All I Want (A Farmers' Market Story) (27 page)

He closed his eyes as though she’d hurt him, and when he opened his eyes, there was a whole mix of emotions in them and Meg didn’t feel so much like joking or kissing anymore. She wanted to take away all the hurt, all the confusion.

“I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to put it right. How do we...?” He shook his head. “You know, my brother keeps saying these obnoxiously insightful things.”

“Terrible man.”

His lips quirked just a hair. “He said that sometimes people use love like a weapon, or a shield, and I’ve done both. With my family. With you. It always comes with caveats and carefulness. And fear. I never knew
how
to let that protective shield down, not until I met you. I didn’t know how to trust that, not when I thought, well, I thought I’d finally found all the things I wanted, and I had, but the process to get here was so...different, so alien to me, I didn’t know how to trust the results. I didn’t know how to not be hurt. I don’t know how to
hurt
.”

“If love can be a weapon, and a shield, it can also be a comfort. A salve for all that hurt. I didn’t know how to hurt either, Charlie. Not for the longest time. I had to numb it, and I had to use something outside myself to do it, but love was always the thing I could count on instead of drugs or alcohol. It just took me some time to trust that love, wholeheartedly. Because love can be a foundation too. The thing we stand on when we don’t understand each other, or the world. When we’re hurt or afraid. It’s the thing we’re supposed to lean on, to believe in. Most
especially
when it hurts.”

“Dell said love was a gift—that you have to give, and receive.”

Meg smiled. “I like that. I think...maybe, it’s all those things. I know it’s the thing I’ve been missing. And I
know
it’s what I feel when I’m with you. Sometimes it will be as perfect and easy as the past month, and sometimes it will suck as hard and awful as the past few days, but we have to keep getting back up.”

“Keep giving.”

“And receiving,” she said pointedly.

He crossed to her then, took her face between his palms. “I love you, Meg.” He looked so grimly serious a tear slipped over her cheek, then another. “I’m sorry for everything I said. It was fear and it was... It was wrong. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known, and you did so much of that on your own. I’ve been jealous of people so much of my life without realizing it, but I think I finally get that leaning on those people, loving those people, is a lot better than wishing I could be them.”

She placed her hands over his, trying to blink back the tears and failing.

His thumb brushed one off her cheek. “You’re the only person I’ve so gladly put my heart on the line for. It was jarring how easily it came, how good it seemed. I’ve never been very trusting of things that seem too good to be true, because, quite honestly, my life has been easy. I can handle easy. It makes hard stuff seem that much more...insurmountable. So, I never put myself or my heart on the line. I never invested in what I knew would be a gamble, because I didn’t want to lose.”

“Love isn’t ever going to be easy, maybe not even a sure thing. It can’t be. Plus, we have a baby. Which makes things even harder. But it also means you’re going to have to surmount it. And if you’re scared, or unsure, I’ll stand here being brave and sure. Because I love you. And I know—I
know
you’re going to do the same when I falter.”

“What if we both falter at the same time?”

Somehow that only made her feel stronger. She wasn’t the only one who was scared, unsure. She wasn’t the only one who might screw up. In fact, screwing up was a given, but the couple that screwed up together...stayed together? She could hope.

“We’ll always have Columbus Day,” she said.

He dropped his hands from her face only to scrub them over his own as he laughed. “You are...” He shook his head, hands dropping to hover between them. Then he reached out, gently placing each palm over her slight bump.

“You are both everything I want, and...I guess I had it in my head the only way to get what I wanted was to work so hard at it that everything else fell away. Being with you has never felt like work, even when it has felt like I’ve lost my mind, falling into a bizarre universe of goats. It has never felt like something I
earned
. But it’s something I want. Something I love. So, I guess I’ll have to go backward and earn what I’ve already got.”

“You don’t have to earn me. Or us. You just have to be here. And we both have to be honest, and open. Even when we’d rather, oh, rip our tongues out and grind them into meat.”

“Okay, you can stop talking now.”

“Tongue meat was too much, huh?”

“Meg.”

“What?”

His mouth hovered close to hers, his hands still above the child they’d created by accident. “Shut up,” he said, before a grin flashed over his face and his mouth touched hers.

