16
Elise
The fall leaves crunch underfoot as I step outside the brewery and check my phone, taking a quick break from catering duties. Even though I’m catering the Hayes wedding, the brewery’s industrial-sized kitchen has the space and equipment I need. Really, it’s not all that different from regular weeks catering events here.
Earlier, my hands were too crusted over with dried frosting when my phone vibrated in my back pocket to check my messages. I take a deep breath, considering the row of missed calls to my mom from this last week, and the singular text I got in return.
Sorry, it’s been a busy week.
I don’t want to call her again.
I think even a few months ago, I would have been relieved to see her trying to respond to me, making as little effort as typing out a sentence, even if it were to break bad news. I can’t bring myself to feel guilty that I’d be shamelessly thrilled if my mom remembered to invite me to someone’s funeral.
She’s never been a person to run to and just hold my hand while I cry out everything that’s been weighing on my mind. The prospect of calling her back is as weighty as anything else I’ve felt these last few days, getting tangled in my feelings about Shawn and his family.
But right now, her attention isn’t what I want. Maybe some deeply buried part of myself wants to feel like I’m not alone in all this, that I could just hand over the bulk of my emotional burdens to someone else, or just have someone whose lap I could cry into for a while.
But it’s not my mom, and it never will be. I’m just going to have to handle this on my own.
I switch to scrolling through my email app, taking a few more moments to myself before I head back in. A couple old clients are having events I could cater, one said she would recommend me to a friend that had a more long-term job open.
And after Shawn rejected me last night, I’m grateful for a bit of hope for life after Mystic Falls.
I feel dirty. I shouldn’t have come onto Shawn. I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to hook up with him. But I knew he could make me feel good. I just didn’t think he wouldn’t want to.
I mean, I guess I should have been ready for that. I did leave him; why would he want anything to do with me? Just because we’re back in the same place doesn’t mean we have any kind of want or need for each other again.
I mean, maybe I hadn’t been thinking that because Deanna has liked me so much these past few years, and his brothers, that they’d be happy to see us together, that things could easily pick up the way we left things off. It would be like they’d never refused to meet me, heartbreak simply forgotten. But I hadn’t been thinking or wanting that. Because that’s dangerous hopeful thinking, and I can’t allow that.
I don’t want to go down this line of thinking more than the million times I’ve already been through it.
He could’ve at least decided he didn’t want to take me up on my offer before he started touching me. Even his rejection isn’t enough to throw cold water on my libido, it seems. I guess that’s a win for therapy.
For maybe the hundredth time today, I think about texting Shawn. Not that I even have his number. I don’t think I could get it from Aiden or Laura without some pretty judgmental looks, either.
The brewery’s back door swings open abruptly, and some stupid part of me hopes it’s going to be him, that we can have a private word about what happened.
But it’s Deanna. “Oh, Elise. Good morning.”
She looks just as surprised to see me out here, standing on the little platform of the loading bay. People really only hang out here on their smoke breaks.
“Sorry, I was just stepping out for a second,” I start to say, when she cuts me off with an apology.
“I’m sorry if dinner was a bit awkward last night.”
Deanna looks me squarely in the eye as she says that. It doesn’t sound deeply heartfelt, but there’s sympathy in her voice.
It’s honestly caught me so off guard all I can do is stare back at her. This is not at all what I expected, especially after how she acted last night. She takes that moment and puts a gentle hand on my arm. She wears a solemn expression.
“Elise, I value our relationship. You’ve been wonderful to work with, and pleasant company outside of work.” She glances away towards the woods on the hill, where the Hayes House stands, just on the other side of it. She chews her lip a moment. “So, I hope you understand how much I value you, when I say you shouldn’t spend too much time with Shawn.”
I frown. My heart is pounding in my chest. I have to look away. My hands are automatically tight fists at my side, and I try not to overtly show that I’ve been dreading this.
“I . . . um, uh,” is about all I can manage to say.
Not exactly the kind of confident dressing-down speech I’d rehearsed and tweaked in my head for so many years. It’s a lot harder to summon those feelings of indignance at being dismissed when she just said she values me.
I don’t know how to respond, except to turn a little away from her.
She takes her hand off my arm, but hovers nearby. “Did he tell you he was married?”
I swallow. This conversation might not be what I was afraid it was, but I’m not sure where it’s leading. She seriously thinks we’re still married, after all these years? Did he never tell his mom we got divorced?
“I mean,” I stammer, not really sure what I mean. What do I even say? Yeah, I’m well aware he was? Or, no, actually to correct you Deanna, boss, I’m pretty damn sure he’s as divorced as I am.
“I saw him take his ring off the other day, before he went to talk to you,” she sighs, a faded disappointment crossing her features. She glances at me, misunderstanding my shocked expression, and giving my hand a sympathetic pat. “And I’m sorry you had to learn the way you did, last night.”
