The Wishing Tree (13 page)

She showed up that afternoon, as promised, dressed in clothes that
had belonged to her before she left—clothes that hadn’t been worth taking with her when she moved to Asheville, for obvious reasons. She’d tried to make the work clothes look cute but opted instead for looking efficient—someone who’d come to get some work done, to actually help. Michael stopped working long enough to give her instructions, but that was about all. He’d either lost his social skills in the last five years or he was still pretty mad at her. She had to hand it to him, he was giving her a chance, not avoiding her altogether as he’d probably been tempted to do. With a little work and determination, she could fix things between them.

She climbed the scaffolding next to Michael’s and looked at the row of boards she was charged with pulling away. “No,” Michael said as she was deciding how much
time this was going to take. “You move down there.” He pointed at the last scaffolding, the farthest away from him. “We’ll work from the outside in.”

Okay, so with a
lot
of work and determination, she could fix things between them. With a sigh she hoped he heard, she hopped down and walked to the other end of the house, scaling that scaffolding. When she looked back at Michael, he had his earbuds in his ear and was bobbing his head in time to some music she couldn’t hear. She hadn’t thought to bring her iPod, foolishly thinking they’d spend the day catching up, mending fences even as they mended the house.

She shook her head, reached for a board, and began to pull, surprised at how easily it gave way. How something that looked so sturdy could really be falling apart. It reminded her of Elliott’s last tweet: “When you left, it all came tumbling down.”

Her mind wandered as she worked, thinking about what he’d been tweeting and how she shouldn’t even be looking if she really didn’t want to hear from him. She mainly wished he’d stop retweeting the things other people were tweeting about him. The women saying that he sounded sincere and she, Ivy, should give him the chance to explain. The ones who said they’d give anything to hear what he was saying from their husbands, that many women never got an apology or so much as a backward glance, that she, Ivy, didn’t know what she had.

She snuck a glance at Michael. Maybe there was some truth to that. There had been before.

There were also men tweeting to him. Telling him that he shouldn’t grovel, that he should look for another
woman—one who would appreciate him. Some were complimentary, saying that he had inspired them to reach out to women they loved and make amends, or try to. Whatever they all had to say, there was one thing that was certain, with each passing day her husband was picking up followers like a snowball racing down a mountain, growing in size and momentum. He was causing quite a stir in the Internet world. But he still wasn’t getting what he wanted. She wondered if all this attention was a good substitute, if he could be happy with reaching everyone but her.

She wished Michael would take off his earbuds and turn to talk to her. She wanted to ask him questions. Things like “What have you been doing for the last five years?” “Are you seeing anyone?” “Why’d you decide to renovate the McCoys’ house?” “Are you happy for Shea and Owen?” And even: “Do you wish it was us?”

Instead he never looked at her, flint-faced as he pulled the boards off and tossed them into the now-cluttered yard.

A little later, he climbed onto the next scaffolding, a bit closer to her. “That’s more like it,” she said aloud, assuming he couldn’t hear her with those earbuds in his ears. “What?” he asked her.

She looked over at him, shocked. He must’ve turned his music off.

“Oh, nothing. I just had a board that wouldn’t come off. I got it off. I said, ‘That’s more like it’ because I got it off. Wasn’t talking to you.” She turned back to her work, grimacing dramatically as she did.

“You’re not moving very fast over there,” he shouted.

“I’m a girl. And I work for free. You can’t fire a volunteer.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He laughed. “Stupid me, I thought having you here would actually speed things up.”

She stopped and crossed her arms for emphasis, staring at him until he stopped working and looked back at her. “What?” he asked.

“Maybe I should go home, then. If I’m no help at all.” Her hands and arms hurt from pulling and she had a few splinters. She was dirty, she was hot, and she was tired from getting up early to work at the bakery. She didn’t need to be there at all, and that was becoming more and more apparent.

