Chapter 45
I wait until Skip and Jon have left the saloon before I turn to my mother. “Please don’t invite any more reporters into the bar without telling me first. And don’t tell them Logan and I were married, for goodness sakes.”
“He would have found that out anyway. You know this town can’t keep a secret.” She beams. “On another note, your parents are back together, baby.”
“I saw the yellow dress, Mama. I figured things were going in that direction.”
She nods, waiting for more.
“Y’all aren’t even divorced this time!” I say next. “You were just separated. So it’s not like this is a huge deal. Right?”
But Mama’s still waiting, her face flush with hope like it always is when she and Daddy reconcile.
I sigh. “Oh, crap, Mama.” I lean over and kiss her cheek. “Congratulations.”
I exhale silently because I know better than to hold my breath. Not for any kind of reunion that will last.
“Thank you, Mace.” She takes a sip of the wine and then frowns at me. “Stop messing with your hair, baby.”
I take my finger out of the pretty twirl I’ve made with a loose wave. Even Mr. Bingley’s had enough of my mother. With a loud meow, he jumps off the counter, using Mama’s lap as a halfway point to the floor.
“Oh, Mr. Bingley, aren’t you precious.” Mama pats him fondly before he scampers off. “Mace, I have some more amazing news.” Long sip of her wine, then—“Your old mother just won the lead role in the Community Theater’s play this summer.”
“The lead?” I ask her. “That’s great.”
“I know.” Mama smiles broadly. “This is the original script that Deena wrote herself. It’s titled Queen Austen.”
“God, this town has done so many Jane Austen plays, already. I mean, how many times has Pride and Prejudice been redone? Like seven times at least?”
“Six. We don’t count that dreadful rock ballet disaster.” Mama nods. “But this one’s different. The main premise is a dialogue about love between Jane Austen—that’s me!—and a leper.”
“That’s certainly unique.”
“It is,” Mama gushes. “Jane’s jailed the entire time until her talk with the leper reveals that she didn’t follow her heart and lost her true love.
I think that’s Jane’s real message in staying locked up so long.
Whoever the heroine and hero are, they are going to have to dig deep inside themselves to know how they feel. ”
“And you and the leper are the only two characters?”
“Oh, there are other characters that come in and out. But they all enhance the viewpoints of the leper and of Jane, who are of one mind, let me tell you, Mace.”
Good Lord.
“I ran into Riley on my way here,” she says. “Wink’s home for a few days. I know she loves Wink to bits, but I’m not sure about that boy. She’ll probably marry him, but he seems…what do you think, Mace?”
“Seems like a dream come true,” I say truthfully. “Football star, scholarship to UT, funny, handsome. What’s not to like?”
“I can’t quite put my finger on it. As you say, the positives are obvious. But Riley just seems kind of off.”
I swallow down the feeling of discomfort I always get whenever Mama fixates on Riley.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Mama briefly pulls her shades down to look at me more closely.
“Fine,” I say in a short tone.
“Is this about the torn page of the legend?” she asks me in low tones.
“Oh, my heart just dropped into my toes when you got that scar. I had only found Vivian’s clue the year before, and then, you brave thing, jumping in to play the heroine because your sorry excuse for a father couldn’t grow up.
Just like Mr. Woodhouse in Emma. I know you always argue me that Emma’s father was different because he wasn’t a drunk or a philanderer, but I can sense the similarities.
I’ve always felt a common bond between your daddy and Emma’s—they both even have ‘Wood’ in their surname.
Very formal and masculine, don’t you think? ”
I gesture for her to wrap up her soliloquy.
“I just felt so terrible when you got hurt.”
“Mama, I know. You’ve apologized like a million times. It’s fine.”
“Nobody knows about the link to your scar and the Darcy legend, so don’t worry about that. I knew it would ruin your reputation if it got out. As I said, secrets don’t keep in this town, so I never even told your daddy.”
I give her a look until she admits, “Okay, that part may have been for me. Your daddy would kill me if he knew I’d tampered with Vivian’s diary.”
“Well, he’ll never know, so no worries.”
I wonder how much longer it’s going to take her to finish that glass of wine.
“Baby, you really do seem ornery. Are you starting to panic?”
