Chapter Nineteen
S omething about the word brother must have made Gates back off. He stood behind the bar across from Dottie, Jessa, and Libby. He looked either sad or thoughtful, Brooke couldn’t tell which, but he was clearly watching Cornelia hold on to Nate’s arm like he was the relative she’d been pining to see for years. He had to know. He had to know that Brooke had feelings for Nate. He might even know that she’d always had those feelings. Gates had been there for everything.
Trig and Cornelia asked questions and gushed over Nathan, while Brooke’s attention was turned to the drama at hand: Libby.
Jessa and Dottie were firmly on Libby duty and could barely even wave hello. Nana, however, easily abandoned the sobbing girl. She was never one to follow social cues anyway.
“What’s wrong with her?” Brooke asked.
“Oh, first it was the barn venue for her wedding—the thing came down in the storm like it was made of toothpicks,” Nana said. “Then something about her fiancé suggesting that they postpone the wedding got her all pissy and she ran off.”
“So, she came here?” Things were starting to make a little more sense now.
“Well, yes, and anyhow, I decided to come into work and I found her,” Nana said.
“You came into work?” Brooke asked, as if Nana had any work to do while the winery was closed. Or even when it was open. “So you were never lost.” That meant Brooke could’ve stayed at the lighthouse with Nate. Why did all of the details keep working against them?
“Oh, heavens, no. I wasn’t lost. Duke said he was thinking of adding some baked goods for sale at the gift shop, and I thought it best to come into the store for inspiration.”
“I never said that,” Duke grumbled.
Nana smiled sweetly at him. “But you agreed with me.”
He nodded, unable to keep the hint of a smile from his face.
“As I was saying,” Nana addressed the larger audience of Trig, Cornelia, Fred, Duke, and Brooke—everyone except the group hovering around Libby, “Duke is considering adding some baked goods to the gift shop. Now, everyone knows that drying a muscadine is sticky business, but I believe I can substitute muscadine raisins for the Medjools in my date bar recipe, and I promise you that people would kill their own mothers for a bite of one.”
Cornelia flinched.
“I meant it as a surprise,” Nana said in a tone designed to leave every human in the room feeling guilty. “Leave it to y’all to converge on me and spoil everything.”
“If you would take your cell phone with you, then we wouldn’t have to worry the way we do,” Trig pointed out. “Please stop leaving it in your cottage.”
“Now, look here,” Nana said. “If I am trying to get away from you people for some free time, it makes no sense at all to bring with me the one thing that handcuffs me to everybody. I will decide when I will and will not bring along that hateful thing.”
“Brooke,” Dottie called. “Come on over here, darlin. We need a word.”
Brooke took a long breath and walked to the bar. Dottie reached for her hand and pulled her closer. “Libby needs our help,” she began, one hand holding tight to Brooke and the other rubbing circles on Libby’s arched back. Libby’s head was down, her face covered with a handful of small drink napkins. “Tell her, Jessa.”
Brooke could tell Jessa was trying to choose her words carefully. She looked for affirmation from Gates, who stood behind the counter like a bartender, before she began. “So, not only is Libby’s wedding venue now gone, but most of her bridesmaids have had other things come up.” She quirked her eyebrows at Brooke in a do you understand what I mean? sort of way. “I think that’s bound to happen when you hold a wedding on a holiday like the Fourth of July.” Jessa made it sound like people dropping out of a wedding at the last minute was perfectly normal. “People have other plans.”
Libby lifted her head long enough to say, “They don’t have other plans.”
“Well, I’m sure they have a good reason,” Jessa said.
Brooke could tell from the look on Dottie’s face that she was trying to hold her tongue. That didn’t last long. “Nope. Nope. We are not doing a little cha-cha dance around this.” Dottie swung her pointer finger back and forth. “It ain’t helpful. Let’s deal with the truth of it. Libby, did your bridesmaids ditch you because you started acting like an entitled bride? Like you were the queen and everyone else was there to please you?”
