Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
J enny was still flabbergasted by Wyatt’s victory as they left his parents’ house a little after midnight. She hadn’t had a private moment with him after people crowded around and his phone started ringing incessantly. Congratulatory telephone calls started pouring in from all over the state. Even the governor called.
But now all was quiet as they drove through the dark of night back to the grove. Wyatt unlocked the farmhouse door, then they both went inside to plop onto the sofa in the front room, sitting in dazed exhaustion as the reality of the situation sank in.
“I’m expected to be in Tallahassee a week from today,” Wyatt said. “That means I’ve got a million things to do at the office tomorrow.”
“Can’t someone else handle things?”
He shook his head. “I’m the only one who can write the staff’s annual reviews, and their pay raises depend on it. I’ve got to sign off on a bunch of budget stuff. And train a replacement.”
Jenny traced the back of Wyatt’s hand as he kept rambling. It was odd how a person could feel joy and despair at the same time. Wyatt had staked everything on this unlikely dream, and amazingly, it was about to come true. She would roll up her sleeves and lift him up to the best of her ability. . . joyously and without regret, no matter how much the next few days would hurt.
“I’ll have to rent a truck to pack up a bunch of stuff for the move,” Wyatt said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done before Monday.”
They both faced a monster week ahead. Wyatt had to end one job and start another. Preparations for selling the Fabergé egg were going into high gear and would be launched with a red-carpet gala this weekend.
Oh, and she had a wedding to plan and a grove to look after.
“You go to the office and I’ll start packing your condo,” she said. “I’ll even run a load up to Tallahassee for you.”
“ Oh, Jenny ,” he breathed and held her tighter.
Wyatt had been willing to move to the grove for her. Could she move to Tallahassee for him? It was only three hundred miles away, but it might as well be Morocco. Managing an orange grove couldn’t be handled remotely, and Hemingway wasn’t reliable enough to be the only one on the ground. She would have to choose, and going to Tallahassee would expose her deepest, most shameful secret:
Beneath all her bravado, Jenny wasn’t capable of doing anything with her life except growing oranges.
Jenny headed to Wyatt’s condo the next morning to help him pack. They started with a quick survey of his belongings to estimate how many packing boxes to buy. She counted the pictures on the walls and measured the books on his shelves. The decorative pewter tankard with the hinged lid still sat on the top shelf, exactly where it had been the night of their first date. She refrained from touching it as she continued measuring his books, though she desperately wanted to know if he had kept that note.
They got an hour of work done before Wyatt needed to leave for the office. As soon as the door closed behind him, the tankard beckoned, and Jenny couldn’t help herself.
She held her breath and reached for the tankard. The pewter was cold and she trembled as she tilted the heavy lid, and yes . . . the note was still inside! She opened the slip of paper and savored the words all over again.
Today I changed a tire with the woman I’m going to marry.
A rush of affection bloomed inside. After all this time, even during those awful months they’d been apart, he still hadn’t gotten rid of this note. She was about to replace the tankard on the shelf when footsteps sounded outside the condo. Keys jangled and the door abruptly opened.
“What are you doing?” Donna asked, her face cold.
Jenny hugged the tankard to her chest. “I’m helping Wyatt pack up.”
The sour expression on Donna’s face didn’t bode well. Wyatt’s dad stood right behind her, frowning. Donna pushed inside the condo and tossed her handbag on the kitchen counter.
“We’re here now and can take over. You don’t need to stay.”
Jenny drew an unsteady breath and clutched the tankard even tighter. It was tempting to thrust Wyatt’s note at Donna, tangible proof of her son’s devotion, but it would be spiteful. Fighting over Wyatt wasn’t the way to solve this. And yet, being deferential to Donna’s suffering hadn’t done any good either.
She set the tankard down and met Donna’s steely glare. “If I live to be a hundred, I will never be able to apologize enough for the crime Jack committed against Lauren and your entire family.”
“Agreed,” Donna said.