“I am not panicked.” I take a breath. “First of all, the legend isn’t real.
Second of all, even if it were, other women in our ancestral Cowherd lineage most likely have scars, and some of those women were probably the oldest child of the jailkeeper.
The fact that I have a scar doesn’t signify anything.
Third of all, I personally couldn’t care less about the dumb threat to the eldest daughter.
You know why? Because I think all guys suck. ”
Mama takes another sip of wine and glances down at the bar. Her eyes light on the divorce papers peeking out from underneath the dish towel. Before I can grab them away, she lifts up the towel and taps the papers with her long painted nails. “How’s it going with these?”
“Mama, please take off your sunglasses.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Mama, the shades.” I sigh.
She sighs right after me, but she removes her sunglasses. Her face is all done up from her audition with heavy rouge and eye makeup, but she still looks tired and worn. Older than she should. I take pity on her and tell her about my meeting with Gigi.
“She sounds like a big nightmare if you ask me,” Mama says when I’m finished. “But what a beautiful girl. Logan dropped by the theater with her to see his mother.”
I twirl a piece of my hair with my index finger. “Yes, we all know she’s a freaking goddess. You and Daddy got yourselves a great fake couple of soul mates to tout around town and boost your profits.”
Mama glances down again at the divorce papers sitting in front of me.
“I’m worried about you, baby.”
I pick up an empty glass and try to keep it steady as I pour myself some orange juice.
“Seriously,” she says as she eyes my shaky hand. “Does this news of Logan marrying sit all right with you?”
“It sits great.” I put down the glass and cross my arms over my chest. “He and I swore we’d never marry each other, anyway.”
“Why on Heaven’s earth would you do a silly thing like that?”
I’m not sure at the moment, but I can’t tell her that. “He wasn’t supposed to marry anyone. I wasn’t either. We had a silly pact.”
Mama frowns. “Well, be that as it may, it seems like things changed on his end. And I don’t want to see you end up alone.”
“Mama, I don’t need a man. I can stand on my own. I have for a long time now.”
“I know that. But you want a man beside you, don’t you?”
“No. That’s why I’m never getting married.”
At her eyes on the papers lying between us, I snap, “Again!”
“Sometimes, I still wish Daddy and I had opened that cell door.” Mama exhales loudly.
“Oh, please.”
“Mr. Darcy is a hard act to follow. Don’t you think?”
As much as I love Pride and Prejudice, reading it to Mama all those nights Daddy was gone was exhausting.
She interrupted me constantly to cry over Darcy versus Daddy and how come Daddy didn’t act more like Darcy.
Blah, blah, blah. I tried explaining that Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet did not have four children together and hadn’t been divorced multiple times, but she said that was all noise and not her point at all.
Then, she’d lecture me on the perils of love and men.
Especially Darcy men because they are the most likely to get under your skin.
“The heat, the unrelenting Texas heat,” she’d bemoan.
“It just makes it harder to hear your brain sometimes. Finding your own Mr. Darcy is challenging enough. Plus, with the Queen of Romance residing in our town, there’s an aura like a heavy cloud of invisible love dust over everything and everyone.
It pervades Darcy, Macey. I’m telling you it does. ”
I blink my way back into the present as Mama waves her hand in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”
“To a dark past.”
Mama slurps up her wine noisily. “Listen, I think you should join me in the theater. Get out your pain through the stage. What about Small Woman? The role has been cast already, of course, but Nancy Solderman has to miss opening night. And they’re desperate for someone who’s willing to do just one evening’s worth of acting. ”
“Small Woman?”
“It’s a small role,” she says, ignoring my laughter. “But her lines are so significant. It would be such fun. We would be colleagues for a night! And you’ll still get to come to rehearsals just as if you were in the entire production.”
I could count the ways this idea is poisonous, but I don’t. Because I am feeling small right now. Too small. I look at Mama and say yes to the play.
And then, she tells me to close the bar for an hour. “I have just the person to help you out with this Logan mess. Come with me.”
I normally say no to everything my mother suggests, but I’m usually not so out of sorts. I turn the sign on the door to Closed and then lock up the empty bar and follow along behind my mother down Main Street.