Bitter and sweet, p.1
Bitter and Sweet, page 1
Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook
Please note that the endnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication
Dedication
For my maternal grandmother, Laura Wilson Kennedy, and the three beautiful children she gave the world. We’ll see you in heaven.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Grandma “Gail” Cooper Holland
Chapter 1: Mariah Clark
Chapter 2: Sabrina Holland
Chapter 3: Tabitha Cooper
Chapter 4: Mariah
Chapter 5: Sabrina
Chapter 6: Tabitha
Chapter 7: Sabrina
Chapter 8: Mariah
Chapter 9: Tabitha
Chapter 10: Mariah
Chapter 11: Sabrina
Chapter 12: Tabitha
Chapter 13: Sabrina
Chapter 14: Mariah
Chapter 15: Tabitha
Chapter 16: Sabrina
Chapter 17: Mariah
Chapter 18: Tabitha
Chapter 19: Sabrina
Chapter 20: Mariah
Chapter 21: Tabitha
Chapter 22: Sabrina
Chapter 23: Mariah
Chapter 24: Tabitha
Chapter 25: Sabrina
Chapter 26: Mariah
Chapter 27: Tabitha
Chapter 28: Sabrina
Chapter 29: Mariah
Chapter 30: Tabitha
Chapter 31: Sabrina
Chapter 32: Mariah
Chapter 33: Tabitha
Chapter 34: Mariah
Chapter 35: Tabitha
Chapter 36: Mariah
Chapter 37: Sabrina
Epilogue: Mariah
A Note from the Author
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
About the Author
Praise for Rhonda McKnight
Also by Rhonda McKnight
Copyright
Grandma “Gail” Cooper Holland
Georgetown, South Carolina
Present Day
My expectations were too high. That’s what I’d been telling myself as I exited the hospital. It repeated in my mind as I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
The sun had been swallowed by the dark of dusk by the time I parked behind the restaurant. I reached for my purse and stepped from the car. The keys jangled in my free hand as I walked to the back door. I inserted them, releasing the locks one at a time, and then pushed the noisy door open. Lingering citrus from the oil cleanser I’d used on the floor rose to my nostrils. I was impressed that the scent was still so strong. It’d been a week since I’d mopped. Maybe it was always strong, but this place wasn’t always so empty. Usually, the tiny kitchen was in use. The smells of spices and coconut and sounds of searing meat and pots of seafood gumbo rolling to a boil always met me at the door—that is, unless I arrived before the cooking began, and that was rare. I was never here alone. I never considered I’d have to be here . . . alone.
I looked at the tables, their chairs atop them. The glass door to the bakery case glistened with a haunting emptiness. I stepped to my left and walked into the kitchen. It was small—much too small, I’d always thought, for all that we’d done here. But today it felt huge, like it was swallowing the nothingness that had erected itself and rested in every corner.
Nothing had been cooked here in weeks. Nothing had been served to the community who had depended on us for almost ninety years. We would reach ninety. Forever was the goal, but we couldn’t end at eighty-seven. It was too odd of a number. It came up short. Eighty-seven was unfinished.
I walked to the wall across the room. I called it the “Wall of History” because it included pictures all the way back to 1937 when my grandmother opened this place. There were pictures of every cook, every celebrity and politician who ever visited, our family and friends—this wall contained lifeblood. A lot was shed to open this place, and even more was shed to keep it. My eyes roamed the many framed award certificates and settled on one in particular, a presentation from the mayor of Georgetown. I was proudest of this one. Etched in gold script, it read: Gail and Odell Holland for Restaurant of the Year. We had rivaled fancier establishments and shined.
I reached into my purse for my phone and placed a call to my granddaughter Mariah. Her voicemail encouraged me to leave a message. Coincidence? A reprieve? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to ask. I pushed that thought away. Ask I would, because it was the season for shocking statements and questions. I knew that well. Three weeks ago, the doctor had let my husband’s condition slip from his mouth as easily as raw oysters slipped from the shell.
“Your husband has had a massive stroke.”
“He will need full-time care.”
“A skilled nursing facility is your best option.”
The doctor’s report stabbed me, wounded me in a way I was wholly unprepared for and destroyed by.
And then Odell’s words: “Gail, keep oona promise.”
A tear slid over my cheek as I fell back against the wall. I was tired. My sixty-nine-year-old body was exhausted. It was time for the younger ones to relieve us in the same way I relieved my mother.
I went to my contacts again. This time I called my other granddaughter, Sabrina. I got her voicemail too. She didn’t listen to voicemail. None of these young people did, so I sent a text to both of them with the simple message:
I need you to come home.
Chapter 1
Mariah Clark
Duncan, South Carolina
Present Day
Find a way to survive.
I bolted up in the bathtub, water sloshed over the side. I coughed until my lungs were cleared of the water that had slipped down my throat and then pinched my nose.
I had to find a way, or I was going to die from heartbreak, disappointment, betrayal, and this migraine I couldn’t shake. But I couldn’t manage to find air anymore. Even though oxygen was all around me, breathing was not just hard but impossible.
