Honeysuckle Summer (The Sweet Magnolias #7)(13)
“The owner of the restaurant,” he guessed.
“Exactly. She about had a fit over that one. Of course, the fact that Annie collapsed that night and wound up in the hospital pretty much trumped whatever trouble we probably would have gotten in over inviting the boys to the party.”
“What happened to Annie?”
She hesitated at talking about Annie’s personal business, but then everyone in town already knew the story. “She had anorexia. It nearly killed her.” She waved off the subject and grinned. “As for the mischief we got ourselves into, I’m sure I could tell a few other stories, if I racked my brain. And most of the teachers at the high school could probably add a dozen or more.”
He looked a little pale as he shook his head. “I’ll definitely keep that slumber party scam in mind when Carrie—she’s the fifteen-year-old—tells me she wants to spend the night with a friend. I had no idea teenage girls were so sneaky.”
“The ones I knew certainly were,” she told him.
He smiled, causing an unexpected bump in her heart rate. Then his expression sobered.
“May I ask you a personal question?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Travis mentioned something about you not being able to leave the house. Is that true?”
She nodded. Whatever embarrassment she’d once felt over her problem had faded as people in town had come to accept that if they wanted to spend time with her, they had to do it here.
“When I first came back to town, I was able to sit on the back patio. I was so relieved to be someplace safe that I didn’t realize at first that leaving here was even an issue.”
“Makes sense,” he said.
“Then, after a couple of months of healing physically and mentally, I tried going out with Sarah and Annie,” she said ruefully. “I never made it past the driveway before I’d break out in a cold sweat. My heart would start racing so fast, I was sure I was going to pass out. After that happened a few times, well, I hate to admit it, but I just stopped trying. Eventually it got so bad, I couldn’t even take a step outside.”
“Why’d you give up?”
The question was simple, but the answer was complicated. Raylene wasn’t sure she could explain it. “I suppose it just seemed easier,” she said eventually. She shrugged. “And there was no place I really needed to be, nothing I really wanted to do.”
Carter looked unconvinced. “You’re content to make this house enough for the rest of your life?” he asked incredulously.
“I suppose I haven’t let myself think long term. Right now, when I consider leaving here, the fear outweighs the joy of whatever might be out there. Forever’s not a concept I can grapple with.”
“What about the yard, at least? Can you go outside that far?”
“You know that I can’t,” she responded, meeting his gaze. “You saw me frozen in place on the top step the other day. If I could have gone farther, believe me, I would have. Knowing Tommy was somewhere out there and I couldn’t look for him was horrible. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.” She regarded him with curiosity. “Why does this matter to you? Are you that worried about the kids? Because if that’s it, you can stop. I will never have the responsibility for looking after them again.”
“For their sake, I’m relieved to hear that,” he admitted candidly. “But it strikes me as sad that you might not get to experience all that life has to offer. You’re a young, beautiful woman. You’re smart and funny. Seems to me it’s a waste to stay hidden away here.” He frowned. “Don’t you even want to get better?”
“I doubt you can understand this, but getting better, leaving this house, seems to mean more to other people right now than it does to me. I feel safe here. I love being with Sarah’s kids. People come and go all the time, and that’s what matters. I’m not alone or lonely.”
“There must have been things you enjoyed before the panic attacks started,” he protested. “Don’t you miss at least some of them?”
Raylene thought about it. She wondered if maybe this whole cycle of fear and panic hadn’t started even while she’d been married. It wasn’t that her home had been a safe haven. Far from it, in fact. But in it, she had been free of the speculation that would have spread had people in her social circle ever spotted her with the kind of bruises that had been inflicted too many times to count.
Back then she’d lived a solitary life in many ways, living for quiet moments in the garden, where she’d nurtured her fragile plants the way she’d longed for someone to nurture her. Thinking about that brought on an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.
“I miss my garden,” she said softly, closing her eyes as she remembered it—purple, white and magenta azaleas in spring, a sea of tulips, then hollyhocks, summer phlox, golden lilies, shaded beds of impatiens and a tinkling waterfall amid a fragrant collection of rosebushes.
“Planting flowers, watching the yard fill with color, even pulling the weeds. The doggone honeysuckle nearly drove me mad, but it smelled so sweet, I even loved that. And I loved the way the sun felt on my shoulders.”
In the year before she’d finally ended her marriage, she’d stopped gardening. Even now she shuddered at the memory of the rampage her husband had gone on, destroying all her hard work, leaving the rosebushes ruined, the flowers wilted and dying in a chaotic heap before he was done. In some ways, his savage attack on her garden had hurt as much as any of the physical attacks she’d endured.