Love Arrives in Pieces Read online

  True. She had the tiaras and the dried bouquets to prove it. But maybe Stella didn’t want to remember. Maybe she’d rather forget all of it.

  But then she’d disappear in her mother’s sight completely.

  Mama pointedly wiped her hands with a napkin and blessedly changed the subject. “Still no job offers yet?”

  Well. Not a better subject.

  “What are you doing here, Mom?” Kat jumped straight to the point, a new trait that Stella still had trouble getting used to. Marrying Lucas had definitely brought out her sister’s sense of confidence and independence.

  The pregnancy hormones probably took care of the rest.

  No doubt about it, Kat had come a long way since her insecure days with her ex, Chase. The guy who’d broken her heart years ago before Lucas claimed it for his own.

  The one who’d broken a piece of Stella’s too.

  That secret still weighed heavy. She shifted in her seat, focusing back on her mother. One crisis at a time.

  “Yeah, Mama, you didn’t come down to the shelter to find me and ask about a job. What’s going on?” Not that her parents didn’t have legit reason to be overly interested in Stella’s career, seeing how if something didn’t change soon, Stella would be right back living with them. As if she wasn’t twenty-five years old and divorced. As if she didn’t already have enough labels to fight.

  “Regardless of whether I did or not, you still need a job.” Her mother looked for a place to discard the tainted napkin. “But you know you’re welcome to stay with us if nothing turns up.”

  More like, You’re welcome to stay with us and let us control the rest of your life since you’ve messed it up doing it on your own so far. Mom meant well, but she didn’t have to actually say the words for them to linger in the air.

  No thanks. Stella would rather stay at the shelter. Besides, Daddy had already handled her legal fees. She was done depending on her parents like a college kid. “I know, Mama. It’s okay, rent is just a little late. Apparently Louisiana isn’t interested in color swatches and throw pillows right now.”

  “Come on, you do more than decorate people’s living rooms. You did that big job for that office complex over in Texas last summer.” Kat finally spoke up, swatting at Stella’s arm. “You have a great portfolio. Something will turn up.”

  But what if it didn’t? What if she really ran out of options? Stella’s stomach twisted. Her parents hadn’t saved years’ worth of a preacher’s salary to finally get their forever house and then be expected to support their grown daughter. Dillon had promised before God and Daddy to do that, instead. It wasn’t their fault he had commitment issues.

  And a penchant for redheads.

  Besides, she couldn’t bring herself to ask Mama for anything after coming across that file the other day in their home office when scrounging for a pen, the file that held a copy of her divorce papers. She’d left them there when she’d come home after the divorce, then couldn’t bring herself to take them into her new apartment—her sanctuary, that was all hers, with no shadowy reminders of the past.

  The part that galled her the most was that the file was simply labeled STELLA. It looked funny, minus the last name she’d had for the past two years. Incomplete. Like she was nothing more now than a tidy label, something else for her mom to organize and keep straight.

  Too bad a glossy sticker couldn’t package up the turmoil of the past two years—much as her mother had tried.

  Mom crossed her arms over her chest, then thought better of it and smoothed out the wrinkles she’d created in the material. “Kat’s right. Something will turn up.”

  The repetition of the vague sentiment didn’t do much to lift her hopes. How many times had she said the same things to Dillon in an attempt to convince him to stay?

  First, the initial round of questions. What do you need? What can I change? What can I do?

  Nothing.

  Not. A. Thing.

  Then came the desperate bribes and promises. Go ahead and buy that new truck you’ve been wanting. I’ve cooked your favorite dinner tonight. Why don’t you go out with the guys later, blow off some steam . . .

  He’d blown off steam, all right. But not with the guys.

  “Anyway, of course I didn’t come down here to quiz you on your job options. I just got out of a meeting with the Junior League committee, and I’ve brought you something.” Mama dug in the oversized purse on her arm, the one that could house a litter of Chihuahuas but instead carried her mother’s entire life. Right down to the day planner penciled in perfect cursive. Stella used to joke that Claire Varland didn’t organize, rather, organization Claire Varlanded.

