Chapter 15 #2
“Except it’s not okay.” Anne-Sophie’s knuckles were white as her pottery wheel spun faster and the clay transformed into an uncontrollable glob in her hands. “Is it, Vivianne?”
Juliette’s gaze darted to Vivianne, who flushed and looked away. Guilt swallowed her sister’s lovely features.
“Go ahead and tell her, Viv,” Anne-Sophie scoffed, molding the clay into a clumsy mess. “Tell her how heartbroken we were when she completely cut us out of her life. When she moved away and never looked back. When she swore she’d never leave us like Gabi had done.”
Her sister’s hurtling insults were a slap in the face. The words punctured her soul, tore her heart. Worse, she’d commanded the attention of everyone in the workshop.
Juliette dipped her head, shame heating her cheeks. “I was doing what I thought was best.”
“Best for you,” Anne-Sophie retorted.
“That’s not fair.” Juliette released her pedal, and the clay she’d been molding fell into a lump upon the wheel. Discarded.
She loved all of her sisters. Fiercely. But raising them, it hadn’t been her responsibility.
“You’re right. It’s not.” Anne-Sophie glared at her in challenge. This was it. This would be the defining moment of their relationship. “I suppose it would be more fair to say all you ever do is run away from your problems instead of facing them, and you don’t care who you hurt in the process.”
“That’s not true.” Juliette’s voice trembled. She could barely defend herself against her sister’s accusations because, honestly, what was there to say? She’d done all of those things exactly. Instead of shoving them away and ignoring them, Anne-Sophie was calling her out for all of her mistakes.
“Anne-Sophie,” Adrienne warned firmly but softly.
Everyone was listening. Their eyes may have been averted, may have been focused on the clay they were trying and failing to form, but they were completely tuned into the argument.
Even Erin stepped back and let out a low whistle while she pretended to tidy up the shelves of pottery waiting to be fired in the kiln.
Anne-Sophie pointed one accusatory finger. “It is true. You left to get away from Mama, but you abandoned us. You turned your back on us. We’re your sisters, Juliette. And you treated us like we had somehow wronged you. I needed you and you left me.”
Juliette struggled to find the right words. To make her sister understand. But she was speechless.
“Do you have any idea how she treated me after the accident? After I almost died? She was suffocating, I could barely breathe without her noticing. She never let me do anything, I couldn’t go anywhere.
I couldn’t leave the house. You were supposed to be there for me, you promised me you’d never leave me.
” Anne-Sophie was yelling now. Frustration and anger colored her cheeks a vibrant shade of pink.
Anne-Sophie shoved up from the wheel, and clay flew in every direction. She gathered up a handful and launched it at Juliette.
It splattered against Juliette’s sweatshirt, staining the gray to a muddy, orangey brown.
“Soph!” Juliette shrieked.
She collected another fistful and heaved it in Juliette’s direction. This one smacked her in the face. Cold, wet clay smothered her skin and she gasped.
“Anne-Sophie!” Vivianne cried.
Clay clung to Juliette’s hair and lashes. It stuck to her cheeks and nose. Furious, she grabbed her own clay and launched it at her baby sister. “Stop being so immature!”
Her aim struck true, and the clay was a direct hit on Anne-Sophie’s designer sweater, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even blink. She was full of fire and refused to be put out. “I’m glad Rodrigo left you. Now you know what it feels like to be forgotten. To be unloved.”
A collective gasp sounded throughout the room.
Blood rushed in Juliette’s ears. Ringing.
Deafening. She sucked in a breath but it was hollow.
Her chest ached, like her broken heart had been sliced open, carved from the inside out, gaping and empty.
Tears of mortification brimmed along the edges of her eyes, and she hastily blinked them away.
Adrienne stalked across the room and grabbed Anne-Sophie by the arm. “That’s enough.”
Juliette shook her head. She had to get out of there. To get away. Before any more damage was done. She snatched her coat off the back of the chair, struggling to see through the burn of tears.
Her watery gaze found Erin. “I’m sorry for the mess. This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come.”