“No, stay.” He said it halfheartedly before he turned back to his work. “But I’ll have two-thirds of the house done before you have your little third down there done.” He looked so smug she wanted to shimmy over there and hit him upside the head like she used to do when they were little and got in fights. Though the physical brawls stopped when they grew up, the feelings behind them never did. In part they had always acted like siblings, or cousins. So familiar with each other, they were family by default. That’s why the decision she’d made five years ago had had such far-reaching ramifications.

In some ways it had been like cutting off a body part. A useful part, something she’d once relied on and had to learn to do without, still reaching for the missing limb out of habit, still feeling the phantom pain even though she knew it was gone. Elliott had been her therapy, her rehab, helping her learn a whole new way of life apart from them all, letting her lean on him as she took those first halting steps away. And then he’d betrayed her, let her fall. And now she was discovering that the limb really was … gone.

She spun around angrily, knocking over a barrel she’d been stuffing the rotten boards into. The barrel started to fall over the side and she reached for it, realizing as her hands flew out that there was nothing for her to grab hold of. She screamed as her hands flailed, then blessedly grabbed the side of the scaffolding. Though it wobbled dramatically, she stayed put. The barrel, however, slid over the side of the scaffolding and landed in the yard, spilling the boards within it.

She looked over, panting, to find Michael watching with a horrified expression on his face. She was gripping the rail of the scaffold with white knuckles, her eyes wide with fear as they locked on his. And there, for just a moment, was that trace of concern that she’d hoped to see the whole trip. But then he grinned and flashed her four fingers.

The signal was an old joke between them that had started when they were kids. That school year he’d learned roman numerals and had discovered that the roman numeral for four was IV. From then on, he’d called her, simply, “Four.” When she entered her gawky, clumsy adolescent stage, and he’d taken up golf, he’d learned that
fore
meant an out-of-control golf ball might hit someone else. He’d then changed her nickname from “Four” to “Fore,” meaning “You better stay out of her way or you might get hurt.” Everyone got a good laugh out of it. And to this day, if she did something clumsy, she could hear his voice saying “Fore” to her.

She smiled back, her heart filled with the rich memories of their shared past. He could act mad, or distant, or past their past, but there was no way he could be. It was too much to get over, too much to ignore. She would find a way to tell him that, to make him understand.

There on the scaffolding, she took a bow and he clapped. When she turned back, she was smiling and feeling more hopeful, in spite of her brush with serious injury.

They worked steadily into the afternoon. After making a spectacle of herself, she got serious and got into a rhythm, enjoying the release of yanking the boards out with violence. She felt powerful, in control, a force to be reckoned with. Her hands were a bloody mess, she stunk from sweat, and she was sure she looked a sight. But she put all of that out of her mind and just focused on the satisfaction that came from tearing something apart.

When she climbed down the scaffolding and looked at the house laid bare, she saw a resemblance to her own life.

Michael came down and stood beside her silently as they both surveyed the house. “Looks pretty bad,” he finally said.

“I’ll say. We tore it up good.” She couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice. He had no idea what she was thinking, what this exercise had really meant to her.

“Well, sometimes you have to destroy something in order to restore it,” he said. “Want something to drink inside?” He nodded toward the house, and she, struck dumb by his words, nodded her answer before following him into the house, the place where she once had tea parties and drank lemonade and dreamed of a future that looked so different from the one she was living.

She gazed around as they entered the kitchen. Not a thing had changed. Everything was as she had remembered it:
pictures on the wall, furniture, everything. Hadn’t the McCoy kids wanted any of it?

Michael handed her a bottle of water from the cooler, and she pressed it against her cheek before opening it, the icy water dripping onto her face with refreshing coolness. “Ah,” she said. “Perfect.”

The expression on his face was one of amusement. “You’re supposed to drink it,” he said, using his best “duh” voice. She remembered it well from their childhood.

“I’m getting to that.” She rolled the bottle across each cheek and down her neck. He turned away to look out the window. “It’s just so hot,” she continued talking as if he were listening. “If it’s this hot in June, what is it going to be in August?”

“Dunno” was his only response.

