Chapter Fourteen
T he storm system was still blowing the next morning. It kept the crowds away from the winery, so after inching her way to work and running through puddles to get inside, Brooke decided it was a good time to organize the gift shop and deep clean the tasting area. Nana hadn’t shown up for a ride to work that morning, which was not unexpected considering she’d claimed to be allergic to rainwater for as long as Brooke had known her. The woman snuggled in on rainy days like her house was a protective bubble and her oven was the secret to survival. Brooke would stop by after work and see what sort of goodies she had baked.
Large droplets beat against the tin-roofed building so loudly that it sounded like someone had set an old TV to static at the highest volume possible. Rainwater pooled all over the grounds. Certainly, no one would be making the trek to the end of the island that day. Some of the roads were completely flooded out. Even Dottie had kept the truck at home, and Dottie never missed a chance to make money.
Jessa was doing paperwork in her back office, Allie was in the lab, and Libby was probably using the company computer to browse wedding ideas. Brooke worked alone, finding things to keep herself busy. If she was getting paid to be there, she would find something useful to do. It was nice to have a day to detail clean and organize. It gave her time to listen to her thoughts rather than stuffing them into the part of her brain that was supposed to act as a lockbox but instead leaked like a broken faucet.
Gates. His face would always be engraved on her heart. His old attempts at a sense of humor made her smile. He wasn’t funny, but he tried to be. She used to feel special walking into a room on his arm, noticing the women leaning over to whisper about him. Like Jessa, people couldn’t keep it to themselves when someone as good-looking as Gates showed up. Some people went so far as to point at him. He pretended to be oblivious to it, but he definitely noticed. She knew by the subtle changes in the way he stood taller and tried to hold a little smolder on his face—his eyebrows slightly lifted and his cheeks sucked in. That part always made her laugh, even though he didn’t think it was funny.
She would always care about him, and yes, she missed him. But that didn’t make him the person she should invest her life in. She sprayed Windex onto a glass display table and wiped it off in circles. She hoped he was okay. How could he not be? He was better off without her too. He had a great life in Savannah, plenty of friends, a good job in finance, and their little apartment that she’d painted and wallpapered and made into a home. She hoped he’d been watering the fiddle-leaf fig in the kitchen.
Then a thought hit her. Was her father like Gates for her mother? Had Cornelia settled? Was Trigger never right for her to begin with? And, what did a person do when they’d been married to someone for thirty years and didn’t like them anymore? Her hands stopped circling the surface, even though there was still a wet spot of glass cleaner. Had they tried working on their relationship? Did they talk about their wants and needs with each other? How long had her mother been feeling unseen?
Brooke finished the table and began setting the cork-lined trays, coffee table books, and decoupaged oyster shells back where they’d been. It wasn’t like her mother could fill her car with everything she owned and take off to stay with her parents. Despite Brooke’s anger about the man in Charleston, she felt a rush of empathy. Which was quickly followed up with a sickening worry for her father. How would he survive alone? He was used to people taking care of him, to coming home to women full of life and chatter and activity. He would be lonely and miserable.
Her whole family was drowning.
She moved to the raw-edge wooden tasting counter and sprayed a special wood cleaner all over it. She’d just started wiping it down when she remembered something Nana had once said. I might be old, but I am not inclined to put myself on mute. No, ma’am. I am turning up the volume. At the time, Brooke thought it was funny because it was Nana, but she hadn’t stopped to think about what it meant.
Not only was her mother unseen in her own home, but the older she got, the more invisible she was in society. People no longer listened to her opinions—they called them old-fashioned. They didn’t notice her beauty—it had faded. They couldn’t see her value. With each passing day Cornelia became more and more powerless and irrelevant. How scary. And unfair. Yet, Brooke was just as much a part of the problem as the rest of the world. Everyone seemed to forget that they were growing old too.
Heck, Nana is a freaking genius. At least the kooky lady gets noticed.
She realized she’d been wiping the same spot on the counter for the past few minutes, so she set down the cleaner and the rag and sat on a barstool. For the first time, Brooke thought about what it must have been like for her mother when she was twenty-three. The world was different, she’d had fewer choices. Did she like how her life turned out? Did she like who she was?
One day Brooke would be in her midfifties, maybe married, hopefully settled somewhere, and on the downhill side of her life. What would she want?
The answer was easy. She would want family. Both the one she already had, plus a solid, loving, supportive family that she created herself. She wanted to be friends with the future version of herself—to like her, respect her, and be proud of her choices.
A loud clap of thunder made her jump, causing a spurt of adrenaline, a healthy pinch of fear, and a sharp reminder of how alone she was, even though there were other people somewhere in the same building.
The bells on the front door jingled, and Brooke assumed it had blown open with the wind, so she jumped again when she saw a person standing there.
“I heard this place has the best scuppernong wine this side of the Mississippi,” the man said. He turned to hang his black rain slicker on a wall hook. He had light brown hair, broad shoulders, and an athletic physique. When he turned around, she immediately felt lightheaded.
“Nate. What are you doing here?”
“Seemed like a perfect day for wine tasting.”
Brooke laughed. Something about him standing in front of her, just the two of them in a room with a storm raging outside, made her giddy. He was taller than she’d realized while sitting down at the restaurant—at least as tall as Gates, and maybe taller. His jaw had sharpened with age, and he even had a shadow of a beard. But his eyes still crinkled in the corners like he approved of her, like she brought him joy. She laughed much harder than his comment deserved. She laughed until she had to cover her mouth with her hand, and her stomach spasmed with guffaws. Tears ran down her face. She was intensely aware that she looked like a lunatic, but could do nothing about it.
“I’m sorry.” She ran behind the counter to grab a napkin and dabbed at her face while her outburst finally, mercifully, began to subside. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, trying hard to squelch the unwanted display of emotion.
He took a seat on the barstool in front of her. “You okay?”
The hysteria was mostly tamped down, but tears still emptied onto her cheeks. She tried to breathe normally, but each breath was choppy. “I don’t”—she took two rough breaths in—“know”—she wiped her eyes and nose, trying to pull herself together—“why I can’t stop laughing.”
“Did I scare you?” he asked.
She nodded her head even though it wasn’t fear. Not at all. Maybe it was the fact that he looked like a better version of the teenager she’d spent so many years dreaming about? Or that he had made such a big effort to get to her? She didn’t think so. No. That wasn’t it. She looked into his face, sitting so handsomely across from her. There was no anger in the set of his mouth, just concern in the squint of his eyes, and maybe a little amusement. She knew exactly what had brought on her flash flood of extreme emotion.
It was hope.