Save The Date Part 47

"Some old mean queen named Cullen Kane."

"What! Bert, I appreciate your trying to make things up to me, but I do not want to be poaching Cullen Kane's clients."

"It's not poaching," he a.s.sured her. "I met Taylor while I was um, seeing Cullen. You know he wines and dines all these brides when he's trying to get them to commit, but she just discovered he's doing another big wedding the same date and time as hers, at a church across town, and when you meet Taylor's mama, you'll understand that she is not having a florist double-book on her date. I ran into Taylor at Whole Foods this morning, and she remembered me and told me the whole sad story. I might have slipped her one of your business cards. Not an hour later, her mama called here."

"You are shameless," Cara said.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"I told the other two brides you'd call them in the morning. This one"-he plucked the top slip and waved it in front of her-"is from the general manager of that new boutique hotel that opens at the end of July in the old Kresge's store downtown on Broughton Street."

"The Ibis? Did he say what he wanted?"

"She would like to discuss your developing a signature floral look for the hotel. I told her Wednesday noon would be good for you."

"Here? She can't come here. The shop is going to be all torn up. We've got to be of here by Friday. And we've got to finish up all the stuff for that beach wedding Sat.u.r.day...."

"Relax," Bert said. "Deep, cleansing breaths. In, out. Release the tension. You're meeting her at their new lobby restaurant. She'd like you to bring along some concepts, which I told her you'd be pleased to do."

"Concepts? I can't just come up with a whole look out of thin air by Wednesday. I don't know anything..."

Bert grasped her by the shoulders. "I got this. Okay? I went online and looked at the chain's website. There are seventeen Ibis hotels, all over the country, mostly out West, in California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. This is their first property in the South. Each of the hotels has a different name and theme, keyed to the location. I printed out photos I found of their hotels in Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. I think they go for a pretty eclectic, bohemian look."

"You did all that? Today? On top of packing up my stuff?"

"I also finished off one of the oyster-sh.e.l.l chandeliers for Sat.u.r.day."

"How many do we have left to do?"

"Two."

Cara groaned. "Then I guess I better go fire up the glue gun, huh?"

62.

Jack found Libba in the barn Wednesday morning. She'd left the big sliding doors open, and she was standing in front of one of the windows, staring out at the pasture, where a mare and her foal drank from a galvanized watering trough.

She turned at the sound of his footsteps. It seemed to him that Libba Strayhorn had aged ten years since he'd seen her last. Her gray-streaked hair was pushed behind her ears, and the sunlight revealed the network of fine lines and creases radiating out from her warm gray eyes and downturned mouth.

"The wedding is off, Jack."

"I heard."

"Already? Yeah, what am I saying? The gossip mill in Savannah must be working overtime."

"Ryan's mother-in-law, Lillian, is friends with Marie Trapnell," he said.

"I should call Marie," Libba murmured. "Let her know I don't blame her."

Libba thrust her hands in the back pocket of her jeans. "Right now, I feel like a big old fool putting all this time and money and work into this place. Libba's Folly, that's what the neighbors around here have been calling it, and they haven't even gotten the word yet that the wedding is off."

Jack set his toolbox down on the floor. "I don't know what to say, Libba. How is Harris dealing with all this?"

"About like you'd expect. He's crushed. Hurt." Her laugh was bitter. "p.i.s.sed off. He and Brooke lived together for six years. Six years! That girl was like family to all of us. n.o.body understands it."

Jack nodded. "Uh, we don't have to finish the work here if you don't want to. We can leave off tiling the bathroom. The kitchen fixtures have been delivered, but I can probably send them back and just pay a shipping and restocking fee."

"No," Lillian said sharply. "Mitch and I talked about this last night. We want you to go ahead and finish everything, just as planned. Harris is going to get past this. We'll all get past it. He will find somebody who has her head on straight and eventually get married to a girl who can appreciate what she's found in him. Holly has a new boyfriend, and that's gotten pretty serious. They will get married, and eventually we will have a large time right here. And someday, my grandbabies are going to laugh and run and play in this barn."

With that, Libba Strayhorn burst into tears.

