"How's your ankle feeling?" Tucker asked.
His voice about knocked me to my knees.
"It's …" I pressed a hand to the side of my head. Maybe I was stroking out. Having an aneurysm. A heart attack. "It's better," I said weakly.
"Are you okay?" He took a step forward, pausing the conversation between my dad and Magnolia. God, I hated that name.
"Yes," I said firmly. Too firmly, because Miss Flower Garden gave me a strange look. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Yes, sorry. I think the humidity is getting to me a little bit."
Magnolia smiled, her lips a pale pink version of her dress. It shouldn't have worked, but it did. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, wrapped with a pink ribbon. Everything about her worked, and I felt like a frumpy, big-haired mess. "The south takes some getting used to, doesn't it?"
I started laughing. I couldn't help it.
On a sidewalk of the ice cream shop, in front of Tucker and his perfect girlfriend and my innocent father, I was having a mental breakdown that I could only think to blame on the humidity, for fuck's sake. When I wiped helpless tears of mirth from the corner of my eye, they were all looking at me like I'd lost my damn mind.
My dad spoke first. "Maybe we should forget the ice cream and get you inside, honey."
I nodded, tossing the uneaten ice cream into the black trash can next to me. I hadn't taken a single bite. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea."
"Grace," Tucker said, and I inhaled shakily at what the sound of my name on his lips did to my heart, "would you able to meet about the festival tomorrow? I've got some free time in the morning if you do."
"Y-yeah, that works for me."
Magnolia kept her stunning eyes trained steadily on my face while I answered, and I prayed to every deity that had ever existed that my face wasn't bright red.
"Great. I got your brother's number earlier, I'll uh, I'll just get your info from him."
I nodded frantically. "Ready, Dad?"
"Sure thing." He looked at Tucker and Magnolia. "Good to see you both."
If they said anything to him, I didn't hear it, because I made a sharp pivot and hobbled my ass over to my dad's rusted, red truck. Both Tucker and Magnolia were watching me, with varying degrees of curiosity on their faces, as I slammed the truck door shut and yanked the seatbelt over my chest.
My dad climbed in. "Are you all right?"
"Just start the truck, please," I whispered. My heart was pounding as he did what I asked, and slowly back the vehicle out of the spot. Through the bug-splattered windshield, Tucker's eyes never left my face. Not for a second.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine mine mine mineminemine.
He is mine.
A terrible, impossible, horrifying realization yawned dangerously in my head and I pressed a hand to my chest to keep my heart from bailing out of its safe spot behind my ribs.
"Can you take me back to Aunt Fran and Uncle Robert's? I need to talk to them about something."
My dad grimaced. "Aren't they gone until tomorrow morning? He had some conference in Nashville, and she went with him, I thought."
"Shit," I hissed, dropping my head back onto the seat. "I forgot."
"You're scaring me a little bit, Gracey B."
"Pops," I sighed. "I'm scaring myself if that makes a difference."
I didn't feel better until we turned onto a side street, out of view of the ice cream shop, out of view of Tucker and Magnolia, and every other part of Green Valley that I didn't particularly feel like seeing at the moment.
As we drove, I chewed on my lip, mind racing.
The things I was thinking … well, I couldn't believe I was thinking them. But given the current zig-zagging of my thoughts, of the strange things happening in my heart and head, there was only one possibility, and I did not like it.
"Dad, do you know where any old family things are? Like, journals and stuff."
He lifted his eyebrows. "I reckon they're in Robert and Fran's attic. They got all the boxes of stuff from Great Grandma when she passed. Couldn't tell you which ones though."
"That's okay."
"What are you looking for?"
I exhaled, glancing over at him. "Hopefully some proof that I'm wrong."
Chapter 36 Grace
After a few hours in that attic, I knew three things with utmost certainty.
1- I was, thankfully, not allergic to dust.
2- The Buchanans that settled in Green Valley were a verbose lot, when it came to journaling.
and
3- Every single one of them believed wholeheartedly in this love curse, though I’d yet to pinpoint its origin.
A wingback chair with a loose arm was my current perch, and my legs were slung over the edge as I flipped through the age-crinkled papers. The ink was smudged in some places, other pages had wet spots that made it hard to make out, but all in all, the things I found were a fascinating study of where I came from.
The first of the Buchanans were tenacious, undeterred by hardships that I couldn't fathom. They lost children, spouses, crops, homes, and filled the pages of their journals with every bit of it. And while it took some digging, and a free trial on some family tree website that I really couldn't afford until I got a job, I discovered that four generations earlier, one Buchanan male and his wife gave birth to a daughter. The only Buchanan woman born into this family, until me.
I let that sink in, because while it had always been a joke that I'd only been born because I came out hand in hand with another Buchanan male, the joke seemed to be based in an almost unbelievable grain of truth.
It took me five boxes of sifting, and one text to Aunt Fran, to find the
