Picking Up the Pieces: Rose Gardner Novella 5.5 (Volume 2) Read online

  Her face lit up, then just as quickly faded. “I can’t. Momma wants me to deep clean the house.”

  Anger riled up inside me, but I’d learned from experience that getting angry with Rose never worked. Cajoling was her trigger. “That tiny house doesn’t need much cleaning.” I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “How about I talk to Momma? Then you won’t be the one to get in trouble. I’ll tell her I’m scared to go by myself. Which wouldn’t be a lie,” I added to ease her guilt. “I really would be scared to go alone.”

  The happiness bursting from my baby sister’s face nearly broke me. How could our Momma do this to her? “Would you?”

  I threw my arms around her. “Of course. I love you, Rose. You’re the best thing in my life.”

  “Other than Mike, of course,” she said into my shoulder.

  Oh, yeah. “Well, of course other than Mike, silly.”

  It took a lot of finagling to get Momma to agree to the trip, but she finally did. And then on Friday afternoon, while I sat at my desk at Seton Insurance Agency, I started bleeding and lost my baby. I was thirteen weeks along.

  Rose came over and spent the weekend, taking care of me and cooking for Mike. Thankfully, Mike loved her. Truth be told, he would have been history long before then if he didn’t. He just hated that I spent so much time consumed over her. Rose was a thorn in our relationship. One I refused to pull out.

  Instead, it festered.

  But for all the people who whispered and snickered behind her back about her being a freak, the few people who truly got to know her loved her. How could they not?

  While I was sad about losing the baby, part of me was relieved. How could I manage to watch out for Rose if I had my own children to take care of?

  During Rose’s senior year—after she got accepted to college—I realized I was about to be alone and purposeless. Mike and I weren’t getting along, and I was suddenly terrified. I’d done everything for Rose up until now. If she escaped Momma’s grasp, she wouldn’t need me anymore. But I’d given up any chance of an education when I married Mike and all I knew was what I’d picked up at the insurance agency. How could I live alone off that? Besides, a divorce wasn’t acceptable. A divorce would mean failure, and Violet Mae Gardner Beauregard did not do failure.

  The answer to saving my marriage was as simple as what had led to it in the first place.

  A baby.

  I got pregnant and had Ashley. My love for her caught me by surprise. That my heart had room enough to love my baby and my sister. And of course, Rose left college and returned home not long after beginning, adding to my worry. Only having Ashley didn’t fix anything between Mike and me. It made things worse. I insisted we couldn’t raise our baby in the ramshackle rental house where we lived, so Mike took extra work so we could make the down payment on a brand-new house at the edge of town. It worried me to be a little farther away from Rose, who had already moved back home, but she had a job and was using Daddy’s old car to get around.

  Mike and his dad’s business had hit a rough patch, and the new house was a stretch on our budget. Mike was under a lot of pressure to provide for us, especially since he’d insisted I quit my job to take care of our baby. Then, about a year later, he got that job offer in Little Rock. Part of me was dying to go. To leave behind all the bad memories of this town. But I could never, ever leave the one person who truly loved me, no matter what.

  Rose.

  So we stayed, and Mike resented me for it, even though he knew the reason why. Even though he loved her too.

  “Rose is twenty years old, Violet. She’s a grown woman. You were married and pregnant with Ashley at twenty. You have to stop smothering her.”

  It only proved to me that he didn’t know her at all. Rose was too pure, too tender-hearted, too naïve to maneuver the world on her own. She needed me.

  So we stayed and I put extra effort into making the perfect house for him, being the perfect wife. We had another baby so I could give him a son—didn’t every man want a son?—and Mike finally seemed happy with the life I’d made for us.

  Only I was utterly miserable.

  If only I could get Rose married off to some sweet man, someone who would be gentle and kind to her. Someone I could trust to take care of her so I could be free of the burden. But she looked like a mini-Momma with her baggy clothes, no makeup, and unstyled hair. Add in the fact that she spouted out the most bizarre statements out of nowhere and most people thought she was unbalanced. Which meant no man in his right mind was even interested in her. What was I gonna do?

  And then Momma died. And everything changed. Only not for the better.

  When Momma died, it was as though Rose’s chains fell off—which was a good thing—but the whole town was talking. Everyone was certain my sister had killed the witch and I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. God knew the woman had done enough harm to deserve it. But I couldn’t deal with the rumors, the people whispering behind my back—and hers. It didn’t help matters that Rose chose then, of all times, to finally free herself of Momma’s rules. She went shopping and got new clothes that showed off her figure, and Aunt Bessie cut her hair and showed her how to put on makeup—something I’d been trying to do for years—and she showed up at our mother’s funeral looking like the beautiful woman I’d always known her to be. But the moment I saw her—barely recognizing her—I knew the town was already stringing up the noose to hang her. Everyone was certain she was guilty, which boiled my blood.

  I chose to ignore that for a few tiny seconds I thought she might have done it too.

  But then she made that stupid list of things she wanted to do before she was arrested and Joe Simmons—Joe McAllister then—was only too eager to help.

