Chapter 27 Tara

Chapter 27

Tara

T he Carrigan's crew had insisted that Tara stay through the end of the year.

Elijah and Jason threw a hell of a New Queers Party at Ernie's, they argued. Somehow, despite all the things she was supposed to be doing, she'd ended up agreeing. This place, once it had you, liked to keep you. She began to understand how people kept coming up for a visit and staying for a decade.

New Year's came and went, and she didn't leave. She had been thinking about Charleston every day for three weeks, but she kept freezing up and unpacking her bags again.

What was she doing with her life? If she burned herself out dealing with her family—which was inevitable, she had to admit, and she'd been doing it on purpose—would she be able to keep showing up for clients? What good would that be for anyone? It still wouldn't prove that she'd been enough all along.

She was obsessing about this at every moment that she wasn't obsessing about Holly, although she was good at multitasking, so she was often obsessing about both at once. After all these years of building a life brick by brick on the idea that she didn't need romantic love—that falling in love would make her vulnerable and put any woman she loved in a terrible position—it had never occurred to her that maybe she should choose a less terrible position to put herself in.

Miriam had broken off their engagement because she'd realized she wanted love, not a marriage of convenience. Tara hadn't understood what she meant. Why would anyone want a love story? She'd spent all her life putting up walls against everyone she could possibly imagine falling for, but she could never have imagined Holly, so she hadn't guarded against her.

She hadn't tried to call Holly. Some days, she wanted to demand an apology for all the horrible things Holly had said, and the next day she wanted to apologize herself for devaluing Holly so much that she'd actually tried to get her a "respectable" job so that she would be acceptable to the Chadwicks. She also hadn't put on hard pants, or straightened her hair, for weeks. Noelle had told her, lovingly, that if she didn't stop listening to Miranda Lambert's "Mama's Broken Heart" on repeat, Noelle was going to lock her in the attic like Bertha Rochester.

"I should call her," she said to Cole, a month after the wedding.

"Oh no." He took her phone out of her hands. "You're not ready."

She snatched it back. "How do you know? And who put you in charge of making my decisions for me?"

"Well, you put me in charge, Tara Sloane, when you made me your best friend," he said calmly, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

She breathed deeply. "I did not appoint you to that position. You were just there. Can you answer my first question, please?"

"You asked two. I answered the latter. That's how conversations work. Anyway, I'm you, so I know you're not ready."

"What do you mean, you're me?"

"I have a theory."

Tara sighed. Cole always had a theory. "Tell me."

"You know how in Hedwig and the Angry Inch , the souls are split in two and then they try to find each other?" He pantomimed this.

"And also in Plato, the source of that story?" she reminded him.

He scoffed. "Whatever. I think our souls are actually the same soul and we didn't have to look for each other because we were already together."

Blinking, Tara said, "That's a wild theory, Nicholas."

"Mmm-hmm. So's COINTELPRO, but here we are. Because we're the same person, I know you're not ready, because you're falling in love, but you haven't decided yet whether or not you're going to let yourself fall all the way."

"I can't be," she argued, though she knew he was right. "It's ridiculous. We were together for a week. People don't actually fall in love on the first date."

Cole laughed. "Of course they do. People do it every day. There's not a correct way to fall in love. Some people never do, some people do with multiple people at once, and some people fall in love once in their lives, in the blink of an eye, and all those things are equally valid. It's not, like, logical. Also it happened to me, so I guarantee it's possible."

Maybe she only thought she was falling in love because he was.

The idea that she could, truly, have fallen halfway in love basically instantaneously was taking some adjusting of her worldview but, surprisingly, less than the idea that Cole Fraser actually loved her as much as she loved him. Maybe it was because she'd always known she was capable of deep love and had never known she was capable of being loved.

She sighed. "Okay, know-it-all. When will I be ready?"

He shrugged. "When you know what you want. With your life. With your job, your family, your heart."

"How the hell am I supposed to know that?" She couldn't even be trusted to know when to call a girl. She didn't even know who she was.

"You could always stay in Advent!" Cole singsonged. "We would love to keep you!"

How quickly he had become part of the "we" of this community.

"What would I do here?"

He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. "Work with Elijah?"

"He practices estate law, and I don't," Tara pointed out. "I'm pretty sure they don't have a lot of need for a criminal defense attorney in the wilderness."

"So take a year off. Learn to knit. Take cooking classes. Volunteer at the library."

Had he met her? There was no way she could be happy doing nothing. Holly might have made her rethink how much of her identity she derived from her profession, but she wasn't ready to become a lady of leisure.

