Gran laughed. “It's so the good-looking man next door could come over and visit without the neighbors seeing.”

“You built that for Matt?” Ralph asked.

“Heavens, no, dear! Although I'm sure it's come in handy for him and Hope.”

I felt my face turn fifty shades of red. How on earth did Gran know?

“They've been dating?” Ralph looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“That explains the candle I found in the potting shed,” Eddie whispered to me. “Or should I call it the love shack?”

“Stop it!” I roughly elbowed him.

“You have me intrigued, Miss Addie,” Ralph said. “Who took out the fence?”

“There was a gentleman who lived there in the seventies, whose wife had Alzheimer's.” She turned to Eddie. “Do you remember him?”

“Vaguely,” Eddie said. “Glen something, wasn't it?”

Gran nodded. “Glen Adams.”

I put down my fork and stared at Gran. Eddie and Ralph did the same, then we all exchanged a look. Was she saying what we thought she was saying? “So you and Glen . . .”

“We became very close friends during some hard years. Charlie, of course, was paralyzed, and then he died. And poor Glen's wife didn't even know who he was. He cared for her at home as long as he could—longer than he should have, actually; she roamed the house at all hours and kept running away. He finally had to put her in the nursing home. And then he was out there every day for most of the day, even though half the time she thought he was trying to harm her.”

“Oh, Gran.”

“After she died, he moved to Dallas to be near his daughter. We
met up several times a year. He went with me on some of my trips abroad.”

“You loved him?”

“Oh, yes, honey.”

“So why didn't you marry him?” Eddie asked.

“Oh, we talked about it. But his kids were very sensitive—they hated the idea of their mother being replaced, and he didn't want them to know that we'd seen each other when she was alive—although I don't think that you can cheat on someone who has already mentally gone. Besides, we didn't consummate our relationship until she'd passed. It was a line neither one of us wanted to cross.”

“Well, there's a lot two people can do besides actual consummation,” Ralph said.

His words echoed Matt's the night we'd caught the kids digging in the yard. My already warm face grew hotter.

“Hey!” Eddie put his hands over his ears. “This is my mother we're talking about!”

“Glen should have stood up to his children and the gossips and married you,” I said.

“Oh, I never wanted to marry again.” Gran buttered a roll, as if we were discussing something as mundane as the weather. “I liked having my own space and being able to come and go as I pleased without having to answer to anyone. Plus I wanted to travel more than he did. For a long while there, though, we gave each other a lot of comfort.”

“So you had another romance in your life,” Ralph said.

“Oh, more than one, dear. You know all those years I traveled?”

We all nodded our heads. Throughout my childhood, Gran had taken lots of exotic trips.

“Well, there a French man who'd meet up with me. He was single, too, and the kind of person who didn't want to be tied down. Oh, we had the best times! I think one reason it was so wonderful was because we only saw each other often enough to not get sick of each other.”

“I had no idea!” Eddie put his napkin on the table, clearly flummoxed.

“And later, there was a man in New York who had the most delightful sense of humor. We visited Hong Kong and Australia and Tahiti together.” Gran speared a dainty bite of salad. “There were other little flirtations here and there along the way, but those were the main ones.”

“Wow!” said Ralph, clearly impressed.

It took Eddie a moment to close to his gaping jaw. “I'm gobsmacked.”

Gran laughed. “Most people don't really know what goes on in another person's private life.” She primly took a sip of iced tea. “Most of us keep secrets because we're afraid of being judged. Funny thing is, the person who judges us the most harshly is usually ourselves, so our guilt and regret and shame just fester in the dark.”

“So the answer is complete disclosure?”

“Oh, no, not necessarily,” Gran said. “The answer is forgiveness. Of others, of course, but most especially of ourselves.”

Eddie put down his fork. “How, exactly, do you do that?”

“Yeah,” Ralph asked, leaning forward.

“It's taken me ninety-one years to figure it out, but after Hope and Matt found out the truth about that baby, I had to find a way to forgive myself or else die of remorse. I know this will sound strange to you, but Mother gave me the key.”

“Is she still on the ceiling?” Ralph asked, clearly intrigued.

“I honestly don't know,” Gran said. “I don't see her, but she talks to me sometimes. And I distinctly heard her say, ‘Pack your burdens in a suitcase and give it to God.'”

Eddie, Ralph, and I looked at each other. Maybe Gran was further gone mentally than we'd realized.

“That's when it hit me: forgiveness is not so much something you do as something you
don't
do. You stop carrying your guilt and anger and resentment around. So I pictured it as a big old heavy suitcase I've been lugging around everywhere. I imagined carrying
it onto a train and hoisting it into the luggage compartment. Then I climbed off and watched the train leave the station, going faster and faster and getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared down the track. And then I walked away, feeling light and free.”

My throat felt strangely tight. I think Eddie's did, too, because his eyes were glistening.

“And that worked?” Ralph asked.

“Yes, dear. You might have to picture it a couple of times, but then when an old regret comes up, you just remind yourself, ‘I got rid of that baggage.'”

The doorbell rang. “Oh, that'll be the Weldon sisters,” Gran said. “They said they'd come over for a visit tonight.”

I helped Gran up and onto her walker while Eddie got the door. And later that night, I dreamed about helping Gran load her steamer trunk onto a train, then watching the train levitate off the track and into the sky, where it soared away like an old warplane.