Page 5 of Between the Shady Groves
“Could I ask—would you mind if Claire came too? If she’s able to. She’s moved back permanently as well, and you would not believe who she’s with.”
“No, I probably wouldn’t,” she said, not wanting to hear it, but Grace either didn’t hear that tone in her voice or ignored it.
“She’s with Josiah McMurtry, and would you believe that Trevor and I are together? We just got married a couple weeks ago, and it was almost like Claire decided that they were going to beat us, because they got married a few days before we did.” She laughed, like it was somehow funny.
“Well, good for you,” Lauren said and watched as Grace’s face fell as though she was hurt by her lack of interest and enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, Lauren just couldn’t drum up anything else. It was like her emotions were dead, along with her mom and her marriage.
“All right. I’ll leave you. I really am looking forward to getting together with you. And I know that Claire will be excited when I tell her that you’re in town. We talked about how much we miss you.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. Between the shady groves.”
She didn’t want to go to the healing garden. She didn’t want to meet her friends, she didn’t want to do anything, other than just sit here and wallow in the memories and bathe in her sadness and depression and all the terrible things she wished she could change.
Grace was barely out of the door when Lauren turned the mixer back on, after scraping down the sides of the bowl.
She had mixed it long enough. She probably mixed it too long. It was going to be tough and not light and airy like it should be. But she didn’t care. It was the smell she wanted, more than the food. She probably wouldn’t even eat it. Her appetite had been fickle lately and more gone than come.
Stopping the mixer, she scraped the bowl again and then poured the batter into the pans that she had already greased and prepared. The oven had been preheated, because she had been trained by the best, and she plopped the pans in, eager to have the scent of the Nutella bread spilling through the bakery again.
While she waited for it to bake, she did what her mom had always taught her to do. Cleaned up immediately. She could almost hear her mom say that it was easier to clean up a small mess than a big one. So she liked to keep her space wiped clean and her dishes done.
She had taught Lauren to do the same.
Lauren wasn’t sure she had learned a whole lot from her mom. It seemed like there was so much she didn’t know and more she wished she would have paid attention to, but that was one of the things she was sure about. If one made a mess, one cleaned it up immediately, because a fresh mess was easier to clean up than an old mess, and a small one easier than a large one.
Maybe that’s what she had done—she had waited too long to clean up the mess of her marriage, and it was just too big for her to be able to do anything with.
Cannon, I wish you were here. I miss you.
Four
“All right. I want you to keep me abreast of everything. You can text me, and I’ll help you as much as I can. But I need to have the next six weeks off and be interrupted as little as possible.”
“All right,” George said, looking at the iPad screen that showed the schedule for the next six weeks. George had been a dependable foreman for years, and now, Cannon was going to completely depend on him.
“Do you have any questions?” Cannon asked, wishing he’d given George more responsibilities over the years. But he was the kind of business owner who liked to be hands-on and doing everything himself. He never guessed that he would need to take this kind of time off. But he knew it was absolutely essential. In fact, it might be too late. And then… He wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
Even if it wasn’t too late, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do, because it was obvious that his wife was…not happy. To say the least.
She hadn’t answered any of his texts, hadn’t even responded, and he wondered if maybe she’d changed her number or blocked his. He didn’t know how to tell.
“No. I don’t. I’m sure it might be a little bit rocky, but I’ll deal with it. I know how to put these things together, and Remy in the office can take care of the billingand all that.”
“Yeah. The girls in the office have things covered. If you’ve got the outside stuff covered, they’ve got the inside stuff covered, and Micah and Shelley will hopefully keep the sales rolling in.” That was the one place where he really didn’t spend a whole lot of time. Word-of-mouth was their sales for them, but they had Micah and Shelley who went to trade shows and worked on marketing. It had been more than enough to keep them busier than they could handle.
Maybe Lauren was upset about her mom passing away. Or something else. Maybe he needed to find her and spend a little time holding her hand. But he was almost sure she would come out of it. Lauren was happy and upbeat, and whatever the issue was, they would work it out.
There was one small problem.
He didn’t know where she was.
“All right. I will only be gone as long as I need to be to get some personal things straightened up. Then I’ll be back.”
He didn’t really think it was that serious. Six weeks might be too much. Still, he’d never left his business for that long, and he was a little nervous about leaving it now. But his wife and marriage meant a lot to him, and he wasn’t going to just let her go. He wanted to fix this. Any rational man would, of course. There was no cheating happening, unless there was something he didn’t know. And if there was, they were going to have to talk. If she was cheating on him…
The thought made his heart race, and despite himself, his pace picked up. He headed to his truck, and he was going to go to her sister-in-law’s house first. A call might make more sense, but he felt the need to move. If she wasn’t there, in Lexington, Kentucky, then he was going to look in Raspberry Ridge. Her mom still had a place there, and it had been left to Lauren in her mom’s will. They had talked about using it as a summer house, but he had been reluctant to do that, since he didn’t want to leave his business for the summer. Or even for a couple of weeks.
