You're Still the One (12 page)

His face paled.

“I think he was happy telling me that.” My voice pitched high, my dad’s total lack of love and kindness stunning. “He was drunk and he said that no man would want me now, especially not a doctor like you, and I might as well come back home to the trailer with him. Though I never set foot in his trailer again, I thought he was right. I knew you wanted kids, you wanted a family, and I couldn’t have any. Depriving you of kids wasn’t fair. I knew you would always miss that part of your life, and you would be such a good dad. Since I hadn’t told you about the baby, there was no reason to tell you I couldn’t have kids, because I knew I wouldn’t be your wife anyhow.”

He wiped his eyes again and sighed deeply, then picked me up and put me on his lap and leaned back against the couch. “First, Allie, I’m sorry you can’t have kids. I truly am, but you made a decision that affected both our lives. You made it by yourself, without me.”

“I did, and I am so sorry.” The tears rolled off my chin. “I thought it was the best one, at the time. I was so screwed up.”

“We lost years together. Years. You decided to act alone. I had no say. I had no say in
our
life.” His eyes swam in tears. “Allie, when you broke up with me, everything went black in my life. That’s why I worked so hard in medical school, to keep that blackness away. I missed you every single day. Everyone else complained about the long hours at medical school. I was glad of them; they kept me from falling apart.”

“I felt that same blackness. It clung to me. I went back to school, graduated, and drowned myself in relentless work so I couldn’t think, so I could block out missing you and the baby, and what we could have had.”

“Allie, I love you. I want you. If we can’t have kids together, that’s the way it is. I want us to be together—”

“But, Jace, you will live your whole life without kids if you’re with me.”

“I’ll live it that way, then. Or we’ll adopt. From here in America; foster kids; kids from abroad. Families come together in different ways, babe, and you and I are a family, and whoever else we put in our family is part of our family, too.”

“But Jace—”

“Allie, we were meant to be together. I knew it when I fell in love with you up at Yellowstone. I know it now. I have had this place in my heart, forever, that has wanted to be with you, that has missed you, that’s been lonely for you. Honey, I love you with all that I am. You and I should be together, always. I want to marry you. I would marry you tomorrow if you would agree. Please, Allie.”

“Really, Jace? Even without kids?”

“Yes, of course. Say yes, Allie. Say yes to us. I want you to be my wife more than I want anything, more than I will ever want anything.”

I felt like the Grinch whose heart grew three sizes. “Yes, Jace. Yes to us.” I kissed him, my arms around his neck, his arms holding me tight. “I love you, Jace Rios. I always have, I always will.”

We made love on the couch.

Then in the hot tub.

We had tacos for dinner.

It was a most excellent night.

The next day, I explored the contents of the blue cardboard box. It was the last step for me—then the space my dad occupied in my head was going to be banished forever. What I found shocked me.

Inside were some of my mother’s things: A burgundy velvet-covered jewelry box. Her wedding ring with a miniscule diamond that I remembered her leaving when we fled. A brooch with a hummingbird on it. A colorful Mexican fan. A ceramic vase painted with blue flowers.

What shocked me was his note. My dad, my often violent, uncontrollable dad, wrote that he loved me, that he loved my mother, that he was sorry.

That word
sorry
came up at least ten times. He blamed himself and took full responsibility. He blamed himself for my mother’s death.

I choked up over that box, and when I got myself together, I walked through the apple orchard my dad left me. My apple orchard now.

I picked a Jonagold off a tree as Bob went running after those tantalizing squirrels, Margaret following her man with her tongue hanging out.

Mr. Jezebel Rooster cock-a-doodle-doo’d. He gets his times messed up.

The apple was delicious.

 

 

I found the ring in the middle of an apple pie we were sharing on Jace’s deck as the sun went down over the blue mountains in the distance, pinks and yellows settling over my apple orchard down the hill.

At first, I couldn’t even figure out what I was looking at. What was it and what was it doing in my pie? I pulled the ring out of the crust and licked it. It was quite the sparkler—absolutely stunning.

Jace reached for my hand and dropped down to one knee. Gotta love that. “Will you marry me, Allie Pelletier?”

“Oh yes. Yes, I will.” He picked me up, swung me around, and kissed me the way he always kisses me, full and passionate, with love, bodies together tight.

