Chapter 19
Savannah
The reporters found Nolan's restaurant within two days, a small crowd of them camped near the entrance with cameras aimed at anyone who came or went, and I arrived Thursday morning to find Nolan's staff fielding calls from three different national outlets asking for comment on the mystery wife, his front-of-house manager holding the phone away from her ear like it had personally offended her.
"I'm sorry about this," I told Nolan, watching a photographer through the front window trying to get an angle on the patio. "This is bringing attention to your business you didn't ask for."
"I've had worse press for a bad health inspection," Nolan said, waving it off. "This is nothing. Wren's more worried about it than I am, honestly. She thinks it's going to scare people off the showcase."
"Is it?"
"Ticket sales tripled overnight," he said, dry. "Turns out a little scandal is good for business, much as I hate to admit it."
Wren found me in the back office later that afternoon, chewing on her thumbnail the way she did whenever something worried her.
"There were people outside asking the staff questions about you.
About whether you're going to keep doing this, or whether you're going to disappear back into that other life now that everybody knows who you are. "
"I'm not going anywhere," I told her. "This is mine. Nobody gets to take it away from me just because my name is in a headline this week."
"Promise?"
"Promise," I said, and meant it more than I'd meant most things I'd said in the last month.
Rhett called that afternoon and offered to send his security team down to manage the crowd.
I expected, from six years of experience, that offer to come with strings attached, some version of a plan already decided that I would simply be informed of after the fact, the way so many of his gestures had worked before.
Instead his head of security called me directly that evening, his voice careful and professional in a way that felt intentional.
"Mr. Callahan asked me to tell you the team is available if you want them," he said.
"He also asked me to make clear you're in charge of that decision entirely.
If you want them at the restaurant, we'll be there.
If you want them somewhere else, or nowhere at all, that's your call to make.
He was specific about that part, said to tell you word for word that this one's yours to decide. "
I sat with the phone in my hand a moment longer, trying to remember the last time anyone had handed me a decision about my own life without already having an opinion about which way I should go, without at least a subtle push toward the answer they wanted.
I mentioned the offer to my father that evening, mostly to hear how it sounded said out loud. Earl considered it for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek the way he did when he was actually thinking rather than just reacting.
"That's a strange gift," he said finally. "Giving you the say instead of making it for you. I'll give him that much. It's not nothing, coming from a man who's spent six years making decisions you never got a vote in."
"You think it means something?"
"I think it's early to know what anything means," Earl said. "But I'd rather see a man hand you the reins than hand you another bouquet. Reins mean he's finally figured out you're not something to be managed."
"You've gotten wiser about marriage in your old age," I told him.
"I've had thirty-two years of practice getting it wrong before I got most of it right," Earl said. "Your mother would tell you it took me the first ten of those to stop trying to fix her problems before she'd finished describing them. A man learns, if he's willing to."
"Did you ever think you and Mama wouldn't make it?"
Earl considered the question longer than I expected.
"Once. Bad year, the year before Daisy was born.
I won't bore you with the particulars. What I'll tell you is we didn't fix it by one of us winning the argument.
We fixed it by both of us getting tired of being right and deciding being married mattered more. That's not romantic. It's just true."
Nolan found me staring at my phone in the back office, clearly working up to the call. "You don't have to do this today."
"I know. I want to, though. It's been sitting in my chest for two days and I'd rather say it than carry it any longer."
"Then say it," he said. "Whatever it means, whatever he did wrong, calling him to say so isn't the same as taking him back. Those are two different phone calls."
"I know the difference."
"Good," Nolan said. "Just wanted to make sure you did before you dialed."
I called Rhett back an hour later. The security detail could wait. I needed to talk about the interview itself, the thing that had actually been sitting with me for two days.
"You should have called me first," I said. "Before you told the entire country. I understand why you did it, and some part of me is even glad you did, but you made a decision about my life without asking me, and that's the exact thing you've been doing to me for years, just in reverse."
He said nothing at first, and I could hear him actually thinking about it instead of rushing to defend himself.
"You're right. I told myself I couldn't keep profiting off a lie that was hurting you, and that part was true, but you're right that doing the right thing didn't give me the right to decide everything about how it happened.
I should have called you first. I'm sorry, and I'm not going to add an explanation onto that to make it smaller. "
It was the first apology from him in weeks that did not come wrapped in a justification designed to soften it. Just the apology, plain, without a single word attached that asked me to make it smaller than it was.
"Thank you," I said. "For saying that without adding anything to it."
"I'm trying to learn how," he said. "I'm still learning. I know trying doesn't erase six years. It's what I can give you right now, and I intend to keep doing it."
A message came through that same week from a number I didn't recognize, and when I opened it I found three sentences from Jolene Price, a name I'd only ever seen in headlines until that moment.
I'm sorry for whatever part I played in hurting you, even without knowing it.
I hope this all gets easier. You deserved better than a hallway.
I read it three times before I answered.
Its plainness reassured me in a way the flowers and jewelry never had.
I wrote back a short reply, telling her she had nothing to apologize for, that none of it had been her doing, and thanking her for reaching out at all when she easily could have stayed out of it entirely.
She wrote back a single line, no elaboration needed.
For what it's worth, he talks about you like you hung the moon.
I just wish the rest of the world had known it too.
I told the head of security to send the team down, mostly for Nolan's sake and Wren's, and I noticed, hanging up, that the decision had felt entirely like my own to make, start to finish, in a way very few decisions involving Rhett had felt in longer than I could remember.
The team arrived the next morning, professional and unobtrusive, positioned along the sidewalk rather than inside the restaurant itself, careful to let the business run exactly as it had before. Nolan met the head of the detail personally.
"I appreciate this," Nolan told him. "Long as it doesn't turn my restaurant into something that feels like a fortress. Wren's got enough nerves without armed guards changing the mood of the room."
"Understood," the man said. "We're here to keep the sidewalk clear, nothing more. Mrs. Callahan's orders were explicit about that."
Mrs. Callahan. I hadn't heard anyone use that name in reference to me in longer than I could remember, certainly not from someone on Rhett's own payroll, and hearing it stated so plainly, without hesitation, without a glance toward anyone else for confirmation, landed somewhere I hadn't expected it to land.
Nolan noticed the name too, catching my eye across the sidewalk with a small, knowing smile that told me he'd registered exactly what had just happened, even without either of us saying anything about it directly.
"Feels different, doesn't it," he said. "Hearing it said plain like that."
"It does," I admitted. "I don't know what to do with how much it does."
"You don't have to do anything with it today," Nolan said. "Just let it sit there a while. Some things need time to feel real before you have to decide what they mean."
Wren joined us a moment later, curious about the small crowd of security personnel now stationed along the sidewalk. "Are we famous now?"
"You're famous," I told her. "I'm just infamous. There's a difference, and yours is the better one to have."
She laughed, easy and unbothered, young enough still to find the whole situation more thrilling than frightening, and I envied her that lightness even as I hoped she'd never have to trade it for the heavier version I now carried.
Nolan watched the two of us with an expression I couldn't quite place, something between amusement and something more thoughtful.
"You're good for her, you know. Not just the booking skills.
The way you talk to her about all this. Like somebody who's actually lived through the version she's scared of. "
"I have lived through it. Still living through it, honestly."
"That's exactly why it matters," Nolan said. "Advice from somebody who's never been scared isn't worth much. Advice from somebody still in the middle of being scared and doing it anyway, that's the kind that actually sticks."