Folk Around and Find Out (Good Folk: Modern Folktales #2)(117)

He nodded. “Okay, gotcha. And that’ll work, too. We should start calling that woman Saint Sienna. If she gave her blessing to a cow, everyone in town would line up for its milk. Go on.”

I continued quickly, the sound of the tea kettle whistling spurring me to talk faster, ending my twisty tale with the events that took place in Cletus’s office yesterday morning.

“I didn’t know Charlotte was up there,” Beau said, his eyes unfocused. “That sneaky bastard. How’d he smuggle her up to the office without any of us noticing? And how’d you get her out without me seeing you?”

“Cletus is a sneaky bastard, but he’s the reason—or something he knows is the reason—Charlotte doesn’t have to worry about the Buckleys anymore. He intervened yesterday, sent old man Buckley some sort of letter, and we just heard this morning that Kevin is being shipped off to the middle of Nebraska, the planned custody suit dropped. And they’ve agreed to stop the court-ordered visitations. Mrs. Buckley won’t be terrorizing those kids twice a month anymore. It looks like she’s free of them.”

“Well. That’s a relief. I’m happy for her.”

“Be happy for Kimmy, Joshua, Sonya, and Frankie, too. That family is poison.”

Beau’s mouth hooked to the side. “And now you’re in love with her? With Charlotte?”

“Or I’m infatuated. It’s one or the other. That’s why I’m here.”

“I—you—what? You want me to tell you which it is?”

I tilted my head back and forth. “Eh, not really. I want to talk about that girl you got pregnant—”

His mouth flattened. “She wasn’t pregnant. She thought she was pregnant, but she wasn’t. It was a pregnancy scare and I offered to marry her, but she didn’t—”

“Exactly!” I snapped and pointed at him. “She didn’t want to marry you, but you thought you were in love with her, right? What was her name? Uh, Nancy or . . . Beth?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he gritted out, his eyes darting toward the kitchen again, then away. “Why are you bringing this up?”

“How did you get over her? She broke your heart, right? She rejected you. How’d you—you know—push her out of your mind and move on?”

Beau heaved a sigh, bewildered. “Why?”

“I want to do that.”

“What? I thought—did Charlotte reject you today?”

“No.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I saw her this afternoon and we made out in the laundry room. Then I stayed and made dinner while she gave Frankie a bath. I think if Joshua gave him a bath, he wouldn’t fuss so much, and I’m going to suggest it. But today was”—I swallowed thickly at the memory—“awesome. She’s awesome. In fact, I’m certain she likes me a lot. A whole lot. She might even love me, too. You know, she probably does, but she loves lots of folks.”

Beau made a face. “I don’t understand. If you love her and she loves you, why do you want to know how to push her from your mind?”

“I want to be prepared.”

“For what?”

“Just in case I’m wrong. Just in case I need to stop loving her and leave her and her kids alone. I don’t want to—to feel like this.” I waved my hand in front of my chest where the main source of pain originated. “I don’t want to feel like I need to be around them all the time, like I miss them when I’m not there. Tell me, how do I—you know—move on if I need to? What did you do?”

Beau set his hands on his hips and sucked in a slow breath, and he stared at me for a long moment, his brain clearly working. I gave him time, but I did glance toward the kitchen again. Shelly and her one expression would be returning with tea any second now. Then she’d kick me out and I’d have to wait until tomorrow for Beau’s advice, which meant I likely wouldn’t sleep tonight, which meant I’d be in a shitty mood for fishing. I didn’t want to be in a shitty mood for fishing.

Finally, he said, “I’m not sure the situation with Beth applies here.”

“Why not?”

“With her, I realized she didn’t make me a priority and I was better off without her, and that made it easy to stop thinking about her or having feelings for her.”

My mouth turned down in a grimace. “Well. That’s not going to work.”

He’d turned his head slightly, inspecting me from a new angle. “Charlotte makes you a priority?”

I considered the question, but I didn’t have to think it over for long. “She has. She makes me a priority, even though she’s stretched super thin.”

“How has she made you a priority?”

“She’s honest with me, about her expectations, her limitations. She wants to make sure I feel valued, that I don’t sell myself short, that my needs are met. She doesn’t want me to work on rehabilitating my reputation for show if it means I’m not staying true to myself, even though it would make her life easier if I did. In all the ways it’s feasible for her to make me a priority, she does.”

Beau’s smile was a small one, but it packed a punch. I braced myself, certain something big was coming, a brilliant nugget of advice that would help me navigate these uncharted waters and see me safely to the other side.