"I hate snow, and I love the South," she reminded him. "I love living and working in, and fighting for, the South, Cole."

Cole sighed. "Tara Sloane, as much as both of us hate to talk about the ramifications of this reality, we are rich. You know that, right?"

Tara nodded in resignation.

"So you have, like, so many options that only rich people have," he continued. "You can live in Advent in the summer, and Atlanta or Birmingham or Savannah or, hell, Asheville, with all the other white Southern gays, in the winter, for instance. It's actually a very short flight."

"I'm not becoming a snowbird," Tara scoffed.

He waved this off. He never let her have any of her excuses. "So split your weeks or something. You can decide that some options don't work for you, for a variety of reasons, but you can't say you don't have any options, Tar."

"How will I know which one is right?" she cried, pulling on her hair.

Cole cocked an eyebrow at her, stealing her own move. "Why do you need to?"

What did he mean, why did she need to? "All my life, I've tried to do the next right thing. You know this."

He stared pointedly.

"What?!" she demanded.

"I mean, babe, how has that worked out for you so far?" A mean but fair point. "Maybe you should try doing the next wrong thing. Or even, the next thing."

February brought one answer about the next right—or maybe the next wrong—thing.

Lucy, her assistant, called her right before Valentine's Day in a panic. "Boss, you gotta get back here pronto."

What kind of twenty-four-year-old said "pronto"? Lucy was a treasure.

"What's up, kid?"

"Randolph is taking the case to trial."

Again, Tara didn't ask what case. The huge one. The one she'd fought to be allowed to take, because the partners at her firm thought it was social justice warrior bullshit that wouldn't make them any money, and that her client wasn't worth defending. The one she'd pushed her ethics to the line trying to keep on track.

"He's fucking what?" Randolph was the senior partner at her firm.

Lucy drew in a sharp breath. "Some of the true crime podcasts have started talking about the case, and HBO called about doing a special. You've been off the grid, and Randolph…"

"Wants the glory. And now he can take my work and spin it to make the firm look altruistic and progressive." Tara nodded to herself. Fuck. She couldn't even argue, even if her boss would listen to her, because as good as she was in front of a jury, Randolph was the best, and at the end of the day, Tara wanted her client to get the best defense.

The case had been the only thing pushing her to get back home, the only real responsibility she had left there. She had a moment's hot anger at having so much work stolen from her, and then an overwhelming wave of relief. She didn't have to go back yet. Oh, she was going to eventually. The South was in her bones and her blood, and she loved it deeply. But right now, she could stay at Carrigan's, wrapped up with her friends in this little magical pocket universe for a little while longer while she figured out who the hell she was. Because if she went back to Charleston now, she'd never know.

Carrigan's had shown her a mirror version of her life, and a version of herself that she'd never imagined, but she didn't know how to take that version of herself out into the world yet.

"Lucy, my dear girl, I am quitting the firm. I highly recommend you do the same. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing next, but when I figure it out, I'll call you to see if you're available."

"Oh, I will be," Lucy assured her. "Where you lead, I will follow."

Tara only knew this was a Gilmore Girls reference because she'd been letting Cole catch her up on TV she'd missed, and they'd been systematically making their way through the WB catalog. She now had a lot of opinions on Piper vs. Prue Halliwell, and teenage aliens who loved hot sauce.

Then, rather than having Galentine's Tea or a Valentine's special for couples, the Carrigan's team leaned hard into supporting Tara's broken heart by hosting an Anti-Love Party. They played angry breakup music, decorated broken heart cookies, and wore their best black outfits.

It was… fun? It was a lot of fun. She hadn't played, for the fun of it, since she'd burned down her life. Until she came to Carrigan's.

While she was gleefully writing Luv Sux on a cookie in pink icing, Elijah Green sat down next to her. "Needs glitter," he observed.

"You're not wrong." She picked up some edible glitter and sprinkled it on.

Jason and Elijah were constantly planning fun outings with what seemed like every queer person in Upstate New York. Noelle and Miriam often went and always invited her along. Getting to know them and their friends had put into stark contrast what she had waiting for her at home—polo matches and brunches where drunk straight women complained about dating.

"Not to add salt to the Valentine's wound," Elijah said, gesturing at the broken heart in Tara's hand, "but any thoughts about what you're doing next?"

She made a face. "Lots of thoughts, but none of them great. You got any ideas, most brilliant lawyer friend?"

