Chapter 20 #2
I snapped a bunch of pictures and quickly helped the guys unload the truck.
Then I drove down the street I knew so well and walked right in the front door of Dogwood.
It was approaching five o’clock, but Parker and Amelia’s living room–turned–Southern Coast headquarters was still buzzing with activity.
Amelia spotted me first, which was good because she was who I needed.
“Are you still busy?” I asked.
She looked around. “Do I look busy?”
She was holding papers in her hand and jotting something down on the huge whiteboard at the front of the room.
“I did what you said, but I still need your help.” I grinned at her, hoping I was charming. “You’re the finisher, right? There’s no one quite like Amelia Thaysden.”
I showed her the pictures of Daisy’s nearly empty apartment.
“Okay. Let me think.” She put her pen in her mouth. “There’s a gorgeous armoire wrapped in stable blankets in the barn that her TV could go in. And there’s a table and chairs, and…” She sighed. “Just never mind.
“Parker!” she called. “I’m going to help Mason. Y’all just figure it out.”
He looked mystified. “Amelia, I am the publisher. I am not qualified to make editorial decisions, and need I remind you, we leave tomorrow.”
“I am aware,” she said. She kissed him lightly. “I have full faith in you.” Then she turned to walk out and motioned for me to follow, Parker calling, “I do not have faith in me! Amelia!”
I slung my arm around her. “Thanks, sis. You’re a lifesaver.”
She hated when I called her “sis.”
We drove the truck out to the barn. “So, you’re really smitten with this one, aren’t you?”
I tried to be coy, but I smiled.
“It’s good,” she said. “I haven’t seen you serious about anyone like this since…”
She trailed off like she was thinking, and I said, “You. Since you.”
She swatted me with the back of her hand. “We do not speak of the high school dalliance. Not ever.”
“I know,” I said. I’d been a real shit to Amelia. We’d been dating and, after I got hurt, I just left her without a word. “But, if I haven’t said it enough, I am sorry about how I treated you.”
“Well, thank God,” she said. “Because if things had ended up like we imagined back then, I wouldn’t have Parker or Greer or George or Southern Coast. And to be clear, I would not have waited until now to settle down.”
I laughed. “Okay. Well, it all worked out then.”
“I get it, though, you know? I mean, at the time I didn’t. At the time I thought we were true love, and we were going to be together forever.”
I smiled at her. “Well, we were. I mean, come on, I was a famous baseball star. I could have been sleeping with anyone.”
She laughed. “And instead you were waiting for me.” She squeezed my forearm. “Are you okay? You seem very introspective these days.”
I tapped my palm on the steering wheel of this old truck that felt like home to me.
I knew every crack in the leather, every squeak in the chassis.
I had learned how to change oil on this truck, made out with my first girlfriend in the eighth grade in the back seat when, yes, I was definitely not old enough to be driving a car.
These were the things that would be hard to let go of.
But maybe I’d lived in these old wounds long enough.
“I think I’ve just been wondering if it’s time to move on, you know?”
She shrugged. “I never moved on. I’m right back where I started.”
I nodded. “But you left. You married someone else, you had this whole career, you made something of yourself.”
I put the truck in park outside the barn and Amelia looked like she was thinking.
“You know, Mason, I worried about coming home again. I worried about descending back into that little girl that everyone thought I was. But then Parker and I got married and we had the babies, and we started the Southern Coast office in our house, and some things are the same, but they’re different too.
And I think life is just all about taking the next best step.
For now, we’re happy here. The kids love their school and Tilley needs us.
But I never think, Oh, this is the rest of my life.
If you’re thinking about making a change, all you have to do is take the next best step.
” She grinned and patted my hand. “And I can guarandamntee you that if you leave and you want to come back, Cape Carolina High is not ever going to close the door on the great Mason Thaysden.”
“Not so great,” I said.
“No?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t told anyone, but I applied for two coaching jobs that, frankly, I thought were easy gets, and I didn’t get either of them.”
Amelia gasped. “You applied to two whole jobs and didn’t get either of them?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m over here pouring my heart out to you, and you mock me?”
“You didn’t get them because they weren’t for you, Mase. If you’re really ready to go, the right thing will come along.”
Amelia hopped out of the truck, calling, “John! Can you help us?” to the farm superintendent.
The next best step, I thought. For right now, my next best step was finishing out a winning baseball season. And making Daisy smile.
Amelia pointed to that huge old armoire, a table, four chairs, and a small desk for us to load into the truck.
“The desk will look nice in her bedroom.” She rubbed her chin. “Does she need art? I’ve got some great stuff in the attic, and all those blank walls just won’t do.”
“Julie’s got it covered.”
She made her signature Amelia excited face. “Oh, yay. I love her work.”
Back at the town house, Julie and Cheryl were working at a frenzied pace amid a flurry of plastic bags. Julie was measuring, Kevin was hammering, and everyone was sweating.
“Boys,” I called, “I’ve got some big pieces we need moved in. And I brought reinforcements.” I pointed at Amelia.
“Amelia!” Cheryl trilled.
“Sorry I don’t have time for niceties, Amelia,” Julie called while hanging a painting of a pair of ballet slippers over the crib.
“Wow,” she said. “Y’all are incredible. This is really coming together.”
“We’re just taking over this poor woman’s house,” Cheryl said. “I’ve got a load of baby towels and new onesies on quick wash in her laundry room.”
Amelia looked around and said, “I’ll make up the crib.”
My work here was done. With the ladies handling everything in the nursery, Drew cursed me for all the heavy lifting, so I gave them a hand.
“Boy can bench one seventy-five but complains about a third of an old armoire.” I wished I had sounded less out of breath as I said it.
We put it in place, and, while the boys got the other pieces, I got my drill and a small electric saw from the toolbox in my truck and cut a tiny hole out of the back of the antique while Amelia wiped it down with Pledge. I hooked up Daisy’s TV.
Amelia was just fluffing pillows she had grabbed from the house and arranging a stack of back issues of Southern Coast on the coffee table when Daisy walked in.
My first thought was how sparkling she looked, even after a long day of work.
Her skin was dewy and fresh, and I wanted to kiss her right then and there, something I had yet to do.
She gasped. “Mason! Amelia! I was expecting an old crib, not a total home renovation.” She took in her front rooms. Amelia had even managed to cut a few fresh hydrangeas for the dining table. Daisy wrapped her arms around me and kissed my cheek. Then she hugged Amelia.
“Wait until you see the nursery!” I said with an excitement less masculine than I’d intended.
“Ladies! Are you ready in there?”
“We’re ready!” Cheryl called.
I put my hands over Daisy’s eyes. Before I removed them, I took in the crib, the changing table, the artwork, the giraffe.
The moms had arranged all the diapers and wipes already, folded baby clothes to fill the drawers in the white wicker chest that someone had donated.
DSS would never know we had put it together in a few hours.
I thought of Maisy, of her little warm body on my chest, of how connected I had felt to her, of how I kept waiting for that feeling that I wanted to protect her, would always protect her, to pass. And yet it didn’t. This was Maisy’s room.
I removed my hands from Daisy’s eyes, and Cheryl made a Vanna White motion toward the crib. I stepped up beside Daisy and saw her eyes fill with tears as she ran her fingers across it. From the closet, Julie turned, and I saw her eyes widen in the split second before Daisy turned and noticed her.
At the exact same time Julie whispered “Daisy!” Daisy said, “What the hell is she doing here?”
I looked at Amelia, whose eyes were wide. How did Daisy and Julie know each other? I did the only thing I could think of: I put a protective arm around Daisy’s waist. I didn’t know why she was so upset. But I was Team Daisy all the way.