“I love you, Allie. I’ve loved you since I met you, and I’ll love you when we’re old and making apple pies together for our great-grandchildren, using your mom’s recipes.”

“That’s a really beautiful image.” I held his face and kissed him, loving him wrapped around me, loving us, loving our future.

“Sure is,” he drawled. “As long as you don’t burn the pies.”

I laughed and elbowed him and he grabbed me, flipped me over his shoulder, and shut the bedroom door with his cowboy boot.

 

 

I was a fool.

A hopeful fool.

I called a baby doctor.

She had a cancellation the next day, so I took it. She did the exam.

She said, “We can fix it.”

I was stunned.

I told Jace the news as soon as I saw him.

He picked me up and swirled me around.

 

 

I told Pearl the news about our engagement.

She hugged me and asked for the pieces of my mother’s purple-flowered china plates that my father had shattered.

I didn’t know why she wanted them, but I handed them over.

For a wedding gift, she created a four-by-five-foot mosaic of Jace’s house, which is where we are going to live. She used the pieces of the plates to form the flowers in the trees near his home.

“Welcome home, dearie,” she said. “Now get in there and bang out some babies.”

 

 

I received a call from the owner of Mackie’s Designs.

“We want you back, Allie,” Belinda Carls, the chic owner, said in her soft Texan drawl. “Annalise is gone. We checked out your claims and you were right as rain on a desert. Shane, Jeremy, and David said they were bee-bopping on the mattress with her, and they appreciated the promotions, but that’s wrong as a skunk’s scent and it’s not how we work, not how Mother would have wanted it. Did you know Annalise threw her Manolo Blahniks at people who made her mad? I just found out that many of her employees have had nervous breakdowns and plumb lost their minds. She was fired quick as a wink. How would you like to be president of Mackie’s Designs?”

I thought about it for a long . . . two seconds.

“No, thank you.” I could not imagine wearing four-inch heels again, and I don’t need to hide myself or my past behind couture or high-end fashions anymore.

“No?” Belinda was astonished, baffled. “What do you mean
no, sugar
? I’ve told you the salary, the benefits. This is a Texas-sized opportunity for you, Allie, and that’s no bull . . .”

“Sorry, Belinda. I’m going to bake pies.”

“Pies, dear?”

“Yep. Pies. Most especially, apple pies. My mother’s favorite. I’ll send you one.”

I’m selling pies.

I started selling them at a local Saturday market. The first time, I sold twelve pies. The next Saturday I tripled that, and the next Saturday I doubled
that
. I was mentioned in an article about the best food to buy in local Saturday markets. I started getting orders from local stores in addition to the country café down the road.

I decided to turn my dad’s house into a country store where I could bake and sell my pies. I bought new industrial appliances, took down a wall, hired a few local women, and we baked, sold, and shipped pies to other stores all day. I covered a table with my mom’s tulip tablecloth and her apple orchard photograph is on a wall. I wear her apple apron.

I love my new life. I love watching the leaves of the apple orchard change. I love the smell of all the pies we make: raspberry, rhubarb, lemon meringue, chocolate, etc. and, most especially, apple pies, which I have named MaeLynn’s Apple Pies.

I love remembering my mom and baking pies with her.

Sometimes I can hear her voice, her laughter. I look at the photos of us in Bigfork often.

I have brought the happiest memories of my mother right into this kitchen. Her memory is not blotted with grief and simmering resentment anymore, and I revel in the joy of who she was, the light she brought to my life. I love the time I had with her, however short. I have no room in my heart for anger, grief, or hatred toward my dad. I lived with it for too long; it wore me down to nothing and turned me into someone I am not.

At night, I hug my husband.

We cook dinner and sit by the fire. We locate the constellations, we put puzzles together. We hike through the gorge, by waterfalls, up to magical viewpoints. I go with him on photography forays because he likes taking pictures. We let the dogs run and we ride the horses. We bike. I read Jane Austen out loud. We read the same crime thriller together and talk about it. We have planned a trip to Yellowstone.

And we laugh. We always laugh.

 

 

My name is Allie Pelletier.

I had some trauma in my childhood.

I was often lonely and miserable.

I ate a lot of apples.

I made pies with my mother.

I fell in love in Yellowstone. I am still in love with that same man.