"Have you thought about consulting?" he asked, popping some cookie into his mouth. "Working with people around the country defending tough cases? It would give you a lot of outside-Charleston options. Hell, you could do it from here."

She almost said no, reflexively. She almost said, "I can't settle anywhere but Charleston." But she stopped herself. Even if that were true, eventually, for the rest of her life, what was true right now? That she had no job to go back to and no real connections to do the kind of work she wanted to do going forward.

Consulting was smart. Really smart. It would let her collaborate with amazing people, on her own schedule, anywhere. And she could still take on her own cases. No wonder the Carrigan's crew spent so much money keeping this man on as their lawyer.

"I'll think about it," she said. "Consulting, not staying here permanently. I'm not the kind of gay who wants to start a commune in the woods with her ex."

"I can't wait to hear what you decide," Elijah told her warmly. Then, looking over her shoulder, his eyes widened. "I think your friends are descending."

He fled in the face of Cole and Hannah. They flanked her, Cole on her right and Hannah on her left. Cole stole what was left of her cookie.

"Isn't Elijah a great friend?" Hannah asked. "Wouldn't it be great if you lived here and could hang out with him all the time?"

They were relentless. "I can't just live in your hotel. You need to rent out the rooms."

"We are renting them!" Hannah reminded her. "To you."

Noelle appeared and sat across from them. "You could stay here in the back cabin. Unlimited Rosenstein's pastries and Kringle snuggles, zero parrot wallpaper."

"If I stayed, I would have to earn my keep. I can't stay here and do nothing," Tara argued, breaking a cookie on the table into crumbs.

"You're not ‘doing nothing,'" Hannah asserted. "You're self-actualizing."

"I try to avoid self-actualizing at all costs," Tara deadpanned, although she wasn't kidding. "Why won't you let me help?"

Hannah glared at her. "I'm already letting you pay to stay here, against my wishes."

Tara glared back. This wasn't the first time they'd had this argument. "I'm paying you because I have a lot of money and you're a new business. But you keep saying I'm part of the Carrigan's team, so let me help."

Hannah threw up her hands. "You're not here to help us. You're here for us to help you ."

That thought made Tara want to vomit. "People don't help me. I help people."

The whole table stared at her for a long beat.

"If I'm not helping, why would people keep me around?" Tara whispered, the words tumbling out of her mouth.

Cole gathered her in his arms. "I hate that your family made you feel like you had to earn love. But we're your family, and we love you because we fucking want to. Because we can. You never have to prove you're good enough for us."

"That's true," Noelle said. "We hang out with Levi and he's the worst person we know."

Goddamn it, she was sobbing again. It was so embarrassing.

"Why is Tara crying?" Miriam asked as she walked up, sounding appalled.

Taking several shuddering gasps, Tara got enough air in her lungs to say, "I'm self-actualizing."

"Oh no." Miriam shoved Cole out of the way. "I know how much you hate that." She crouched down next to Tara's chair and said, "C'mere."

Taking Tara's hand, Miriam dragged her out the back of the inn and toward the carriage house where she and Noelle lived.

Everyone trailed behind her.

"What are we doing, Mir?"

Miriam didn't answer, a tiny elf intent on mischief. She stopped in front of the windows to the carriage house, which were painted with the name of her business.

"What does it say?" She gestured at the windows.

Tara looked at Miriam, and then the window. "It says Blum Again Vintage and Curios."

"No no no. What does it say under that?" Miriam huffed.

Oh.

"‘What you never knew you always needed.'"

Nodding and shaking her mass of dark curls frantically, Miriam said, "Yes. That's what you find here. So what did you never know you always needed?"

"Are you going to say romantic love?" Tara asked. "Please don't."

"That's what I never knew I always needed. I don't think it's what you needed, though. It just helped you get what you needed."

All right, she was curious. "And what, my dear, is it that I always needed?"

"To stop being afraid of your power, Tara! You burn down one country club, and you put away the wild child forever, but she's still in there! You think she's a terrible person because you've been railing on her for so long. But she's you! You have to embrace who you truly are. Messy, wild, radical Tara Sloane. That's the only way you'll ever figure out what you most want."

"You want me to heal my inner child," Tara said flatly.

Miriam nodded. "More like your inner punk-ass teenager. And I have a perfect way for us to heal her."

Ushering Tara into the workshop and store space, Miriam kept chatting, but Tara wasn't listening. All around her were Miriam Blum upcycled art pieces, and Mimi Roz paintings. All the funky, strange, thought-provoking art that Tara hadn't wanted in her home. Probably because she hadn't wanted her thoughts provoked, and she was afraid letting in any chaos would open the floodgates.