  I knew what he wanted the moment I found him helping Rose paint the living room after Momma’s murder. Someone like him could never appreciate how fragile she was. He would just use her and hurt her, only Rose was too stubborn to listen to me. She thought she could go from years of oppression to running around without a safety net.

  To my surprise, Joe really cared about her. And when it turned out he had been undercover all along, I was shocked when he continued to spend time with my sister after the case was closed. But I was even more shocked to discover that after twenty-four years, Rose no longer needed me. I’d spent my whole life focused on making sure she was okay. I couldn’t simply let her go now.

  After a few months, I came to accept that Joe loved Rose, even if he hadn’t introduced her to his family, which I knew was a bad sign. One day Joe and I were working on the nursery while Rose ran errands. I stood at the base of the greenhouse, my hands on my hips. “Are you ashamed of my sister, Joe Simmons?” I asked.

  He was on the roof, screwing in a piece of Plexiglas. He sat back and looked down at me. “No. Why would you ask me that?” Then a knowing look filled his eyes. “Is this about my family again?”

  “You being embarrassed of her is the only reason I can think of why you wouldn’t let them meet her.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated. “You don’t know my family, Vi. They’ll chew her up and spit her out before she even knows what happened. I can’t put her through that.”

  “So you’re trying to protect her?”

  “Everything I do is to protect her.”

  “You really do love her, don’t you? At first I thought she was just a diversion from the city life for you, but now I know it’s more than that.”

  Joe climbed down off the roof. “I have never loved anyone like I love your sister. I’d move heaven and earth for her, and I know you’d do the same. I think that’s why we clashed when we first met. We both want the same thing; we just have different ideas about how to go about it.”

  I crossed my arms and studied him. Maybe he was right.

  “Our fighting is only hurting Rose. She’s caught in the middle. I know you’re worried that I’m going to hurt her, Violet, but I love her. I want to marry her and have a house full of kids. I
want to grow old with her and spend the rest of my life making her happy. You just have to trust me.”

  He had no idea what he was asking. I’d never trusted anyone in my life. But I could tell he was determined, and he’d sure stuck around a lot longer than I’d expected. The nursery had been the solution to two problems for me, one of which was keeping Rose from running off to Little Rock with him and leaving me behind. I wasn’t sorry to admit I’d expected Joe Simmons to disappear after that, but he’d proved me wrong again. Maybe he could be good to her, despite who his parents were. “I’m holdin’ you to it, Joe Simmons. Don’t you dare hurt my sister.”

  He shook his head, solemn like he was taking a vow. “Never.”

  Less than two months later he left her sobbing on the floor.

  But she still hadn’t needed me. By then she’d assembled her own group of misfit friends and she seemed to prefer their comfort to mine. I’d spent my entire life protecting and loving Rose, and now she no longer needed nor wanted me. I felt hurt and betrayed. I’d spent most of my life living for her.

  And now I had nothing.

  No, I had Brody.

  Brody MacIntosh was the biggest surprise of my life.

  Let’s rewind a year. I came up with the idea of the nursery when I realized I needed something besides Rose and my kids to make me happy. Obviously they weren’t filling the void, but I needed Mike to be on board with my idea. I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, so I caught him late one Saturday afternoon when he was cleaning the grill, getting ready for our cookout a few hours later.

  “Mike,” I started, then hesitated. “Are you happy?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty much. I’ve got you and the kids and the business is going well.” He looked up at me. “Why do you ask?”

  I sucked in a breath. “You know I love flowers.”

  He looked around our backyard. It was filled with beds of flora. His face softened. “I know that they make you happy. And I’m glad. They’re really pretty.”

  My stomach was in knots. “What if I wanted to do something with flowers?”

  He shook his head in confusion. “You make flower arrangements all the time, Vi. What are you talking about?”

  I braced my shoulders. “I want to open a nursery.”

  He blinked. “You mean a daycare?” His face lit up. “That might not be a bad idea. You could watch kids here and bring in extra money. Lord knows we could use it with all the diapers the baby goes through.”

  “No, Mike. A floral nursery.”

  His smile fell. “A floral nursery?”

  I nodded, pushing on. “It might be a good idea.”

  “Why would you want to start a business, Violet?” he asked, turning back to the grill and scrubbing vigorously. “You’ve got your hands full with Ashley and the baby.”

  “I need something else, Mike. Don’t you ever feel like you need something else?”

  He picked up his beer bottle and took a swig. “Yeah, of course I do. I’d love to own a fishing boat, but we can’t swing it right now.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. Something bigger. I want to be something other than your wife and Ashley and Mikey’s mom.”

  His face darkened. “You are. You’re Rose’s sister, which seems to take up more than enough of your time.”

  He started to brush past me, but I grabbed his arm. “I haven’t been spending as much time with Rose since Mikey came along. You know that.”

  He stopped, but he still looked angry. “I’ve tried to give you everything you asked for, Violet, and you’re still not happy.”

  “Will you at least hear me out? I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while and I’ve done my research.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look receptive.

