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Charlie climbed into Dell’s truck and turned the key in the ignition. The feeling weighing down his arms, twisting in his chest, it was all very new. Something he’d never experienced before, so it was hard to pinpoint, hard to label.
His career was being threatened. He had no wife, no serious girlfriend, no chance for kids anytime soon. He had things, but the intangibles, success and love and contentment...well, if he lost his job, they would all be missing.
His chest squeezed tighter, arms feeling heavier. He had a bad feeling it all meant one thing.
Charlie Wainwright was a failure. And that was something he’d never been.
* * *
MEG CARMICHAEL IGNORED the heavy grief in her chest and set up her table at the Millertown Farmers’ Market. She chatted idly about the weather with the woman to her left, who had a table of colorful jellies and jams set out. She pulled out brochures, breathed in the scent of lavender and smiled despite the tears pricking her eyes.
Lavender had always been her grandmother’s favorite.
With a deep breath Meg plastered a smile on her face and looked at the display she’d put together. Baskets of soaps boasting different shapes and scents. The Hope Springs Farm name and an illustration of a poppy and a goat graced her signs, brochures and labels.
Look at all you’ve done. It was Grandma’s voice, because that was the voice that had guided her since she ended her last stint in rehab. She’d been clean for eight years now, sober for six. She had a business, and a life she was proud of, to show for it.
And Grandma was gone. Meg had to keep telling herself that was okay, that was life. Getting high wouldn’t change the fact that her sole familial supporter was gone. Dead.
Nothing would change that, so what was the point in throwing away her life again? The pain wouldn’t go away. She’d have to be her own positive force. Her own support.
That wasn’t scary or overwhelming. It was empowering. Or something.
Meg repeated the word empowered over and over inside her head. Willing herself to believe it as the morning went on. She was powerful. She was strong. Breathe in. Breathe out. Smile. Charm. Sell.
The market was busy, which made it easier. Though her booth that boasted no food products wasn’t as popular as the vegetable stands and the honey and egg stands, she was having a pretty successful morning for herself.
Because she was successful, empowered, strong.
An older woman with a little white dog passed, ignoring her greeting on her way to the organic dog treat table a few spots down. Not to be deterred, Meg greeted the next passerby. “Mother’s Day is just around the corner!”
As she’d hoped, that caught the attention of a man who appeared to be in his thirties, alone and the type to be too busy to remember Mother’s Day. Meg had a knack for recognizing those types.
“We’ve got lots of scents and shapes. Owls, foxes, pretty designs. Perfect for any mother who likes nice, usable things.” She smiled broadly. He couldn’t be much older than her and was only an inch or two taller. Sandy-brown hair that looked carefully styled, the kind of five o’clock shadow that looked cultivated rather than accidental.
He was...actually kind of hot. Which was weird, because she wasn’t usually attracted to men who looked like they belonged in the world she’d grown up in. Except for the jeans. Her mother never would have approved of jeans.
“Owls, huh?” He stepped closer, squinting at her baskets of soaps.
“Owls are scented with lemon verbena. Very cute and fun,” she said, pointing to the appropriate basket. “Goat milk soap has great antiaging benefits—not that I’d mention it to the recipient.”
“No, I don’t suppose I would either.”
“You can buy by the soap for three fifty a piece or a gift basket of five is fifteen dollars.”
“Fifteen dollars for soap?”
He wasn’t the first person to balk at her prices, and he no doubt wouldn’t be the last. Still, her repeat customers didn’t seem to mind. “I promise the recipient will be a convert and won’t blink an eye at the price. Goat milk soap is that good.”
“Well, you’re quite the saleswoman.” He gave her a sideways glance, his expression changing as he took in her bright and colorful arm of tattoos. “I’ll give you that,” he added, looking away. But she read the expression all the same. Judgment.
Once upon a time, the judgment had bothered her, fueled her. She’d used that judgment to prove the world didn’t understand. She was above the world, its rules, everything. She sought out that judgment.
These days...well, she figured it didn’t really matter what some stranger thought of her choices.
“Mix-and-match gift basket?” he asked, running a long finger over the face of an owl.
“Yup. Name your five, and I’ll even package them up all pretty.” She went behind the table and pulled out one of her gift bags, complete with the Hope Springs logo on the front and a pretty red lace ribbon to tie it up with.
She waited for him to pick the soaps he wanted, but he just stared at her wrist. “Is that...”
“A goat?” She held out her arm to emphasize the tattoo at her wrist—the only one she’d gotten post-rehab. A little goat with a poppy, sitting beneath the cloud design that took up most of her forearm. Her fresh-start goat. “Yup, it’s a goat. I love them.”
