Life Without You (25 page)

The marriage may not have been real in the eyes of the law; but when I’d spoken my vows, I had thought I was beginning a path to happiness. In exchange, I’d been cursed by the lies of a criminal whose real name I had not known, his wedding vows spoken as falsely as the words that were printed on his birth certificate.

“Once my parents were gone, it was harder,” Savannah continued, bringing my mind back to our conversation. “Thank God I had Vivi and Annabelle. You might not know it to look at the three of us, but we’re actually all pretty close. And as much as Vivi goes on about Annabelle, she really does love her. They’re a lot more alike than they’ll admit.”

A smile crept over her face. “Your grammie’s cakes certainly didn’t do any harm in helping things feel just a little bit better, either. When Caleb died, she baked a cake and brought it to the reception after the memorial service. And every month for that first year after he was gone, even though she hardly knew me, she baked me my very own cake, always decorated with something that went with the month. I think it was her way of reminding me to celebrate that there is still so much of life left to live, even after something like that. Merry was such a special lady, and her cakes were so special. I think she never really understood that, never felt that important, even with all the things she did for other people. And when all of those trendy cake shops started popping up everywhere, doing fondant and things that she didn’t know how to do…it really made her lose confidence even more. She felt like she couldn’t compete—she told me a few times when I called her for cakes that I probably wanted something fancier than she could do. Fancy as those cakes were, though, they never tasted like Merry’s.
Her
cakes were always something you could count on being good. And that’s why so many people ordered them, year after year, for
everything
they could think of.”

Savannah’s smile deepened and she closed her eyes, looking as though she was imagining a bite of the sweet frosting as it melted on her tongue. “It’s funny how much all three of us—Annabelle, Vivi, and I—loved her cakes. Something else we had in common.” She paused. “For Annabelle, though, I think hurting your grammie was one thing that she never felt forgiven for. No matter how many cakes she ordered and how much business she sent Merry’s way, Annabelle always seemed as though she wasn’t satisfied.”

“You know, then, about George and my grandmother?” I asked, feeling somewhat surprised at the realization that the subject had never come up in conversation with Savannah before now.

She nodded. “Annabelle told me what happened. It wasn’t something that we discussed regularly or anything like that, but she told me the story once when we were talking about how much we loved Merry’s cakes. I asked her how long she had know your grammie, and then we just got to talking…” Savannah shook her head in wonder. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how deeply people can affect your life without really knowing it?”

I nodded silently. It really was amazing to me, how sometimes even the most seemingly small acts could shift things so much, could set someone else off course or help them get back on track. How you could heal or destroy someone else with a simple word.

“I think that’s why Annabelle tried so hard, for all those years. She saw the damage that came from running off with George like she did, and she wanted so much for your grandmother to see how sorry she was for all of it.” Savannah shrugged. “So Annabelle did what Annabelle does best—she used her powers of persuasion and her influence to get her ladies in line. Did you know that Annabelle gave your grammie her first big order?” Savannah watched me carefully as she spoke, no doubt wondering if I was really understanding the weight of what she was saying. “After that, there weren’t many cakes ordered in this town that weren’t baked by Merry. Annabelle saw to that, but she also saw to it that no one ever told your grammie just how much of a hand she’d played in things.”

“You mean Grammie wouldn’t have started doing all of those cakes if Annabelle hadn’t stepped in?” I asked, feeling dumbfounded.

Savannah smiled. “Remember, Annabelle has quite the ability to use her power for good, and she definitely exercised that power. Merry might have done it, eventually, on her own. But by having the encouragement of so many women who all insisted that they wanted her and her alone to bake their cakes…that was something.”

“Obviously,” I murmured. “Wow. I wish I had that kind of force.”

Savannah laughed. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? It’s scary, in some ways, but in cases like this, the ability to have so much influence is inspiring.”

“Awe-inspiring,” I agreed. “I take it that Annabelle told you all this?” I ventured.

