Liars (Licking Thicket 2)

His face fell and it almost broke my heart. “No, of course. Of course you do. I understand.” Parrish tried to give me a smile as if everything was okay, but it so clearly wasn’t. “See you… tomorrow? Or… or whatever.”

“Parrish,” I breathed, leaning in to kiss the tender spot under his ear. “Please understand it’s not you. I’m just…”

He put a gentle hand to my chest and pushed me away. “Scared. I know.” He cleared his throat and tried the fake smile again. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

After grabbing his bag from behind his seat, he hopped out of the truck and raced to the front door of the building.

When I looked back over to the back fence, Miss Sara wasn’t there anymore. And I felt like the shitty good-for-nothing man everyone seemed to think I was.

I put the truck into gear and pulled away, heading to Ava’s house to pick up my baby girl and hope like hell I could make it through the night without crying louder than she did.

15

Parrish

“Parrish, honey, hand me that trowel.”

I turned away from my quiet contemplation of the clouds—there was one up there that looked exactly like Brenda the chicken, complete with giant feather crown, and it made me all kinds of sentimental—and twisted my head on the soft grass to blink up at Miss Sara, who knelt beside a raised planter box.

“The trowel,” she repeated. “The little shovel with the red handle in the bucket over there.” She tilted her chin toward the big metal pail in question since her two hands were busy holding a giant plant by the roots. “Come on now. You’ve been lying there sighing for nearly half an hour, and that’s plenty of time for lallygagging. This bleeding heart isn’t gonna transplant itself, so sit on up and help me out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I sat up obligingly and did as she asked, but I felt Miss Sara’s worried sideways glances even as I helped her loosen the soil and dig holes for the plants.

I guessed I should probably tell her not to worry, that I’d be fine in a day or two, but I was pretty sure that would be a lie, and I was heartily sick of lying. Besides, I’d decided the best way to handle the current destruction of my heart was to not think of Die—anyone—at all. This plan had worked fairly well for going on thirty whole minutes, which was kind of a new record for me.

“You know,” Miss Sara said conversationally. “When I was troubled, my mama always had me pull weeds. Nothing like working in a garden to help you get your mind on the right path. And boy did I ever have a restless mind back in those days. Mama said busy hands helped you think more clearly.”

I nodded politely as I patted the dirt into place around one of the root balls while Miss Sara supported the plant itself. Aunt Marnie had the same philosophy. It was one of the reasons I’d started restoring my Mustang back in the day. Probably one of the reasons I liked to pace when I was puzzling something out, even to this day.

“Eventually, once I’d pulled enough weeds my back was hurting, I’d’ve burned off enough energy to start talking about things,” Miss Sara continued. “And that was when I could really see a problem clearly and find the solution, you know?”

She paused expectantly, so I gave her a small smile. “Er, yes, ma’am. Self-knowledge is important.”

Miss Sara huffed out a breath impatiently, but when she spoke again, her voice was still light. “For example, when I was sixteen, I went steady with a young man I thought was the absolute most. Real nice guy. Smart too. And Lord above, was he a looker. Even my daddy liked him, and he didn’t like anybody I brought home.” Her mouth twisted up at one corner, and her eyes had a faraway look. “But Garvey had a whole life planned out for himself after school. His family was big in local politics, you see, and I was not cut out to be some rising politician’s trophy wife, no sir. I wanted a career of my own. A college degree. Our relationship wasn’t meant to be, no matter how much I wished it was, ’cause we wanted different things, so I broke up with him right after graduation. And Parrish, you’d better believe, there wasn’t a weed that’d dare show its face in my mama’s garden, or the neighbors’ gardens either, that whole summer, I was that purely heartbroken.”

My gut clenched, but I nodded. “Sure. Throwing yourself into work seems like a solid plan to get over it.”

I wondered if maybe I should do that. Get back to the store and take care of any details that might have slipped when I was busy with Mari—other things—this past week. Heck, maybe it was time to pack up life in the Thicket entirely, since the store was going to open in just a couple of weeks. Heading back to Nashville would mean a clean break… or as clean as you could get when you were still legally married to a gorgeous, sweet, sexy, upstanding man who could never care about you the way you cared about him.