Home At Last Chance (Last Chance #2)(42)
Author: Hope Ramsay

But Daddy was alive, and Tulane felt the sudden need to let Daddy in on the truth about Sarah.

He drove by Momma and Daddy’s house, but Elbert’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, so he headed south toward Golfing for God.

Tulane pulled his Mustang into the parking lot, right next to Daddy’s old pickup. The sound of a weed-whacker split the serenity of the summer day as Tulane opened his car door.

Daddy was cutting weeds, like he always did every summer. For some reason, knowing that Daddy wasn’t moping around the house made Tulane feel a little better. He tried hard to push that positive thought out of his mind, because he wasn’t here for anything positive.

He was here to make Daddy see the truth. Finally.

He got out of his Mustang and slammed the door. He strode down the gravel walk, the midsummer sun casting short shadows in the middle of a hot, humid day.

Tulane found Elbert trimming the main walkway. Beyond Daddy the ark baked in the noonday sun, its peeling paint giving the place a seedy feel. Even so, the grounds at Golfing for God had been tidied. The place looked better than it had on Monday morning.

“Hey, Daddy,” Tulane called, his voice tight, even to his own ears.

Elbert killed the motor on the weed-whacker and turned with a slow grin. “What brings you to Golfing for God this morning? Aren’t you supposed to be up in Darlington?” Elbert leaned the whacker against a pine tree. His T-shirt today said “Enlighten Up!”

“I’ve come to set you straight.”

“Set me straight? About what?”

“About Sarah. Daddy, she used you. And she made a fool out of both of us. She’s a liar and—” Tulane bit off his own words. He couldn’t manage to say the rest, because the emotions he’d tamped down suddenly bubbled up and caught in the back of his throat.

Daddy seemed unaffected. He stood with his feet planted wide, the noonday sun glinting on his gray hair like a halo.

“Did you hear what I said?” Tulane raged, his voice ragged.

“Well, you don’t have to shout. I don’t believe Sarah’s a liar or that she used me, son.”

“Well, you should believe it. She set me up. She set all of us up.”

“Uh-huh. And what makes you think this?”

“Oh, crap, it’s a big complicated mess.” With that Tulane started to pace the walkway as he described every one of Sarah’s underhanded, no-account, dishonest actions. When he finished his detailed indictment, Tulane didn’t feel any better. Especially since Daddy didn’t seem very impressed with it.

Elbert stood with his hands planted on his h*ps and said, “Let me get this straight. You think that Sarah put Hettie up to forming the Committee to Resurrect Golfing for God for some cockeyed scheme to advance her career. And then, once we got the committee rolling, Sarah turned on us and made us look like fools by talking to that idiot Arnold Simons?”

Tulane stopped pacing and gave his father a dirty look. “Daddy, this is not about Golfing for God. It’s about the stupid pink car, and the car seat program, and all those nasty interviews they did of me, and then that vicious article about Haley.” He took a couple of steps toward his father. “Are you even listening?”

“Oh, I can hear you. But you’re wrong. This is not about a pink car or that nasty blog. This is, actually, about the golf course.”

“You’re crazy.” Tulane turned and took two steps. He wanted to scream out so loud that the angels would hear him.

“You can think what you like,” Daddy said.

Tulane heard the disappointment in his father’s voice. He took several deep breaths and tugged hard at the anger that was about to pull him out of control. When he’d managed to center himself again, he turned around.

“I’m sorry I said that.”

“I accept your apology. Besides, I didn’t take it literally.”

“Daddy, don’t you see, she used me.”

“Well, that might be true, son. But Sarah didn’t use me. And she didn’t use Haley, or Hettie, or your mother or any of the ladies that formed that committee. I don’t think she talked to Arnold Simons at all, although Lillian Bray sure did run her mouth off to that man when he came through town looking for background.”

“He came here?”

“Yeah. He came. I didn’t talk to him. And near as I could tell, he didn’t have any inside information when he arrived. Whatever nastiness he printed in that online blog of his came from Lillian. Lord knows that woman could poison the sweetest well on earth.”

“But, Daddy—”

Daddy put up a hand and gave Tulane his scary father look. “No, son, you listen now. Did you know that Sarah came down here on her day off and worked with the church ladies to help them organize their nonprofit committee? She wrote up a whole list of instructions about what they needed to set it up, legal like. She spent a lot of time on that. Ruby and Hettie were so grateful. Sarah didn’t have to do that, you know? And I don’t see where a person who does a thing like that is evil or nasty. And I sure can’t figure out how helping the committee get started was part of some crazy master plan designed to advance her career. So, I’m sorry, Tulane, but I don’t think I’m crazy or deluded when it comes to Sarah. I like that girl. A lot.”

