When she came out of her haze of thoughts, she realized there were tears dripping down her cheeks. Stan dabbed at the water tracks with his thumbs. “Aw, Sweet Tea. It’s all right.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered as he wrapped his long arms around her and pressed her into a shirt that smelled of Old Spice.
“I did it to myself,” he mumbled into her hair. “It wasn’t ever anythin’ you did. I was a grade-A dipshit, and it took your mama leavin’ for me to see it. Hell, it still took a year or two for me to dry out. And even then, I couldn’t get over the guilt.”
Margot relaxed into him. She didn’t think she could ever remember getting a hug like this from a relative. She wasn’t being held at a careful distance to protect emotions and expensive clothes. She was being enveloped, anchored, and comforted. And she could have had this for years if her mother hadn’t left. Then again, who knew how long it would have lasted if Stan had continued to drink. There was no perfect outcome. There was no win-win. She probably would have ended up a mess no matter how her mother had handled it.
“I’m sorry. I have to go.” Margot ripped herself out of her father’s arms and dashed out of the cabin.
MARGOT FELT LIKE she was standing on a cliff with her toes hanging over the edge.
The morning had started off normally enough, if normal was being caught between several different paths in life and feeling unable to choose any of them. Her father had been gently distant with her for days, bringing coffee to her office in the mornings and chatting but not pushing her for anything more. Kyle had been texting her off and on all morning, checking in, making her smile.
The last-minute details of the festival were coming together nicely. The early reservation numbers for local hotels looked good. The liability insurance on the carnival rides had come through. The online advertising was showing an encouraging number of click-throughs. Margot was going to host one last informational meeting with the volunteers running the booths and games and then she would consider the success of the festival out of her hands.
And then Rae called for the interview they’d scheduled. Margot was on Skype, talking to a panel of people from RAB Events as they asked interesting but pointed questions about her organizational methods, her thoughts on alcohol consumption, and her predictions on the coming trends in food and drink. It felt like Margot was stretching muscles she hadn’t used in months, discussing her planning timelines and how she might develop good contacts in a city she’d never even visited. She relaxed into the conversation, but in the back of her head, she wondered whether this was what she really wanted, moving to Texas and abandoning the life she’d built. She’d agreed to the interview without a second thought. Did that say something? Wasn’t your gut reaction supposed to be the right decision?
While one of Rae’s subordinates was asking a question about her stance on budget versus vision, a text notification chirped from her phone. Marianne had sent her another text. It was a picture that June had drawn in a school art class Marianne volunteered for, a rough shape sort of similar to a sailboat with four circular smiley faces sticking up over the hull. June’s teacher had very helpfully printed names over the little faces: Daddy, Miss Margot, Hazel, and Me. And at the bottom of the paper, June’s teacher had printed My Family Went on a Boat Trip.
And instead of the heart-melting sensation she was sure most people would feel upon seeing this message, a cold flush of dread ran through her belly. June had drawn her as part of her family.
And then she realized that she hadn’t answered the interviewer’s question about party budgets yet.
THE REST OF the interview had gone well, so well that Rae had offered her the job before they hung up. She’d sent Margot a compensation package that included a handsome salary, excellent insurance, moving coverage, and housing at a nice local hotel until Margot found an apartment. And Rae was kind enough to give her some time to think the offer over.
So here she sat at her desk, staring at the wall, wondering what the hell she was going to do. On one hand, she’d just been offered an awesome job in an actual city. She would be using her real talents. She’d be making three times the money the family paid her to work for the funeral home. On the other, there was her family, and her father. It was lovely that she felt like she had some closure about her issues with her mother, but how could she walk away from her dad when she’d just reestablished some understanding with him? And then there was Kyle . . . and his girls.
She hated to admit it, but the idea of staying here and seeing where things might progress with Kyle scared her. She wasn’t qualified for this sort of emotional responsibility. She wasn’t prepared to be part of a nuclear family. She didn’t have any experience remotely resembling a happy one. She had very limited mothering instincts. Hazel and June were adorable, but she was not ready for this. She might never be ready for this. They deserved better. She’d been deluding herself, having sailing outings with the girls, going to Kyle when she was upset, thinking she was keeping things casual between them. They’d been building toward something, and she was about to back out of it, in a big way. They would be better off if she left now, before more expectations were built up, she told herself. She’d never intended to stay in Lake Sackett long term. She was only following the plans she’d always had.
“Did the wall make you angry?”
Margot turned to find Marianne standing in the doorway, with Frankie and Duffy peering over her shoulders.
“What?”
“You’re staring at that wall like it owes you money,” Frankie said.
“Lots of money,” Duffy added. “Bass boat money.”
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“Well, I have a rare child-free evening—thank God for in-laws—and we came to see if you wanted to go down to the drive-in and watch cheesy 1950s B-movies while eating inadvisable amounts of popcorn,” Marianne said. “Carl’s gonna bring the flatbed, so it will be like sitting on our own parade float.”
“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Margot said absently.
