“I don’t understand it, either,” Elle said. “But it’s happening. Daniel and I had a chance to talk about things and it helped me realize that he’s not a bad guy.”
Kate made a sound that was somewhere between a tsk and a snort.
“He was a pretty rough dude in school, Elle.”
“Says the girl who used to like to dress up like Columbia in Rocky Horror Picture Show and act out the part at the midnight movies on Saturday nights when you were in high school, but that isn’t who you are now.”
“Thank God,” Zelda murmured.
“Mom,” Elle and Kate said in unison.
“We don’t hold it against her,” Elle said, making the point to her mom and grandmother. “Do we?”
“I make it a personal rule not to hold any kind of grudge,” Gigi said. “I try to talk to people if we have a problem.”
“You talked to Daniel?” Elle asked.
“Of course I did,” Gigi said. “I didn’t dig into the past, but I didn’t have to. I figured that if you and Roger were meant to be, nothing could keep you apart.”
Gigi’s shrug filled in the missing words, And we all know how that turned out.
“I consider myself a pretty good judge of character,” Gigi said. “When I started shopping around for a general contractor, I learned that Daniel Quindlin was the best. I figured, why should I settle for someone second-rate when I could have Quindlin Brothers, the very best, refurbish our family home? Besides, I sense that Daniel has always had a thing for you, Elle. It took guts to stand up there at your wedding and do what he did in front of all those people. When Roger ran, I knew he didn’t deserve you. I always thought he was a little too sneaky and slick for his own good. And yours, too.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it,” Kate said. “Is that how you feel, Elle?”
“Amazingly so,” Elle said. Admitting it made her stomach hurt a little. But she still wanted to walk back her confession of falling in love. And, okay, if she thought about it too hard, in real-world terms, she had the urge to run away and go back to her safe, if not somewhat boring, life in Atlanta. But at the same time, she was aware that the urge to run was a symptom of the post-traumatic stress she’d suffered after Roger.
And how was that working out for her? She’d let herself edge toward a new relationship exactly once since Roger. She’d been the one to end things because there was no chemistry—to preempt things—before she’d even given Heath a chance.
She and Daniel had mad chemistry and after announcing it to her family she was getting cold feet.
Was that what she wanted? To be alone? Was that how she wanted to live?
“In the spirit of full disclosure,” Elle said, “this is new. Obviously. Daniel and I are still trying to figure things out. I didn’t mean to throw around the ‘love’ word wantonly, so maybe you could keep that part to yourself. It’s premature.”
“Oh, brother.” Kate rolled her eyes. “Do you love him or not? I need to know whose side I’m on.”
“Thank you for being on my side, Kate,” Elle said.
“We’re all on your side,” Gigi said.
“I need a drink,” Zelda said, eyeing the pitcher of sangria in which Kate was muddling the fruit. Zelda hopped up and got four wine glasses from one of the cupboards. “Take your time and don’t let anyone rush you into anything. Being alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
Elle knew her mother was thinking of her divorce. She didn’t talk about it very often.
Fred Clark had left Zelda when the girls were in elementary school. An alcoholic, her father had been unemployed more often than he’d held a job. Zelda finally gave up trying to collect child support. She’d decided making a clean break was better for her daughters than the occasional check from Fred. Everything was fine for a couple of years until Fred sued for half interest in the Forsyth Galloway Inn.
He’d lost, but his stunt had inspired Gigi to have a lawyer strengthen the terms of the trust protecting the inn from husbands of future generations succeeding in pulling a similar stunt.