I have found peace with my past.

I am pregnant. We’re having a little girl.

We will name her MaeLynn, after my mother.

We are going to give her brothers and sisters, too.

Jace and I are very excited.

Like her mother and grandmother, and on up the maternal line, young Rose had the gift. But it wasn’t until she fell in love herself that her powers truly progressed. In fact, ever since George first kissed her, women of all ages began flowing into the shop and begging for her love spell. It seemed everyone who used the secret tincture—purple clover, a drop of George’s cologne, petals from the roses he’d given her—soon fell madly in love. Rose was happy she could help. When you were in love, you wanted everyone in the world to feel the same. And it was all because of George. Everything good in life was because of George.

Her first date, her first kiss, her first time. He laid a silver blanket down on the cemetery’s soft grass. He gave her a thick red rose that was just beginning to open, and even brought two crystal flutes and a bottle of champagne. To this day all she had to do was close her eyes and she could hear the pop of the cork, see the fizz explode and drip down the long green neck of the bottle, listen to the clink of their glasses, and feel the golden liquid drip onto her fingers as she held the glass up for more. He was the center of her world.

And he looked at her as if she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, as if he couldn’t get enough. Everyone else had trouble looking into her eyes—one blue and one green—but not him. Everyone else called the color of her hair “mousy.” George called it chestnut. Others called her weird, or strange. George called her special and magical.

It was easy to say yes, and oh, how she wanted him to make love to her, because that would make them like husband and wife. And he was so slow, and so tender, and it didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, and it didn’t last but a few stolen minutes, and their love was lit by a magnificent moon.

Someday it would be different. Someday she would be his legal wife. Then they could stroll hand in hand in the daylight and no one would look twice. For now they were destined to meet in the dark. Tonight marked an entire year that they had been seeing each other. She wondered what he would bring her. A rose, of course, as always, but maybe something else? Maybe a little necklace she could wear underneath her dress. A little heart, a promise she could wear when they were apart. Oh, how lucky she was. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen.

And that was the problem. He was a man. She was just shy of sixteen; he was thirty-six. Everyone else thought she was just a girl—a strange girl, a mousy girl—but George knew different. She was a woman, and she was in love. She couldn’t wait to see him again. She wore her best dress, blue with a green silk ribbon, to bring out the best of each eye, and brushed her chestnut hair until it shone. When her mother wasn’t looking, she had applied pink rouge to her cheeks and mascara to her lashes, and just a touch of shimmering gloss to her eager lips. It was just before midnight. The moon was ripe and drooping so low she felt as if she could reach out and touch it. George had yet to appear. It was a little odd. He was always the first one there, waiting for her, standing with one hand propped against a tombstone, the other holding her rose. Posing with a silly grin and waiting for the moment when he could say,
There’s my Rose
.

She touched the note in the pocket of her dress, the one he slipped under the door to the shop. He was lucky that she found it first. She would have to warn him about her grandmother’s prying eyes
. My Rose, meet me tonight by our favorite statue. I wish to steal a kiss before midnight.

So here she stood by his favorite statue—a young maiden kneeling with her arms outstretched, palms out, as if pleading with her lover to take her into his arms. She couldn’t stay long, for someone might notice she was gone. Something must have come up, because he would never leave her alone this long in the dark. She had just turned to go home, hurrying along the back row of headstones, when she tripped over something in her path. Startled, she lifted herself from the ground and whirled around.

His beautiful body lay faceup in the grass. His eyes and mouth were open, gaping blankly at the full moon. Just a body, a lifeless vessel incapable of saying
There’s my Rose
. She knelt down beside him, took the rose out of his clutched fingers. How she wanted to kiss his lips, but the foam—it was too much. She couldn’t bring herself to go near them. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She didn’t wonder what had killed him; poison was the easiest spell to spot. It worked quickly and caused the lips to foam. Her mother and grandmother had seen the note. She brought the thorny stem of the rose up to her wrist and cut as deep as she could. It wasn’t deep enough. She was still alive. She cursed her mother and grandmother, she cursed all lovers, she cursed anyone who was lucky enough to steal a kiss before midnight.

Only sweet sixteen but already condemned to the life of a lonely old maid. Her lover had died waiting for her. She, too, would spend the rest of her life waiting for him, waiting for death.