  She handed over the creased papers she’d pulled from her purse, which Stella recognized from the heading as the court documents finalizing the divorce. Ones she’d seen a hundred times. It was a thicker stack than usual, though. She thumbed through to the back pages.

  The initial filings, when she was served.

  That arrow found its mark. She let out a sharp breath.

  “Mom! Why would you bring those?” Kat tried to tug them away, but Stella clenched them tight.

  “No, it’s okay. I’m fine.” Lies. Pageant smile fixed firmly in place, Stella set the papers on the counter, knowing her sister wouldn’t see through the mask. Sort of like when Stella was trained to give the right answer on stage for the judges.

  “What do you most long for, Stella Varland?”

  Shoulders back. Eye contact. Show all your teeth. “World peace, of course.”

  Man, she’d have a different answer today.

  Mama shrugged. “I thought these needed some attention. You’ve been mopey lately.”

  “Attention?” Stella raised her eyebrows, a hundred snarky comments begging to leave her tongue. Those papers didn’t need any more attention—the words were already forever burned in her memory. Kat had always been the smart one in the family when it came to school and memorizing, yet Stella could quote the legal documents line for line. Probably because of how many times she’d pored over the text, searching for answers that now she realized even Dillon didn’t have.

  “Wait a minute. She didn’t say positive attention.” Kat picked up the top page and held the corner close to the dancing flame of the candle between them. Dangerously close.

  Totally not close enough.

  Stella grinned, snatched the sheet from her sister’s grip, and dipped the corner into the hungry flame. It quickly devoured the corner, spreading black ash up the page, the text smearing and burning and disappearing before the flicker snuffed out.

  “Girls.” Their mother’s disapproval was sharp and so expected it felt cliché. She pinned her stare—the same one she used to get her way with various committees, church teams, and even the mayor—on Stella and Kat. “That’s not what I meant. You’re a grown woman, Stella. And a pageant queen. Pageant queens don’t play with fire.”

  Actually, that was about all Stella had ever done; she just hadn’t realized it until this moment. A flash of memory—of Chase—suddenly jabbed into her, and she shook herself free of the image. Not here. Not now.

  Definitely not in front of her sister.

  Kat handed a cupcake to a man in ripped jeans who smelled like a car’s pine air freshener, then took a big bite of a Snow White cake. “Then what exactly did you mean, Mama?”

  Great question. Stella waited, papers dangling from her fingers.

  Claire reached for a cupcake, too, then apparently changed her mind. Stella got her calorie-counting practice honest. “It’s high time Stella realizes the past is the past. This is an anniversary worth noting but not worth grieving over.”

  She still hated that word. Probably because the voices still hadn’t died completely. You have to grieve, Stella. Don’t fight the grief, Stella. Grieve it out, Stella.

  Grieve. Right. In the immediate months after Dillon left, everyone in her narrow circle of friends and family had encouraged her to vent. Process. Feel. But then it got old. T
hey never said so, of course, they didn’t have to. It was in their eyes. No, her family was much too proper and polite to ever say something so honest and raw. “Chin up, Princess,” her daddy said instead. “Don’t let the frogs get you down.”

  But then one day, their gazes turned from compassionate to frustrated. As if they wanted to shout, “Aren’t you over this by now?”

  Maybe if they had said what they were thinking . . . maybe if just one time Mama had actually said what she was thinking instead of constantly running her magic vacuum cleaner over the messiness of life, they all could have felt a little better.

  Some things couldn’t be organized or cleaned up.

  Sometimes a princess just needed to sit in the dirt.

  “We should celebrate, really.” Mama looked back at the cupcake she’d rejected and picked it up, raising it in Stella’s direction like a toast. “To fresh starts.”

  Kat nudged another frosted dessert closer toward Stella. “Not a bad idea, sis. You’re one year free and clear. Think of it that way.”

  The room shrank another a few inches. No, she wasn’t grieving anymore. Yet she wasn’t ready to celebrate, either. Celebrate what? The fact that her marriage had failed? That she had failed?

