“And how do you feel?”
“I still love my mom.”
He hesitated, as if this was a side effect of his actions he hadn’t intended. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel otherwise. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”
Something made her wonder if he meant help her, or help himself. “Why was it such a big deal to be seen at night?” she suddenly asked. “I mean, you come out at night now, don’t you?”
“No.”
“No?” she asked, surprised. “Why?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You’ve said that before. How do you know?”
He gave her a look that made every nerve in her body feel alive. Like when someone comes up behind you and startles you—there’s a small, sudden twitch, a quick gasp of air. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said.
“Win, what are you doing back here?” The man dressed like Win suddenly appeared from around the front of the bandstand. He was bulky but not fat, as if his own importance made him take up so much room. He smelled of cigars and sweet laundry starch. He looked at Win, who tightened like a rope knot with clear animosity. The man’s eyes then fell on Emily. “Ah,” he said, as if something suddenly made sense. “You must be Emily Benedict.”
“Yes.”
He gave her a politician’s smile, lots of teeth, but it didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I’m Morgan Coffey, mayor of Mullaby. And Win’s father. I believe I saw you at my daughter’s party last Saturday? I don’t recall you being invited.”
“I didn’t know I needed an invitation. I apologize.”
“Well then.” He held out his hand and she shook it. His grip was bone-crushing. “Welcome to town.”
“Thank you,” she said, trying to draw her hand back.
But he held on, lifting her arm slightly, his eyes on the silver charm bracelet she was wearing. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.
With another tug, she slid her hand out of his and hid the bracelet with her other hand. “It was my mother’s.”
Morgan Coffey looked completely poleaxed. “My father gave that to my mother when they got married.”
Emily shook her head. Surely he was mistaken. “Maybe they just look the same.”
“The moon charm has an inscription: Yours from dark to light.”
Emily didn’t have to look. The words had almost been rubbed off, but they were still there. She could feel tears come to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, fumbling as she took it off. She held the bracelet out to him, her heart breaking. “She must have stolen it.” After what she’d learned about her mother, she wouldn’t put it past her.
A muscle twitched at his jawline. “She didn’t steal it. Win, let’s go.” Morgan Coffey turned and left without another word.
Without taking the bracelet.
Win watched him go, then said to Emily, “That went better than I thought it would, actually.”
She looked away, blinking back the tears. “I don’t think I want to know how you thought it would go.”
He smiled and stepped over to her. He took the bracelet, which she was still holding out in her palm, and put it back on her wrist.
His touch was warm, and it seemed greater than him, somehow, like she could feel it beyond the places he actually touched. And there again was that comforting feeling. She took a deep breath, her tears disappearing. How did he do that, make her feel so wary, and yet so fond of him?
He looked up from fastening the bracelet and met her eyes. He was still touching her wrist, and she was trembling with the effort to remain still. “Will I see you at the festival this weekend?”
Julia had asked her, but Emily hadn’t given her an answer yet. But she had the answer now. “Yes.”
“Friends?” he asked, and it sounded like he was asking her to do something perilous. He made her feel brave for standing there, for facing him, and she didn’t know why. She’d never felt brave before. Not like this, like there were choices she could finally make on her own.
She nodded. “Friends.”
WHEN SAWYER pulled into his driveway after work that day, he saw Julia sitting on the front steps of his townhouse, a white cake box on her lap. It never occurred to him that she knew where he lived. It made him feel important to her, somehow. Though that was probably his delusion speaking. It spoke to him often about Julia. But this explained the black pickup truck he saw parked at the curb a couple of blocks away. As he’d passed it, he’d thought it looked like Julia’s, though he had no idea why she chose to park so far away. He wondered if she didn’t want to be seen associating with him.
He stopped in front of his garage and cut the engine. He stepped out of his Lexus, bringing his briefcase with him. He’d been looking at potential rental properties that day. His family’s property management business was slowly expanding into neighboring counties. His father had been against it at first. For a very long time, their only client had been the Coffeys, who owned most of the rental property in Mullaby. It had been a constant battle with his father to get him to even entertain the idea of taking on other properties to manage. Now business was so good they were considering opening a satellite office.
As he approached her, Julia stood. She was wearing blue jeans and a dark blue peasant blouse, the ties of the neck open. She looked so beautiful and soft, with her big brown eyes and her light brown hair shining in the afternoon light. He couldn’t see the pink streak, and he had an incredible urge to find it. He’d always been fascinated by her, drawn to her the way curious people are always drawn to things they don’t understand. But he’d done a spectacular job of ruining any chance he’d ever had of being with her, and he’d done it at the amazing age of sixteen. Truly, he should get an award or something World’s Longest Regret.