She rolled her eyes. So much for progress. She cracked open the water and took a long sip, the water cooling her from the inside out.

He turned from the window. “You’ll be gone by August anyway. I’m sure that it’s cooler where you’re going. So no worries.”

She knew a veiled dig when she heard one. This was his way of bringing up their situation without seeming to, his way of pointing out that she was married to someone else, living somewhere else, bringing up the situation just so she knew he remembered. Yet never really saying any of that.

“I remember now that being passive-aggressive was your specialty.” She closed her eyes. She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. She could hear her mother instructing her when she was younger:
Just because you think it doesn’t mean you have to say it
. She should’ve learned her lesson.

He whirled around, anger flashing in his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he yelled.

This wasn’t the man she knew five years ago. That man was sweet, soft-spoken, agreeable. The worst thing he ever did was subtly manipulate her into what he wanted. But she could hardly remember him raising his voice to her. Even at the end, even when she betrayed him like she did. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. Really. I was way out of line.”

He came to stand behind her and laid one hand on her shoulder. For a few seconds neither of them spoke. “Don’t be sorry. I just—I wasn’t—” He stopped, then said, “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I just want to fix things between us. Make them like they once were.”

He took a step back, his hand falling as he did. “Things can never be like they once were.”

She put her water down and took a seat, resting her head on her hands. “I didn’t mean like that. I meant like before before. When we were friends and not … involved.”

He gave her a sad little smile. “Fore, we were always involved. It just took us awhile to realize it.” He turned away, back to the window. “I’ve got some stuff to do outside,” he said. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.” Without waiting for her reply, he walked out the back door and left her in the house alone.

The brief flash of anger was gone and the nice guy was back. And yet, she knew there was more to be said to each other, that conversation they’d never had hanging in the air between them. But he’d made it clear he was closed
for business. She’d just have to be waiting outside the door when he hung the Open sign.

She walked outside and searched around the house until she found him in the back, messing with the railing to the deck. “Say you’ll have dinner with me,” she said to his back.

It was better than saying it to his face.

He continued to tinker with the railing as she waited for his response, watching his back muscles flex underneath his T-shirt. “I know you heard me,” she said.

He stood and faced her, his face red. “I can’t do that, Ivy.” He pointed to the ring she had on. “You’re not free to have dinner with me.” He turned away from her. “But I guess you forget that pretty easy, Fore.”

She sucked in her breath, reeling just as sure as if he had punched her in the stomach. It wasn’t that she didn’t deserve it—she more than did. It was just that she’d never expected him to say it. In her absence, Michael had gotten some … fight in him.

“If you’ll have dinner with me,” she continued, never easily deterred and dang it, he should know that. “I’ll explain everything to you. What I’m doing here. Why I want to talk to you. Everything.”

From the look on his face, she knew she was close to a sale. She had her father’s blood in her, after all. He just needed one more little push. “Stuff I haven’t even told my family,” she admitted.

She watched his face.
Ding, ding, ding, ding. We have a winner
. He always did love being the first to know something. “So, will you? Have dinner with me?”

“I guess it can’t hurt.” He sighed.

“Okay, good. Fireside in Calabash?” While others gravitated to the many seafood places, they always went to Fireside for Italian, a little place that didn’t look like much from the outside but served some great food. She could tell it hurt him a little to remember those many dinners together. But he recovered quickly and nodded.

“Thursday? Six?” she said.

He nodded again, then turned back to the railing. Conversation over. She said good-bye and headed home, happy to have something to look forward to, glad she’d given herself enough time to practice what she was going to say.

In her dream she was in a tree, sitting out on a limb, reading a
book. Below her she could hear voices calling to her—her mother’s, April’s, Shea’s, and two male voices, voices that touched different places inside her, elicited different responses. Instead of responding to any of the voices, she’d just kept reading. But when someone knocked on her door and jarred her from the dream state, she woke up wishing she could go back, to see who finally got her attention.

“What?” she called sleepily from her bed.

“You decent?” It was Shea.

