Olivia
Every Fourth of July I take a walk along the shores of the Gulf Coast and remember my daddy. This year, it’s something I’m struggling with. I wasn’t that far from home, but in many ways, I was the farthest I’d ever been. I’d grown up a military brat, first in Georgia, then Arizona, California, North Carolina and finally Alabama. Though we’d moved an awful lot, and it seemed I’d switched schools more often than I changed clothes, I had a good family, with two parents who loved me, even though one of them had been deployed for more than half of my life.
My daddy was a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, and even though he was gone for much of my childhood, I worshiped the ground that man walked on. I’d about lose my mind when he came home from deployment, and I’d cry myself to sleep every night for a month after he’d leave again. Before that last deployment, life was good, my childhood was good, but then Daddy never came home, and everything turned to shit.
I don’t like to think on it too much, but every Fourth of July I lose myself to a little of that darkness that came and swallowed us up after his death. This year there appears to be enough misery at Tanglewood already, and I decide a walk into town to celebrate with some of the locals is just what I need. There’s nothing like feeling lonely when you’re surrounded by a crowd.
The Magnolia Springs parade hasn’t started by the time I weave my way through the throng. The gathering is small but so sweet, and as I stand beside strangers to celebrate our servicemen and women, I catch a glimpse of a tall, dark and angry Marine leaning against one of the old oaks that gave this street its name. His eyes are downcast, and I can tell he doesn’t want to be here, but then I guess his four-year-old angel wasn’t exactly going to drive herself to the parade, now was she?
At breakfast this morning, Bett had mentioned that she was participating in the march. August hadn’t said a damn thing, but then ever since our conversation the other night, he’d hardly said two words to me. I’ve been trying my best to stay out of his hair by keeping busy at Tanglewood, making phone calls about the shelter, cleaning and baking way too many snickerdoodles. August had even let Bett help, and while her older brother may not love having me in their house, Bettina sure seems to.
A little old lady comes and plants her chair practically on top of me, and I move to the left a fraction of an inch and shoulder barge the man standing next to me by accident.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
At the same time, he says, “Pardon me, miss.”
“No, that was my fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” I smile up at the man. He’s tall, not quite as tall as August, with a very Matt-Bomer, all-American-man thing going on, only his eyes are seafoam green, not blue. Everything about him, from his tan leather shoes to his navy blazer, screams old-money.
“You’re fine,” he says, and then chuckles, probably at his word choice, but there’s every chance he’s laughing at me because I’m probably gawping at him with drool trailing down my chin. “Are you just in the area for the holiday?”
“Oh no.” I finally quit staring and close my mouth, only I realize I’m coming off a bit like a brain-dead redneck, so I quickly add, “I just moved here.”
“Really?” he asks, studying my face closely. It’s unnerving, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m wearing remnants of my breakfast when he says, “How are you finding our beautiful town so far?”
“It’s nice. Of course, this is only my fourth day.” I lean in so the woman and her trio of friends who’ve moved in beside me won’t hear. “But the most beautiful roses often have the sharpest thorns.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I’ve heard a lot about this town’s southern hospitality, but I’m yet to see it. So far, I can’t tell if you wanna run me outta town, take me back to your cabin in the woods and chop me up into itty-bitty pieces, or if you’re just genuinely being polite.”
“Well, I was aiming for polite, but I apologize if I’ve come off like a serial killer. While I do own a cabin in the woods, I assure you I’d likely only take you there for a quiet weekend away. I’m not one for killing things.” He winks. “Too messy.”
“I’m sorry,” I say with a smile, glad that not all the men in this town are as serious as August. Then again, I suppose not all the men in Magnolia Springs have lived through a war zone.
“Jude du Pont,” he says offering his hand. “They’ll come around. Give it time.”
