All I Want (A Farmers' Market Story) (23 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

C
HARLIE
STEPPED
INSIDE
Meg’s cottage feeling as though his skin were suddenly made of lead.

“Where have you been?” Meg asked, stepping in behind him.

It wasn’t accusatory. Not really. It was a simple question, gently asked. She probably pitied him too. Maybe love was nothing but fucking pity.

“I had some phone calls to make. Took longer than I expected.” He knew he should touch her. Reassure her somehow that what had happened outside with her parents wouldn’t happen again, but of course he couldn’t do that. He had no doubt that last look Jeffrey Carmichael had given him had not been the expression of a man ready to give up on whatever he had it in his mind he had to do.

“Are you all right? You seem very different than the man who walked out of here a few hours ago.”

He shrugged. “You know, I had a bit of an epiphany when I was going over business with Cara.” That was all it was, really. A realization that all the playacting in the world didn’t make him someone else. No one ever saw who he really was because it was a lie, and the fact that he’d thought Meg saw it had just been...delusion.

“Why do I have a feeling it isn’t the kind of epiphany you left with?”

“I have an interview in Chicago on Friday.”

“Excuse me?”

“I spent the past few hours calling all the contacts who’d offered me job interviews that I’d declined because they weren’t here. Most were filled, but there was an opening in Chicago. I’ll fly out for the interview and be back the same day.” Sense. Responsibility. Surely not a failure.

And if it had taken him over an hour of staring at his childhood home to convince himself that those were the steps he’d needed to make, that didn’t make him wrong.

“You’re...interviewing for a job in Chicago?”

The incredulous note to her tone did nothing to stop him. “It hit me, you know, how little I was making. How little I’d thought about things like insurance and retirement. College savings and diapers. We haven’t thought about this from a financial aspect at all. We don’t have a plan.” That a fantasy life was never going to be meant for him.

“
We
might not have thought of those things, but
I
have.”

Her. Alone, because she didn’t really need his help either, did she? She had everything handled without letting him into
any
of it. He was still the outsider he’d always been.

Hell, at least that man knew how to void out the pain, freeze it away. “You really think you can accomplish all that without your father’s help?”

“No, I don’t think that, Charlie. I
know
that.” She curled her hands into fists, and he sighed, not wanting to fight her. He was tired of fighting
feelings
today. He wanted his gone, and he’d mostly banished them. If she picked at him, he’d lose that control. It was why he’d ignored Dell’s texts. He was done with emotion, with hurt.

He was
done
.

“I know that whatever scrimping and saving I have to do to give my child everything that will give him a good life, a life full of opportunity
free
of Carmichael strings, is what I will do.”

“That’s foolish.”

“Foolish,” she echoed, shock and hurt and anger twisting into one simple repetition of his word. “You’re talking about moving to Chicago and
I’m
foolish.”

“I’m talking about
us
moving to Chicago.”

She made a high-pitched sound. “I hope you’re drunk, because that isn’t funny.”

“It isn’t meant to be funny.” Just a cold, rational plan of action. “We’ll move to Chicago. We’ll be able to offer the baby a nice life there.” It would get him away from this fictional world he’d created for himself. He wouldn’t hope for things there; he wouldn’t be constantly searching for a place to belong.

It made sense.

“A nice life there? And what do you suppose I’ll do with, oh, this?” She waved her hands around the house, and he assumed she meant the goats, as well.

He shrugged. “Sell it. I should make enough to support all three of us without you working. You know, studies show stay-at-home mothers—”

“Stop. Stop talking. You’ve lost your mind, and I can’t
listen
to any more without crying. So I need you to stop.”

He ignored her. He had to ignore her, because she was wrong. She should see how wrong. “I haven’t lost my mind. I’ve found it. My mind, my sense, my reason. We can’t sustain this life with a baby.”

“Says who?”

“Sense, reason—”

She whirled away from him, disgust in every movement farther into the cottage. “Go sleep it off, Charlie.”

“I’m not drunk, Meg. You don’t have the first idea about how this really works. You said it yourself. Your grandmother made this for you while you were off drowning your sorrows. I don’t think you understand the reality of finances.”

She whirled again, taking a few threatening steps toward him. “Don’t I?”

Her tone was a dangerous thing, full of land mines. He shouldn’t go any further. He shouldn’t keep pressing. He should hold her and tell her the truth of what happened.

Instead he hit where it would hurt. “Your father isn’t evil.”

She sank onto the couch, as if he’d shot her where she stood. Hell, he might as well have. He knew what he was saying. He knew what weapons he was using. He couldn’t parse out why exactly.

Because he was a jerk, he supposed. To think he’d ever be anything but had been a laughable exercise in idiocy. Heartless, hard, uptight Charlie. That was
him
. Everyone saw it except Meg.

Meg.
Something about that thought hurt even deeper than Cara saying she’d pitied him. That Meg saw who he’d always wanted to be but hadn’t found a way to be.

But he couldn’t dwell on that, or the ice would melt, the hurt would win, and then what would he be left with?

“You need to tell me what the hell happened,” she said, those blue eyes boring into his. Her hope that there was some explanation was a terrible thing to crush.

But he had to. “Nothing happened.”

“My ass, Charlie. My
ass
. You left here happy and sweet and, if I’m not totally mistaken,
excited
. And now you’re...you’re... I don’t even know what this is.”

“It’s reality.”

She shook her head, not bothering to hide her disgust. It was like at the diner again, when he’d suggested marriage, except this time...he knew. He knew he was being a jerk. He knew he was being the absolute last thing she needed or deserved. He deserved her disgust.

But he didn’t know how to be anything else. That way led to stupid dreams and
pity
and a pain he didn’t know how to fight. “Do you keep your finances organized? We should go over them. It will give me a good idea of what salary bracket I’m looking for.”