  Everyone knew Dillon had failed.

  But what category did that leave her in? A marriage took two.

  No, she was trapped in the barren land between grief and celebration. Mourning and joy. This vast emotional wasteland was perhaps even darker than the initial shock of separation. This was numbing and indefinite.

  “Celebrate with us.” Mama took a bite of cupcake, wiping crumbs from her lip and somehow miraculously managing to keep her lipstick intact. As if even the cake knew its proper place in her presence.

  Celebrate?

  Maybe.

  But not with cake.

  Slowly, Stella sucked in a deep breath and fingered the edge of the papers. She held them a little closer to the flame, wishing she had it in her to just let them burn.

  Maybe destroying them would finish healing her.

  Only one way to know.

  She unfolded the papers and held a corner steadily in the flame, until the entire stack ignited.

  “Stella!” Mama gasped and jerked away from the counter as smoke billowed from the pile, now rapidly turning to ash and dust. Kat shrieked and grabbed the cupcakes, moving them away from the flames.

  Mama flapped her hands like a bird attempting flight. “Water! We need water over here!”

  Stella stared at the flames licking higher, devouring her past, orange and yellow light swallowing the memories whole. Forget cupcakes. This was a celebration.

  The director rushed to the counter just as Kat filled a pitcher with water from the sink and doused the black charred papers. A whiff of burned sugar cookie aroma wafted in their direction, and then it was over.

  They all looked at each other in relief.

  Until the smoke alarms blared, and the automatic sprinkler system turned on.

  Water sprayed like a shower from above, seeping into Stella’s skin. Chaos erupted, shouts mingling with laughter and cries of outrage.

  She tilted her face to the makeshift rain, letting it wash the rest of the last year away. Fresh start, wasn’t that what Mama had said?

  Cheers.

  “Stella Varland!” Claire shouted over the din of the water and the raucous response of the shelter’s patrons. She held her giant purse over her head and tottered toward the door in her high heels. “That was completely unnecessary!”

  Probably. But seeing her mother dripping in her best pantsuit made it a little worth it.

  The man who’d just gotten his cupcake from Kat shoved the entire thing in his mouth with a wide smile and extended his arms wide. “Free showers, everyone!”

  A mob descended on the counter, snatching the leftover cupcakes before they completely soaked through.

  “Everyone out!” The shelter’s director began waving her arms, directing everyone to the door. “Single file. No one panic, the fire is out.”

  One by one, the crowd shuffled through the front doors after Claire, Kat bringing up the rear, her apron clinging to her drenched basketball belly. “Stella, come on. We can’t stay here.”

  Stella caught the door behind her sister and looked back once more into the dripping chaos she’d created. The last thing she saw before the door silently closed behind her was Dixie and Howard.

  Dancing to “Heartbreak Hotel” as water rained around them.

  two

  Stella Varland had made the newspaper again.

  Except this time, the headline didn’t announce yet another pageant win.

  Chase Taylor couldn’t help but grin at the grainy image spread across his cousin’s kitchen table. It didn’t take a lot to land the front page in Bayou Bend, but setting fire to a homeless shelter would definitely do the trick.

  Stella stared back at him from the newspaper, mouth open as she protested—what? The photo?—adamantly to the camera. She looked good. But what did he expect? She couldn’t help it.

  Beside her in the picture, her sister Kat stood beside a woman who the caption identified as the shelter’s director, Nancy Martin. And one Kat Varland had apparently become Kat Brannen.

  Chase set the paper down, mind racing. And his heartbeat, too, if he was honest. Brannen . . . wasn’t that Kat’s BFF from back in the day? Luke—no, Lucas. That’s right. The football coach. Wow, times changed. He shook his head. Good for Kat.

  That would make his homecoming to Bayou Bend slightly less complicated.

  A familiar pang of regret over the way he treated Kat rose unbidden in his stomach. It had been years ago, another lifetime, practically, since their relationship, but still. He’d done her wrong.

  It was just that Stella . . .

