Chapter 64

64

It was nearly six by the time Jack got back to Savannah from Cabin Creek. He told himself he was only driving past the shop to see if Cara really meant what she said about moving out. He slowed the truck to a roll as he approached the shop, but when he saw the large, hand-lettered MOVED TO NEW LOCATION sign in the window, he pulled up and parked in the loading zone.

BLOOM HAS BEEN TRANSPLANTED TO EAST HALL STREET, the sign said in smaller letters. Trust Cara to make that seem like a good thing.

He fished the set of keys with the CS Bank key fob out of his pocket and unlocked the front door. The first thing he noticed was that the little tinkling bell that announced visitors was gone.

The second thing he noticed was the smell of antiseptic. True to her word, Cara had stripped the walls of the reclaimed-pine shelves and the chippy wrought-iron trellis, the mirrors and the chandeliers. A slight indentation in the wood floor was the only sign that a flower cooler had once occupied this space. The shop was spotless. And empty.

He walked through to the back of the first floor, glancing into the kitchenette and noticing that this, too, had been cleaned out. The undercounter dorm-size refrigerator was gone, but he noticed that the coffeepot had been left behind.

Jack unlocked the door to the courtyard patio. To his surprise, the space looked the same as it had the last time he and Cara and the dogs had sat out here. He was relocking the door when he spotted a small yellow Post-it that must have fallen to the floor.

J—I won’t be needing patio furniture in the new place until I get backyard cleared out. Hope it’s ok to leave here for now.—C.

He shrugged. This was her idea of a good-bye note. No “Dear Jack,” no “Fondly, Cara.”

The second floor had been as thoroughly cleaned out as the first floor. The walls bore the faded outlines of where Cara’s pictures had hung, and there were depressions in the carpet left there by the now departed bookshelves.

Curtains still hung at her bedroom window, and when he brushed the thick linen panel aside to look out onto the street below, it released a scent he realized was Cara’s. Her box fan was still wedged inside the window casing.

Jack slid down to the floor, his hands on his knees, his back against the wall. He inhaled and the faint floral bouquet of roses and some other flower—maybe honeysuckle—filled his nostrils. He thought about the night they’d danced at Ryan and Torie’s wedding, the way she looked in that pink silk dress and how she felt in his arms.

Sweat trickled down his shoulders to the small of his back. It was unbearably hot up here. How had Cara stood it up here for these past few weeks? He stood slowly and started toward the stairs, but then he backtracked to the bedroom, where he unplugged the fan and tucked it under his arm.

As he was passing the kitchen, he spotted a lone coffee cup sitting on the kitchen counter. All the cabinets and shelves had been emptied. He wondered if Cara had meant to leave this one behind. He picked up the cup, and on the rim saw the faint pink remains of her lipstick. He told himself he would return the cup when he returned her fan. That’s what he told himself.

***

The prospect of returning home alone to the cottage on Macon Street did not appeal. Anyway, there was a good chance he wouldn’t really be alone. Zoey’s check still hadn’t arrived, so despite her sketchy description of a job offer in New Orleans, she was still hanging around, sleeping on the sofa at a friend’s house, but “dropping by” Jack’s place, ostensibly to be with Shaz.

Tonight he was in no mood for Zoey’s laughably obvious attempts to seduce him. What he was in the mood for was a cold beer and some hot wings. He called Ryan.

“Hey bro,” Ryan said. “What’s shakin’? You finish up over at Cabin Creek? Pick up the rest of the tools and stuff?”

“Change of plans,” Jack said. “Libba wants us to go ahead and finish everything. Including the kitchen.”

“Even with the wedding off?”

“Yep. She wants it finished. How did you guys do today over at Sylvia Bradley’s?”

“You don’t want to know,” Ryan said. “That old lady is driving me nuts. We put the new roof on that mud porch yesterday, and this morning when I got over there, she’d somehow managed to climb up on the ladder, and she proceeded to bitch me out about how the new shingles were a different color than the ones on the rest of the house!”

“Did you explain that those old shingles probably hadn’t been manufactured since the Eisenhower administration?”

“I tried, but you don’t explain nothin’ to Sylvia Bradley. She wants you to call her. I think she’s gonna try and talk you into giving her a new roof for the rest of the house.”

“Not happening,” Jack said succinctly. “Hey, I’m headed over to the Exchange to grab a bite. You wanna meet me?”

“Awww, man. Wish I could. We’ve got our first childbirth class at the hospital tonight.”

“Okay, no problem. Listen, in the morning, I’m gonna get the HVAC guy to walk through Jones Street with me, to see when we can get started on that.”

“Oh. So… Cara went ahead and moved out?”

“Yeah. Probably for the best. You know what a pain in the ass it is to rehab a building when somebody’s living there. Anyway, good luck tonight. I hope you do better with childbirth class than you did with high-school algebra. Cuz I am not helping out with that homework.”

“Smart-ass,” Ryan growled.

***

Jack sat in a booth by the window. The tables around him were filled with groups, families with young kids, gray-haired couples there for the early-bird specials, and groups of office workers stopping in for happy hour after work.

He drank a beer and ate half a plate of wings before deciding he was tired of avoiding his own home. Zoey had managed to find his spare key. By God, he would go back to Macon Street right now, and if she was there, he would kick her ass to the street. And then he would go to Home Depot and buy a new lockset and install it himself.

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