Libby nodded without lifting her head.
“You got too big for your britches, and now everything’s exploding in your face like a shook-up can of Pepsi-Cola.”
Libby nodded again.
“And how much did their dresses cost?”
“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” Libby said quietly through her tear-soaked napkins.
“Uh-huh.” Dottie shook her head. “And I bet you expected them to have parties for you too.”
Libby nodded again into her palms.
What kind of masterful manipulation was Libby trying to pull off? Brooke had never seen the girl cry before, and now she’s sitting here weeping in front of a crowd? It wasn’t right.
But it did seem like she was telling the truth. For once.
“I guess there’s no way to have the wedding here at the winery,” Jessa said. “The band is booked, and we’re almost sold out of tickets for the Independence Day party.”
Brooke didn’t realize that Nate was directly behind her until he spoke. “You might be able to have it at Camp Dogwood,” he said. “We’ve got a month to get it ready.”
We? The word made her simultaneously excited and pissed-off. She would work on anything with Nate, even if it was for Libby. But she wasn’t sure why he was being nice to her .
“Yes, and this group is very creative,” Dottie said to Libby. “We could make it a real nice wedding in a month.”
Libby lifted her head.
“And Jessa and Brooke will be your bridesmaids,” Dottie added.
If Brooke had access to eyeball laser beams, she would have shot them directly into Dottie’s head.
“Oh, how lovely,” Cornelia stepped in. “When I was in my twenties, I was a bridesmaid every wedding season for years and years.”
Dottie shot Cornelia a look of disgust.
Brooke spun around. Her mother, Trig, Duke, and Nana were all watching the scene unfold. The best course of action at the moment was to stay silent. She didn’t have to refuse to be in the wedding right then and there. She could refuse later when no one was around to try to convince her otherwise. But one thing she knew for sure was that there was no way she would put on an ugly dress, especially a $350 one, and stand up in front of a bunch of people pretending to be happy for a girl she couldn’t stand.
“My granddaughter will not be in your wedding,” Nana announced like she was reading Brooke’s mind.
“Nan!” Brooke said, shooting her a shut up look.
“There is certainly no need to play games,” Nana reprimanded her.
Of all people , Brooke wanted to say. Nana was the number one game player, attention seeker, time waster. “I can handle this, Nana.”
“Trigger? Why is my granddaughter turning on me?”
“I’m not turning on you!” Brooke just didn’t want to face off with Libby under these conditions.
“Radar’s showing we’re at the tail end of the storm,” Trig said, looking up from the app on his cell phone. “Cornelia,” he said. “Shall we?”
Yes , Brooke thought. Please leave. She noticed how Dottie watched her parents carefully—did Dottie wish she had a husband to monitor the radar app too? Dottie sucked in her lower lip, hiding the missing tooth, before placing her hand on Libby’s back again. “Now, Libby, you need to go on home and set things right with your man. We’ve done enough fixin’ here to get your wedding back on track.”
Libby had since lifted her head and glanced around the room, but not once did she lay eyes on Brooke. It was like Brooke wasn’t there.
“Nana, you’re coming with us,” Cornelia said. “Anna Brooke, you and Gates will follow us home, and Nathan—”
“The hell I am,” Nana interrupted. She had put on her oversized yellow slicker with the hood pulled up over her wild white hair. She grabbed hold of Duke’s hand. “I have baking to do.”
Duke didn’t appear indifferent anymore. He looked—what was it? Guilty? Sort of. But also surprised. And as his eyes moved back up from confirming that her small hand was indeed holding tight to his, he appeared downright pleased.
Fred stood in a corner, chuckling and taking it all in. The lawyer turned island gas station owner had clearly moved back for times just like this.
“Do not come looking for me,” Nana said. “I mean it.”
Trig looked perturbed, but it was Cornelia who said, “Let her.”
“I’m so sorry, Nan. I don’t know what got into me,” Brooke said. She was mad at Libby, and she’d taken it out on her eighty-year-old grandmother. “Truly. I didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, just do whatever it is your mother says,” Nana said. “I’ll try to behave myself.”