“Olivia.” I reach out and shake his hand, but then the parade starts, and silence falls over us only to be completely eradicated by hoots and whistles. There’s a small regiment of soldiers, scouts and cadets that file past on foot or in wheelchairs, and a tractor or two, and then little Bett’s daycare center comes along, their teacher proudly holding the banner and the children are all dressed in their finest, despite the heat.
Bett’s wearing the midnight-blue dress she wore the first day we met. A ribbon bar and a purple heart medal are pinned to her dress. I dare a glance at August, who seems to have moved forward into the crowd now that it’s almost over. He watches his sister carefully, and then when she screams my name and breaks away from the parade, barreling into my legs, I wrap my arms around her and give her a tight squeeze, though my eyes never leave August’s and his never leave mine. Bettina’s teacher calls her name, telling her to keep up, and I give her a wave as she skips back to her place in line. I glance back at August, but he’s melted away from the crowd and is nowhere to be found.
“Friend of yours?” Jude asks, nodding to the little ones as they march past with swinging arms and eager faces.
I don’t know if he’s talking about Bettina or the man I can’t take my eyes off of, but I smile and say, “Yeah.”
Of course, I’m lying through my teeth. While Bettina may want to be my friend, her brother appears to outright detest the idea. I’ll talk him around, though. I’m sure of it.
“You’re staying at Tanglewood?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, clapping as a farmer slowly putters past on his tractor. Red, white and blue streamers tied with aluminum cans trail behind him and make a godawful racket. My gaze darts all around the parade, but I can’t find August anywhere.
As the fire brigade slowly drives down the road with its lights flashing, and its siren whooping loudly, people start packing up their belongings and head along Oak Street behind it. A woman with perfectly coiffed auburn curls and bright red lipstick sidles up to Jude and says, “There you are, I been looking for you all over.”
“Hello, Ruby,” he says, and the rest of their conversation is lost to me because as the crowd pushes forward, I get separated from the couple. I don’t mind too much. While Jude may be gorgeous in a southern gentleman kind of way, I’m too busy wondering where August went to pay the man any mind.
I follow the herd, and it isn’t long before I find myself at the fire station. It sits on the edge of Magnolia River and is surrounded by trees. Beside the big old brick firehouse there are stalls on the manicured lawns decorated in red, white, and blue selling hotdogs, cotton candy, cold drinks, and more American flags than you can poke a stick at. I’m a little lost at first, but it doesn’t take me long to find my bearings. It doesn’t take long for curious minds to start talking either, if their furtive glances are anything to go by. God bless small towns.
Once I collect a Coke and a hot dog, I’m set upon by a group of women—all about my age—who practically drag me away from the hot dog stand and force me to lose my appetite with their horrified looks at my supper of processed meat and carbs.
“We heard you’re new in town,” a woman with a shock of strawberry blond curls and pale pink lipstick says. She looks like she just stepped off the set of The Stepford Wives. I cast my gaze around the group of well put-together women., They all appear to be from Stepford.
“Sure am,” I say, setting my pop down on a nearby picnic table and wiping the condensation from my palm onto my sundress.
The woman thrusts a dainty manicured hand out in front of me and says, “I’m Katherine Abernathy.”
I take Katherine’s proffered hand and shake, wincing when she glances down at the ketchup I just smeared over her milky white skin. She retrieves a God’s honest handkerchief from her purse and wipes away the mess as if a toddler had just attacked her with sticky fingers.
“Olivia,” I say sheepishly.
“Well, Olivia, this here is Elizabeth, Georgia, Della, and Alice.” She points to the women gathered around me as if she’s a hostess on a game show.
“Hi,” I say, choosing not to shake hands after the way Katherine looked at me. I nod to each woman respectively and become a little more nauseated by their beaming smiles and perfect hair and makeup. By the time I’ve reached Alice’s overly cheerful face, I feel small and grubby, like a rat scurrying around their feet, desperate for a way out. My God, you couldn’t even make these women up.
“I saw you talking to Jude du Pont at the parade,” Alice says, flipping her long blond hair back from her shoulder. “Do you two know each other?”