“So I’m going to stop trying. Stop slinking away. I will be forever grateful that you raised Wyatt to be the strong and compassionate man that he is, but I won’t take orders from you. The only person that can order me out of this condo is Wyatt himself.”
Twin splotches of anger colored Donna’s cheekbones as she reached for her phone and started dialing. Jenny pounced, covering Donna’s hand to stop her.
“Don’t do this,” she warned. “Don’t make Wyatt choose. He’s got enough on his mind without playing referee between us. He loves you. He’d do just about anything for you, and the past two years is proof of that.”
Donna jerked her hand away. “You’re not married yet,” she said. “I’ll bet you’re not even planning on joining him in Tallahassee, are you?”
The question hung in the air like an accusation, and it was painful because Jenny had strategized all night long about how to manage a long-distance marriage. The coldness in Donna’s eyes was proof the older woman knew the truth.
Jenny tried to calm the thud of her heart as she gathered a breath. “It isn’t easy to be hated,” she said. “A lot of people turned away from me over what Jack did, but I can’t let their opinion of me become my reality. I love Wyatt and will do whatever I can to support him. You can stay and help me pack or you can go, but I won’t let you drive me away.”
The wall of anger coming off Donna showed a tiny crack. Not much, but any softening would be welcome. Donna set her phone down and smoothed the bitterness from her face.
“Why don’t you consider putting the engagement on hold while Wyatt establishes himself in Tallahassee?”
It wasn’t an entirely bad idea, except that if she let Donna start working a wedge between her and Wyatt, the rift would surely grow.
Impulsively, Jenny headed to the kitchen and knelt to open the lower cupboard. Where was that silly cake pan? Pots and metal lids clanged as she reached all the way to the back of the cupboard. Utensils skittered across the tile floor when she dragged a copper tin from beneath a pile of mismatched plastic containers. She latched on to the football-shaped cake tin and held it before her.
“Wyatt brags about the football cakes you made for him as a kid,” Jenny said. “I love that you did that for him. I barely remember my mom, but she used to bake me cakes, too.” She set the tin on the counter with a tiny click. “She used to braid my hair and make finger shadows on the wall. She sang me to sleep when I was afraid of thunderstorms. She died when I was eight, so I never learned how to bake or cook. The best I can do is open a can of soup.”
Donna scoffed and looked away, but she was listening. She was listening , and Jenny couldn’t afford to let this moment go to waste.
“After she died, I used to play dress-up in her clothes. They still smelled like her. I used to imagine her voice comforting me when I was lonely. I wished she had been there to teach me how to cook or put on makeup . . . or bake a football-shaped cake. What I’m trying to say is that I know what it’s like to have a hole in my life. We both do. I hope that maybe someday you will . . .” Jenny lifted the cake tin again. “That maybe someday you’ll teach me how to make one of these football cakes.”
Donna cleared her throat and began collecting the spilled plastic containers. Her mouth was in a fierce frown, and Ed watched cautiously from the other side of the kitchen.
“Yes, maybe we can do that for Wyatt’s birthday,” Donna choked out.
Ed sent Jenny a look of gratitude, and his voice was warm with approval. “I think that would be a fine idea. I know Wyatt would like that. Very much.”
Donna helped put the kitchen back together after Jenny’s mad rummaging through the cupboards. She even initiated a stiff hug and an air kiss before she and Ed left.
It wasn’t the most promising start to a new relationship, but it was a beginning.
Jenny was still in a good mood over the tentative truce with Donna as she drove back to the grove, but it evaporated the moment she turned onto her property.
Hemingway had neglected to wrap the saplings on the front twenty acres. She slammed on the brakes and got out of the truck, gaping in disbelief at the grove. Hemingway hadn’t wrapped a single tree. Covering the trunks with white protective wraps was the best way to protect saplings from heat stress. It was the only thing she’d asked him to do all week, and he still hadn’t done it.
Maybe she shouldn’t grouse at him. She’d been so distracted with helping Wyatt that she hadn’t been paying enough attention to her grove. Maybe Hemingway just needed more guidance. Or maybe he didn’t realize how important it was?