Regretting I hadn’t brought the wine bottle I’d opened into the bathroom, I reached for my empty glass and raised it to get the final drop out. Muscadine wine. My grandfather’s creation. Low in alcohol, high in sweet, rich in love. The taste usually conjured up feelings of comfort and safety—memories of better days or at least not days as bad as these. But it wasn’t working tonight. Not working because drinking it made me sad. My grandfather was sick. He might never make this wine again. A sick grandfather was the last thing I needed in my messed-up life right now. The life I didn’t even know if I wanted to live. But I had zero permission from heaven to die. My grandmother had enough stress. She didn’t need to bury her granddaughter.
And if I died, I’d be chum in the ocean for gossip. Everyone in Hendley was already talking about me. Again. I could feel the wind from their whispers. It wasn’t hard to be the subject of gossip. In a town as small as Hendley, South Carolina, where the population was twenty-two hundred, including children, gossip was served with the grits in the morning and the cracklin’ corn bread at night. However, I didn’t think I would receive the honor of being the subject of conversation so soon. It didn’t seem fair that it was my turn again.
The first time people let my name fall off their lips was because Vince Clark, one of the city of Hendley’s golden boys, got married to someone other than Callie Humphries, the head cheerleader/prom queen in his kingdom whom they expected him to propose to after college. Callie had been waiting at his house when he brought me home. There was disappointment that their story hadn’t ended in a happily ever after, but folks got over it fast. The cash bar at our wedding helped.
The second time my name was caught up in town gossip involved my mother-in-law, Sylvia. When the grapevine caught the news that she was sick, people were surprised I was taking such good care of her. Everybody knew she didn’t like me. The Callie thing was a source of disappointment to her too, and liquor at the wedding had not changed that. Sylvia’s aggressive form of bone cancer carried the prognosis—dying. The accuracy—right on, nearly to the day the doctor told her.
Sylvia refused a nurse until one was absolutely medically necessary. As she had no daughters, the assignment to care for her fell on me. In truth, I could have been a full daughter if she’d only embraced me. I’d lost my own mother at age six, had a horrible stepmother, and even as an adult, I still wanted that sacred relationship.
Still, I did the right thing. Even with our complicated relationship, I did all I could for her. What I did was right in the sight of myself and God, certainly my poor husband, who couldn’t take care of himself, forget another person.
You would think I would have been appreciated by the wagging tongues and certainly by my husband for my charity, but I wasn’t, which was why I was in my current state of depression. I couldn’t unsee his horrible behavior or unhear his words. They pounded against my brain like a temporal migraine.
“I’m leaving you.”
I stood over a boiling pot of sausage and kale soup, a new recipe I was attempting to perfect. I wasn’t listening to him, not really. My head was full of basil, onion, garlic, and the scent of bay leaves, but I heard him say he was leaving. “Where are you going?”
“You’re not paying attention, Mariah. I wan t a divorce.” The words hit me from behind like a bat pummeled against my spine. I turned toward him and found he’d been waiting for me to look up from my pot, which I did before he clarified his statement with, “I’m taking a divorce.”
Taking a divorce? Who says it that way?
After eleven months of date nights, new perfume, and five new lingerie purchases, this man was still standing here telling me he was leaving.
“You can’t just give up.”
“I’ve tried. I’m not built for this.”
I really didn’t know what he was talking about. “Not built for what?”
“Unhappiness.”
A little sound escaped through my lips, something like a muffled grunt. I uttered, “Unhappiness? What does that even mean?”
“If you can’t define unhappiness, then you’re probably not happy either.” Vince walked out of the kitchen like he hadn’t thrown a meat cleaver at my heart.
I reached across the tub for my bottled water. Through the open bathroom door, I caught sight of the manila envelope I’d put on the table near the door. It held legal papers. Vince delivered them personally the evening after he’d spoken of his unhappiness. It was a temporary order issued by the Turnin County Court that gave him ownership of his family home and the diner. It also instructed me to vacate far too quickly for it to be legal. It included an Order of Separate Maintenance and Support that required him to pay my rent and my medical and car insurance. The document was signed by his second cousin once removed, Sharon Clark, justice of the Turnin County Court. One of the only two justices in the county.
Sharon had never liked me. She didn’t even like Vince much. But if she’d been even a decent human being, she would have had more empathy. I didn’t deserve to be made to leave the home I’d lived in for nine years and helped Vince renovate and pay the taxes on with only a two-week notice. Or maybe she still would have done just what Vince asked—protect the Clark family assets, mainly land, and in Vince’s case the house his great-great-grandfather built and the restaurant Vince inherited from his grandparents. The restaurant that was in bankruptcy when I married him, and which I not only saved from ruin but made into the success it was today. Success that included it having been listed on just about every top list of diners to visit in the Southeast and a few spots on the Food Network. It was also the new location for my upcoming weekly cooking show for ABC Upstate Daily Television.