Not knowing what else to do, Jack awkwardly patted her back.

Libba took a crumpled tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. "Please forgive a crazy old fool. I know this must be embarra.s.sing for you. Go on and do what you need to do. I'll get out of your way in a few minutes."

"It's okay," Jack said. He hesitated. "I don't know if this is any consolation, but earlier this year, my live-in girlfriend left me, too. It came out of nowhere. She met some other dude and blew town with him. At first, I was destroyed. I mean, what the h.e.l.l? But then ... the longer she was gone, the more I saw that things hadn't been going that great between us. We didn't have much in common. Zoey wanted me to be somebody I wasn't. This sounds mean, but when I look back on it now, I realize we were just a habit. She did me a favor by leaving. But it still hurts like h.e.l.l when the other person does what she did."

"Don't I know it," Libba said, sniffing. "What happened to the girlfriend?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "She's back in town, pestering the h.e.l.l out of me. I let her stay at my place one night, while I was away, and now she keeps turning up, claiming she's just visiting the dog. I'm gonna have to get the locks changed to keep her out."

"But I gather you were able to move on," Libba prompted.

"A couple months ago, I met somebody new." His face darkened. "Okay, I don't know where I was going with this, because that didn't have such a happy ending either."

"Cara?" Libba asked gently.

"Yeah."

"You two broke up? Already? I'm so sorry. She's a lovely girl. A joy to work with, and so creative."

"She's all of that," Jack admitted.

"Do you mind my asking what happened?"

He made a helpless gesture. "The thing is, I don't know what happened. One minute, things were going great. We had fun together, we like the same things. We even have the same kind of dog. Cara has had some bad luck and tough times, financially, and it seemed like everything was coming down on her at once. I wanted to help out. Her shop is in this cool old building downtown on West Jones Street, and some a.s.shole was gonna buy it and put Cara out on the street, out of professional jealousy. It just happens that I used to take piano lessons from the old lady who owned the place. I went to see her and I guess I sort of sweet-talked her a little because I was able to outbid the other guy."

"That's so thoughtful," Libba said.

"I thought so," Jack said wryly. "But apparently I was mistaken. I kept it a secret because I wanted to surprise Cara. The building hadn't been maintained at all, and it needs a lot of work, but I thought we could work on it together, you know? Really transform the place."

Libba squeezed his arm. "You could make anything awesome. I still can't get over the miracle you worked with this old barn. That's the one good thing that came out of all this. I'm just telling myself I didn't lose a daughter-in-law, I gained a fabulous barn."

"Thanks, but that's not how Cara saw it. She was mad as h.e.l.l. Furious. Accused me of going behind her back, and making some sinister power play to get control of her and her business. She actually thought I was going to jack up the rent on her after making the improvements, and when I insisted I wasn't, that p.i.s.sed her off even more, because she said I was insinuating she couldn't pay her own way."

He shook his head again. "I just don't get it. I did this for her. Out of, you know..."

"Love?" Libba raised one eyebrow.

"I guess."

"Had you two talked about your feelings, or how serious things had gotten between you?"

"Not really. I didn't think we needed to. I mean, we were together, and it was going good...."

"And then you bought her building, out of love." Libba laughed. "Some guys would have settled for a nice piece of jewelry, Jack."

He looked confused. "Why would Cara want jewelry? She was going to lose her shop, and her apartment. Her father's breathing down her neck to repay him some money she owes him, and this seemed like a good solution."

"I'll tell you a little story, Jack. Back in the early eighties, Mitch and I had been married a couple of years, and we were renting a crummy garage apartment on Washington Avenue, when I got pregnant with Harris. One day, some friend told Mitch about a little fixer-upper in Kensington Park, so he went to see it on his lunch hour, then came home that night and proudly announced he'd bought us a house."

"And you weren't thrilled?"