“No, Jules.” Erin reached out, but Juliette dodged her grasp. “Please stay. It’s just clay. It’s meant to be thrown down—”
“She’s right. She shouldn’t have come here.” Anne-Sophie sniffed and flicked a bit of clay from her shoulder. Her eyes were red. “She shouldn’t have come here at all. Not to Lovely Mud. And definitely not back to Mystic Cove.”
“You will never understand.” Juliette turned away from them. She had to get out of there.
“There you go,” Anne-Sophie called after her. “Running away again.”
Juliette whirled around on her sister, spreading her arms wide. Her voice pitched high, full of despair. “What do you want from me, Soph?”
“I want you to apologize! I want you to admit you were wrong.” Anne-Sophie’s words trembled as they fell from her lips. “I want you to say you’re sorry for leaving me behind.”
And there it was. There was the real reason for all of her baby sister’s anger and resentment.
Juliette had left her behind.
Tears slid down Anne-Sophie’s face, mixed with the clay on her cheeks, and turned into tiny waterfalls of mud.
“I know it wasn’t your job to raise us. It wasn’t Gabrielle’s either. We have a mother.” Anne-Sophie rolled her shoulders back, and a breath shuddered out of her. “But I think everyone here can agree she could’ve done a better job at it.”
Murmurs of assent sounded softly, and then Miss Bobbie stepped forward. “Now, Anne-Sophie, your mother loves you girls. She wasn’t the same after—”
“After the accident, I know.” Anne-Sophie’s face crumpled. She was the only one to survive the car accident that killed their father.
“No.” Miss Bobbie drew the word out cautiously. “She wasn’t the same after he left her.”
Juliette’s jaw dropped and shock rattled her to the core. “What?”
“Papa left Mama?” Vivianne clutched her chest and her lashes fluttered back.
“No.” Adrienne shook her head in disbelief, ready to dismiss such an outrageous claim. “Everyone knew Papa was a flirt, but he never acted on it. The accident took him from us, not another woman. Our parents weren’t separated. He loved her…mostly.”
“You girls need to go have a chitchat with your mama.” Miss Bobbie’s wrinkled lips pressed into a thin line. She adjusted the purple-rimmed glasses perched on her nose, then rolled up the sleeves of her overly bright hot pink floral blouse. “I’ll clean this up.”
Juliette apologized again, profusely, to Erin. But she waved away her concern. “Just call me in the morning, and we’ll grab a coffee.”
The sisters walked out of Lovely Mud and into the brisk winter night. The air felt different to Juliette, thick and chilling, the sort that seeped down deep into her bones. It wasn’t quite cold enough for snow, but it was definitely the perfect conditions for freezing rain.
Adrienne buried herself in her coat and shivered. “Well. That was eventful.”
“I’ll say.” Vivianne scrolled through photos she’d taken on her phone. “I got some great action shots for Lovely Mud. Before the fight broke out, that is.”
“So.” Adrienne looped her arm through Vivianne’s, and her twin snuggled up close. “Can you two fix whatever is broken here so we can address the possibility of our parents being divorced?”
Juliette pulled her baby sister aside, and let years of regret flow from her.
“I’m sorry, Anne-Sophie. I am so sorry. Leaving the three of you behind was a mistake, but cutting myself off from you was the worst decision I ever made.
” She pulled the slip of paper that had fallen from the pages of her design magazine from her coat and held it out to Anne-Sophie.
“You looked up to me. And I let you down.”
Anne-Sophie analyzed the wrinkled paper with the bubbly handwriting. A look of puzzlement furrowed her brow. “You still have this?”
“I just found it,” Juliette admitted. “I never opened my interior design magazines once I got to DC. Mama had already planted the seed of failure. It hurt too much to even look at them.”
Anne-Sophie reached out and took her hand, the warmth of her supple leather gloves enclosing Juliette’s chilled skin. “I should’ve called.”
“I wouldn’t have answered.” The truth was often a bitter pill to swallow, and Juliette found this one in particular seemed to lodge in the back of her throat.
Shame heated her skin, flushing her with embarrassment and guilt.