The night he and Julia had had was amazing, and something he’d dreamed about for years. Up until that night, she’d only been a fantasy. He’d been the popular preppy kid; she’d been the school’s punk hardass. He’d never thought he’d have a chance with her, so he’d kept his distance and watched her from afar. That night was everything he’d dreamed it would be, although a little bittersweet. He’d meant—absolutely—everything he’d said at the time, all caught up in the fantasy come true. But adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you, and no farther. When Julia had left for school the next day, he’d gotten scared. He and Holly had the approval of not only his parents and hers, but everyone in school. Especially after what had happened with Dulcie and Logan that same summer, how the whole town had turned on her and looked suspiciously at her friends, he’d wanted to hold on to what he had, and he didn’t have Julia. Julia was water in his hands. She’d slipped right through. Lovely and strange and unpredictable, she’d been everything he wasn’t. Nothing he was used to. He’d reacted badly when she’d called him and told him she was pregnant. When he thought back to that conversation, it was like watching a movie. It was the only way he could deal with it, to totally disassociate. That wasn’t him. That was a ghost of himself, some horrible boy who’d forced a troubled girl to have an abortion because he hadn’t wanted to face the consequences of his actions.
But he ended up facing the consequences anyway. Fate has a way of biting you in the ass like that. He thought he’d moved on, first with Holly, then by throwing himself into the family business. But then Julia came back to town and he realized for the first time that he hadn’t moved on at all.
He’d just been waiting.
Waiting for her to come back and forgive him.
“I didn’t know you knew where I lived,” he said as he walked up the steps toward her.
“Apparently, I didn’t. Someone told me once that you owned that big house on Gatliff Street. I assumed you lived there. But Stella told me that’s where you and Holly lived when you were together, and that you’d moved here after the divorce.”
“Holly and I still own that house jointly, actually.” He stopped on the porch a
nd stood in front of her. “When she moved to Raleigh, we agreed to rent it out and split the income.”
“Why didn’t you just keep living there?”
“It was too big. My family gave it to us as a wedding gift. Five bedrooms. It was a big hint for grandchildren.”
“Oh,” Julia said awkwardly.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I’m not. I’ve come to terms with it.”
She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him. Then, changing the subject, she thrust the cake box at him. “I brought you a hummingbird cake,” she said. “I made it last night.”
He set down his briefcase and took the box from her, stunned. “You actually baked me a cake?”
“Don’t get all emotional on me. I have to tell you something. A couple of things, actually. I’ll save the big thing for later.”
Later. That was curious. And encouraging. He couldn’t help it. Later meant there would be time in between. Time to be with her. “And the cake is to soften me up?”
“The cake is because I know you like it.”
He gestured toward the door. “Come in,” he said, suddenly excited by the thought of her being in his house. It was almost as if, by having her step over the threshold, something significant would be accomplished. She would be closer to him. He would be closer to her forgiveness.
But she shook her head. “I can’t. I ran out of gas coming over here.”
“Ah. That’s why I saw your truck parked a couple of blocks away.”
She nodded. “I was just waiting for you to come home to give you this and to tell you something, then I have to walk to the gas station.”
“I can take you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said dismissively. She didn’t want anything from him. Yet he wanted so much from her. “I do bake cakes because of you. Well, I started baking cakes because of you. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
He wasn’t expecting that. He rocked back slightly on his heels.
She stuffed her hands deep into her jeans pockets, making her shoulders hunch a little. “It was what you told me about how you always sensed when your mother baked cakes. I loved that story. I started baking when I was away at school. That’s a whole story unto itself. The point is, at a time in my life when there were a lot of bad things happening, you gave me something good. Something to hold on to. I’m opening my own bakery when I move back to Baltimore. And it all started with you.”
He felt incredibly humbled. She was being too generous. “I didn’t give you anything but a hard time. How can you possibly appreciate that?”
“I’ve learned to hold on to the good parts.”
He didn’t know what to say. He struggled for a few moments before saying, “And that’s not even the big thing?”
She smiled. “No.”
On the one hand, he really wanted to know. On the other, he wanted to make this last. As curious as he was, he would live with the anticipation forever if it meant being able to be with her like this.
He shifted the cake box and opened it. He loved hummingbird cake. It was all he could do not to dig his hand through it like a shovel right now. His mother had tried to hide cakes from him when he was small, but he always found them. He couldn’t help it. At that age, he hadn’t yet developed the willpower to resist. He’d inherited his sweet sense from his grandfather. It was the reason he felt so close to him, closer than to anyone else in his family. His grandfather had been the one who taught him how to turn it off, after one too many stomachaches. And he’d also been the one who’d told Sawyer that not everyone could see what he saw, so be careful who he told. Sawyer normally left it off now, unless he was distracted or tired, then he would unwittingly see the silver glitter undulating out of house windows, or the sparkle trailing out of a child’s lunch box. The only time he consciously switched it on was when Julia baked on Thursday nights. She was hidden from him, but he could see her do this. She was so good at it, the smell so beautiful. And he’d inspired it. He was overwhelmed.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever told about my sweet sense,” he said. He’d never even told his ex-wife.
“I hate to break this to you, but your secret is out.”
