Bitter Seeds

Savanna Lewis had been tailor-made to be her mother’s daughter. When she was six years old, her mother marched her down to the apartment of old Marjorie Deargood and handed her over to the widow for proper lessons on cooking and baking. From that day, she learned how to whisk efficiently, how to make the perfect loaves of bread, how to anticipate when a cake was good and ready to be pulled from the jaws of the oven.

But Savanna wasn’t being groomed to become a chef or the owner of her own bakery. Both her mother and Marjorie would stress that every morsel of knowledge would benefit Savanna in the search for an adoring husband, led around by the pull of his stomach. The effect was even more perfected by the right outfit, the perfect shoes, and the appropriate blends of make-up to mask the flaws and highlight the assets.

All through high school, while other girls dabbled in the realms of bra-burning and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, Savanna jotted down in her notebook all her wishes—numbered one to five—most of which had to do with her crushes on the football players, the college-age boys who hung around in the local diner, even the twenty-something owner of the town’s first general store. She hadn’t had a father—not really, even with her mother’s live-in boyfriend Stan—so she looked for affirmation in every single place she could.

College was an after-thought. She ended up working as a beauty consultant in the big mall halfway across town, the place all the who’s-who frequented because it was the happening place removed away from the big city. That was where she met Trevor Glade, an up-and-coming businessman who had driven out of his way from his hotel to visit the new mall because he needed an extra dress shirt. Savanna met him only by chance because she was covering for someone who had called off in the men’s department. Not only did she get the phone number tied to his hotel room in town, but she also convinced him to buy a blue-and-silver tie to go with his new white shirt because she said it brought out the color in his eyes.

On her first date with Trevor that same week, Savanna made a five-course meal that might have seemed extravagant and overblown from an outsider’s perspective, but it was just the perfect touch for someone who thought so highly of himself like Trevor. She felt victorious when he pressed a wine-tinged kiss to her cheek before he went off back to his hotel. But soon his business trip would be over—and then what would she do?

The business trip that was supposed to last only two weeks turned into a month. When Savanna talked with her girlfriends, she said in fluttery tones that she wasn’t far off from falling in love—though she fancied that Trevor liked her more than she liked him. It was a matter of pride to say that she had a man on the end of her string, all the better to pull him closer and wind him up in her web.

What she didn’t expect was that he would tell her one evening in his hotel room that he would be leaving the next morning.

“What?” Her hand dropped away from his, and she laughed, feeling like the breath had been knocked out of her stomach. “But I thought—I mean, Trev, you said—”

“We’ve got a good thing going,” he said gently, as if he were trying to keep the simmer low on whatever her reaction might be, “but you’re a small-town girl. You’ve never even seen beyond this place.”

“What’s so wrong with that?” she asked, indignant, though she was still trying to understand. In her fantasies, she would be the one ending things; she felt she had just that much power and sway over him, over any man that might come her way. Hadn’t her mother taught her just that?

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that—or with you,” he said, “but, doll, I’ve been all over the world. There’s just so much out there, so much life. It would be too much to ask for to have me be tied down to this place or you. Do you understand?”

Savanna didn’t understand. Hadn’t she perfected this image all along? Who was he to say that she was lacking in some way, that it would practically demean him to settle for her when he could have the world? How fair was that?

As she tried not to cry, she focused on the letter opener atop the hotel room’s desk. The silver stiletto blade blurred, and Trevor caught her hand in his again.

“Savanna, say something,” he murmured, rubbing circles into her skin. She pulled her hand away and stood up, the skirt of her dress whispering against the settee.

“You must have thought it was fun, pulling along a girl like me,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wobbling. She pulled a tissue out of the box on the desk and dabbed at her eyes. “You were probably laughing at me the whole time.”

“Sweetheart, no,” he said, rising and placing his hands on her shoulders. “I would never laugh at you. How can you help where you grew up and what you’ve lived? It’s not your fault that you’ve been stuck in this tiny town all your life.”

Savanna sniffed and turned around to face Trevor. “Then why can’t we see the world together? Let’s drive to the nearest airport and take the next plane out to anywhere we want. I’ve got some savings, so we could—”

But the way his eyes shuttered, his expression growing flat, she trailed off and knew that she had already lost him. Maybe she had been the fool to a man who had a wife waiting for him at home. She had probably just been a plaything to him in the weeks since they’d met. All of it, gone up in smoke, swifter than any lie or trick.

“So that’s it then,” she said, her own voice sounding dead to her ears. She stepped back, her hand drawing across the desk for support. “You won’t even try to invite me into your life—your world.”

“It’s not that simple, Savanna,” he said, and she could hear the heat growing in his voice. His mask was slipping; he was growing tired of trying to placate her with sweet words and their excuses. Funny, really, since she was also feeling the strain as she tried to keep her own anger down, locked deep inside.

Be the girl he thought you were. Be sweet till the bitter end. Smile and tell him that you’ll let him go. Maybe you’ll get a goodbye kiss out of it, like something out of a movie.

To hell with that.

She swiped up the letter opener and held it in the air. Trevor’s eyes narrowed, his hands going up, and she was certain he would lunge at her the very next moment. “Savanna, let’s just talk about this like rational adults—”

“No,” she said simply, primly, right before she took her step forward.

It seemed Savanna Lewis was done playing the nice girl her mother had raised her to be.