She would gladly shut up and be kissed, and be loved, and be trusted. Because it wasn’t about what she’d earned, or what had been held against her in the past.

All that mattered was that Charlie was here, and they had a whole future ahead of them.

EPILOGUE

A W
AINWRIGHT
-P
RUITT
Christmas was truly something to behold. It didn’t matter that Meg had now partaken for three years—that it was all her babies had ever known for Christmas. Each year she walked into the barn where she’d gotten married—just like Mia and Dell, and Cara and Wes—and her jaw dropped at what these two families could do when they came together.

Even with her own family crawling all over her, a sleepless night behind her, all she could feel was awe. Awe that she got to come to this. That her life, and her children’s lives, were free of the Carmichael brand, that stifling pain, all thanks to Charlie and the secrets he’d known about her father that kept the Carmichaels and their obsession with appearances far away.

But that was the last thing Meg wanted to think about on Christmas. She wanted to think about love, and family. Not just her babies, not just the Wainwrights and the Pruitts.

This afternoon at Dan and Elsie’s had been a nice reminder too. Every year she was awed by the way they’d taken to her children like grandparents. Each year, little by little, the ways they’d made inroads with their daughter, who’d now been clean for almost a year.

Christmas had become awe and wonder and light. Warmth and hope and happiness. Family. Love. All things she’d never really had before, Grandma aside.

She rested her palm on Daniel’s head as he wriggled in the wrap against her chest. Even at only three months old he seemed to be determined to be mobile at all times. Little May, tiny and wiry even at nearly three, tried to climb Meg’s leg the better to find her pals.

“Mama,” she whined, her big dark eyes taking in the whole room as she looked for her cousins. The three girls, each only a few months apart, were a nearly inseparable threesome at any family gathering. Usually following Lainey around with barely contained awe and reverence.

Poor Daniel, terribly outnumbered by the older girls. She brushed a gentle kiss across his fuzzy head as Mia walked past, hand pressed to the small of her back, the still-small swell of a baby more noticeable these past few weeks. “Well, fourth cousin might be the charm, sweetie,” Meg murmured.

Lainey rushed over and came to a skittering halt in front of Meg. “Hi, Aunt Meg,” she said breathlessly. “Daddy said we can open a present when Uncle Charlie gets here.” She gave a little hop.

“He’s bringing in the present wagon.”

Lainey squealed, then took May’s outstretched hand. “Come on, May. Grandma Pruitt is letting everyone have one gingerbread man.”

The two girls bounded off to the kids’ table, where Mia’s mother was huddled with Grace and Violet. Meg smiled, glad her little girl had something very close to sisters in her life.

Meg shifted with Daniel, trying to decide where the best place would be to sit so she could feed him soon, but as she surveyed the room, it hit her, as it did every year. This...
this
was her family.
Hers.

She had learned Mia and Cara’s father wasn’t much of a talker, but he indulged any child who climbed onto his lap. Their mother fretted over the kids, the table, her children, but she seemed to have a knack for quelling fights and kissing scrapes that no one else possessed.

Mrs. Wainwright and Kenzie were as ruthlessly efficient in getting the meal served as war generals, and Mr. Wainwright was always adept at keeping everyone’s glasses full.

When they weren’t chasing after their ever-increasing broods, the adult children could be found all but slumped over in holiday exhaustion, trying to maintain some semblance of conversation with each other.

They invariably failed.

It was Meg’s absolute favorite day of the year, and every year, without fail, she cried. It was magic, in all its exhausted, stressful tinsel-laden madness. Family and joy and coming together.

“Meg.” Charlie’s exasperated voice came from behind her, but she didn’t bother to turn around fully. He would come up and put his arm around her, like he always did. Kiss her temple, and tell her there was no reason to cry.

“There’s no reason to cry.”

Her lips curved and she used the back of her hand to wipe away the stray tears. “I’m too happy not to cry.”

He kissed her temple, and his arm wrapped around her shoulders. “I’ll never understand that.”

But he didn’t have to, because he was here. Finding him had given her love. Family. A place to belong.

