Home At Last Chance (Last Chance #2)(34)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Elbert leaned forward where he sat. “Son, I’m only going to say this once. You don’t have to defend me or lie about me. I’m comfortable with who I am. I am tired of you trying to make excuses for me. I don’t want them.”

“But—”

“Look, I know there are unkind people in this town and in the public who have made your life difficult. But the best way to handle them is to ignore them. Take a page from Haley’s book.”

“She’s too little to—”

“Yeah, and see how it works for her?”

“Daddy, don’t be ridiculous. You know good and well that walking away from bullies doesn’t work.”

“Ignoring a bully is not the same as walking away from a fight with one. See, son, if you don’t care, they can’t hurt you. I love you, and I love the way you have tried to protect and defend me and Haley. I’m glad to see you’re angry about what was written. But I don’t need your protection, and Haley has her angel. Sometimes I think you and your oldest brother were cast from the same mold.”

“Ha, that’s a laugh. I’ve never been like Stone.”

“You’re more like him than you know.”

Tulane took his hands out of his pockets and braced them on his hips. “Uh, Daddy, I don’t think so. Stone is strong, silent, mature. And I’m, well…” He shrugged.

“Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Sell yourself short all the time. You let what everyone says about you get inside your head. And I can see how it shakes your self-confidence.”

“Pete used to say that all the time. He used to say I needed to man up.”

“Yeah, I know. I don’t happen to agree with that advice. In my book, manning up does not mean picking a fight every time the opportunity presents itself. It means cleaning out the garbage between your ears.”

“Garbage?”

“Yeah. The stuff you’ve decided to believe about yourself because some stupid person said some hurtful thing a long time ago. You need to learn to ignore that crap. Tulane, you are a talented, smart, and caring man. I’m proud of you, too. When are you going to learn how to be proud of yourself?”

“Hey, Elbert, where should we start?” Bill Ellis called from the ark.

Elbert looked over his shoulder. “I reckon the first thing we should do is pull down the kudzu that’s overtaken the trees over by the Red Sea.” He gestured toward the southern boundary of the course and the hole depicting Moses parting the waters.

Elbert stood up. “I can’t help you figure out your life, Tulane. But I can tell you that I don’t need or want you to fight my battles. And I sure as hell don’t need your financial help with Golfing for God—especially not if it’s just because Pete asked you to do it. I’d rather take my chances with Hettie Marshall. Hettie gets what Golfing for God is all about. I’m hoping one day you’ll figure it out, too.”

Tulane turned and watched as Hettie picked up a pair of loppers in her carefully manicured hands and headed toward Moses and the Red Sea. “How in the hell did you get Hettie Marshall and Bill Ellis involved in this thing?”

Elbert grinned. “A miracle. Or maybe just a force of nature from up north named Sarah Murray.”

“Sarah? What are you talking about?” Tulane flashed on Sarah’s little hand in his during the flight from Delaware. She was a force of nature. A force he needed to stay the hell away from.

“Well,” Elbert said, “I don’t rightly know what Sarah did exactly. But Hettie says Sarah helped her to see Golfing for God for what it is. And then Hettie talked to Bill, and I don’t know what Hettie told him, but now Bill is a believer. I never expected an actual minister of the Word would get it. But he does.

“I don’t know if Sarah can see angels, but she sure has managed to find me a couple of flesh-and-blood helpers who have gotten me out of my funk. To be honest, son, without Hettie’s enthusiasm for rebuilding this place, I might have given up hope. Or faith. I might have listened to Jimmy Marshall and sold this land to a developer.”

“Jimmy Marshall wants you to sell out, but his wife is trying to help you?”

Elbert chuckled. “Well, son, you know how complicated things can get in Last Chance. I’m not entirely sure that Hettie knows her husband has been after me to sell. But it doesn’t matter, because thanks to Hettie, Bill, and Sarah, I’ve decided to stay.”

Just then, voices came from down the walkway. Tulane turned just in time to see Millie Polk and Thelma Hanks and a handful of other members of the Last Chance Garden Club strolling down the ruined walk. And with them, looking like she belonged, walked Sarah Murray, descendant of Pilgrims.

Sarah was a whole lot younger than the rest of the church ladies and gardeners, with a better shape and brighter hair, but she still looked like one of them. And seeing her there made something ease down deep inside Tulane.

Then he noticed that Sarah’s eyes were red, and her skin was splotchy, and she looked like she’d spent the morning crying her eyes out. After that, he was a goner.

Sarah stopped in her tracks the moment she saw Tulane.

He looked like he’d tumbled right out of bed and thrown on the dirty laundry lying on his floor. His jeans had holes in the knees and he was wearing a faded Atlanta Braves T-shirt.

He needed a haircut and a shave, too.

He looked kind of like Sarah felt. Her morning had been pretty much the worst day of her life. There was nothing like being awakened by an angry Dragon Lady and being told that your career was over for all time to come.

