Honeysuckle Summer (The Sweet Magnolias #7)(43)

She glanced over at that wonderful garden that Carter had created for her, tried to take comfort in the colorful flowers, but she couldn’t seem to focus. She was shaking too badly, her eyesight blurred by tears.

Then she heard him, Carter calling her name. She tried to answer and couldn’t. He came around the side of the house and took in the situation with a glance.

“Well, look at you,” he said lightly, moving slowly toward her as if fearing he’d startle her. He approached her as carefully as someone trying to gentle a spooked horse. “Did you decide to take a walk on your own?”

Unable to speak, she merely nodded.

“Ready to go back inside?”

She nodded even more vehemently.

“Take my hand then,” he said gently. “We’ll go in together, unless you’d rather I just sit out here with you.”

She shook her head, glancing desperately toward the house.

“Okay, then,” he said quietly, still holding out his hand. “We’ll go inside.”

It took what seemed like an eternity for her to release her grip on the chair and take his hand. The warmth of his skin did what nothing else had. It reassured her. She clung to him. His hand became her lifeline.

“It’s only a few steps,” he told her. “We can count them as we go. One.”

She stepped forward haltingly, slowed by an inability—or unwillingness—to open her eyes for more than a second at a time, as if that would shut out the fear.

“That’s good,” he said soothingly. “Now another. Two.”

It was five endless steps in all, but she did it by concentrating on the sound of his voice and his commands and not thinking at all about the terrible panic that had her in its grip.

Once inside, she collapsed into a chair, sobs racking her body. “I thought I could do it. I thought it would be okay,” she whispered in a choked voice, unable to look at him. She’d never felt more humiliated.

He brought her a tall glass of iced sweet tea, then sat across from her. “Stop beating yourself up. You tried. That’s what counts. And tomorrow will be better.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe that. It’s always going to be like this.” She lifted her gaze to his. “You can’t imagine what it’s like.”

“No, I can’t,” he agreed. “But the fact that you tried, that’s what counts. It tells me how brave you are, how badly you want to conquer this disorder or phobia or whatever it is.”

“Brave?” she scoffed, an almost hysterical note in her voice. “I took a few steps into my own backyard, no more than I’d been taking every day for a couple of weeks now with Dr. McDaniels and Sarah. Today, though, I fell completely apart. If you hadn’t come along, there’s no telling how long I might have stayed there, completely frozen. I thought my heart was going to pound right out of my chest. I couldn’t breathe.”

He ignored her interpretation and spun his own. “But you did this all on your own,” he reminded her. “I think it was amazing.”

“Then you have very low standards.”

He smiled at that. “And you’re way too hard on yourself. So, why today? And why without Dr. McDaniels?”

She explained her earlier thoughts. “I got to thinking that maybe the reason I was making such slow progress was that I was afraid of being humiliated in front of someone, that maybe I’d do better on my own. And the Fourth of July picnic is coming up, and I wanted so badly to be out here with everyone else. It just seemed like the right time to push myself.” She didn’t mention her concerns about Carrie, her need to be available to her in a way she couldn’t be if she remained housebound. She gave him a bleak look. “Maybe there is no right time.”

He studied her for a minute, then asked, “Are you pushing yourself so hard all of a sudden because of me? I know that probably sounds egotistical, but I don’t want to be the one putting added pressure on you.”

Once again, he’d surprised her with his perceptiveness. “In a way,” she admitted. “Sooner or later, you’re going to get bored to tears by me never being able to go anywhere. You’ll lose interest, and who could blame you?”

“I don’t see myself losing interest anytime soon,” he told her. “I keep coming back, don’t I?”

“So far,” she conceded. It suddenly dawned on her that his arrival today, which had been timely under the circumstances, was unexpected. “Is there some reason you dropped by in the middle of your shift? You’re not upset because Carrie and Mandy dropped in here the other day, are you? Because I’d told them to come by anytime.”

He shook his head. “No, I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to spend time with them. They need a woman they can talk to, Carrie especially. As you know, she’s having a tough time, and it’s worse now that school is out. She doesn’t seem to have made any friends at all, so she’s hanging around the house, bored to tears.”

Raylene regarded him with surprise. “She told you how she’s been feeling?”

He nodded. “She admitted that she’s miserable. I should have seen it myself. I’m taking them to Columbia this weekend. I hope that will help, but we can’t run over there every time she starts feeling homesick.”