Some days, drowning in diapers and lack of sleep and business stress, it was hard to find her gratefulness. That was life. But so was this.

All she’d ever wanted. Perfect in its imperfection. Joy and pain and hope and fear. All wrapped up in love.

All she’d ever wanted. All they’d ever need.

* * * * *

Be sure to check out the other books in
Nicole Helm’s
A FARMERS’ MARKET STORY
miniseries!

ALL I HAVE
ALL I AM

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The Lottery Winner

by Emilie Rose

CHAPTER ONE

J
ESSAMINE
M
ARTIN
TRIED
to appreciate the fingers of peach and salmon creeping over the rooftops as she walked along the Key West boardwalk, but she was too busy waiting for the new pay-as-you-go phone in her pocket to vibrate to concentrate on which tints she could blend to attain those specific hues.

She missed her family and work. As noisy and chaotic as teaching art to elementary school kids might be, the routine was normal, comforting. This unrelenting solitude wasn’t. She couldn’t even keep track of what day it was unless she checked her watch. Monday. She used to love Mondays. They represented the beginning of a week doing what she loved. That had changed the day the school board demanded she leave.

She wanted her old life back.

Gulls squawked and waddled away as she passed, and fish churned the waters of Key West Bight, waiting for the tourists who weren’t up yet to buy food pellets from the gumball machines and toss them into the water. After six weeks of walking this stretch, she could identify some of her nonhuman companions as regulars by their size, colors and scars. So sick of her own company and lack of purpose, she was almost desperate enough to talk to them.

The waterfront was quiet at the cusp of dawn. Only fishermen moved about, preparing their charter boats for a day of excitement and adventure, traveling out to the Gulf for fishing or to the Tortugas for diving. Her day would be filled with more of the same monotonous schedule she’d adopted since arriving. She’d read another of the paperbacks she’d picked up at the Key West library or do a little painting or sketching if she could rouse the muse. But even her muse yearned for the stark lines of South Carolina’s rolling hills, bare deciduous trees and thick pines.

The phone buzzed against her hip. She snatched it up so quickly she nearly dropped it as she fumbled to find the right button to answer the unfamiliar device.

“Is everyone okay?” she blurted.

“All good here. How are you, Li’l Bit? Enjoying your vacation?”

She bit her tongue on the automatic impulse to tell her brother for the zillionth time not to call her Li’l Bit and that this was in no way a vacation. But at this point, she didn’t care what Brandon said as long as he called. “Have there been any more...incidents?”

“The extra workers Dad hired and the Cherokee County deputies are keeping an eye on the orchard. And the Gaffney police have units watching your house and Leah’s and the kids’ day care.”

She’d been horrified when her brother told her even her sister’s family was in danger. Jessamine couldn’t live with herself if something happened to her precious niece and nephew.

“Can I come home?”

Silence filled her ear, and she pictured his grimace. Could she blame him? Same question. Different day. “Not yet,” he responded finally. “That dumb redhead with the local news showed up at Mom and Dad’s last night with a camera crew. She noticed that your car’s been in the same spot in the driveway for weeks and suggested the disappearance of the state’s largest lottery winner is due to foul play. She wants permission to search the orchard. She expects to find your body buried under the peach trees.”

Not the answer Jessamine had wanted. “I wish I’d never bought that stupid ticket. I only wanted change for a five.”

“Don’t be a drama queen. Millions of people would kill to be in your shoes. Literally, Jessamine. Remember that. Watch your back. And remember, you wouldn’t be in this predicament if you’d learn to say no instead of giving that mooch money every time she asks.”

Mortification burned her face.
Guilty as charged.
“I’ve learned my lesson.”

“I hope so, because being a people pleaser will take you down. Seventy percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt or dead within a few years.”

She groaned inwardly. He’d clicked into special agent mode, reciting the overprotective, stern lecture she now knew by heart.

“Brandon, please stop telling me that every time we talk,” she interjected when he paused for breath. “I heard you the first fifty-something times. You’re only contradicting yourself when you tell me to relax and have fun then try to make me scared of my own shadow.”

“I don’t want you to become a statistic.”

“I won’t.”

