Chapter 48
I’m in Beaufort at Magnolia’s doorstep, hammering on her front door. I’ll keep at it for as long as I need to, like a persistent
woodpecker. I’ll rap-rap-rap as long as it takes. Even the neighbors are beginning to poke their heads out of doors (to my delight).
“Mother, open up!” I shout.
Magnolia wrenches open the door, holding her robe closed, and pulls me inside. “What on earth do you think you’re playing
at?”
“I could say the same for you.” I walk through the house and into the kitchen.
“And why are you here?” she asks.
“I thought about calling, but I need to do this in person.”
Magnolia glides to the other side of the kitchen, putting the island between us. “Really, you just expect me to drop everything
because you’ve decided you need a chat?” She picks at her manicure.
“You paid to have Lincoln moved out of the city.” It feels like dropping a match in a roadside fireworks tent.
Magnolia startles, her eyes popping wide.
“Yes, I found out about your convenient little donation ,” I say.
“How?” she asks before she realizes it. “Not that I mind. I figured you’d find out eventually. By now, it’s all water under the bridge. You’re glad you didn’t end up with a washout like him.”
I look her straight in the eye. “He’s back in town, and actually, we’ve been dating, if you can believe it. His old friend
and colleague Marcus Wilson was at Spoleto, and he let it slip, not realizing it had ever been a secret in the first place.”
Magnolia’s face tightens, like she’s resisting a frown. “I just don’t think we need to get all hot and bothered over a little
something that happened decades ago. And what’s this about him being back?”
“Not quite decades, Mother. And how could you? You think you have the right to mastermind my life by moving chess pieces around behind my back?”
She flaps a hand like there might be some kind of an in-between. “I wouldn’t describe it that way exactly—it was the boy’s
choice in the end. Yes, I made the donation with a small ask, but I was glad to support the studio even if he declined.”
“Sure, he made the choice, but that doesn’t grant you any kind of immunity. You paid tens of thousands of dollars to take
my boyfriend away from me,” I say.
Magnolia sighs as if realizing she won’t get off easy. “You’re right. I did interfere with your life, and I’m sorry it hurt
y’all. But I was doing it for your own good, Magnolia.”
I land a palm on the counter. “Mack. Especially for this conversation, it’s Mack.”
“Mack.” She says it like a polite admission.
“How in your mind are you making this into ‘the best’ thing for me? I know you didn’t have great luck with guys, but Mother,
you saw how I felt about Lincoln. It was obvious.”
“That was exactly why—I didn’t want you to risk everything you could have, throw it all away.”
“Love is always a risk.”
“Not every kind.” Magnolia’s chest puffs slightly. “The Suffolks? They’re reliable, people who don’t do divorce—”
“Except for me and Grady.”
Magnolia looks resigned as she lets out a breath. “Right. Not until the two of you.”
I almost feel for her as I watch her fiddling with the stack of mail in front of her, because I know what it’s like being
a mother. Countless times I’ve made decisions for Hallie, choosing things I believe are the best for her. I haven’t always
been right, but the point here is that Hallie is still a child. I was an adult at the time.
She looks up. “I didn’t want to hurt you; I needed you to see that Grady was a better choice.”
“And what do you know about good choices? Because you had a child with a man who is apparently so awful that you won’t even
tell me his name. That , especially, removes any right for you to pick someone for me. I was desperate for your love. You were my only parent because
you never let me know the other one. Yet you have all these good reasons to take my choices, to take Lincoln.”
“You will never understand the situation between your father and me. Never . And it’d do you good to leave it alone,” Magnolia says, her jaw setting.
I feel like my toes are hanging over the edge into an abyss of some kind, like if I keep pushing, I could break the bond between
us permanently. But it doesn’t scare me. Maybe it’s what I was looking for all along.
“And maybe I won’t,” I say. “Probably you’ll withhold it from me, but I won’t ever value these important decisions you’ve made on my behalf if you’re not even willing to explain.”
Magnolia springs toward me, finger pointed, eyes glittering with anger. “It would do you good to respect your elders, which is something you know nothing about. My folks protected me from your awful father, and I repaid them with obedience.”
“ Please .” She won’t get me that easily. “Fighting for the life and for the man I love isn’t disrespectful.”
“Pushing yourself into other people’s business is disrespectful.”
