Page 37 of What August Heard
“Don’t Callie me. She packed her bags in the middle of the night and walked out of this house alone and you just turned your car off and came back inside.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She pressed her mouth together. “Do you have any idea—”
There were footsteps on the stairs. Callie turned to look.
Margaux came into the kitchen. Her hair was down and her eyes were soft with sleep and she looked at me like a puppy.
“Baby, what happened? Is everything okay?”
Callie looked at her.
Then she looked at me.
She picked her car keys up off the counter. She walked past Margaux, and past me.
She turned around as she was just about to step out, as if she had forgotten something.
“You know what?” She said, her eyes moving between Margaux and me.
“You both deserve each other.”
Then she turned around and left.
I stood in the kitchen.
Margaux put her hand on my arm. “What’s wrong with her?”
I looked at the counter. At the note still sitting under the corner of the cookie jar.
“Margaux, we need to talk.”
***
Chapter 13
August
I had cried enough.
That was the decision I made at ten in the morning, still on the kitchen floor, back against the cabinets, staring at the ceiling. I had cried enough and I had bills to pay that nobody was going to pay for me. I had not been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had been born into a situation that required me to move on from whatever was breaking my heart and go do the thing. I had been doing that my whole life, and today was not going to be different just because Fletcher Calloway had called me a nobody on a patio in Sable Cove.
I got up. I washed my face. I called my flower supplier.
The Millhaven Farmer’s Market was already busy by the time I set up. Cliff was at his booth, talking to a young couple who had bought a few bottles of his honey. He looked up when I came in with my first bucket and watched me set up without saying anything for a while.
I arranged the dahlias. Lightest to darkest, left to right.
“What happened to you?” Cliff said.
I looked up. “Nothing at all.” I gave him my best smile. “Good afternoon, Cliff.”
“I can see it,” he said. “Right there in your eyes. Something big happened. It takes a big thing to bring down a girl like you. I told you that on your first day.” He paused. “The young man who doesn’t love you but buys all your flowers. Is he coming today?”
I straightened a peony. “I don’t know.”
“Actually.” I put the peony down. “I don’t think he’ll be coming here anymore.”
My eyes went blurry. Fast, without warning, like a faucet turning. I blinked hard and looked at the dahlias and told myself absolutely not. Not here. Not at the market. Not in front of the customers and the guitar player and Cliff.
He came around from behind his booth and put both arms around me.
