Chapter Six
“D in-ner!” Cornelia’s voice broke into Brooke’s impassioned internet search like a tornado siren.
“Be right there!” She’d known since childhood that if she didn’t answer, she’d be doing extra chores or writing a three-page essay on why daughters must obey their parents.
Even with his middle name, Nathan Quade Daugherty could not be found anywhere on the internet. Was he still alive? She was desperate to know.
She slinked down the wooden stairs carefully, hoping that Cornelia wouldn’t notice she was wearing only socks and not her house shoes. When she turned the corner to the dining room, she froze. Cornelia looked furious, Trig looked amused, and Nana sat in her spot at the table dressed in a tall yellow banana costume. Her face, through the hole in the front, looked pleased.
Brooke opted to say nothing, and sat quietly across from her.
“Is nobody going to ask me why I’m wearing a banana costume?” Nana pretended to be exasperated.
Cornelia bit her lips together, her eyes firmly on her plate.
“Guess we’re getting used to you acting crazy all the time, Mama,” Trig said. “Long as you don’t hurt anybody, it’s fine by us if you want to dress like that.”
“You people,” Nana spat, “are no fun.” She scooted out her chair and stood with her hands on her yellow hips. “Ba.”
No one said anything.
“Ba!” she said louder, extending both arms out straight to the side.
Cornelia dipped her head and scooped creamed corn into her mouth like it was keeping her from saying something curse-filled and loud.
“What is my name?” Nana asked.
“Grace Sharon Beauregard Warter,” Trig said.
Nana made a face at him and turned to Brooke. “Anna Brooke. What is my name?”
“Nana.”
“Yes. Ba—”
“Ba-Nana?”
“Finally. Someone with half a brain.” Nana sat back down.
“You’re not funny,” Cornelia said. “Not at all.”
“I am not trying to be funny,” Nana said. “I am trying to be interesting.”
“Is this the happy surprise?” Brooke asked. Her family should be on a reality show. Nana alone could bring in the ratings.
“No. Your surprise informed your mother that he has already eaten dinner and will be here for dessert,” Nana said.
Cornelia stared daggers at Nana.
Nana smirked back. “She doesn’t know who it is yet, Cornelia.”
“My surprise is a man?” Brooke put down her fork with a clank. “Cornelia. You did not.”
Her mother shrugged, and answered in a sing-songy voice, “Mother knows best.”
“Mother doesn’t have the first clue,” Brooke said, taking her cloth napkin from her lap and throwing it on the table. “Perfect. Just perfect. Gates is coming over and my grandmother is dressed like a banana.”
Gates was the kind of guy who people noticed when he walked into a room. Not just because he looked like an action movie star but because he carried himself like he didn’t have the time for or interest in any other living creature. Nothing and no one could touch him. No person could outshine him. He was the Ken doll of human beings.
Brooke wasn’t ready to see him. It’s not that he’d been mean to her or had broken her heart. No, it was simply that she didn’t like who she was when she was with him. Through no fault of his own, Gates made her feel small. When he was around, she was invisible. She was the lesser girlfriend to the handsome guy who could have anything he wanted.
By the time the doorbell rang, Brooke’s makeup was refreshed, her outfit changed, and she was more anxious than a freshman on the first day of school. It was silly. She’d been living with the guy since they both graduated from college. She knew that he reverted to a six-year-old when he had the flu and that he swelled up like Violet Beauregarde if he touched anything with wool. But she’d always been nervous around him—like he was the president and she was the intern. He was the lead in the play and she was monkey number five. He won the lottery and she only got one number right.
It was that feeling that created a gap between them. Over time, she began to realize that she couldn’t tolerate living her life feeling less than someone. And, Gates seemed to have come to the same conclusion. So why was he suddenly showing up on Goose Island?