“Yeah, come in.” She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes, blinking to bring Shea into focus as she buzzed into the room, a force of barely contained energy that seemed to gain power the closer they got to the wedding.

She hopped onto Ivy’s bed, joining her without asking
permission just like she used to when they were kids. “So, Mom’s ‘not feeling well’ today and says she can’t take me wedding dress shopping.”

Ivy’s eyes widened. She’d assumed the dress was already bought. With the big day looming, Shea would have no choice than to buy the dress off the rack. Shea read her thoughts. “Don’t freak out. I’m going to Wilmington and I’m going to find my dress today. They’ll alter it and then it’ll be ready in time.” She shrugged. “With us agreeing to this televised thing, there was no way around it.” She looked down at her hands. “It’ll be fine.”

There was something in the way she said it that told her Shea was not being entirely truthful about her feelings. But the distance between them kept her from delving into what was really going on. “So, do you want me to go with you?” Ivy asked.

Shea turned to her. “Will you? Do you have to work at the bakery today?”

Ivy shook her head. “I’m pretty sure Leah can survive without me.” Shopping with Shea would be a good distraction. It would keep her from making some lame excuse to try and see Michael. She needed to play it cool until their date-that-he-would-never-call-a-date.

“Okay, great. I really didn’t want to be a loser shopping for a wedding dress alone.”

“Why not wait till Mom is feeling better? Seems to me that this is the kind of stuff she’d live for.”

“She says she doesn’t feel well, but I can’t shake the feeling that she’s lying. If you ask me, I think she got a better offer from her secret admirer.”

Ivy giggled. “Maybe we should follow her.”

“Or set up a stakeout!” Shea agreed, her eyes dancing at the thought of catching their mother.

“No, we’re going to go find you a killer wedding dress. Let Mom sort out her own stuff.” She rose from the bed, wearing a nightgown that Elliott had bought her as a joke. He called it her spinster gown, cotton plaid that looked like a nightshirt a man would wear in the 1800s. It was her favorite thing to sleep in, a fact that chagrined Elliott. She closed her eyes. Enough about Elliott.

Shea was watching her again, her expression curious, as if she were trying to read Ivy’s private thoughts. No chance there. “See you after my shower?” Ivy asked.

“Sure thing,” Shea said. “I’m going to go work on the seating chart for the reception, make Margot happy.”

“She’s got a lot to be happy about, from the sound of things,” Ivy quipped. Shea cracked up laughing and left the room making kissing noises.

Ivy parked in front of the wedding shop in Wilmington, wondering if perhaps they should’ve gone to Myrtle Beach, or driven farther to Raleigh. So far they’d tried on a fair amount of dresses, but none of them was “the dress.” If she’d heard about the trip secondhand, she’d have thought that Shea was being too picky, too dramatic, too Shea. But she’d been there to see it herself. There’d never been that “wow” moment when she emerged from the dressing room.

Ivy had expected to feel a wild range of emotions when
Shea came out donned in the dress she would marry Owen in—happiness, jealousy, uncertainty, guilt. Instead she’d sat outside several dressing rooms feeling void of any emotion save boredom. She never wanted to see silk, tulle, or lace trim again.

The elation she’d felt when she set off with her sister for a day of shopping had quickly diminished, a slow leak that neither of them could seem to find and plug. By the time they reached this last shop, they were both nearly flat. Ivy had tried making a few
Sleepless in Seattle
jokes, realizing when Shea barely managed a smile in return that that was something she shared with April, not Shea. And even reminiscing about Coral and Oceana, the mermaids they once pretended to be, hadn’t roused a smile.

Ivy could feel herself giving up as she opened the car door and followed Shea inside with a dejected sigh. She just wanted to get home and go out with Michael. He would listen to how the day had gone, help her dissect what was obviously bugging her sister, and why Shea’s mood could so quickly affect hers.