  “The closest nursery is in Magnolia, and while there are places around Henryetta that sell flowers, there’s not a year-round nursery. We could fill a retail void, and we could also work with builders.” I put my hand on his arm, getting excited that he hadn’t stopped me yet. “Think about it. You get all the plants you use for landscaping from the nursery in Magnolia. You could get them from my nursery instead.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “You mean you want to make it part of the construction business?” He shook his head. “I’d have to talk to Dad.”

  “No. It would be its own business. And I’d sell to all the construction companies.”

  His eyes hardened. “You mean you’d sell to my competition.”

  “Well…”

  He shook his head, his jaw set. “No.”

  “How can you just say no? Will you at least think about it?”

  “No. Do you have any idea how much money it would cost to set up a nursery? How much money we don’t have?”

  “I can get loans and grants. They have all kinds of things available to women business owners.”

  Mike’s shoulders stiffened. “You’re not considered a woman business owner if your husband is part of the business, Vi.”

  “I know.”

  His face reddened. “You want to do this without me?”

  “It’s not how it sounds, Mike.”

  “I don’t care what kinds of loans or grants you get. Do you have any idea how much time it takes to start a new business? We have a baby, Violet. Do you really want to put our baby in daycare?” He shook his head. “Why’d you even have Mikey if you wanted to shuffle him off to someone else?”

  “That’s not it, Mike. I swear.” Tears stung my eyes. “I just want something that’s mine. Something that gives me a purpose.”

  Mike leaned forward and grabbed my arm. “You have a house that’s yours, Violet. And two kids inside it. They’re both yours too. Taking care of the house you wanted so badly and our two kids is your purpose.” He dropped his hold, looking at me with a face awash in disappointment. “Get your priorities straight, Violet.”

  I’d already been unhappy with my marriage, but that conversation destroyed what little love I had left for him. But I couldn’t bring myself to let my marriage go. And I couldn’t let go of my dream either. Despite what Mike thought, I was sure my idea would work.

  So last April, I went to city hall to find out what it took to get a business license, and that’s when I ran into Brody MacIntosh, the mayor of Henryetta. I had little Mikey with me, and Brody came out of his office to help me wrangle him while I asked the clerk questions, Brody himself offering some of the answers. When he offered to walk me out to my car to help me with Mikey—doin’ his civic duty he said—I knew I should refuse, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was something about him that drew me to him. There always had been. I’d known him in high school, or more accurately, I’d studied him. He was several years older and had been dating his current wife. I’d thought what I felt was a silly schoolgirl crush, but talking to him that afternoon made me question all sorts of things about my marriage. So when he opened my car door for me—his light brown hair blowing in the spring breeze and his brown eyes watching me with an appreciative gleam that made my insides flutter—I figured that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. Brody gave me his business card and told me to call him anytime I had a question.

  I held onto his card for three days, working up the courage to call him, but he called me first, asking if I needed more answers.

  I asked a few lame questions just to keep him on the phone. But when I finally stopped he said, “I have a question of my own, Violet.”

  “Oh?”

  “Meet me for lunch next week.”

  “To talk about my business?” I asked.

  “We can talk about that too if you’d like.”

  Everything in my head screamed tell him no! But I liked the way he looked at me that day at city hall. But more importantly, I liked the way I’d felt, some spark I’ve never felt with Mike. Before I knew what I was doing, I said, “Okay.”

  We agreed to meet at an Italian restaurant in Magnolia. I arranged for Mike’s mother to take care of the kids while
I “ran errands”. I couldn’t look her in the eye when I dropped them off. Multiple times on the drive to Magnolia, I almost turned my car around and drove back home. It’s a business lunch. Nothing more, I assured myself. And by the time I pulled into the parking lot, I’d convinced myself that our lunch date was perfectly innocent. But when I walked into the restaurant and saw Brody waiting for me in the foyer, I knew exactly what was going to happen. We barely made it through lunch before we left, making out in the parking lot like a couple of teenagers. Brody pulled me into his car and drove to the Quality Inn, where I spent the best three hours of my previously boring life. But when he drove me back to my car, I looked him in the eye and said, “Brody, I can’t do this again.”

  He didn’t say anything, simply gave me a tender kiss and pulled back with a gentle smile. “I think you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Violet Beauregard. Don’t take that away.”

  I told him I couldn’t meet him again and then got out of the car. I picked up the kids and had time to prepare dinner before Mike came home.

  Later that night, I laid in bed wondering how I’d gotten to this place. I, Violet Mae Gardner Beauregard, was an adulteress. What would Momma say? This would have shown her that I was the bad Gardner sister and Rose was the good one. That thought was what spurred me to text Brody at two in the morning and tell him that I’d meet him the next Tuesday.

  I knew I should stop it. Each and every time, I told myself not to go. It was wrong and sinful to boot. But I liked who I was when I was with Brody. I felt sexy and desirable. He thought I was smart and funny. He not only listened to me, but wanted to hear what I had to say. I wasn’t Mike’s wife or Ashley and Mikey’s mother when we were together. I for sure wasn’t Rose’s sister. The only reason Brody knew anything about Rose was because he came to Momma’s visitation and saw her standing next to me.