“She did,” Savannah said. “But it wasn’t in a haughty, look-at-me way. Actually, I think she told me because she was, in her own way, looking for reassurance that maybe, just maybe, she’d done something good in the middle of all that she’d done wrong. Much as she’d hate to admit it, Annabelle isn’t above making mistakes.” The fondness in Savannah’s voice was undeniable; but so, too, was the fact that she knew far better than to place Annabelle above reproach. She’d learned to take the good with the bad, just as I suspected Vivi had, in all the years that they’d known one another.

“After your grammie made her that first cake, Annabelle gave her a cake server to say thank you. It was silver, with her initials engraved on the handle. I wonder whatever happened to that cake server?” she murmured, turning her eyes back to the carousel and the cluster of children that was now spilling from its gated enclosure, having satisfied themselves for the afternoon, ready to move on to their next adventure.

What, indeed? And had Grammie known, when Annabelle had given her that gift, what she was telling her? Had she realized that Annabelle wanted her to know that she saw beauty and uniqueness and talent that should be celebrated and recognized?

I hoped so. And I hoped that it was something she was reminded of, every time she used that silver-handled server.

Chapter Twenty

Pulling on the jeans Annabelle had bought me felt downright delicious, if I was going to be honest. It had been so long since I’d actually had a brand-spanking-new pair that I almost didn’t know what to do with myself, and I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone would be able to tell just how special I was feeling. I knew it was ridiculous, but it didn’t make it any less true. Now that I’d finally made the decision to wear them and enjoy them, the jeans were giving me a little bit of a confidence boost.

Which, now that I thought about it, had been precisely what Annabelle had intended when she’d purchased them for me. I just had to make that feeling last, once I walked through the door and out into the real world again. Not that I thought that any amount of new clothes could fix what was wrong with me; but I kind of viewed it as an outward step toward what I wanted to accomplish with the bigger part of me, the part of me that so very greatly needed to be reclaimed and redeemed. The part of me that I had to believe could still be pulled from the wreckage.

I finished dressing carefully, taking a moment to appreciate the fact that everything was fresh and new, with none of my old associations attached. I had a clean slate with these clothes, a chance to make new memories in them. Memories that I hoped would become the beginning of my story back to real, true, full life.

Where I would go from here really
was
up to me.

“Dellie, your cousin’s here!” I heard Grandpa yell at me from down the hall, and I smiled, shaking my head. Some things would never change, I thought. But I was glad of that, in this case. Hopefully, seeing my cousin now, after all this time, would be another marker of me regaining my identity and trying to repair some of the relationships I had allowed to lapse.

I’d called Olivia a few days before, finally doing something I should have done much sooner, right when I’d found out about Grammie and George. It had been too much of a shock at first, though. And even after I’d had a chance to process it all and discuss it with my sister and mom, I hadn’t been sure that it was my place to be the one to tell her, assuming that she’d been as unaware of the whole thing as I had been. According to Uncle Luke, though, Olivia and her brother had a head start on the information. Which now gave me the freedom to talk about it with her, to see if she’d felt as blindsided as I had been.

Had the circumstances been different, I might have been angry about the fact that I’d been kept in the dark, when my cousins had known the story. Admittedly, part of me still felt a little resentment when I’d found out, but the larger part of me understood the reasoning behind it all. Grammie had told them herself—Olivia, at least—at a time in Olivia’s life when she was recovering from a broken heart. She’d wanted her to know how much she understood being hurt and that she wasn’t alone. She had wanted to help her heal.

“Be there in a minute!” I yelled back, taking one last look in the mirror before I left the room to reestablish my connection with my cousin, the girl who had once spent countless hours with me catching lightning bugs and making rings, who’d raided the cookie jar with me on so many summer visits, who’d ridden the carousel with me and been my cohort as we licked bowls and beaters clean of batter when Grammie was finished with a cake. The girl who was now a woman, a single mother who’d been through trials that had made her stronger, inspiring to me in ways that I knew she wasn’t even aware of.

I hoped that I would be able to express that to her now, seeing her again, face-to-face for the first time in a decade.

