Helen Brenna - The Pursuit of Jesse

“You’re not giving me much credit,” Missy said.

Maybe she could share part of the truth. Only part. “It’s a long story, Missy.” She stuck one last iris stalk into the vase and called it a day. She could mess with this arrangement forever and it would never be perfect. “You sure you want to hear?”

“Come on, Sarah.” Missy smiled gently. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

SARAH PUT THE ARRANGEMENT in the cooler and then turned. This was it. Time to get this off her chest—at least some of it—once and for all. “You knew I grew up in Indiana,” she said, leaning back against the wall and letting her thoughts wander back in time, an indulgence she rarely allowed herself. “But I’ve never told you much about my childhood. My family.”

“No,” Missy murmured.

“Well, as wealthy as your family was? Is, I should say. Mine was on the other end of the spectrum.”

“I’ve met your mom and dad,” Missy said, confusion on her face. “They seemed…middle-class.”

“You met my stepdad,” Sarah said. A few years back, when Brian was too small to take care of himself, her mom and stepdad had driven to Mirabelle to help with Brian during a particularly busy wedding season. “My real dad died when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay.” It really wasn’t, but maybe talking about him might help. Sarah’s real father had been the only bright spot in an otherwise dreary childhood, and she still missed him with a vengeance. “Before my dad died, we were dirt-poor.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It’s nothing I’m proud of, that’s for sure. Maybe if my parents had only had a couple children things might’ve been different, but I’m smack-dab in the middle of seven kids. They could never afford a house, so all of us were crammed into a second-floor apartment, above a drugstore.

“My dad worked at an orchard. Long, back-breaking hours during certain times of the year. We hardly ever saw him at harvest time, but in the winter he made up for it with all of us. Work hard and play harder. That’s what he’d say.”

She smiled, remembering. She had only a few pictures of her dad, but in every one of them he was smiling or laughing. “He was always happy. I don’t think I ever saw him angry. At us kids. Or my mom. God, he and Mom were so much in love. He could make her laugh like no one else.

“I remember them talking quietly about buying a house. My dad wanted to start his own apple orchard, and my mom used to say that a house was the key to happiness.” Sarah looked away. “She also used to say, after he died, that he was all talk and no action.”

“Oh, Sarah.” Missy reached out and briefly squeezed her hand. “How did he die?”

“He got sick. Had a low fever. Didn’t seem to be a big deal.” She paused, not wanting to remember anything more than that. The rest was too painful. “A few days into it, he got really bad, but we couldn’t afford a doctor. By the time my mom realized how sick he was, it was too late. He died of complications from pneumonia. How stupid is that? All because we didn’t have enough money to pay for a doctor.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was devastated. Heartbroken. We all were. My mom didn’t come out of her bedroom for days. Not long after that, we moved back to my mom’s hometown to be by my grandparents and she met my stepdad. He was an okay guy. Quiet and dependable. Nice enough—a banker—but boring, especially when compared to my dad. I understand now why she married him, but at the time I couldn’t forgive her.”

“For marrying again?”

“For betraying my father. More than that, for, I guess, settling. It wasn’t long before I started to feel…almost…claustrophobic. I couldn’t wait to get away from Indiana.”

“So you left,” Missy said.

Sarah nodded. “Right after high-school graduation, I went to Miami. When I got there, I felt shell-shocked. I’d been so sheltered.”

“A good girl in a big, tough city,” Missy murmured.

“I did okay at first. Picked up a lot. Fast. I got a job within the first week working for a well-known wedding planner. Her clients were only the richest and the most famous.”

Having grown up as a Camden, one of the wealthiest families this country had ever known, Missy had probably run in the same crowd until she’d turned her back on her family and tried for her own fresh start.

“I wasn’t as strong as you were, Missy. Before I knew it, I’d fallen in with a crowd that loved to party. Damn, I met some men who knew how to have a good time. But then, I guess, so did I.” She glanced at her friend, hoping to gauge her reaction. Instead of judgment, there was only compassion and understanding. Still, she knew she couldn’t share everything.

It’d been a long time since she’d let herself even think about the past, let alone talk about it, but as she relayed her story to Missy, it hit Sarah. She was lucky to be alive. “I did a lot of crazy things back then, you know?”

“Didn’t we all?”

There was no way Missy had stepped out like Sarah, and Sarah’s brief step out of line had been the biggest mistake of her life. “That’s when I met Brian’s dad.” Along with a few other bad boys she hadn’t been able to resist.

“You told me he died. I figured the rest would come when you were ready.” Missy frowned. “He is dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Sarah chuckled. “This is one man who won’t be coming back from the grave. Good riddance to him, too.”

“That bad?”

“Robert Coleman, Jr. Name ring a bell?”

“Coleman and Coleman Enterprises?” Missy asked.

Sarah nodded.

“That company’s the largest health and beauty manufacturer in the world,” Missy went on. “That’s a lot of money. And power. How did you meet him?”

“At a nightclub. I was out partying with girlfriends when he and a couple other guys asked us to dance. Before you know it, we were all heading to Bobby’s yacht. Turned out I was a real sucker for a man’s smile. His was something. The kind that could charm a rosebud into blooming. Or a woman into bed. It wasn’t long before Bobby singled me out. One thing was for sure, that man knew how to have a good time.”

“When you have that kind of money, it’s one temptation after another.”

“For him or me?” Sarah shook her head and decided it was best to leave out a piece of the next part of her story. Just one small detail. “Then I got pregnant.” She held Missy’s gaze. “Overnight everything changed. Bobby mostly cleaned up his act and asked me to marry him. I agreed.”

Missy’s eyes misted with tears. “You loved him.”

“I suppose, in a way. There must’ve been a part of me that knew it wasn’t going to work because I set the wedding date for after the baby’s due date.”

More likely a part of her had known what she was doing had been wrong. She’d justified it by saying Bobby was cleaning up his act, but that had been no excuse.

“The wedding plans zipped along. Bobby and his mom pulled out all the stops and I fell deep into the quicksand, getting caught up in all the excitement. Saffron flowers and orchid bouquets. A handmade wedding gown. Over seven hundred guests at his mother’s estate in Miami Beach for a sit-down dinner.”

“Then Bobby screwed up.”

“Yeah. He completely disappeared for a few days. When he came back, he was like a little boy he was so sorry. Went straight again. Promised me the world. I believed him. That happened at least three times before Brian was born.

“He was out partying when I went into labor. Bobby showed up at the hospital the next day, all smiles and apologies, but looking like death warmed over. Still, I didn’t call off the wedding. I kept thinking that being a father would change things. It didn’t. I couldn’t even trust him to babysit.”