“Felix,” she answered simply. “He caught me turning the house upside down looking for it and demanded to know what I was doing. I told him my ring was missing. He asked a few questions, like when I’d last seen it, whether anyone had been in my room. I didn’t often have friends inside the house when my parents were in town, only to use the pool in the backyard, so that was an easy no. He asked if Mrs. Durham had cleaned my room that week. She had, but Luke, even if I’d thought your mom was guilty—and I didn’t—I wouldn’t have told him that. Not when I was getting to know you, learning what kind of person you were, the kind of loving, hardworking family you came from… I didn’t know your mom well, but I knew you enough to understand you weren’t raised by someone who would steal from her employer. She was always pleasant to me.”
“Where’re the glasses?” I pointed to her delicate flute, thinking whiskey straight from the bottle would be way more appropriate. I didn’t want memories of my mom dredged up here with Magnolia. I’d welcome anything to dull my senses and hopefully the grief that never went away.
“Out there at the beverage station.”
She started to stand, but I gestured for her not to get up and went to the other room myself. I picked up a glass and paused for a moment before heading back in.
Magnolia’s assessment of my mother was spot-on. She was the last person who would steal anything. She was honest and, like Magnolia had said, loving and hardworking.
Fuck. My eyes burned just thinking about her.
Remembering my mom was enough to choke me up, but add on top of it, Magnolia’s revelation that she wasn’t the accuser? I couldn’t even process that right now.
Painfully aware that Magnolia was on the other side of that wall, waiting for me, I sucked it up, took my glass, and rejoined her. I slid the flute across the desk to her, unable to stop my racing thoughts.
If Magnolia hadn’t accused my mom…
A knot formed in my gut.
If she hadn’t accused my mom, that would make me the biggest dickhead alive for convicting her without even hearing her side of the story.
Magnolia slid me a full glass of light, sparkling alcohol that was completely inappropriate and insufficient for this occasion. I left it sitting on the edge of the desk.
“How do I know you didn’t accuse her?” I asked, unwilling to handle the shift in my reality that would create if it was true.
“Why would I, Luke?” she asked with outrage. She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “What would I have to gain by hurting the family of the boy I had feelings for?”
I leaned forward, planting my elbows on my knees, running my hands over my face. “When I found out my mom was fired and accused of stealing, I thought you’d been playing games with me all along,” I admitted.
“How could you think that?”
The pain that flashed in her eyes struck me like a lightning bolt. I knew what I’d believed with every bone in my body back then, but seeing her reaction now had doubts seeping in like water in a doomed ship.
I swallowed, bowing my head. “Back then…” Hell. I hated admitting any of this because I could suddenly see how it was going to come across. “I’d had a crush on you for as long as I could remember, so that first night when you came over to my car and talked to me, with no airs, just what seemed like real talk between us, I rode the high from that for days. At the same time, there was this part of me that couldn’t quite believe someone like you would be interested in a farm kid like me. My mom was the help. You were the rich girl whose family employed her.”
“But that happened week after week. We were getting to know each other. I thought we were being real with each other.”
“I thought we were too. Most of the time. But doubts sometimes crept in.”
“So you thought I was faking it? So I could…what? What would be my motivation for that, Luke?”
“I don’t know. I was seventeen. Seventeen-year-old boys don’t make sense. They’re all hormones and insecurity. But you had a reputation for being a mean girl.”
Magnolia downed several gulps of champagne. “I wasn’t that girl when I was with you,” she said quietly.
I straightened so I could look at her. Her eyes were averted, and she was fiddling with her beaded bracelet, so unlike the gold and diamonds she’d worn back then, pulling it around and around her wrist. She looked vulnerable, uncertain, maybe even embarrassed.
A lock of her reddish-blond hair fell over her face. I fixed my gaze on it as I was shot back in time again, recalling when I’d run my fingers through her hair while I kissed her in the front seat of my family’s old, beat-up car. I remember thinking how silky and luxurious it was and how surreal that I knew what Magnolia James’s hair felt like between my fingers, what her lips tasted like under mine, how sweet her voice was when it was just us. Her wardrobe might’ve changed since then, but her mane of long, gorgeous hair hadn’t. I wondered if it still felt as smooth.
“I was genuine with you, Luke. You treated me like I was special. You made me feel safe enough to be myself. You’re the only person who ever saw that side of me.”
“You had boyfriends all the time,” I pointed out.
“I had guys who took me out and wanted to get in my pants. Not real relationships with any of them. You were different—or at least I thought you were back then, in part because you didn’t try to get in my pants, but also because you listened. You opened up to me too. But then you cut me out of your life in every way without hearing my side of what happened.”
Closing my eyes, I pressed my thumb and finger against the pressure points on my forehead as everything I’d held true all these years unraveled.
I couldn’t deny that what she said rang true. I’d thought our fledgling relationship was special too. Real. We’d connected. Until I’d come in from working in the strawberry fields one Wednesday afternoon and found my mom home when she was supposed to be at work.
