Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
M ost women might be heartbroken that the man they had started to have feelings for had rejected them like a holey, mismatched sock. But most women hadn’t been raised like Sunny. They hadn’t been rejected over and over again until their heart had formed a thick outer shell that nothing could penetrate.
Okay, so maybe her heart did feel a little battered. But it wasn’t anything she couldn’t deal with. She was a strong woman who was in control of her emotions.
Although hiding out in the emergency room bathroom as soon as Reid and Sophie stepped into the lobby wasn’t exactly the action of a strong woman. But she didn’t want to put Reid, or herself, in an awkward situation. So she’d hidden out until they’d left, then caught a ride home with Corbin, Belle, Jesse, and Liberty.
Corbin seemed to know something wasn’t right and kept shooting her glances in the rearview mirror the entire drive back to the bed-and-breakfast. She knew he was going to want to interrogate her. So as soon as they got there, she used the excuse of being tired and went to her room.
She was tired, but she didn’t go to bed.
Instead, she grabbed a blank canvas, while Jimmy hurled obscenities at her, and started to paint. The painting didn’t turn out angry as much as miserably sad. Ultramarine blue was the predominant color, and rather than throw it, she dripped it down the gray base-coated canvas like the tears that dripped down her cheeks.
She didn’t try to push back those tears. She was through hiding her emotions. Through putting on a bright smile and acting like everything was just fine and dandy so she wouldn’t be pitied or upset the people she loved. Like everyone else in the world, she had the right to be angry. To cry. To throw fits. To paint angry art. She was who she was and people could love her or not.
That included Reid Mitchell.
It also included her mama and daddy.
After she finished the painting, she cleaned her brushes, gave Jimmy more birdseed to throw on the floor, and then called her parents. Her mama answered with her usual enthusiasm.
Her mama was good at hiding her true emotions too.
“Hey, my sweet little ray of sunshine! It’s about time you called your mama. Didn’t you get all my messages?” Sunny had gotten them. She had just been putting off dealing with them. But she couldn’t put it off anymore.
“I got them.”
There was a long pause. “Well, if you got them, I didn’t receive the money. Did you Venmo me?”
“No, Mama, I didn’t.”
“Oh. So are you gonna send a check this time?”
“No. No check. I’m not sending you any more money, Mama.”
“What? Why? If this is about me not answering your call last month, your daddy and I had just gotten into an argument and I wasn’t fit company. You know how I get when me and your daddy fight. I just want to be alone.”
A great sadness filled her. Her mama would never change. Sunny had to accept that.
“Yes, I know how you get, Mama. In fact, if anyone knows how you get, it’s me and Corbin. We were the pawns in your and Daddy’s pathetic marriage. We were the ones who suffered the most every time you fought. And I’m through pretending that we didn’t.” Emotion rose in her throat and it was a struggle to get the next words out. “I’m also through trying to make you love me. If you can’t love me, that’s your loss. Not mine.”
Before her mama could reply, she hung up the phone. Her heart hurt and her hands shook, but she also felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt lighter than she’d felt in a long time. Maybe forever.
She also felt drained.
Stripping out of her paint clothes, she crawled into bed and fell fast asleep.
She woke in the morning to a loud “Bullshit!”
She rolled to her back to find Jimmy Buffett perched on her painting. She sent him an annoyed look. “What’s bullshit to some folks is art to others.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she remembered a study one of her favorite art instructors had talked about where a group of people from different walks of life had been shown ten paintings from famous artists and asked to rate them from their favorite to least favorite. Out of fifty random people, no two had rated the paintings exactly the same. In fact, the ratings were widely spread with some people rating a certain painting high and others rating the same painting low.
The study had proven that art was in the eye of the beholder.
And yet, Sunny had been letting a few art critics and a couple bad showings convince her that she had no talent.
For the first time, she really studied her angry art. She realized that she didn’t hate it. She liked it. She liked it a lot. It was a piece of her. A sad piece, but still a piece. She was tired of being ashamed of her pieces. She was tired of hiding her art.
With a burst of energy that startled Jimmy and sent him flying to the top of his cage, she jumped out of bed and pulled on her paint-splattered T-shirt and jeans before grabbing the painting from the easel.
The door of the gallery wasn’t locked. There was no art inside to steal. But there was going to be.
It was time Sunny came out of the attic.
There was an entire gallery full of empty walls to hang the painting, but she chose to set “Wall of Tears” on the easel in the front window. Once the painting was secure, she walked outside to take a look.
It looked good.
It looked damn good.
A joyful bark had her turning from the gallery window. Buck came waddling out the back door of the house to greet her, stopping to lift his leg on a bush on the way. Jesse wasn’t far behind him, wearing a stretched-out T-shirt, saggy sweatpants, and a sleepy look.
He yawned widely as he stood next to her and looked at the painting. “Is that new?”
“Yes. What do you think?”