“But—”

“And lemme tell you one more thing. You going off and listening to the ugly things those people from New York had to say and then rushing over here to spread that filth makes you just the same as them. Good Lord, Tulane, you should know better than anyone that just because someone says something ugly don’t mean it’s true. When did you become a bully, like Lillian and those New York people?”

Tulane backed up a step. The sun beat down on him, but all the heat inside him suddenly froze. Everything froze except his brain.

His brain, on the other hand, started to add things up, but it ran into some serious inconsistencies in the data.

“But if it’s not true, why didn’t she defend herself? Daddy, I saw the memos with my own eyes. She wrote one that said it didn’t matter if I won any races, because just having someone like me in a pink car would sell diapers.”

“Well, I reckon she was right about that. It did sell diapers. And it’s her job to sell diapers. You can’t hold that against her, Tulane.”

“But she wrote the memo about the pink car.”

“Well, I reckon that sold a lot of diapers, too.”

“But she wrote this awful nasty memo about Deidre and her child, Daddy. I just couldn’t believe that Sarah would do a thing like that. And if she was capable of doing that, well, then she was capable of playing us all like fools. Me included.”

Daddy smiled. “And how did she play you for a fool?”

Tulane wasn’t going to explain about the one night he’d spent in Sarah’s bed. He just said, “She broke my heart.” The words came out husky.

It was hard to admit the truth. But the way his chest felt right at that moment, he knew for a fact that his heart was not just broken, it was shattered. He wanted Sarah like nothing else, but the Sarah he wanted didn’t really exist.

“Oh, I see.” Daddy sounded concerned now. The humor had left his voice. “A broken heart is an awful thing. You just have to look at what a broken heart has done to your oldest brother. I can’t help you with a thing like that either. On the other hand, I’m sincerely glad to hear you have a heart to break. It shows maturity on your part.”

Tulane closed his eyes and kind of sagged where he stood. His head hurt. His heart hurt. He was confused.

“Did you ever tell Sarah that you love her?” Daddy asked.

Tulane opened his eyes. “I was going to.”

“You were going to? Son, that’s not the same as actually telling a woman you love her, you know. It’s hard to be brokenhearted if you never actually say the words.”

“I was going to. I had it all planned out for yesterday. I planned to have a serious conversation with her about a relationship.”

“Well, that sounds grown-up of you, I guess.”

“But then the shit hit the fan, you know? And then everyone was telling me that she wasn’t worth it.”

“And you didn’t come to her defense when the bullies attacked? Boy, that’s a change in your usual MO. I can’t remember how many fights you got into over me. And I know you love me.”

Tulane blinked. “Daddy, last Monday you told me I should ignore the bullies, not fight them.”

“Well, yeah, you could have ignored them and gone and found Sarah and had that serious conversation. But you didn’t do that either. From the purple bags under your eyes, I’d be willing to bet you did something stupid instead, like getting drunk.”

“Oh, crap.” An emotion that was both wonderful and awful gnawed at Tulane’s insides. Was this how Racer Rabbit felt every Saturday morning when the clueless bunny finally figured out the lesson he was supposed to learn?

“I am an idiot,” Tulane said.

“Yup. You are,” Daddy agreed. “But you wouldn’t be the first Rhodes male to stake a claim to that title. Clay behaved pretty idiotically when Jane crossed his path, too. You missed that last October when you were off testing cars. It was right entertaining there for a while watching that boy squirm.”

“I gotta go, Daddy. I gotta find her. You think she’s already gone home to Boston?”

“Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“Absolutely not.” Daddy grinned like the proverbial cat who had lunched on the canary.

“Daddy? What’s going on?”

“Well,” Elbert said, “the truth is that Sarah’s at the Cut ’n Curl, having her hair and nails done. Now, mind you, she didn’t exactly come to get her hair and nails done, that’s just a by-product of the real reason she came, which was to get your phone number.”

“But she has my phone number.”

“No, I guess it was in her corporate-issue BlackBerry, which National Brands took away from her when they fired her. And if you ask me, that is truly tragic, when you think about the way Sarah used that thing to manage Pete’s funeral.”

“She came to get my phone number?”

“Uh-huh, something about needing to apologize to you for something she wrote. Anyways, your momma called and told me I should send you to the Cut ’n Curl just as soon as you showed up.”

“When I showed up?”

“Uh-huh, see, Miriam and your momma have been waiting on you since about ten this morning, on account of the fact that Miriam Randall is never wrong.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Son, Miriam told your momma that you would marry a preacher’s daughter back when you were about fifteen years old. None of us really believed it until Sarah showed up. So anyway, Sarah came to your mother this morning, full of apologies for things that weren’t really her fault. And Ruby’s been keeping Sarah on ice, so to speak, until you showed up. Apparently, Miriam was certain you would show up before lunch. You’re running a little late.”