“I see that.” Finally he shifted his gaze away from her arm and started looking through the soaps, picking out one of each kind and handing them to her so she could package them. He then pulled his wallet out of his pants—his very expensive-looking leather wallet.
“Don’t want anything for yourself?” she joked.
He glanced around her table of pastels and bows and flowers. Girly to the extreme. “Why not? Not getting any younger. Maybe I could use some antiaging soap. I’ll take the goat to remember you by.” He picked it up with a grin that said he knew he was charming. The kind of grin that usually made her roll her eyes and stick a finger down her mouth in a gagging motion.
His didn’t quite have that effect, though. His made her grin back.
He plopped the goat soap into her palm and she blinked for a second before remembering the routine. Wrap it up. Get yourself together, because you are not sixteen.
“Well, I certainly appreciate your business.”
“I can’t resist a good saleswoman.”
A little flush crept into her cheeks, totally against her will. Oh, he was too charming and he knew it. Somehow, it didn’t dilute her reaction at all. “Keep me in mind for all your soap and lotion needs.” She plucked a card from her table and handed it to him, trying not to cringe at how ridiculous that sounded.
“My...” He cocked his head, gaze running from her table back to her.
His dark eyes met hers, and one side of his mouth quirked up. “I don’t have a lot of soap and lotion needs, but I’ll still keep you in mind.”
He was flirting with her and it had...been a while. Her life was pretty isolated these days. Not so much by design, but necessity. Running a goat farm all by herself was hard work, and she didn’t know a lot of fellow thirtysomethings as interested in cloven-hoofed creatures as she was, aside from the occasional satanist.
He pocketed her card and took the bag of soaps. “I’ll see you around.”
“I’m here every Saturday.” Oh, brother. That was just lame. But he smiled and nodded, and she let herself stare as he walked away.
Really nice butt.
Designer jeans.
Couldn’t win them all. The fact of the matter was, cute and flirting or not, he was the type of guy she’d known all too well growing up. The nice clothes and expensive watch, that serious business resting face.
He was a type—a type she had no interest in.
Oh well. It didn’t hurt to look, especially when the chances of him returning were slim to none. When her phone chimed in her pocket, she stiffened. The text from her mother wasn’t unexpected, but it felt cruel. Mom surely considered it efficient, but the timing, the brevity...
The funeral will be Thursday.
Grandma was gone. Meg hadn’t been allowed to be in the hospital for fear she might “upset people.” Even though Grandma had been the only one to stand by her. Even though Grandma had set her up with the farm after Meg got out of rehab, and even though Grandma had supported her through every setback.
As though that hadn’t been bad enough, every offer of help with arrangements had also been rebuffed. Because it was what they wanted. No one in the Carmichael clan was thinking about what Grandma wanted. Would have wanted. All they could think about was appearances. What people might think.
It had been drilled in them for generations, Meg figured. This strident need to show only perfection and success.
To them, Meg would always be a failure. Always be imperfect.
Meg blinked away tears and forced her lips to curve upward as two women passed. “Good morning! Goat milk soap has many skin benefits. Can I offer you a brochure?”
Suck it up. Smile. Pretend nothing is wrong. Mom would be so proud.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e6121bbe-7be2-50fa-9e53-4006cb7ccf58)
“OBVIOUSLY WE’LL OFFER you a reference as this isn’t a reflection of your abilities.”
Charlie sat in the cushy chair of his new boss’s office, which had been his old boss’s office, but now...
He blinked, trying to make his thoughts follow a straight line. This wasn’t out of the blue. He’d known this possibility existed. But now it was here and he somehow couldn’t wrap his brain around it.
“We’d like you to stay on for a few weeks, ease us through the transition. You’d be compensated, naturally. Alisha here will go over your severance package once that’s done.” Mr. Collins nodded toward the human resources woman Charlie had never met because she’d come from this new company.
It didn’t matter who she was or what she went over, he was being let go from the position he’d worked his ass off for. He’d poured ten years of his life into this company and what did he have to show for it? A severance package?
“I’m sure you’ll land on your feet. You’re sharp. I’m sorry we couldn’t keep you, but you know how these things go.”
Mr. Collins held out his hand, the same dismissive gesture Charlie had extended to others in the past. But always for performance reasons. He’d never had to lay off a member of his team just because.
But Charlie had been businessman professional too long not to smile politely, take the offered hand and let Alisha usher him down the corridor to her office. An office that had belonged to Marissa, a mother of three, not that long ago.
This new woman’s office was spare and efficient, absent of a million hand-painted drawings with goofy magnets along the edge of the filing cabinet. No giant bowl of hard candy at the edge of her desk either.
Things like this had been happening for weeks, and he was shamed to realize how it’d failed to hit him until he was the one getting the ax. Change usually meant a person’s life was being upended. The changes that had been sweeping through the office hadn’t been voluntary or easy for most involved.