Okay, so maybe she hadn’t initially believed his warnings that lottery winners and their family members were exponentially more likely to be victims of violent crimes, kidnappings, blackmailing and lawsuits. At first she’d gone about her life as if nothing had changed, blaming his excessive paranoia on his job as a computer crimes investigator with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

Then, after the public announcement of her win, the media storm had hit and her life had exploded. Her back door had been kicked in while she was at work and her house ransacked. Many of her belongings had been stolen. And then her car window had been shattered—
twice
. One of those times had been the day after she’d gotten it back from the repair shop. Next there was a burglary at her school, specifically of her classroom, which had prompted the school board to demand she take a leave of absence until her presence no longer posed a danger to the students. But the final straw had been when her parents’ house had been broken into while her mother was home alone. At that point her brother and father had “strongly encouraged” Jessamine to take a long vacation for everyone’s safety.

So here she was. Stuck in paradise. And miserable.

“You still lying low?” he asked.

“Even you wouldn’t recognize me.”

“Good. Alternating your routine?”

She winced and studied the hungry seagull easing closer. As much as she liked to experiment artistically, she was a creature of habit. Routines were soothing and comforting, and comfortable was something she hadn’t been since arriving here. So...she might have wavered on that edict a little—which Mr. Rules and Regulations wouldn’t appreciate.

“I’m being very cautious. So, what else is new?” she asked in an effort to divert him.

“Mom enrolled in the concealed-carry class yesterday.”

Yet another piece of normal chipped away. Jessamine sank onto a dew-dampened bench with her back to the hungry fish. Her mother detested guns. And now she was going to carry one. Because of Jessamine. “The burglar really shook her up.”

“Getting out of the shower and finding a strange man going through your bedroom drawers tends to have that effect on people. You, Mom and Leah need to be careful. You and Leah should take the CC class, too.”

That would mean having a gun in her house. She had no problem with firearms. She’d grown up around them. Her father and brother were avid hunters. They’d taught her to shoot a weapon competently and hit a target. But she didn’t need to own a gun. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Leah has agreed to take it with you.”

She rocked her head side to side to ease the tension knotting her neck muscles. “How can
me
winning the lottery ruin so many lives?”

“Nobody’s life is ruined, kiddo. Your notoriety is a temporary inconvenience. Once it blows over, you’ll be fine. We all will be, with some minor adjustments and a few extra precautions.”

She shooed the inquisitive bird. “How can you be sure?”

“Because Big Brother will be watching. Not just the guys in uniform doing drive-bys, but also with the security systems we’ve installed at the folks’ and your place.”

“Afraid to step outside is no way to live.”

“I hear ya.” He paused. “Jessamine, Dad and I have come to a decision.”

His ultraserious tone and the use of her given name rather than the hated nickname trapped the breath in her lungs. “One I’m not going to like, I gather.”

“Depends on how you look at it. Remember we used a chunk of your first check to rent that house for you for three months? Well, we want you to stay there for the duration. It doesn’t make sense to throw that money away when we’re still working the kinks out of security here.”

Her spine snapped straight. “But you said the only reason to pay for three months was because it was cheaper in the long run than renting week to week.”

“And it was—
is
. It’s also the only way to guarantee you’d be in the same secure place while you’re away.”

“You said a month. Six weeks at the most. It’s been that. I’ve already missed Thanksgiving.”

“Turkey is turkey. It tastes the same every year. Look, we can’t make you stay, but everyone in the family will sleep easier if you do.”

“But what about Christmas? And Mom’s birthday?”

“Dad’s taking her away somewhere secret for her birthday. He won’t even tell me where. She won’t be home. We’ll have Christmas when you get back, and then we’ll really have something to celebrate.” His radio squawked in the background. “I gotta go. Love you. I’ll check in again tomorrow before my shift.”

And then the phone—her only connection with home—went dead. She lowered her hand and stared at the silent device. Loneliness welled within her.

Christmas was only twenty days away. And her mother’s birthday was three days afterward. She’d never spent either day away from her family. Pressure built in her chest, rising up to clog her throat. She wanted to scream but settled for stomping her feet. The gull got spooked and flew away. She glanced around to make sure no one had witnessed her tantrum.