As she’d done in all the other stores, Ivy started pulling random dresses from the rack in Shea’s size or close to it, all but ignoring the helpful salesgirl who hovered around them hoping for a sale.
Don’t get your hopes up
, she thought silently. “Here,” she said, piling the yards of fabric into Shea’s arms. “Go.” She pointed in the direction of the dressing room, and Shea stalked away without a word.

Things had gotten progressively tense each time they left a store with empty arms. Ivy feared that this last store would also leave them empty-handed. The closest they’d
come was an ultra-simple white dress, one that looked more like a prom dress than a wedding gown. While it had been pretty on Shea, it wasn’t what she wanted to wear on this one important day. She’d put it on hold at the other shop and—barring a miracle here—they would be headed back to buy it before driving back to Sunset.

Ivy smiled and shook her head politely at the salesgirl, who offered her coffee or soda while she waited. She knew this batch of dresses was also a no-go when Shea didn’t even emerge from the dressing room to get her opinion. Ivy yawned from boredom, wishing she’d brought a book to read or something. If she still had her smartphone she could at least get online. Stupid, cheap pay-as-you-go phone had no bells and whistles. It also had no phone calls. She’d not given the number to anyone except her mom, dad, Leah, Shea, and April. She couldn’t believe there’d once been a time when her phone was never out of her reach. Elliott used to beg her to put it down, to put it up, to leave it behind just once when they went out. But she never did. He had to have been shocked when she turned off her cell phone service entirely. She thought of him, wondered what he was doing at that moment, realized she hadn’t checked his tweets this morning, as she usually did, in an effort to hurry up and get shopping with Shea.

She heard crying coming from the dressing room and looked around to see if anyone else could hear. Slowly she got up and quietly moved to stand outside the door. “Shea? Are you okay?” she whispered.

“Just go, Ivy.”

She looked around the small bridal shop. There was
nowhere to go. “Okay, I guess I’ll just go sit back down then.”

“No, I mean just
go
. Go back to Sunset. Or back to Asheville. Or wherever you belong.” Shea’s voice had gone from weepy to angry.

She stood still for a moment, grateful that the salesgirl had honed in on some other unsuspecting bride—one who looked much happier to be there. She kept speaking in a whisper to Shea, hoping it would persuade her to do the same. “Shea, I’m not sure what’s wrong but I’d like to help. That’s what I’m here for.”

Shea yanked open the dressing room door, completely clothed. Behind her, dresses were tossed willy-nilly around the tiny room. If Shea would let her in, she’d hang them all back up properly. “You’ve already done plenty, don’t you think?” Shea spat out.

Ivy drew back just as surely as if Shea had slapped her, uncertain as to what had provoked this outburst. One minute they were united in finding her a dress (their standards had slipped from the beginning of the day—now it was just a suitable dress instead of the perfect one), the next minute they were as divided as they’d been before Ivy came back. She’d expected the cool reception from her sister when she arrived at Sunset, but she thought they’d made progress in the last few days, united over the wishing tree, their mother’s mysterious phone call, even their reunion with the guys the other night. This anger of Shea’s was out of the blue, but from the sound of things, she had decided to be angry all over again about Ivy’s own wedding that never happened. She just couldn’t figure out how not being able to find a wedding dress provoked it.

“I can’t leave you, Shea. I’m your ride home.”

Shea swiped at her eyes, smearing mascara and making her look even crazier. “I’ve already called Owen. He’s coming to get me. We’re going to hang out here for a little while. Get a break from home.” She said the word
home
like it was a bad word. Ivy had once felt that way about it, so
that
she understood.

She backed up, stooping beside the chair she’d been sitting in to retrieve her purse. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll go. If you’re sure.”

Shea crossed her arms. “I’m sure. I just can’t talk to you about this right now. Please just go.”

Ivy looked at her sister, trying to figure out what had just happened, how things could’ve gone from good to bad to really bad in the course of a day. Hadn’t she been sitting on the bed with her sister just this morning, giggling? “Can I ask what I did to upset you?”

Shea shook her head and looked away. “That’s the problem. You don’t even know.”

“I’m sorry I don’t. I really don’t.”