But he’d been too wrapped up in himself, in how much he deserved to stay, to notice how it was affecting people, and that shamed him too, deeply.
There was paperwork to fill out. Alisha spoke in gentle, patient tones, so he nearly felt like he was back in kindergarten, complete with her escorting him back to his office.
His office. His.
“You’ll want to start notifying your clients,” Alisha said in that elementary school teacher voice. “Before they hear from anyone else.”
Right. Work to do. Clients to notify so the company that was firing him—no, laying him off—didn’t lose any business. He would need to prepare everything to turn over to his replacement, whom he’d meet tomorrow. It didn’t matter that he’d been let go, there was still work to do.
For the afternoon, he worked as diligently as he had the previous ten years. Making sure clients understood nothing would change, readying files and binders. He efficiently and methodically worked to make his job something he could simply hand over to someone else.
It was a long day of continuous surrealism; none of it really sank in. Because he had a few weeks ahead of him, of training someone else to do his job. He had weeks of making sure things were “in order.”
So, at the end of the day, when he shut his laptop down, he thought this would feel the same too.
Instead he stared at the blank screen. His usual next step was to snap it shut, slide it into his briefcase, check his phone one last time for emails or messages and then walk out. Most Thursday nights he ate dinner with his parents. It wasn’t a day to stay late in the office, like he did every other night.
But the IT Department had asked him to leave the computer so they could prep it for his replacement. He didn’t know how to walk away from this extension of himself that was going to be handed off to someone else.
His replacement.
He looked around the office that had been his for almost two years. He wasn’t a knickknack kind of guy. There were some awards on the wall, a picture of the Wainwrights from Lainey’s first birthday on his desk next to his Stan Musial–signed baseball.
It would take him ten minutes tops to erase himself from this office, and he didn’t know what that said about him, or his job, or his life; he only knew it felt like it meant something—something not particularly good.
* * *
MEG PACED THE SIDEWALK outside the church trying very hard to breathe through the sobs that racked her body.
She couldn’t hear what was happening inside, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She didn’t want the prayers or priest’s words telling her Grandma was in a better place. What better place was there than here—at Meg’s side?
Meg tried to mop up her face, but she’d neglected to bring tissues, so she had only the collar of her dress and the backs of her hands. And she just kept crying, so it was a completely useless exercise anyway.
She might not want to be in there, but she knew she should be. Grandma would want her in there, would consider it the right thing to do.
But she also wouldn’t want a scene, and if Meg tried to get in a second time...
The broken sob was impossible to swallow down. How could they turn her away from the funeral? How could they ban her? Grandma wouldn’t have wanted that. Grandma had always loved her.
No matter what.
Meg knew, in a way, this was her fault. She hadn’t planned well and the black sweater she figured she’d throw over her tattoos had boasted a giant hole in the armpit when she pulled it out of her closet.
Meg had spent ten frantic moments pawing through her closet trying to find something acceptable to her parents that would also cover her arms and match and be suitable grieving colors and she’d just...given up.
What was the point of scrambling through your closet when your grandmother was gone and your family was going to snub you anyway? To her parents, the tattoos were the visible slap in the face of all Meg had thrown away, all the shame she’d brought to their doorstep. In the world of her parents, appearances were everything.
So she’d accepted that Mom would sneer at the simple black dress that allowed some of her tattoos to be visible. She’d accepted that she’d probably have to sit alone, maybe even toward the back of the church.
But she’d never imagined it possible, not in a million years, that her parents would bar her from her own grandmother’s funeral.
The church bells tolled and Meg felt like she was eight again, alone outside this church, not understanding what was wrong with her—why her parents would rather pretend she didn’t exist than hug her.
She’d run out of church one Sunday, determined to just run. Because the priest could talk all he wanted about God’s love, but it hadn’t been infused into her parents. All they’d ever cared about was what their friends might have said behind their backs, or to their faces. The deals Dad might have lost if certain business partners found out he couldn’t control his daughter. The Carmichael name.
“I won’t go back there,” she muttered aloud, no doubt looking like an insane person. But surely this couldn’t be the worst behavior anyone had ever seen at a funeral.
The stately church doors opened with a groan, and everyone began processing out. Red eyes, tears, handkerchiefs. Some people didn’t look twice at her. A few of her distant relatives touched her arm briefly on their way to the cars that would take them to the cemetery.
But everyone knew not to stop and talk to Meg. Meg the addict. Meg the failure. Meg the giant black splotch on a proud and old-moneyed family.
When Mom approached, her eyes held more fury than grief, and all Meg wanted to do was leave to find a drink. Find oblivion. It had been a long time since she sincerely wished for something else to take her away, but that wish was so deep, so big, it was all she could think about as Mom bore down on her.