  No. No more regrets. He was done with all of that. He’d buried a giant regret in that polished oak coffin with his fiancée last fall, and that would be the last regret he ever had.

  He tried to drown the rush of memory with a swallow of black coffee, and nearly spit it out. “Dude, did this even brew? It’s like a solid.”

  His cousin, firefighter Ethan Ryland, joined him at the kitchen table, crunching a piece of bacon. “Hey, I just make it the way Chap makes it.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Chap?”

  “Chaplain. Darren Phillips, at the station.”

  Chase peered into his mug at the sludge posing as liquid caffeine. “Tell him his methods could use some prayer coverage.”

  “Watch it, now. Are you really complaining about staying somewhere for free?” Ethan slid into the chair across from Chase, grinning around his bacon. “I can turn all the cooking over to you, man. Or better yet, just let you go hang out with your folks.” He wiggled his eyebrows at the threat.

  “Think I’d rather bathe in that coffee.” Chase stood and took his mug to the sink, briefly debating pouring it down the drain or into the garbage disposal. He opted for the disposal and flipped the switch. He raised his voice over the sudden gargle of the machine. “And I told you I’d pay you half the rent after my first check.”

  “I’m messing with you.” Ethan rocked his chair back on two legs and reached up to adjust the brim of his navy department cap. “I’m only here every other twenty-four hours, anyway. Could stand a roomie for a while.”

  The two-bedroom apartment with his buddy beat crashing indefinitely at his parents’ place, anytime. He’d find his own place, eventually—assuming he decided to put down roots in Bayou Bend again. That was still undecided. Chase loved his family—they were half the reason he’d moved back to Bayou Bend from Houston after Leah’s death. The job being the other half. He’d been torn for months over what to do and where to go after her passing, so when the job opened up for a contractor to renovate Bayou Bend’s old run-down theater, well, he decided that was sign enough.

  He’d wrangled a lease-to-own deal on his house in Texas, packed up, and moved back home within three days. He started
work tomorrow.

  “I’m glad I’m back.” Mostly. No—completely. He squared his shoulders. He needed to own his decisions. Life was wasted on the indecisive. If Leah’s untimely death had taught him anything, it was that life was too short to do anything halfway or half-hearted.

  Go big or go home.

  In his case, it happened to be both. Literally.

  “And just in time for our ten-year reunion next year.” Ethan made a show of checking his watch. “Who knows. Maybe we’ll actually find dates by then.”

  Chase cringed before he could hide it, and Ethan threw both hands in the air, bacon skittering across the table. “Whoa, sorry, dude. I forgot. I mean, I didn’t forget. I just wasn’t—you know. I mean, I haven’t ever—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Honest mistake. The reminder of his singleness and loss didn’t sting quite as bad as it had last month. Or the month before that. What was the saying about time healing wounds? He had always figured it was a bunch of garbage, but maybe it had its merits.

  In Chase’s case, time didn’t necessarily heal so much as motivate. Since Leah’s death, he’d run his first mud 10k, mountain climbed in Arizona, tried his hand at surfing the Pacific, and mailed his nephews custom-made paintball guns. Time was of the essence—not to heal, but to fulfill. He had to move, and move quickly, because time was always running out.

  And there’d be no more regrets.

  Ethan stared at him, the familiar angst-filled expression of a guy with his foot stuck permanently in his mouth. “Dude.”

  It was almost comical at this point. “Seriously, it’s okay.”

  Besides, it wasn’t the first time someone spoke before they thought, and it wouldn’t be the last. Chase didn’t want people censoring themselves around him, anyway. Part of the beauty of moving to Bayou Bend was leaving Houston and all of his and Leah’s mutual friends behind—the ones who brought him homemade lasagna and unidentifiable casseroles after the accident, and put him on their church prayer lists, and couldn’t look him in the eyes without glancing away.

  He was done with the label of “Leah’s fiancé” and “the guy who was engaged to that girl on the news.” Even now, the memories persisted. Flames roiling from the hood of her car. Pavement smeared with smoke and ash. The clank of the gurney being lifted into the ambulance . . .