Shea turned away and began grabbing mounds of white fabric to put away. “Then we have nothing more to say to each other.”

Ivy stood for a moment and watched Shea busy herself with hanging the dresses. When it was apparent that she’d meant what she said, Ivy turned and fled the shop, wondering why she’d come back to Sunset, the tears falling as she realized she had nowhere else to go.

She drove back to Sunset with the windows open, even if running the air-conditioning made more sense. She wanted the wind whipping her hair, the breeze in her face, the ocean scent following her all the way down Highway 17. She wanted the wind to blow all her troubles away.

A few minutes into the drive, she stopped trying to figure out what had set Shea off, reducing her to tears and dress throwing and dismissing her entirely. She wrote it off to a severe case of wedding stress, but something kept nagging at her that it was more than that—that the scene with Shea had much deeper roots than her wedding plans, roots she’d have to reach down deep to pull up. She pressed harder on the gas pedal, willing herself back to the beach house, where she’d do her best to put the day behind her.

As she drove she thought about Elliott and Michael, and how she thought she’d made that choice long ago. Once and done. Yet now she was back here again, geographically and emotionally. And both men were in her life again. And her certain decision … wasn’t so certain anymore. Her thoughts took her back to her ski trip, to when Elliott had called her hotel room that next day. She’d come in from late-afternoon skiing to find the message light blinking on the hotel phone, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she dialed the number to access the message. Michael would’ve called her cell phone. It had to be Elliott. She’d found she wanted desperately for it to be Elliott calling and, as she heard his voice, felt guilty for thinking it. This would become the roller coaster that was the next few days for her—wanting, then feeling bad for wanting, then wanting again.

He’d taken her out that night, riding beside her on the ski lift in the darkness, snuggling to stay warm as they climbed higher and higher. She remembered thinking how ironic it was that she was finding love on the other side of the state—the opposite of where she’d come from, beach to mountains, warm to cold. The winter stars shone around them, their breath coming out in puffs of white air as they talked, continuing that all-night conversation they’d begun the night before. They’d had so much to say then, never running out of words, never guessing they’d one day become a couple who stopped talking altogether, communicating in as few words as possible. He’d tweeted about that night, that starry winter ride through the cold air. And she’d felt—for just a moment—the pang of loss, which is, she supposed, what he wanted. He wanted to remind her of what they had.

But the point was, they didn’t have it anymore. She was resolute in her commitment to keep her distance from Elliott, to not get tangled up in the emotions of the situation but to take things one step at a time. And the first step was deciding where to go after the wedding. Should she move in with her father for a time? He was the least likely to gloat or hover, and he could help her find a job. Or maybe she should go back to Asheville and beg April to let her live in one of the cabins while she figured out what her next step was.

She swallowed, taking in what she’d just decided. Not one of those possibilities included Elliott.

Red flashing lights behind her jarred her from her runaway thoughts. She looked down at her speedometer. It seemed that her thoughts weren’t the only thing running
away with her. Her foot had gotten heavier along with her thoughts, and she was going 85 in a 65-mile-an-hour zone. With a sigh she pulled over, fighting back the tears as she waited for the police officer to approach her car. This day just kept getting better and better.

She rolled down the window, and as she opened her mouth, the pent-up tears began to flow. “I am so s–s–s sorry,” she sobbed. “I had no idea I was going that fast. I’m just a mess. My sister’s mad at me and my husband is cheating on me and I think I married the wrong guy and now I don’t even know where to l–l–l live.” She stopped talking, realizing the policeman had backed up a few steps, adjusting his hat.

“Wait right here, ma’am” was all he said before he scurried away, back to the safety of his car.

As she waited, she flipped down the driver’s-side mirror and took a good look at herself. She looked haggard, her nose and eyes red and running, her face splotchy. In a word, she was a mess. And she’d made a fool of herself in front of that cop. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw him talking on his radio. He was probably asking for the men in white to come and cart her off before she did something far worse than speed. It wasn’t a half-bad idea.