“I was so determined to be someone else, I lost sight of who I was from the beginning. I pushed away the only people who ever mattered.”
Silence settled between them, the shifting sort, where there was so much left to say, but the words could not be found.
“I’m sorry,” Juliette repeated. “So very sorry. I should’ve come back sooner.”
Anne-Sophie rushed into her arms, smearing mud and clay between them, and Juliette was overwhelmed with a memory she’d shut out long ago.
A memory of a much smaller version of her sister, when Anne-Sophie climbed into her lap, smelling of fresh flowers and baby powder, and asked for a story before bed.
They would read together with the bedroom light dimmed to a low glow, and Juliette would use her softest voice, pitching the words with practiced gentleness to lull Anne-Sophie to sleep.
Mama must’ve been at work then.
She was always at work.
“You never should’ve left,” Anne-Sophie mumbled. “You never should’ve given up on yourself, either.”
The hour was growing late, and though everyone wanted to discuss their father’s wrongdoings and their mother’s secrets, they decided doing so without including Gabrielle was likely a bad idea.
“It’s possible she knows more than we do.” Vivianne tapped one muddied, glittered nail against her chin. “She is the oldest.”
“I agree. She needs to be a part of the conversation.” Adrienne flicked a glance at her wrist to check the time. “But I’ve got to be at the shop early to receive the flower shipment, so maybe we can all pick a time that works best?”
“Definitely.” Anne-Sophie looked over at Juliette. “Do you need a ride back to the apartment? It feels like it’s going to rain.”
The sky was dark, faintly illuminated by the silvery glow of the moon, but a dense layer of clouds was settling in and swallowing up the stars.
“No, I’ll walk.” Juliette didn’t want to trouble her sisters. Plus, the flower shop was in the opposite direction of their family home and Anne-Sophie’s new place in Virginia Beach. “It’s just a few blocks down.”
She said goodbye to her sisters and headed back toward Mystic Florals.
A few moments later, the wind picked up.
It wound its way through the buildings and homes, gusting in cold spurts off the beach, showering her in a spray of damp air and sea salt.
She ducked her head and increased her pace.
Tiny droplets of rain sprinkled down, but what started as a frozen yet gentle drizzle quickly morphed into a steadfast downpour.
The rain pelted her from all angles. It soaked her hair and left her coat sodden.
Puddles of rainwater mixed with beach sand splashed up around her boots, and the hardening clay from the pottery class turned into a reddish-brown, muddy slop.
Juliette darted toward the front door of the flower shop.
She searched her purse for her key, then frantically checked her pockets.
It was nowhere to be found. She must have left it in her bedroom before she went to Lovely Mud to meet her sisters, because Mama had offered to close up the shop instead. Great. She was locked out.
Juliette rattled the doorknob to no avail.
Her key was gone and her fingers were frozen.
The biting rain stung her skin and caused numbness to settle in her palms. Her teeth chattered to the point where it set her whole body on edge.
Every muscle clenched, spasmed against the cold shuddering through her system.
Slick clay-mud melted over her clothes and dripped from her face.
She clutched her purse to her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around herself.
She should call one of her sisters, but then she’d feel like an absolute fool for refusing their offer to drive her home, and she hated to make them turn around just to come back for her.
Shivering from the awful weather, she rummaged through her purse in search of her phone, when a pair of headlights coming up the road landed on her.
The vehicle slowed.
Please don’t be anyone I know.
Please don’t be anyone I know.
A truck rumbled to a stop in front of the shop, and she shielded her eyes from the glare of the headlights.
“Juliette! Are you okay?” a familiar baritone called out.
Brock.
Why was she not surprised? Her luck was never-ending.
She shook her head to disguise the tremor in her voice.
“Come on and get in,” he called out, pushing open the passenger door.
Juliette didn’t even hesitate. She didn’t care how it looked if she was climbing into Brockton Gallagher’s truck. The cold was deep in her bones now, making it difficult to catch her breath. She wanted a hot shower, warm clothes, and maybe even some good company.
Brock could offer her all those things and more.
He could offer her comfort.