"I was enraged! I had three years' worth of back issues of Southern Living, bookmarked with ideas for our first house. And this place was a dump. Two bedrooms, one tiny little bath that didn't even have a shower. No washer or dryer, and the kitchen was a nightmare. If Mitch had bothered to show me the place, I could have pointed that out. I could have pointed out the fire station across the street, and predicted that every time there was an alarm, those fire trucks would go racing out of there with sirens wailing, waking our sleeping baby. But most of all, I hated that my husband didn't understand me enough to know you don't make that kind of a decision without consulting your partner."

"Point taken," Jack said.

"I tell you, I stewed and fumed over that house every day, until when I got pregnant with Holly, I laid down the law, we sold that house, and we picked out another house together in Ardsley Park."

"And you lived happily ever after."

A smile crept across Libba's round, ruddy face. "We did, didn't we?"

"I don't see that kind of ending for us," he said. "Cara is determined to move into another building, over on East Hall. The guy who owns it is a bottom-feeder, had it on the market forever, and couldn't unload it. I took a look at it, just out of curiosity, and it's a real piece of c.r.a.p. That block is no place for a florist's shop, and it's no place for her. But I've learned my lesson. I'm staying out of it."

"No chance of a reconciliation?" Libba asked.

Jack shook his head vehemently. "I tried. Now I'm done. A man can only crawl for so long."

63.

Cara heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. She stuck her head around the kitchen doorway. "Bert? Is that you?"

A blond head came into view. "It's Leo." He topped the last stair and flashed her his trademark Southeastern Region Salesman of the Quarter smile. "The shop door was open and unlocked, but there was n.o.body around downstairs, so I thought I should come up here and check things out. You shouldn't leave your door unlocked in this neighborhood, Cara. Anybody could walk right in here, like I just did."

"Thanks for the helpful advice, Leo. What do you want?"

He glanced around the kitchen. "I saw all the boxes downstairs. You're moving?"

"Yes." She slammed the packing-tape dispenser on the top of a cardboard box of dishes and dragged it across the closed flaps, snapping off the tape at the end.

"How come? I thought you liked it here. It looked like a pretty sweet setup."

"The building has been sold." Cara moved over to the next box. Leo leaned over and plucked a mug from a nest of wadded-up newspaper.

"Hey, I remember these. They were a wedding present from my aunt, right?"

"Keep it," Cara said.

"That's okay," Leo said, handing the cup back. "I got plenty myself."

He leaned back against the counter, crossed one foot over the other, oblivious of the fact that he was in her way.

"Where are you moving to? Not out of town, right?"

She put the tape down on the countertop. "Is there a point to this drop-in, Leo? Because if there is, I wish you'd get to it. Bert will be back with the van any minute now, and I want to finish boxing up this kitchen."

He glanced around the kitchen. "What happened to your new boyfriend? How come he's not the one doing all the heavy lifting?"

Cara flushed. "None of your business."

"Sounds like he's out of the picture now. Just as well. The dude was not in your cla.s.s, at all."

Leo reached in his pocket, brought out a Chap Stick, and ran it across his lips, smacking them noisily, and in the process reminding Cara of how much she'd loathed that particular nervous habit of his.

"Again. Why are you here?"

"Well yeah," Leo said. "The thing is, your dad called and asked me to look in on you."

"Why would the Colonel do that?"

"He's worried about you. He said he'd tried calling you several times, at the shop and on your cell phone...."

"Who gave him my cell-phone number?" Cara demanded. "I didn't."

"Okay, I might have shared that with him. But only because he was really concerned about you. He called me because he said he hadn't heard from you, and he was even thinking of flying down here to see if you were okay."

"I knew I should have changed that number after we split up," Cara said. "He actually asked you to come over here and spy on me?"

"It's not spying. We were married for Pete's sake. I care about you." He ran an index finger down her cheek, and Cara flinched. "You dad cares about you. "

"The Colonel cares about the fact that I still owe him money," Cara said. "Did he appoint you his new collection agency? Or are you his idea of a leg-breaker?"

"He never said a word to me about money. He said you're having some challenges, that's all. He thought maybe I could help. I would help, if you'd let me."

"'Challenges'?" Cara hooted. "I'm pretty sure my father never used that word in reference to me. He probably told you I'm a screwup and a failure. Did he tell you he wants me to close up the shop and move back home?"