“He, um . . . I know about the falling out you two had. That he didn’t come home for years.”
“He’s filled you in on that much, then?” Deanna sighs, rolling her neck as she digs her hands in her pockets. It’s a movement that is so quintessentially Shawn, it’s actually jarring to watch. I don’t know how I never noticed it before.
“We haven’t talked in years because I disapproved of his marriage when it happened. But that doesn’t mean I want him to be unfaithful to her. And for that much . . . respectfully of your feelings and hers. Please don’t be one of his mistakes.”
I think my ex-mother-in-law just asked me not to help my ex-husband cheat on me. Ok, now she can absolutely never know because I’m not going to be able to explain that.
I’m quiet for several moments. It softens something in my chest to hear that she cares in that small, weird way.
Deanna glances at me, eyeing my lack of a reaction. She shakes her head a little, staring off into the cool gray afternoon, and then smiles to herself. “Don’t worry, I’ll lecture him too.”
I nod. Glad we’re both getting this talk.
For a moment, I let myself stand outside and just enjoy that moment, the easiness between us that existed, before Shawn showed up and upended everything.
I used to believe that Shawn’s mother could only be cold and unfeeling, and it was hard to see why he still wanted to be in contact with his family.
But I know Deanna, and I can see it all together now. She’s not like that.
I also know there are no more pictures of Shawn around the house, and that makes my heart break for him.
I’ve barely said a word this whole conversation, and the words that are waiting, heavy in my chest, are all that I have. I can’t ask her. I have to. I need to know, even if it doesn’t seem like it should be my business.
“Why didn’t you approve of her?”
Deanna’s gaze grows distant, and I wish I could see what she does. “I’m not sure it even matters any more. I wanted to keep him close to home, and all I did was push him away, and lose years we could have had. I thought we might patch things up after his father passed away . . . but he wouldn’t even attend the funeral. And now that he’s home again, I’m falling into old habits. All I do is pick fights.”
It’s not the answer I’d hoped for, though, honestly, I’m not sure what I wanted her to say.
She pauses a moment, running a hand through that perfectly coifed bun she always wears, raking a path of destruction through the neatness. “Maybe if I hadn’t reacted the way I did, I could have eventually convinced him to move closer to home. Perhaps there’d be grandchildren. I’d retire and become a nanny. But she was a Baptist, and that was supposedly worth sacrificing a whole future for.”
Non-practicing Presbyterian, but whatever.
She gives a short laugh, not cold or sharp, but warm and wry, like she can’t believe herself. It pricks something terribly painful in my heart to imagine that.
“That is the problem with babies. You think you’re going to teach them anything, but, truthfully, I think they make up their minds on who they are before they learn to talk. And when they’re adults, all you can do is hope they’ll make the right decisions. I wish I’d known that when I first had them.”
“Oldest siblings are always the practice child,” I joke ruefully, and it pinches something awful in my chest. That was one of the first things Shawn and I connected over.
Deanna grimaces, but I can see it’s to fight a smile. “Before Logan and Aiden were born, I took Shawn to the beach. He was maybe two years old. I had so many fond memories of going there with my sister. We started building a sandcastle too close to the tide, so the water would fill the moat. But a wave pushed us over and I wanted to keep his head above the water. I didn’t even see the way I held on too hard until we went back to the car; I left all these bleeding nail marks in his arm.”
She pauses for a long moment, letting herself grimace and cringe at the memory. “Not the first or the last time I felt like a bad mother. You hold on that tight, you leave claw marks.”
I can hear it in her voice, how the pain of one tragedy is so much you can’t but create more.
Then she gives herself a little shake, stepping away from her memories. “I’m sorry, I’ve kept you out here far longer than you probably intended. You don’t need to keep listening to me ramble—”
“—I couldn’t get my mom to call me back,” I blurt out, confessing to her. “And I think I’m finally ready to stop trying. But Shawn came back home to see his brother get married. I think that means you’ve still got a chance to repair things.”
She holds me in her gaze, and I think I see her eyes become glassy with emotion. Then the door next to us pushes open again, breaking whatever moment we were having as another brewery employee brushes past us.
“Um, I was just stepping outside for a moment, anyway. Fresh air,” I tell her, taking a quick step away. Deanna nods, as I grab the door while it’s swinging shut to head back inside.
I glance at Deanna, but she gives her head a little shake, indicating she means to stay outside a little longer.
“Fresh air and better signal. For some reason, inside the brewery it’s downright awful,” she sighs, taking her phone out of her pocket. She leans against the platform railing with it before her, some brightly colored app on the screen. Even the boss needs her match-three games.
“Don’t tell the boys,” Deanna says in a conspiratorial undertone, quirking an eyebrow. “I used to give them so much grief over their video games.”
I can’t help but smile back and imagine what that was like.