“Thank you.” Brooke gave Nana a quick hug. “I’ll be home soon.”
“Yes, I expect you will,” Cornelia replied as if her expectations were direct orders. “With Gates. I will not have him driving back to Savannah in this weather.”
Gates shrugged, and Brooke could tell he was uncomfortable. No one knew how to properly handle the current situation.
“And Nathan?” Cornelia asked. “Where are you living now?”
“Charleston,” he answered.
“Oh, bless,” she said. “You are nearby. Please come visit us. Either tonight or tomorrow, or any time at all. I must know everything that has happened in your life since I last saw you.”
What would Cornelia think if she knew that at that very moment, Brooke’s feelings for Nate were growing inside of her like a kudzu vine—at the rate of one foot per day.
“Yes, ma’am,” Nate said, leaning down to hug her again. “I would love to.”
“Bye,” Dottie said with a thicker accent than usual. “Y’all take care now. Fred, you are free to go too.” She pointed to Gates, Jessa, Nate, and Brooke. “Don’t y’all four move.” Then she took Libby by the arm and walked her to the door that Trig still held open. “Drive safe now, Libby. And let Jessa know when you get it all worked out.”
Libby agreed, and actually followed the group tiptoeing over the soaked ground and covering their hair from the sprinkling rain out to her car without arguing, blaming, or trying to make herself look like something other than a distressed bridezilla who’d just been hit hard over the head by karma.
“Well, now,” Dottie began after closing the door behind her. “I have been waiting for this moment.”
“Mama, it’s going on nine o’clock. I think we’d all like to go home now,” Jessa said.
“This won’t take but a second. I have been dying to get the four of y’all in a room together for years. Let me have my moment.
“There’s something powerful about that camp,” she began. “Something I can’t put my finger on. But y’all went there and it got all spirally and out of whack. First off, my nose was right. Libby is hiding something. I felt it in my forehead this time.”
That meant it was scary and must be taken seriously.
“Then why are you having us be in her wedding, Mama?” Jessa asked.
“Because it will help. What happened here today is already helping.”
“Helping what?” Gates asked.
“Helping Libby. Why do you think she acts the way she does?”
Brooke knew the answer to that question. “Because she’s spoiled and entitled and judgmental and hateful and—”
Dottie was shaking her head. “That’s all a cover. Don’t ask what’s wrong with somebody, ask what happened to them.”
“Not everybody has some deep dark trauma that makes them horrible, Mama,” Jessa said. “I think Libby likes being that way.”
Dottie had zoned out. It was like there were irises on the backside of her eyeballs looking inside her own head. “She’s two,” she said. “There are two sides of her. One side that likes being on top—it’s the side that tries hard to forget about the other one. The second is the side that’s been held down. Held down hard. That side struggles to be seen.”
“But she’s getting married,” Brooke said. “James must see her. Isn’t that enough?”
“No one sees everything,” Dottie said. “Especially the things we hide.”
“Well, then, she needs to stop hiding whatever it is,” Gates said, always the one to avoid gray areas. “Seems like that would solve the problem.”
Nate muttered, more to himself than to anyone else, “I wonder who hurt her.” If anyone in the world could understand what it was like to be perceived as one thing, when inside you were another, it would be Nate.
“Exactly,” Dottie said. “I’m telling you. She might be bitchy, but she’s not evil.”
Jessa and Brooke caught eyes, and Brooke knew that in all her sweet goodness, Jessa would not only be a bridesmaid, but she would do it with a genuine smile and the most helpful, celebratory attitude. It was exactly the way Brooke was trying to be. If she behaved as if she was as sweet as Jessa, maybe the feelings would follow. Maybe she could actually learn to be happy for Libby. She would be doing it for herself, for her own growth, not for Libby’s appeasement.
“Fine,” Brooke said. “I’ll be in the wedding.”