“Charlie. Stop.” She shook her head, and her blue eyes were full of tears. But they didn’t fall. They simply pinned him where he stood. “Stop the robot act, I know it isn’t you.”

It was his turn to feel shot. Because it
was
him. Everyone thought it was. How did she think there was anything more to him?

“So, tell me what happened.” Her voice implored, her expression implored. It coaxed, it whispered promises he couldn’t believe. Not now.

“I was discussing some financial information with Cara, and our discussion underscored how important it is for me to get a real job.”

“That
was
a real job.”

He wanted to laugh. Everyone thought it was real, but they didn’t seem to understand reality included bills and opportunities that
required
money. “Do you know how much college costs?”

“Charlie, that’s no reason to move to Chicago! Or anywhere. I’m not selling my business. It’s my
heart
.” She fisted her hand at her chest.

He chose to ignore her, ignore how he’d heard Dell say the same about the farm. It might feel like their hearts to them, but sometimes you had to do what was sensible with no thought to your damn heart. “And that’s completely ignoring the fact that we could live in a better school district.”

“We could live in a worse one too. You are a product of this school district, and you’re brilliant.”

Was she trying to kill him? Compliments and seeing this fictional version of himself? He couldn’t stand it.

“You can’t milk goats forever. I can’t go around giving advice to farmers’ market booths forever. Eventually this fad will pass, you know. They’ll die out again and people will buy their food at the grocery store just like they do mostly anyway, and they’ll order their weird soap on the internet. This is temporary.”

She hopped off the couch, temper rising as clearly as the color in her cheeks. “Don’t patronize me. I know what the market looks like, and I know its potential for being volatile in terms of supply and demand.
That’s
why I was thinking of expanding, but beyond that there is this magic thing called
adaptability
. Where you change and grow and bend because you can’t ever make the world this safe, sensible place. There will always be potential for failure and success and getting knocked on the ass. Didn’t you learn that when you lost your job?”

“No, I learned hard work is bullshit and luck favors the lucky. The end.”
And I am not the lucky.

“I’ve worked very hard, and it’s paid off for me.”

“This is not reality,” he threw at her, losing those last grips on patience and control. “It’s
fantasy
. I want nothing to do with it. It was a nice vacation, but that baby giving you a
bump
deserves one of the people in his life to be rational. To be real. To acknowledge that opportunities are important. What happens if
adapting
doesn’t work? What happens when this turns into another mistake? Another failure? Do you keep
adapting
, or do you go back to what got you here in the first place?”

“And what was that?” she asked, her voice a dangerous piece of steel.

“Drugs. Alcohol. When the
pain
of failure grips you again—because it
will
—do you go back to that?”

She reached out and slapped him right across the face. Hard.

He barely felt it, though he felt the shame of what he’d just said. “I deserved that,” he said, his voice as calm and even as it had been outside.

“You’re damn right you did,” she seethed, but then she did something that stoked the rage he couldn’t quite eradicate.

She placed both hands over her stomach.

Maybe he was being mean, but he was right. He was being rational. She didn’t get to... No.

“Don’t do that. Do not put your hand over your stomach like you have to protect that child from me.”

“Seedling
should
be protected from you right now. I know what you’re saying. I know what you mean by connections. So, that’s exactly what I’m doing, Charlie. Protecting us both from your crap. You don’t get to suggest my father has something to offer, and more important, you don’t get to stand there and paint me as the villain in parenting this child. Something climbed up your ass and rattled around in your brain, and you want to be—” she waved a hand up and down his front “—this. Get out.”

“Meg—”

“I am too hurt to be
rational
right now. So get out. Get. Out. Don’t come back until you’re willing to do it on your knees.”

He could argue. He could apologize. There were a million things he could do, but quite honestly...he didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to hurt her and he didn’t know how to stop.

So, he did what she demanded and left without another word.

* * *

M
EG
STOOD
THERE
frozen for she didn’t know how long. He’d...been someone else entirely and then left as though it didn’t matter at all.

Not a word. Not a goodbye. Just turned and walked out the door, and she didn’t know how to process that even a little.

Something had happened—something far more than an epiphany. Something far more than suddenly out of nowhere becoming obsessed with
reason
and finances.

Part of her felt sorry for him. But part of her was too livid to let that other part grow. To insinuate she might fall back into drugs, to say her father wasn’t evil and act as though they might need her father’s connections.

No, her father wasn’t
evil
, but he wasn’t good. He wasn’t nice. He wasn’t father-or grandfather-worthy, and the worst part was Charlie knew that. He knew it.

What on earth had
happened
while he was gone? Why wouldn’t he tell her what was really bothering him? Acting like nothing had happened except he’d come to his senses. She wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t that easily fooled. How dare he leave with words like love on his lips and return with that...whatever that was.

She stomped around the house, gathering her boots and gloves and everything she would need for tonight’s milking. Which was now off schedule. She grunted and cursed all the way to the goat barn. She opened the door in the front and the back, hoping some of the sweltering heat would be alleviated with a decent cross breeze.

She took a few deep breaths before entering the barn, both to ward off the sick feeling but also to try to calm herself. Grumbling and swearing at the goats as she milked them wouldn’t do any good.

It helped—the breathing, the sitting down and methodically milking each goat. It calmed her, soothed her, in a way very few other things would.

Oh, she was still angry with him. Still seething with fury if she thought too much about it, but in the end...in the end, she was, well, hurt. Which she didn’t want to analyze too closely, and that was probably her own failing. Not his.

She simply felt raw and hollowed out now. Alone. A little antsy for a drink, though thankfully pregnancy gave her something concrete to fight that urge with.

“I won’t be going down that road, Seedling. Not ever again. That’s a promise I’m going to stand by, no matter what your daddy says.”