He closed the lid to the box before temptation got the better of him. He shook his head. “Uh-uh. That’s not going to work anymore. You can be as hard and sarcastic as you want, but we both know you really have a soft spot for me. You just admitted it.”
“If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
“Come on,” he said, feeling as light as high cotton. “I’ll take you to your truck. I think I even have some gas in a canister in my garage.”
“No, I …”
But he had already grabbed his briefcase and was walking down the steps.
By the time he had the cake and his briefcase in the backseat of the car and the gas canister full of gas in the trunk, she was in the driveway, looking uncomfortable and ridiculously lovely.
He opened the passenger side door for her, and she sighed and got in.
When Sawyer got behind the wheel and started the car, she busied herself by playing with his navigation system. He just smiled when she programmed his GPS to take them to Frank’s Toilet World on the highway.
Instead of Toilet World, in a matter of minutes, he was at her truck. They both got out and he put the gas from the canister into her tank. She thanked him, but before she could get in, he said impulsively, “Have dinner with me tonight.”
She shook her head. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Come on. You have six months left here. Live a little.”
She snorted. “Are you seriously asking me to have a fling with you?”
“Absolutely not,” he said, feigning shock. “I said dinner. It was your lascivious mind that went to the bedroom.”
She smiled, and he was glad. This was much better than the bristle she’d given him since coming back. Without thinking, he lifted his hand to her hair, petting it, then threading his fingers through it so that he could see the pink streak. He’d often wondered why she kept it. It had to have something to do with her pink hair when she was a teenager. Was it her way of remembering? Or maybe it was her reminder to never go back.
When he met her eyes, he was stunned to see that they were huge. They darted once to his lips.
She thought he was going to kiss her.
And she wasn’t running away.
Suddenly his blood was pumping thickly, increasing in a steady rhythm until it was roaring in his ears. And he leaned down and put his lips to hers.
Touching her, kissing her, was everything he remembered. There was such chemistry between them. Christ, he could almost feel it, the break in her exterior. She’d just let him in. It was that effortless. He remembered from the football field, how willingly she had given herself to him, how it had felt like this. And he remembered thinking at the time, This girl must be in love with me.
He lifted his lips from hers, startled.
“I have to go,” she said quickly, not meeting his eyes, obviously embarrassed. “Thank you for the gas.” She wrenched open the door to her truck and jumped in.
He was still standing on the sidewalk long after she drove away.
What just happened here? he thought.
What in the hell just happened?
Chapter 11
Long ago and mostly forgotten, the land surrounding Mullaby was once farmland, hog land. In those hard-scrabble days of North Carolina, when cattle refused to thrive, swine farming was a boon to the state. Like the citizens of many small towns in the area, the people of Mullaby took great pride in the slow, meticulous pit-cooking of pork, and it soon became an important part of defining who they were. It was at first a Sunday tradition, then a symbol of community, and eventually an art form, the art of old North Carolina, an art born out of work so hard it could fell a hearty man.
But as the years passed, the small farms and the once-prosperous hog-trade trails that stretched into Tennessee gradually disappeared.
Up cropped neighborhoods and shopping centers, and then the interstate came, taking away people who remembered and bringing in people who didn’t. Eventually the origin and the reasons fell away from the bone, and all that was left was a collective unconscious, a tradition without a memory, a dream every person in the town of Mullaby had on the same date every year.
In the early hours of the morning on the day of the Mullaby Barbecue Festival, a fog would settle low in the air, sneaking into windows and into nighttime visions. You’ll forget when you wake, it would whisper, but know this now and be proud.
This is your history.
STELLA HAD been gone for hours before Julia finally left the house. Stella considered the festival her day of debauchery. She started early and wouldn’t be home until the next day. Sometimes Julia worried about her. She couldn’t help it. She’d gotten to know Stella well in the past year and a half. Julia had never seen anyone try so hard to be happy with what she had. The Stella that Julia knew now was very different from the Stella she’d known in high school. Back then, Stella had been conspicuously showy, just like Dulcie Shelby. They’d been as thick as thieves. She’d driven a shiny black BMW bought specifically to match her shiny black hair. And Julia remembered hearing about how Stella’s decorator mother, who lived in Raleigh while Stella lived in Mullaby with her father, had designed Stella’s bedroom to look like a movie theater, complete with her own private movie screen and a popcorn machine. It had even been featured in some design magazine. To be honest, when Julia came back, she’d been surprised to find Stella still living here. Julia had always imagined those rich girls from school going on to live exotic lives. They’d had everything, every opportunity. When you had that much, why would you squander it? How could you accept anything less?
Stella’s problem, it turned out, was falling for the wrong guy. A tale as old as time. Her ex-husband had done a number on her by cheating and spending his way through her trust fund. The experience had turned Stella into a funny, self-deprecating woman who worked in a flower shop, lived in a house she could barely afford, and drank wine out of a box. Sometimes Julia wondered if Stella wanted it all back, if she would trade all she’d learned to be that envied girl again.