“Hmm?” He shut one eye and squinted the other. “I think it’s not as good as the Holidays’ barn picture you painted for me and Liberty for our wedding, but much better than that famous painting by that artist who chopped off his own ear. But that’s the funny thing about art. Everyone likes something different.”
She smiled as she looked at the painting. “I’m just starting to figure that out.”
“So you’ve become an abstract impressionist?”
She realized she didn’t know the answer to that question. She also realized that it didn’t matter. “I don’t know. I think I’m just going to paint what I want to—whether it’s abstract or a big red barn.”
Jesse looked at her. “Does this mean you’re not moving to Dallas to do web design?”
She looked at the gallery Corbin had lovingly gifted her, then into Jesse’s brown eyes that were so much like hers. “I think it does.”
He let out a whoop and swung her up in his arms. She was still laughing when he set her back on her feet and gave her a serious look. “Does this have anything to do with Reid Mitchell?”
Just hearing his name made her heart feel like it had been stomped on by a herd of cattle. Normally, she would swallow the pain and pin a smile on her face. But her days of smiling when she didn’t feel like it were over. “No. Whatever I had with Reid is over.”
His eyes turned sad. “I guess that’s why you looked so wrung out yesterday.”
“I’m still feeling pretty wrung out. But I think I’ll be okay.”
“Of course you’ll be okay. You have my and Corbin’s blood running through your veins. Us Cates-Whitlocks are resilient as cockroaches.” He put her in a headlock and rubbed her head with his knuckles until she giggled. “Now let’s go get some muffins. If Liberty wakes up and doesn’t have something to fill her mama belly, she’s one grouchy woman.”
She playfully shoved him away. “Just let me run in and get some shoes and my phone.”
She easily found her flip-flops, but she couldn’t seem to find her phone. Since the last time she’d had it, she’d been sitting on the bed talking to her mama, she searched through the mussed covers before getting down on her hands and knees to see if she’d knocked it off last night.
She found it under the bed . . . along with another one of Mrs. Fields’s letters. It must have slipped off the bed the day she and Liberty had been reading them. When she saw the paper clip, she realized it was the letter that had been clipped to the one she’d given Corbin. Even though Jesse was waiting, she couldn’t help opening the envelope.
This letter was handwritten, not typed, and not nearly as threatening.
Dear Mrs. Fields,
I have arrived safely and, besides a little nausea, the trip was uneventful. The hotel is not as nice as the boardinghouse, but it’s more than adequate . . . with no customers to worry about pleasing. I can’t thank you enough for making all the arrangements and getting me a bus ticket. You have always been kind to me and I wanted to make sure you know I would never do anything to cause trouble for you. This is my child. No one else’s. I have no desire to see Wilder or Ulysses again. Although I do miss you and the girls. Give everyone my love.
Sincerely,
Ima Lee Rhimes
Sunny stared at the letter in her hand. A baby? The hush money was about Mrs. Stokes’s daddy impregnating one of the women who had worked for Mrs. Fields? If that was true, then Mrs. Stokes could have a half sibling somewhere.
She picked up her phone to call Corbin, but before she could, it started ringing. She knew it wasn’t Reid. He’d made it clear whatever they had was over. But she couldn’t stop herself from hoping. She quickly answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Sunny.” Sophie’s tentative voice came through the receiver. “It’s me . . . Sophie Mitchell.” She hurried on. “I know you’re probably not real happy to hear from me. Especially after what I did to your car and the way I acted yesterday and all . . . and I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. “I’m real sorry.”
Sunny knew she shouldn’t be a softie. But she was. Especially where Sophie was concerned.
“Oh, honey, it’s okay—I mean, not okay. You shouldn’t have run off like you did. And you really shouldn’t have stolen my car. You could have been seriously hurt. Or worse, you could have . . . I don’t even want to think about what could have happened. I just want you to promise me you’ll never do anything like that again.”
“I swear I won’t! I had a long talk with Uncle Reid and I don’t feel so icky anymore.” Sophie hesitated. “I think he kinda likes me.”
“Of course he does, Sophie. He loves you.”
“Yeah, and I don’t have a clue why when I’m such a pain in the butt.”
“You had a pretty good reason to be. But take it from someone who knows, acting out doesn’t help the icky feelings as much as pushes them down deeper. Eventually, you’ll still have to deal with what’s making you feel icky.”
Sophie heaved a sigh. “I know.” Again, there was a hesitation. “Hopefully, you’ll be around to help me with that.”
Sunny started to say that them being friends might not be a good idea, but then stopped. Just because Reid had made it clear he didn’t want to have a relationship with Sunny that didn’t mean Sunny couldn’t have a relationship with Sophie.
“I will be,” she said firmly. “And I’ll help you any way I can.”
“Yay! Now I can get to the real reason I called.”
“The real reason?”
“Uncle Reid is in jail. Since it’s your fault, I figured you should be the one to bail him out.”