I didn’t want his property. I wanted my show. The show that had been my plan, my pitch, my dream, which was disappearing in his newfound happiness. All I had now for nine years of marriage and the work I’d done to save the diner was anger, regret, and a paltry ten thousand dollars.
“An advance on the divorce settlement,” Vince was quick to say as he handed the check to me. “I don’t want you to be broke. That wouldn’t be fair. I know you have to buy food and clothes until you find a new j—” Job was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t say it. “I’m sorry you have to leave the house.”
Just the day before, he’d said he was leaving, but I supposed the word leaving was only a metaphor for breaking the covenant of marriage. He didn’t have to go anywhere. I was the one in this tiny little apartment. My moving out was convenient now as he’d moved his girlfriend in. I hadn’t seen her at the house, but the rumors were true. Small-town talk never failed to deliver. My attorney assured me that Vince would regret committing adultery. South Carolina courts took fidelity seriously. Maybe that was true—that Vince would reap what he was sowing—but today the only person paying for our separation was me.
It had been three months since I’d moved. I was still trying to get the knife out of my back, but my arms—they weren’t long enough.
I stepped out of the chilly tub water, toweled off, and changed into my new favorite clothing—yoga pants and a T-shirt.
The doorbell chimed. I knew who it was before I peeked out and saw the little boy from next door. I pulled it open. “Hi, Jordy.” I took care to use the name he’d asked me to call him. Jordy, not Jordan, because he didn’t want to be called a river—not one the Bible said had dirty water. He was a smart kid.
“Hello, ma’am. My mama says you shoulda got her box.”
The delivery companies couldn’t get the addresses for these duplexes right to save their lives. Every week I received a package that was meant for Jordy’s mama or one of my other neighbors. I walked to the dresser and picked up the small box. Before I handed it to him, I asked him the same question I always did. “Do you want something to eat?”
Jordy was a slip of a child. Small for nine and as dirty as a full-grown ditchdigger. He made good use of the playground behind our units. But I wasn’t sure if that was the reason he looked so unclean. I’d seen him board the school bus a few times, and he didn’t look much better in the morning.
Jordy nodded in the affirmative, his long sandy-brown hair moving with enthusiasm that suggested he very much wanted something to eat. He was always hungry. What his mother was ordering when she couldn’t seem to keep one child fed, I didn’t know but wanted to. Our nosy and gossipy landlord told me she had a public housing voucher and EBT benefits. How he knew the latter, I don’t know. Based on the hours she came and went, I assumed she worked full-time or close to it, but still her kid needed a meal. Either Jordy had a tapeworm or there just wasn’t enough food.
“Close the door.” I put the box down and walked to the kitchen area with Jordy following me. It was a tiny place. We didn’t have to go far to reach our destination. I tossed him the last apple from my fruit bowl, and I swear I heard the crunch before it could possibly have settled in his hands. I reached into the cabinet for one of the many empty plastic storage bowls I kept there and scooped out ham and potato corn chowder. The chowder was more of a winter soup, perfect for the leftover ham bones from Thanksgiving through Easter, but I continued to make it because children liked corn and potatoes and ham. I’d made this pot with Jordy in mind, so I scooped out most of it and pressed the lid closed. Next, I slathered butter on the yeast rolls I’d kept in the warmer and wrapped them in tin foil. I double plastic-bagged the bowl and put the bread on top before handing it to him. There was enough to last them two or three days.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. He was the politest child I knew. No child deserved to feel the growl of their belly at night, but this sweet one doubly did not.
I opened the door and, carrying his mother’s package, followed him outside. I put the box down on the cement stoop in the space that separated our units and left before Jordy could push the slightly ajar door open. I didn’t want to see or speak to his mother. Apparently she didn’t want to see or speak to me either because she never did, not even to say thank you. In a few days, I would find the same plastic bag hanging on my doorknob with the washed bowl and lid inside. She and I understood each other. I had more and she had less. There wasn’t much to discuss. Jordy connected us and his thank-you was enough.
I’d barely locked my door when my phone pinged. A text message from my best/only friend, Hope. The preview line for the message read: Therapy is an opportunity to get strategies. It doesn’t mean you’re . . .
I’d have to swipe to see the rest. Hope was continuing the conversation we’d had earlier when I hinted not so subtly that I had nothing to live for. Did she think the idea of going to therapy was something to live for? It wasn’t. Therapy looked painful. I was in enough pain.
I put down the phone and dropped onto the couch. Therapy wasn’t going to give me my TV show. I’d really wanted that. After all I’d put up with from Vince and his family, I deserved it. He could have at least let the show start before putting me out.
My phone rang, and I ignored it. Hope didn’t like her text messages to be ignored. The second time the phone started ringing, I ignored it some more. I picked up the remote and turned on the television. I glanced at the phone and saw two missed calls from my grandmother’s number. My heart locked in my chest. I closed my eyes and prayed, “Please, God. Don’t let anything have happened to Grandpa.”
I tapped the screen and redialed my grandmother’s mobile number. It went to voicemail. I left a message. “Grandma, this is Mariah. I’m sorry I missed you . . .”
