“Don’t tell me how I feel, Thomas.” Stephen sat on the hard, pea-green couch, his ankle throbbing. He polished off his water and crushed the plastic bottle, tossing it into the rubbish against the wall. In love with her? No, ten times no.
“Let’s get back out there.” He didn’t want to let down the fans. As he stood, Stephen caught his reflection in the mirror on the wall and he knew.
Thomas was right. He was still in love with his wife.
TEN
Thursday morning Corina stepped out of the cab and into the shade of her childhood Marietta home. A one hundred and fifty-year-old white, two-story antebellum with floor-to-ceiling windows and a wraparound veranda that was purchased by her great-, great-, great-grandfather right after the Civil War. In 1867.
Just six months in America from the ancient royal city of Castile, Spain, Grandpa Carlos Del Rey I quickly made his mark in the newly changed South.
Since then, one Del Rey or another had inherited and lived in Casa Hermosa. Home Beautiful. So it had been as Corina grew up—full of life and joy, laughter.
The lovely estate she used to call home, run to for safety, for comfort and love, for acceptance, for laughter, was now a morose mausoleum.
She glanced toward the third-floor captain’s deck as the cab driver set her suitcases at her feet. She and Carlos used to climb out there on summer nights and wish upon the stars.
“That’ll be forty-two fifty.”
Corina glanced at the cab driver, emptying out the last of her reminiscing, and reached in her bag for her wallet. Without Carlos, would Casa Hermosa ever be beautiful again?
She paid the driver as the sticky Georgia humidity rode the low breeze that brushed her shorts against her skin. Then she found herself alone under the magnolias and live oaks, the Spanish moss waving in greeting.
No one knew she was coming. Her first time back since she went to work for Gigi. For some stubborn reason, she’d not telephoned to let Mama know she was coming.
Probably because she had so much on her mind. The reappearance of Prince Stephen sank deeper into her soul day after day.
During her preparations for the trip to Brighton, and on the one-hour flight from Melbourne to Atlanta, Corina tried to sort out her thoughts and feelings, separating truth from vain hopes, dreams from reality.
She told herself going to Brighton was her job. Gigi insisted she cover the premier, interview Clive. But she wondered if “love well” encouraged her to win back her husband.
Yet Stephen came to Melbourne looking for an annulment. Not reconciliation. Why would she even consider any other possibility? Especially after his cruel rejection during the darkest days of her life. Crazy, right?
But they were still married. Five and a half years after believing they were over.
Honestly, she was practically a ball of weepy confusion. Worse, there was no one to talk to about this mess because no one knew.
Corina nearly broke down and called Daisy, ready to confess the whole secret thing. Though, in the end, she couldn’t form the words. Her marriage, her relationship with Stephen felt private, personal, as if something for God’s hearing only.
He knew the truth. She could talk to him. He was more than willing to listen.
If God was behind this Brighton excursion, and if she’d correctly interpreted the grandfather clock chimes and the “love well” whisper, then she wanted to obey.
Or this all boiled down to the fact she was just a foolish girl, desperate to cling to something, anything, she’d once loved and lost.
“God,” she whispered now, in the shadow of home, “I trust you, but help me out here, please. Am I even close? Can I win Stephen back? Is that what you want?”
Nevertheless, at this point she was all in, willing to sacrifice her heart, her will, and her pride. Shoot, she wasn’t even above begging.
Love had a way of making a girl empty herself.
If Stephen refused her flat out, she’d sign the papers—with or without news on Carlos. The truth, while comforting, would not bring him back, and she felt desperate to deal with this open chapter of her life.
Corina’s memories spoke as she made her way to the veranda. Summer evenings of chasing fireflies, the scent of Daddy’s grill in the air. The hum of the ice-cream maker. The strum of Daddy’s guitar and the beauty of Mama’s sweet soprano. Sneaking out with Carlos for a midnight swim in the pool.
Stringing Christmas lights on the railing. Birthday parties and cutting cake. Saturday nights in the porch rocker, quietly talking, listening to the crickets and cicadas, making up lyrics for their music.
Laughing until her side hurt.