No! Hemingway knew what he was supposed to do, and he’d been slacking off. She parked the truck and strode toward his trailer, getting more annoyed by the minute. The strains of Jimmy Buffett came from inside the trailer, so he was obviously home and lazing off in the middle of the day. She banged on the door and waited.
The music clicked off, and soft, feminine giggles came from inside. Hemingway sported a guilty grin and a shirtless torso when he finally opened the door. “Hey, Jenny.”
She peeked behind him to see a woman rolling off his bed, her messy chestnut hair obscuring her face, but those fabulously expensive highlights belonged to Penny Danvers.
Jenny shot Hemingway a glare. “Really? I’ve got hundreds of saplings that haven’t been wrapped so that you could roll around with Bad Penny?”
Penny flipped her hair back. “Don’t be bitter. It makes you sound jealous.”
“I’m bitter because you stabbed us in the back over the citrus canker. Sending that anonymous complaint was a low blow, Penny.”
The words made no dent on the other woman’s smug expression. At least Hemingway had the decency to tug on a shirt. He scrambled to button it while making excuses.
“Actually, Penny came here on business,” he said. “Raymond Wakefield is kicking up a fuss and trying to pin Svetlana’s demise on Mrs. Hawkins. He might try to pull something at the gala to embarrass her. Penny came here to warn us.”
“Raymond wants the judge to reopen his claim for the egg,” Penny added. “He’s threatening to expose everyone’s favorite fourth-grade teacher as a grifter who scammed the egg from his grandfather. Do you know what he means by that?”
Raymond’s claim rested on the fact that his grandfather briefly owned an insurance policy for the Firebird Egg in 1952. The old man funded a trust with an unknown beneficiary around the same time, which Raymond thought was proof of something. The arbitration judge got a thorough look at that old trust and ruled it completely irrelevant to the egg.
“It means Raymond has a bad case of sour grapes,” Jenny said.
“Apparently, they’re sour enough for him to have hired an expensive new lawyer from Orlando,” Penny said. “A gardener out at Wakefield Estates heard a rip-roaring argument between Raymond and the senator. Raymond is incensed his father won’t fight for the egg and is blaming everything on Millicent Hawkins.”
Maybe Millicent’s name was included in the old documents. Why else would Raymond be so sure she was a grifter? Raymond was an intelligent man and probably had something on Mrs. Hawkins or he wouldn’t be pushing so hard.
She sighed and turned away to gaze out at the grove. Everything was changing so quickly. Wyatt wanted her to move to Tallahassee, but how could she leave if she couldn’t trust Hemingway to get off his duff and wrap the trees? She wanted to get married, but her future in-laws could barely tolerate her.
She met Hemingway’s gaze. “I keep thinking about what Svetlana wrote in the book she gave my grandfather. ‘Perhaps someday when we live in a more peaceful world, you and I shall meet again and raise a toast to our colorful lives.’ When are we going to live in that world? I’m tired of having to swim upstream all the time.”
Hemingway gave a sad smile. “Someone should let Mrs. Hawkins know about Raymond’s accusations because it wouldn’t be fair to let her show up at the gala without a warning.”
“She’s invited?”
Hemingway nodded. “All the volunteer staff at the museum are invited.” The gala was going to be hosted at the Wakefield Museum, a perfect venue because they already had two Fabergé eggs and a grand collection of Russian art.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said. Jenny barely knew Mrs. Hawkins anymore, but Wyatt could deliver the message. She sent a pointed look out the door at the naked saplings. “When were you planning on wrapping those trees? I’ve already done my half.”
Hemingway had the grace to look embarrassed. “Oh yeah, I was going to do that today. Don’t worry. I’ll get it done before the weekend. Promise!”
She nodded and turned away. Hemingway used to work so hard on the grove . . . until he found something more interesting, and Bad Penny obviously had a lot to offer. For now, Jenny needed to head back into town. She wasn’t happy about disturbing Wyatt while he was trying to juggle a million balls at once, but if Mrs. Hawkins was in danger, he’d want to know.