“Oh, no. We just met today.”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Katherine says, her laser focus zeroing in on my cowboy boots and cornflower blue dress.
“I’ll say,” another woman—Della, I think—pipes up. “Some of us have been living right under his very nose for years, and he’s never uttered a word.”
I grimace and cast my gaze toward the rest of the townsfolk, longing for something … someone to come and save me.
“Are we keeping you from someone?” Katherine asks.
“Oh, no. I was just looking for …” I roll my gaze over the crowd one last time and spot the man who I believe brought me here in the first place. “Is that Mayor Winkler?”
“You know the mayor too?” Georgia says, brightly.
“My, my,” Katherine says with a malicious smile. “You just got here, and it seems you know everyone already. Oh, Mr. Mayor?”
“We haven’t met yet,” I say, but no one appears to be listening to me because Mayor Winkler waddles toward our group, and it’s as if the Dead Sea itself is parting.
“Ladies, lovely to see you today,” Mayor Winkler says. The group fawns all over the man as if it’s the second coming of Christ, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Now, I don’t believe I’ve met this pretty little angel. How do you do? I’m Mayor Winkler.”
“Olivia Anders.”
“Olivia?” he says, and his dark brow glistens with sweat. He blots it away with a handkerchief. Doesn’t this town ever use Kleenex? “Well I’ll be damned. Welcome, young lady, welcome.”
“Thank you.” After all this time, I’m finally meeting the man who convinced me that setting up a shelter here was the best thing for everyone, and given that the last few days have been nothing short of hell, I don’t know whether to kiss or slap him. I settle for a handshake instead.
Mr. Mayor asks if I’ve had a chance to meet Dalton Brooks yet—another veteran who returned to Magnolia Springs a different man than the one who went away to war. I hoped he’d be here today, but I understand that crowds aren’t always every Marine’s cup of tea. He doesn’t mention Jason Lambert—an eighteen-year-old kid who shot himself in his childhood home just last spring. I’d already done my research, though. Jason may be buried six feet under, but he’s what brought me here, and I intend to make sure that Magnolia Springs doesn’t lose any more veterans.
I’m mid-way through telling Mayor Winkler when he can expect Paws for Cause to open when a familiar voice bursts through the crowd.
“Wivvie, Wivvie,” the little girl shouts, and I whirl around to find Bettina barreling toward us. August walks at a clip behind her to keep up. “Did you see?”
I squat down to her level. “I sure did. You looked amazing walking in that parade. I’m so proud of you, sugar bean.”
August approaches us cautiously, his gaze scanning for danger the way a lot of Marines do. Our eyes meet over the top of Bettina’s head and I smile up at him. “Hi.”
He nods his chin in my direction and I know that’s all the greeting I’ll get, but he surprises me by coming a little closer and saying, “We’re not staying. I just wanted to know if you needed a lift back?” I flinch, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and August frowns and runs a hand through his hair. “You know what? Never mind.”
“I’d like that,” I say, quickly, terrified of being swallowed up by Stepford and spat out the other side the carbon copy of Katherine and her friends.
August clears his throat. “Alright then, well, we were going to head off before the fireworks start.”
“Okay, just let me say goodbye to the mayor.”
“You don’t have to come, you know?”
“I said I would.” I frown at him. “Didn’t I?”
“Auggie dwoesn’t like the fiey works. Boom, boom, boom,” Olivia shouts and skips away from us, so I’m left staring at her brother.
“Seen one firework, you’ve seen them all, right?”
“Right,” he scoffs, and I know his distaste for them isn’t because he dislikes the thing itself, but because of the noise they make, and the memories they dig up. As part of our training, we have to recreate certain situations that may be a trigger for the soldier and the dog, so that the canine knows what to do. Fireworks are often a trigger for anyone who made it out of a war zone.