Everyone dreamed of winning the lottery. It was supposed to be a good thing. For her, it had been a curse. If she could’ve afforded to give away the money, she would have. But she couldn’t. Her parents’ health insurance premiums had risen so drastically in the past year that they’d had to drop coverage, something they couldn’t afford with her dad’s Parkinson’s disease. He needed to stay on his medicines to slow the disease’s progression. Jessamine’s unexpected windfall had allowed her to reinstate their policy and get her father back on his prescriptions. Her new income had also paid for the security systems each house had suddenly required because of her blasted win.

And then there was her job—or lack of one. Would the school board let her return to work when this media thundercloud blew away? She loved teaching and missed her students. But this last round of budget cuts had been hard on the noncore classes, and she’d felt vulnerable even before her temporary dismissal.

She bounded to her feet then, and with leaden steps resumed her route toward Trumbo Road. If she didn’t get moving, she’d start bawling. She’d been exiled from her home and job, cut off from her friends—although she wasn’t sure who the real ones were anymore—and even her church family. She’d attempted to find a church to attend down here, but folks in this surprisingly tight-knit community were too inquisitive of newcomers. After visiting three she’d quit looking and settled into her own Sunday morning routine of sorts. The weeks ahead loomed like an eternity. But she’d get through them. Somehow.

Maybe when she got back to the house she’d paint the Key deer. Again. Or the hibiscus. Again. The coconut palms? A dark swoop crossed her peripheral vision, then a bird splashed down. No. Her miserable mood would be better illustrated by painting the cormorants. A quartet of the prehistoric-looking black birds frequently parked on the end of her dock and spread their drying wings like gargoyles waiting to swoop in and carry her off. And their screeching calls to each other... She shivered despite the sun’s warmth on her skin. The avian squatters creeped her out. She avoided the dock whenever they were present.

She reached the tall white fence marking the end of her route. The restaurant on the other side was quiet now. When she made her rounds again at dusk, the Fisherman’s Widow’s inside and outside tables would be packed. People would be laughing, silverware clinking, and the kitchen would be emitting heavenly scents. She hadn’t risked eating in a restaurant thus far, but she was tired of her own cooking. Maybe she’d order takeout tonight.

And then she connected the dots between her brother’s words and her financial status. She was supposed to be operating on a cash-only basis. Adding another six weeks to her stay put her in a dicey situation. She hadn’t budgeted for three months. She’d replenished her art supplies a couple of times, and in the Keys they had cost double what they did at home. That meant she’d have to be very, very frugal if she wanted to have enough money to cover the rest of her stay. Even then, she’d probably run short. And without access to her accounts, she definitely wouldn’t have money to buy Christmas and birthday gifts.

The irony of being a lottery winner and having her future secured with quarterly checks for practically the rest of her life but being short on actual cash right now didn’t escape her. Her brother had cautioned her not to use a cash machine or credit cards or she might alert someone to her location. She could ask him to send more prepaid debit cards, but he couldn’t access her accounts, either. In his rush to get her out of town, he’d failed to arrange that. He or her parents would have to use their own money to buy the prepaid debit cards until she could pay them back. Not an option she’d take until she was desperate.

So...she admitted with a sigh, no takeout. No matter how tempting. And no more art supplies.

She turned to head back for her car. A muffled cry stopped her. Was it a hurt animal? She listened until she heard it again. The whimper sounded human. She immediately recalled stories of babies discarded in Dumpsters—the restaurant’s was on the other side of that fence. But it hadn’t sounded like a baby. Had it? Undecided, she rocked from her heels to her toes.

She’d worry all day if she didn’t check.

Tamping down her brother’s dire warnings of kidnapping schemes, she clutched the can of pepper spray in her pocket, rounded the wall and approached the garbage container, then cautiously leaned forward to peer inside the open doors. She saw nothing but the dirty metal bottom. Relieved, she exhaled then recalled the trash trucks had been pulling out of the street when she’d arrived. She heard the noise again. It hadn’t come from the smelly green box beside the building after all but from behind the restaurant. Had one of the delivery people fallen? She bit her lip.