“So what’s on your mind?” Frankie skipped into the office and threw herself into the nearest chair.
Margot sighed. “I’m thinking about moving to Texas.”
“What? Why?” Marianne cried.
“We just got you back!” Frankie yelled.
Duffy frowned and pointed to the ladies. “What they said.”
“I got a great offer from a really nice company. It’s the kind of work I’m used to, the work I’m good at,” she said. “And it would mean moving back to a city, somewhere I’m more comfortable. I love you all. I really do. I never thought I’d get to have a big extended family. And you gave me that. But I don’t belong here, and I need to go back to where I belong.”
“Well, I can’t say we aren’t disappointed.” Marianne sighed.
“And as a gesture of our enduring cousinly love, we’re giving you the least scary of the paint-by-number Jesuses,” Frankie said brightly.
Margot shook her head so vehemently she almost lost a hairclip. “No, thank you.”
“Have you told your daddy yet?” Marianne asked.
“No,” Margot said, leaning back in her chair. “I don’t know what to tell him. He just now opened up to me. But that can’t be enough of a reason for me to keep living here.”
“Well, that’s a bunch of horseshit,” Duffy grumbled.
Margot snorted. “Thanks for your support, Duffy.”
“It is!” Duffy exclaimed. “You belong here. You’re loved here. You don’t need to run off to some city to find out that you’re not as happy there as you were here.”
Margot raised an eyebrow. “Well, don’t sugarcoat it for me.”
“You are happy,” he insisted. “I’m the one who picked you up from the airport, remember? I saw how wound-up and miserable you were, checking your phone and the time every two minutes. And you’re different now. You smile. You look people in the eye during conversations instead of staring
at some screen. You should stay here.”
“Where is she going?”
Everybody in the room winced as Kyle appeared in the office doorway.
“Kyle, hi!” Margot said, her voice cracking as she stood from her desk. “What are you doing here?”
“I may have called him to invite him to the drive-in with us,” Marianne said with her eyes closed. “I told him to meet us here.”
“Oh, thank you, Marianne.”
“Why is everybody acting so weird?” Kyle asked, his eyes narrowing.
“We’re gonna, uh—we’re just gonna go somewhere else,” Duffy said, hustling away and dragging his cousins with him.
Kyle’s head kept turning back and forth between Margot and her retreating relatives. “Margot, are you all right?”
“I got a job offer,” she said carefully. “At a really great company in Dallas. They’re doing huge corporate events and these crazy extravagant private parties—right in my skill sweet spot. And they don’t care about the flamingo disaster. They like my ability to handle myself in a crisis.”
Kyle’s face went from warm and concerned to the neutral, professional mask in seconds. “Oh, well, that’s great for you. I’m really excited for you.”
Margot felt her shoulders sag with relief when he didn’t start yelling. She gave an awkward little smile and said, “I am, too. And I’m sort of used to Southern quirkiness now, so really, my time here was like a training camp.”
“Well, I’m glad that we could be of some use to you,” he said coldly.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?” he asked.
Margot chewed her lip. There was really no good explanation for how she’d intended that statement.
“So I’m assuming you’ve already accepted the offer?” Kyle’s face was starting to take on that cold, miserable expression it had held when she first saw him. She was hurting him all over again, just as she’d feared. She was as bad as her mother. It was best to do this quickly, to get it over with so Kyle could move on and find some other woman who could make him and his girls happy.
She dug her fingernails into her palms and tried to keep her voice as calm as possible, even while her stomach twisted itself inside out. “Not yet, but Kyle, I always made it clear that I planned to move on from Lake Sackett, that this wasn’t permanent for me. I told you from the start that I was looking for a job somewhere else.”
“But that was before you really knew me or the girls—and what about your family? You’re always talking about how much you love spending time with Marianne, Frankie, and Duff. And Aunt Tootie. Why are you throwing that away so easily?”
“I’m not throwing it away. I can still keep up with them over e-mail and Skype and—”
“Oh, sure, that’s exactly the same.”
“It’s more than I had a year ago, Kyle. And it’s not up to you to judge whether it’s enough for me or not. Besides, you can’t say you’re upset about this. You’ve been pulling away from the moment Hazel found me in your room. I’m just finishing the job for you.”
He dropped into the chair across from her desk. “You’re right, I’m not being fair . . . You know what? No. This is bullshit. I don’t want you to go somewhere else. You’re the first woman who has come into my life since Maggie that I’ve even wanted to try a real relationship with. I know I’ve been an ass since that morning, but you’ve got to give me some time to figure all this out. This is new for me, Margot. I can’t say I’m madly in love with you just yet, but I was hoping that we were heading toward that, that we were heading toward some sort of life together, that you would want to stay here and make that life together with me and the girls. I mean, you talked about bonus parents with Hazel; you don’t think that they inferred some stuff from that?”