August walks away to wrangle his sister, and I turn back to the mayor to say my goodbyes. Everyone is glaring at me.
Mayor Winkler yanks on the hem of his vest, pulling it down over his rotund belly. “I didn’t realize you’d be staying at the Tanglewood residence. Especially not so soon after the Cottons passed, God rest their souls.”
“I didn’t know they had passed, and since everything is closed until tomorrow, I had nowhere else to go.”
“My dear girl,” the Mayor says, grabbing my hands and enveloping them in his sweaty grip. “You should have called me.”
I smile politely. “No need. Tanglewood has been just fine, and I’ll go and see about finding a rental tomorrow.”
“Oh, I work at the realtor in town,” Georgia says. “You come see me, and we’ll find you something just perfect.” Katherine shoots her a look filled with so much venom she’s practically hissing.
“What a great idea. Miss Georgia will sort you out with something more suitable,” Mayor Winkler says. “She’s more than just a pretty face.”
“Oh, Mr. Mayor.” She blushes right to the roots of her hair.
“It’s for the best, dear,” the man says, patting my hand as if in commiseration. “Mr. Cotton, well, he’s part of the reason I wanted you to come, but given his accident, I’m not sure Tanglewood is the best place for you, and we’d hate for anything to happen.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, it’s just that he’s a somewhat volatile member of the community and—”
“I heard he was dishonorably discharged for gunning a man down in Iraq,” Alice says.
“He was in Afghanistan.” I shake my head impatiently. “He has a purple heart.”
“Oh God,” Alice places a hand against her chest. “Is it serious?”
“He wasn’t dishonorably discharged; he was discharged because he lost a leg in an IED explosion. That’s why he has a purple heart.”
“He lost his leg and has a heart condition?” Georgia asks.
“August is just fine,” I snap, done with this whole damn town. While what the mayor said about August being volatile may be true, this kind of prejudice and stupidity is why a lot of veterans feel ostracized from the community. “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Mayor, but Mr. Cotton has been nothing but hospitable toward me since I arrived. I wish I could say the same for everyone else. Perhaps you just haven’t gotten to know him well enough.” Oh God, I am going to hell for being the world’s biggest liar.
The mayor chuckles. “Perhaps you’re right, but he don’t do a lot to try to fit in or make it easy for people to accept him.”
“Forgive me, but he fought for our country. He fought for the freedom that this town enjoys today, so I don’t feel he should have to do anything to make people comfortable,” I bite out each word as if it were poison in my mouth. Mayor Winkler shakes his head, his jowls wobbling like a turkey’s wattle, and he seems to be looking over my head as I speak, which is just plain rude. “In fact, I’d say August Cotton has done more than enough to make you people ‘comfortable.’ Enjoy your celebration, Mr. Mayor.”
I turn on my heels and smack right into a solid wall of muscle. I guess I know now why Mayor Winkler was shaking his head at me as if he might pry something loose. “Shit.”
August’s hands grip my shoulders to stop me from falling. “Nice speech.”
“Shut up, Cotton.” I wrench free from his grasp and stalk around him on my way to the parking lot.
A beat later, he follows, and when I reach the passenger side of August’s truck, Bett hangs her head out the window and squeals. “Wivvie.”
“Hey, sugar bean.” I give her a bright smile. I know her brother is standing right behind me, and I know my little outburst back there is going to cost me something, but Bettina doesn’t need to get caught up in the middle.
He leans an arm against the top of the door so I can’t open it. “You know you didn’t have to defend me, back there.”
“Well, they didn’t have to be such assholes about it,” I say, and then balk when Bett giggles.
“You swored.”
“Yeah, I swored. Now scooch over, missy.”
“Thank you,” he whispers and walks around to his side of the truck.
“You’re welcome,” I reply with a grin, and I open my door and climb in alongside the most adorable four-year-old in the entire world. I suppose both Cottons have their charm. Yep, one big charismatic family.
Hell, and damnation.