“And how exactly is this not my business?” I ask. “You chose to have me. You carried me and birthed me and raised me, and at every step you made it my
business. He was the man who gave me to you.”
“He never gave me a damn thing!” Magnolia yells. “And don’t you ever say that again. I did everything for you, and all he gave you was a bit of DNA and not a thing more.”
“If he’s such a nothing, you wouldn’t have kept him from me.” I know I’m daring her, hosing gasoline on a spark.
She shakes in place. “Want to know how bad your father is?”
I freeze, like if I move, she might take it back.
“That man is just like Lincoln. Say the word and I’ll tell you the rest.” Her eyes stick to me, unblinking.
Her face shows that she’s mad enough to tell me every nasty thing about him even if it’s only to prove herself right. I’ve
waited my entire life for this moment, a moment I wanted to be a mile marker, cherished in some way. But that isn’t the type
of woman I was born to, and this might be the only chance I ever get.
“Tell me,” I say.
“He’s here, Mack.” She pulls in a breath, and in the pause her body settles. When she meets my eyes again, she is terrifyingly
calm. “He lives right here in Beaufort and has all along, the man you insist on calling a father . He knew you were here and lived in the same town as you grew up. He never contacted me. He never stopped by. He never tried to know you once. He didn’t care enough to make a ten-minute drive. And I loved him for that summer we had, really and truly I did, just like you did Lincoln, but no amount of love can change a man like that. Theo Hartman never gave a damn about me or you, and he gladly lived a separate life only miles away. Happy?”
Goose bumps shoot over me and my skin prickles again and again like I’m misfiring. I taste acid in my mouth and rock under
the nausea of my insides turning inside out. I rush to the sink, feeling like I’m about to heave. Hot tears sting as I hover
above the drain. Theo Hartman.
That can’t be right. I try to work it out, to figure out how the rest of it goes together, but I’m deafened by the ringing
in my ears.
Magnolia’s hand meets my back tentatively, and her voice is softer. “I’m sorry. I am. I didn’t want you to know any of this.
I didn’t want to tell you, but it’s the only way to get you to understand. Why I had to do what I did.”
I lean there, grounded on the cool ledge of the sink.
“I couldn’t let you feel that same pain. Not the years of what it felt like knowing he was right there and never came.”
I straighten and face her. I open my mouth, and I have so much to say. There are so many details that don’t make sense, but
it’s all too much and again my ears are ringing so loudly that I grab them and squeeze. “Wait,” I say.
I step past her and head for the guest room. Inside, I close the door and lock it, and I dive onto my former childhood bed.
I bury my face.
My father planned the gardens at the Daniel House. I really liked him. Theo Hartman was there. He felt familiar because he makes up half of me. But did he know who I was, more than just another
Suffolk? Had he known his daughter was leading the charge? And why did he come? After all that time.
I pull out my phone and search for Hartman Landscape. In a single click, the website is before me, his local office address listed at the bottom.
Still, the man I met that day is impossible to reconcile with Magnolia’s version. Theo was careful and kind and attentive;
he never came across as one to abandon a pregnant girlfriend or his child. Could there be more than one Theo Hartman in town?
Of course not.
But if he was so callous to live his life of success and plenty right alongside me and Magnolia, he must be just like she
says he is. Maybe Theo’s just a good actor when he’s in work mode. For the first time, I understand how my mother would want
to shelter me from this, because his being here all along is especially cruel. The fatherly basics would’ve been so easy.
I think of him treating me, an apparent stranger at the worksite, with such generosity, all the while ignoring me as his child.
But how? I think about Hallie and about how it would kill me slowly to live without her. The fibers of my body would pucker and split
if I never knew her, if she lived a whole life a few minutes away.
Magnolia, finally, I see.
I scroll down the Hartman website and tap their phone number to dial. I raise the phone to my ear, but all I hear is ringing
and ringing and ringing.
This was never how I expected to feel when I finally got the name of my father, and if I’d been asked a decade ago, I would’ve
called finding him in the same town a best-case scenario. How convenient that I could run right over and introduce myself.
But now, this present-day me is the one to face him. I have no peace, only new questions.
Damn it. I hate it, but maybe Magnolia was right about this.
I raise my head and pull in a breath big enough to propel the violent scream I release into the pillow below me. I sit in the reverberations of it and feel the sting on the inside of my throat. Slowly I stand, straighten myself, and march out of the guest room.