“I never meant to mislead you or the girls. I tried to be up-front with you about everything. Getting to know your daughters was great, but I never tried to give them the impression that I was going to join their family. You talk about your wife and it’s this epic, tragic romance, the kind they write songs about . . . I don’t know how to be that to someone. I don’t know how to love like that. I don’t even know how to be someone’s dependable live-in girlfriend. That’s not how I’m built. I wouldn’t begin to know how to be someone’s wife or mother. I literally had no good role models for that, growing up. And I’m not about to use you and the girls as guinea pigs. I would only end up messing it up or leaving. It’s better this way, before everything gets all confused and enmeshed.”
“Oh, yeah, this is super easy. I don’t feel hurt at all.” Kyle scoffed, shoving up from the chair and moving toward the door.
“I’m sorry, Kyle.”
“I’m sorry, too, Margot. I’m sorry I screwed up and hurt you. And I’m sorry that you’re a coward. I’m sorry that you’re a quitter. I’m sorry that I let you into my head. I’m sorry that I let you spend time with my girls when I’ve never let a woman do that before. I’m sorry that you’re afraid. I’m sorry you don’t trust me enough to even try to love me. I’m really, really sorry.”
And with that, Kyle walked out of the office.
Margot let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and put her shaking hands on her desk. She was fine, she told herself sternly. She inhaled deeply through her nose, gritting her teeth and blowing the breath carefully out of her nostrils. This thing with Kyle was bound to end sometime. She was fine. Really. Fine.
Except that her heart seemed to be lodged in her throat and she couldn’t breathe. And Kyle’s face had been twisted in such a horrible mix of disappointment and disgust and she didn’t want that to bother her but she was pretty sure she wanted to throw up. And she couldn’t make it up to him, because there was no making up for making someone feel like they weren’t worth the effort of staying around.
Desperately, she wanted to go back to a few minutes ago, before she’d broken them—broken something she hadn’t even realized was important to her until she was faced with the terrifying reality of not having it anymore. She couldn’t go chasing after him. What would she even say? There was no coming back from this. No more teasing smiles out of Kyle. No more funny texts in the middle of the day. No more being held like she was something precious. No more feeling like—just once—she could be enough.
Margot’s shoulders sagged under the weight that seemed to be dragging through her chest.
A faint knock sounded at her office door. Margot lifted her head to see Stan standing in the doorway, his brows furrowed. “You okay?”
Margot nodded and tried to smile, but her facial muscles didn’t seem to move the way she wanted them to. “Sure. Why do you ask?”
“Well, uh, the Willet visitation is upstairs . . . in the chapel . . . right over your office . . . and your vents are open . . .”
Margot looked up to see that the air vents over her desk were indeed open. And those vents led to air ducts shared with the chapel, meaning that everyone attending the Willet visitation had overheard her argument with Kyle.
“I’m fine,” she said, even as her vision burned and tilted on its axis. Stan’s mouth pulled back into a grimace. “I’m fine.”
“Sweet Tea, you don’t have to pretend you’re fine if you’re not.” Stan crossed the room and closed the vents.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, her voice wobbling.
“Margot.”
“I’m fine,” she said again. She collapsed in on herself, curling around her stomach, laying her head against her desk. Stan patted her back awkwardly as she cried, huge racking sobs that shook her whole body. She threw her arms around her head, trying to hide, from her father or the world, she had no idea. She cried like she hadn’t cried since she was a little girl. And when Stan put his arm around her shoulders, she didn’t even have the strength to shrug him off.
THE NEXT FEW days were just as uncomfortable as Margot had suspected they would be. As word spread that she would be leaving town for a “fancy
city job,” each of her family members—even Aunt Donna—stopped by her cabin to tell her how much they would miss her, but that they were glad she’d found a job that would make her happy. Except, of course, for Aunt Tootie, who informed Margot that she was a “damned fool,” but Tootie loved her anyway. Stan supported her quietly, giving her hugs when she needed them and assuring her that they’d find a way to keep talking, even if she did move away. She spent a lot of nights on her couch, with Arlo cuddling against her chest, trying to remember why she’d returned RAB’s call in the first place.
Every time she dared appear in public, people stopped talking, and not just in the “stranger among us” way they had when she’d first arrived in town, but in a specific way that Margot had earned on her own. Kyle barely looked at her. Any additional materials for the festival she left in his office with Clarice with instructions on how to get them back to her.
It hurt. She missed him more than she thought possible. She missed the way he teased her and the way her head fit under his chin. She missed the girls. She missed the way Hazel saw through the pretentions of adults and got to the heart of the matter. She missed June’s weird humor and overwhelming enthusiasm for everything. And Kyle, oh, how she missed every bit of Kyle.
Even now, as he sat in the back of the crowded school auditorium, staring through her like she was a piece of glass, her chest ached with regret. But she was a professional. The blood of Tootie McCready flowed in her veins. Sort of. She could handle this.
Margot cleared her throat and stepped up to the small microphone. “Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to come out for this volunteer meeting. We’ve only got a week before the festival starts, and I think it’s important for us to get everyone’s roles assigned and clear so we don’t get bogged down in last-minute details on opening day. Now, can we start with booth setup?”