"Ah, here we go!" Miriam exclaimed from the back. She emerged holding something unwieldy and emitting a mildly unpleasant smell. Looking more closely, Tara recognized that it must have, once upon a time, been a carved wooden pineapple. "I got this in a shipment but it's rotting, and I can't use it."

Tara eyed it suspiciously. "And you want me to, what, go Office Space on it? Let out my inner feral kid?"

"Oh no, love." Miriam grinned maniacally. "We're going to burn it."

Nope. Oh no. No way in hell.

"I can see your brain working, but we're doing it! We're going to build a very safe bonfire, with Noelle's assistance because she's weird about fire near her trees—"

"I would call that prudent," Tara interrupted.

"Sure, sure." Miriam brushed this off. "We're going to build a bonfire, and you're going to write everything you're letting go of on this ugly, rotting decorative symbol of Carolinian colonial oppression, and then we're going to burn it."

Tara wanted nothing more, on this earth, than to not participate in this, but she knew once Miriam got her mind around something, she wouldn't let it go. And maybe her inner wild child was whispering, just a little, that it would be fun. "Fine. Give me a Sharpie."

Miriam pulled out a giant box with every color of marker ever made.

What the hell was she going to write? It felt overwhelming.

She couldn't write my whole personality and burn it. She needed specifics.

The door to the carriage house burst open, and Noelle and Hannah pushed through arm in arm. "What's happening in here?" Noelle asked, giggling. "We're missing you both! The anti-Valentine's party needs you!"

Miriam explained her idea, complete with gestures and waving of Sharpies. When she finished, Tara was still staring at the half-rotted pineapple, unsure what to put on it.

"Help?" She looked up at Hannah, beseeching.

"Aw." Hannah gave her a quick, fierce hug. "Let's look at some things that aren't working for your happiness."

"Okay… maybe the marriage of convenience thing," Tara admitted. "Let's start with that. It's definitely not working." That was an easy one. Every situation she'd gotten herself into, the idea that she needed a society wife had blown up in her face.

That earned her a high five. She wrote on the wood:

Marrying for anything other than love

"It turns out," she admitted, "I was never doing it to further my career, it just felt safer."

Miriam snorted a laugh. "I know." Then, she volunteered, "Aunt Cricket?"

"I think I gotta go bigger," Tara acknowledged, both to her friends and herself. On the wood, she added:

Talking to my family

"Go big or go home, I guess," Noelle said, sounding impressed.

Tara nodded. "And I can't go home. At least not right now."

She needed one more thing. Marriage and her family, those were external challenges. She could change her relationships with them, but in the end what she most needed was to change her relationship with herself.

Trying to earn my right to exist

There. That was it.

Outside, they stood around a beautiful, very well-managed bonfire that Noelle was nervously tending.

Everyone who had been inside for the anti-Valentine's party spilled out and gathered around. Ernie was overseeing (kosher) marshmallow roasting, and Levi was making too-fancy s'mores. Cole and Sawyer were canoodling. Elijah was watching his kids, while Jason made sure none of the teenage drama students he'd brought lit themselves or the woods on fire. Tara shouldn't be surprised that somehow this private emotional catharsis had become a whole Carrigan's crew event.

It was the kind of thing that used to annoy her about Carrigan's, but she admitted to herself (if not to anyone else) that she loved it now.

Hannah spoke because she had the biggest voice. "Friends, we are here today because it's time for our beloved favorite, Tara Sloane Chadwick, the phoenix of Charleston, to once again consign her old self to the flames and be reborn! Tara!"

She turned to Tara and held out the weird wooden pineapple. "Are you ready?"

"I am." Tara solemnly took the object. She ran her hands over the words she'd written, saying goodbye to an outdated identity that had served her well, grieving the years she'd been telling herself not to be who she was.

For a moment, she thought about lobbing the thing overhand into the fire, but she was afraid Noelle would kill her. Instead, she walked up to the fire and carefully placed the wooden object in. She looked deeply into the flames, watching until the pineapple collapsed in on itself.

Turning around, she walked into Cole's arms. Where had he come from? He kissed her hair, and she was fairly sure she felt some tears drop onto her head.

"Are you proud of me?" she whispered.

"Baby girl," he whispered back, "you're my hero."

Looking around at everyone she loved, she said, "You know, I should probably at least stay until the baby comes."