“Hello, Mrs. Warter, so nice to see you again.” His deep voice gave Brooke the shivers. She couldn’t tell her mother’s exact words, but she recognized the high-pitched gushing trill. Brooke took each stair slowly, hoping that, given enough time, her heart might calm to a more rational beat.
There he was. Two heads taller than Cornelia and somehow more imposing than Trig. Cornelia looked quite proud of herself.
“Hey, Gates,” Brooke said as she stepped onto the landing.
“Hey.” He looked down at her like he had forgotten what she looked like.
She remembered her new hairdo. “I cut it,” she said. “And dyed it back to natural.”
“Looks good.”
She couldn’t tell if he meant it or not.
Cornelia spoke first. “Nana and I invited Gates here for a little family bonding.”
Family bonding with an ex-boyfriend? That was…well, that was just like Cornelia. When she set her mind to something, she was like a hunting dog on a scent—unwilling to give up until she got the kill. And where was the other perpetrator of this crime? Brooke looked around for a flash of yellow, hoping Nana had gone to her cottage to change. It was one thing to feel subordinate to someone and quite another to be seen as flat-out crazy. Or, at least, related to crazy.
“Can we talk?” Gates asked.
“Sure. Out back?” Brooke flashed her mother a stay-away look before leading Gates to the screened-in porch at the back of the house. From there, they could see the sun setting on the marsh, as well as Nana’s cute little white cottage off to the left. They sat together on the wicker couch before realizing that Cornelia was right behind them.
“Where are your manners, Anna Brooke?” Cornelia stood like a guard at the door until her daughter complied.
“Would you like something to drink?” Brooke asked Gates. “We have snacks, too, if you’re hungry.”
“And we have some lovely dessert when you’re ready,” Cornelia said.
“No thank you,” Gates said.
“Okay, Cornelia,” Brooke said. “You can go now.”
Her mother stuck her head fully into the room. “We’re so glad you’re here, Gates.” She gave him a bright smile before finally leaving them alone.
Brooke’s phone dinged, and she glanced at the text while she still had a chance. It was Jessa. “ Be here at seven. I downloaded a good one.” Shoot. She was supposed to go to Dottie’s and hang with Jessa in half an hour. She started texting back at the same time Gates said, “I miss you.”
Immediately, she stopped. It wouldn’t be smart to get back together. He had to know that. “Did Cornelia and Nana bribe you with something? How did they get you here?”
“You think I can be bribed?”
His brow furrowed and she wanted to reach up and smooth the lines while telling him how handsome he was like she used to when he’d get mad. “No. No, I didn’t mean that. I just know that they had something to do with this.”
“Your mother called me at work to tell me that you hadn’t unpacked your car. She said you refused to move into the house because you wanted to come back to Savannah. And then your grandmother took the phone and said that you’ve been drinking every night and that you’re getting really skinny.”
“I’m not drinking every night!” And what if she had been? She’d been home less than a week. Of course, she neglected to count the week in between Savannah and Goose Island. But she wasn’t going to bring that period of time into the conversation. That was hers. Just hers.
“Do you want to come back?” he asked.
“I miss you too. I really do. But I think we’ve both known for a long time that we’re just not right for each other. Your birthday proved it.”
“You’re going to bring that up again?” He shifted in his seat, getting agitated. When she’d first left, it was because he’d been a no-show. She couldn’t forgive him for making her look like a fool to his friends who were waiting with her to jump out and scream surprise . But during her week alone, she’d realized that their problems were bigger than that. His reluctance to come home was merely a symptom.
“I’m only bringing it up to put it to rest.” She thought about reaching over and to take his hand, but again, chose not to. “I always felt so lucky that you chose me. I still don’t know why you did. But if I’m honest with myself, I want the person who loves me to feel like they’re lucky too. I just don’t get that with you. I feel like you’re settling. And for that reason I’m not really lucky at all.”
“You’re talking about luck? How am I supposed to fix that?”