If Sarah had been good at profanity, she would have picked up the phone this morning and cursed Arnold Simons to hell and back. But her skills at cursing were still rudimentary, and Simons deserved better than she could dish out on her worst day.

So she’d cried instead, until she remembered that she’d promised the Last Chance Garden Club she’d lend a hand with the cleanup of Golfing for God. She decided doing something like might be just what she needed before she tried to figure out what to do next.

During the drive from Florence, she’d convinced herself that coming here to clean up Elbert’s putt-putt was like a nonviolent statement in opposition to the idiots like Arnold Simons. God would smile on the people who chose to clean up the place instead of ridicule it.

Of course, in all the thinking she’d done between Florence and Last Chance, it had never occurred to her that she’d find Tulane here.

She sucked up her complicated feelings and headed toward him. He watched her approach in a way that made her whole body vibrate. Darn it, why did he have to be so handsome and appealing? She needed to get over her crush.

“What are you doing here? I thought you hated Golfing for God,” she asked as she stopped in front of him.

“It’s not my most favorite place, but given that I’m a native and you’re not, I’m the one who ought to be surprised. What are you doing here?” He glanced away for an instant, watching the members of the Last Chance Garden Club as they fanned out like an army and began attacking the weeds.

She squared her shoulders. He wasn’t going to be happy about her getting all involved with his family’s business, so she braced herself for one of Tulane’s outbursts. “It’s my day off and I can do what I want. Since the ladies needed help for their cleanup day, I decided I would—”

“You’ve been crying,” he interrupted in a surprisingly calm voice.

“No, I haven’t,” she lied.

He saw through the lie. “Were you crying about Arnold Simons’s blog?”

“So you heard about that, huh?”

He nodded.

“For the record, Tulane, I didn’t tell that idiot anything about your family.”

He held up his hands. “I didn’t accuse you of that. What, do you have a guilty conscience?”

She shook her head and looked away from him. “No, it’s just that I know you can get angry about things and, well…”

“Well what?”

“Well, I’ve already been bawled out once today because of your secrets. I don’t need to be yelled at again, okay?” She sidestepped and started heading toward the Red Sea, where Bill and Hettie seemed to be having way too much fun pulling down kudzu.

Tulane snagged her wrist before she could get away. “Bawled out? By whom?”

She turned. “Who do you think? I’ve been lying to Deidre for weeks now. She was not amused when she read that blog. I was supposed to clue her in on all that stuff, remember? That’s why she sent me here. I didn’t do my job and she fired me because of it. So I guess you’re on your own from now on.” She tried to pull her wrist out of his grasp.

“She can’t do that to you,” Tulane said.

“Wanna bet? After what I did last weekend? Deidre can do anything she wants.”

He held up his finger. “Be quiet,” he commanded. “And don’t run away.” He let her go and pulled out his cell phone. “You saved my butt this weekend. It’s my time to save yours.”

He pressed a few buttons and a minute later he was speaking with the Dragon Lady herself. Sarah stood there, feeling things she didn’t want to feel as she listened to his side of the argument.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t whine. He just approached the conversation like a grown-up. He took all the blame for the fact that Sarah had kept his secrets. Then he explained in exceptionally calm tones all the facts that Arnold Simons’s blog had left out—like the fact that Haley had been in a serious car accident that had taken the life of her mother. And that Haley had also been traumatized last October in a hijacking that had almost taken the life of her grandmother. He also explained that he was frankly amazed that Sarah had kept his confidences. He had not expected her to do that at the expense of her own job.

He listened to Deidre for a few moments, and then handed his phone to Sarah. “She wants to speak with you.”

Sarah swallowed hard and pressed the phone to her ear. “Deidre?”

“Sarah, why didn’t you tell me this? It changes everything. I had no idea Tulane’s family had been touched by tragedy.”

“Uh, well, I promised him that I would keep this stuff to myself. I mean, it involves a minor child, and I thought—”

“Is she photogenic?”

Sarah closed her eyes. “Very. But don’t go there.”

“But we have to go there, don’t you see? Arnold Simons has made it a complete necessity for us to set the record straight. Our negotiations with Penny Farthing have hit a very delicate phase. Things could go either way. I’m sure you want to see Tulane out of that pink car and into a car with Racer Rabbit on the hood. Don’t you?”

It was like Deidre knew all her hot buttons. Of course she wanted to see Tulane out of that pink car. She felt so guilty that she’d do almost anything to help him, especially now that she’d fallen in love with him.

“Yes, but—”

“Look, I’m sorry I bawled you out before. I was very angry. I’m calmer now. And I understand how you might have wanted to protect this little girl, but you made the wrong decision. I hope you see that now. Being blindsided by this thing is way worse than having come out with it in the first place. And now that I understand why Tulane cares about car seats, well, it changes things. You see that, don’t you?”