The phone conversation itself had been a long time in coming. We’d kept loose contact on Facebook, but our once tightly knit relationship had gone the way of so many family associations as we got older and found our places in the world. The many miles between us, distance-wise, didn’t help things, either; but I regretted now not trying harder to maintain our easy friendship. And, admittedly, Olivia was another person in my life that I was hiding from, another person that I was afraid of allowing to see just how little I resembled the Dellie she used to know.

I walked down the hall, taking a deep breath and hoping I was ready for this. True, that phone call had gone a long way, but we were still so out of sync with one another after all this time. I didn’t expect to pick up where we’d left off—once so close—but I did hope that this would be a starting point. And that I could ask for her forgiveness, as well, for not being here at a time when I should have been.

Now she was here, more than halfway through my month-long visit, having driven down from Richmond once she finally had a break in her already overly jammed schedule of juggling work and college courses and single-motherhood. Hopefully it wasn’t an effort she would regret.

I poked my head into the kitchen, no doubt looking tentative. What would she think when she saw me? Would this meeting be awkward, or warm and easy? I could only hope that it would go well, that we would have a chance to talk about things and establish a new connection that would last past this visit.

“Dellie?” Her voice was the same as it had always been, just a bit more mature, bearing telltale traces of her Virginia roots. A voice I had grown up knowing, a voice I hoped would become familiar once again.

“Hi, Olivia!” I said back, wondering if the smile on my face would communicate warmth or reflect the worry I was feeling. I stepped fully into the kitchen and moved forward to embrace her, bridging the gap in between us with each step I took.

“It’s been too long, Dellie!” she exclaimed, wrapping me into a hug. “Much, much too long!”

“It has,” I agreed, squeezing her with emphasis. “I’m so glad I came, though. And I’m so glad you could come down for a visit while I’m here. I was really wanting to see you—I just wasn’t sure it was going to be possible, with everything you’ve got going on.”

“No, no, I thought it was important. We have so much catching up to do, don’t we?” Olivia said, taking a step back to look at me, her eyes searching mine. I took the opportunity to study her as well, noting the changes of the past few years. Her face had matured, of course; but she still had the warm, sweet smile of her childhood, dark blue eyes that twinkled when she laughed, and a thick curtain of dark blonde hair that fell to her jawline. She and I were just about the same height, but her body was wholesome and capable-looking where mine was frail. She was gorgeous, and I hoped that it was something she could see, every time she looked in the mirror.

I nodded. Yes, we certainly did have a lot to catch up on. Not the least of which was how we had both responded to finding out what had happened, once upon a time so long ago.

Grandpa stood watching us, a smile on his face at his girls, back together after so much time apart. “So what are you two planning to do this afternoon?” he asked, still smiling.

Fortunately, we’d made a plan during our phone call, one that would grant us freedom to talk without worrying that Grandpa would overhear us, one that would give us a little bit of privacy and some real time to visit and catch up.

“Nothing big. We’re going to go get some lunch and talk,” Olivia replied, casting a warm smile in his direction. “We were thinking it might be nice to just go wander around downtown and find something that looks good. Any suggestions?” she asked Grandpa.

He thought for a moment. “I can’t rightly say, girls. I don’t really get out much that way to eat, but I’ve heard there’s a cafe there that has some good sandwiches. And there’s a seafood restaurant or two, of course, right on the waterfront.”

Olivia and I both nodded. “Well, we’ll find something, I’m sure,” I said, trying to move things along a little. More than anything, I just wanted to have some time to talk, away from curious ears and prying eyes. Not that I thought Grandpa was nosy or anything, but having a private place to relax into conversation would do us both good.

“You ready, then?” Olivia asked me, reaching for the purse and keys she’d deposited on the kitchen table sometime after her arrival.

“Are you sure you don’t mind us leaving you, Grandpa?” I asked, suddenly feeling somewhat guilty at our abandonment of him, especially since Olivia had only been here for a few minutes.