Brooke’s phone dinged and she ignored it. “It’s my problem. You’re not supposed to fix it.” She’d always felt like the odd-shaped puzzle piece that didn’t fit and no one could fix that but her. “Plus, Dottie said a long time ago that you and I weren’t meant to be together.”
“Good God, Brooke. Would you stop bringing up that woman? She does not have some sort of supernatural sixth sense. Just ask Jessa. All those years at camp when her mom had her totally freaked out. ‘My mama said someone was gonna drown, so I’ve got to sit here and watch the swimmin’ hole every day,’” he mimicked. “‘My mama said someone with purple hair might be terribly sad, so now I’m going to stick like glue to that weird girl the whole summer.’”
“And Lance Whiting did start to drown!” Brooke said. “You remember? Jessa sounded the alarm and he was saved.”
“He was fine. Jessa’s mom just makes stuff up.”
“And Suzanna too. She was sad. But we really liked her. She was nice.”
“Jessa’s mother is a lunatic.”
“She said I took something home from camp I wasn’t supposed to. Did you know that? She was talking about you, Gates.”
“Pretty sure she was talking about The Dog’s recipe for mac-n-cheese.”
Brooke made a face at him. “I brought two things home from camp—a scar on my ankle from poison oak, and you .”
Every few seconds there was a zap when a mosquito flew into the blue light of Trig’s electronic bug killer outside of the porch screen, and with each flaming death, Gates appeared to grow more annoyed. “What are you trying to say? That all of our time together was wasted?”
“Why did you choose me, Gates?”
“I really don’t want to have this conversation.”
“You have never been able to give me a good answer.”
“No, you just refuse to hear me.” He took a deep breath. “I chose you because I liked you. I thought you were different.”
“When did you first notice me?”
He rolled his eyes. “At camp. In, like, fourth grade.”
“But you never talked to me. I never even saw you look my way. Then all of a sudden, you decide I am the one for you.”
“What did you want, Brooke? You wanted my little ten-year-old self to fall madly in love with you? To chase after you and beg you to be mine? I didn’t even have armpit hair. It happened when it happened.”
Now it was Brooke’s turn to roll her eyes, but instead, she took a deep breath and kept her composure. “It was just strange, is all. Never mind. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just a feeling.”
He leaned back and put his feet on her mother’s glass table. “Well, if you want to come home with me, you can.”
Movement caught her eye. Oh, no. It was very definitely yellow. She leaned in to speak, hoping Gates wouldn’t notice Nana moving outside her cottage. “Do you realize what you’re saying? If I go back to Savannah with you, we will continue our relationship. Then what? Get married? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me?”
“I don’t want to not have you in my life.”
Double negatives always bugged her. She glanced toward the yellow figure skipping around an oak tree, and prayed Gates wouldn’t look in her direction. “And since it’s uncomfortable for you to not have me, you’re willing to potentially spend your life with the wrong person?”
“Why are you so set on the fact that we’re not right for each other?”
“Because we don’t fit. I just know it.”
“You just know it,” he mimicked. “You sound like Jessa’s mom.”
“Oh, shoot,” she said, checking the time on her phone. “I’m supposed to go to her house tonight.”
He put his feet down like he needed the ground for stability. “Fine. I’ll go to bed.”
“Why don’t you come with me? I’m sure Jess would be happy to see you.” She was already walking toward the door, hoping he wouldn’t look back at her crazy grandmother.
His face flushed. “I’m tired from the drive. And your mother has the guest room ready for me.”
“I don’t feel like it’s right to leave you here.” She took him by the arm and pulled him toward the house. “I’ll cancel with Jess.”
“No. Go. Really. I just want to go to bed.”
She couldn’t read him. “Are you sure?”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow.” He walked inside without a hug or a goodbye.
“I have work tomorrow. Meet me at the winery?”
“You have a job here?” He stiffened. They hadn’t been talking, so she’d never thought to tell him. He let the screen door slam in her face.