John Riley's Girl

by Cooper, Inglath

  “You remember how terrified we were?” Lori laughed and dropped her voice an octave or two. “Miss Morgan, I’m not sure which driver’s education class you attended, but the idea is to stop back there on that white line. It makes it kind of hard to see when the light turns green if you’re right up under it like that.”

  Olivia laughed now until she could hardly catch her breath.

  “I want you to know that unto this day I am a model citizen when it comes to stopping on the white line,” Lori said.

  Olivia picked up her napkin and wiped her eyes, sobering. “Could that really have been that many years ago?”

  Lori shook her head. “Life doesn’t exactly sit around waiting on any of us, does it?”

  “No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

  They smiled at one another, and it was strange, but of all the friends and acquaintances Olivia had acquired in the life she’d made since leaving here, none of them had ever been like Lori. They’d always been this comfortable with each other. The kind of comfortable where you borrowed each other’s clothes, used each other’s lipstick, wore each other’s shoes. Real friends with real roots. And, oh, she had missed this kind of connection.

  “You’re really happy with your life, aren’t you, Lori?”

  “I am. You know, it’s funny how when we’re younger, we list off all the things we want when we’re adults and can do what we please. A big house, a fancy car, great clothes, an impressive job. But what gets me up every morning, what makes me feel good about myself when I go to bed at night is my husband and children. It all comes back to that.”

  Olivia planted her gaze on her coffee cup. The words sent a little arrow through her heart, and with it came the sudden realization of the hollowness in her own life, the distinct feeling that something was missing. She blinked and looked back up.

  “Okay, everybody, five minutes to closing.” Marcille made the announcement from the cash register.

  Lori glanced at her watch. “Gosh, it is late. Can you come over to the house for lunch tomorrow?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Lori gave her some quick directions, then picked up her purse from the floor. “I feel like I’ve been given a gift I thought I’d lost a long time ago. I don’t want to lose it again.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Good.” She reached across the table to squeeze Olivia’s hand. “Then we won’t. We just won’t.”

  To Olivia, it seemed impossible that two people could put a lost friendship back on track in so short a time when it had been left to wither for fifteen years. But that was exactly what they had done. Lori didn’t need to know why. She had merely welcomed her back. Accepted her. And maybe, after all, that was the real definition of friendship.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Bedtime Stories

  SOPHIA HAD a long-standing eight o’clock appointment every Friday morning at the So-Chic Beauty Salon in town for a wash and set.

  Friday was therefore John’s day to make breakfast for Flora, the menu usually consisting of either oatmeal and toast or frozen waffles with maple syrup. They were the only two breakfast foods he knew how to make. It was a good thing they both happened to be his daughter’s favorites. He’d never been sure if that was actually true, or simply another of her attempts to make him feel as if he was acing this single-parent thing.

  Unfortunately for him, the smell of the waffles did not appeal this morning. Between the two of them, he and Cleeve had made a good-size dent in that bottle of bourbon, the aftermath leaving John with a colossal headache that was now beating at his temples with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

  Flora was in her chair at the center of the table. Her brown hair hung in a braid down her back. Since it was Friday, she’d picked out her favorite outfit—faded overalls with a pink T-shirt. Laura had been against such clothes for school. She’d thought them too tomboyish, but like so many things these days, John didn’t have the heart to deny his daughter this simple pleasure. And yet the needle of guilt was there, too, making him wonder if he should change something Laura had felt strongly about.

  “Look, Daddy.” Flora pointed her fork at the newspaper on the table in front of her. Syrup dripped off the tip and landed on the elephant pictured beneath the headline.

  “Watch out, honey. You’re making a mess.”

  Flora dabbed at the syrup with her napkin. “Sorry, Daddy,” she said, looking down at her lap, her bottom lip teetering.

  Regret hit John in the chest. His patience was way too thin this morning, his own rattled mind no excuse. “No, I’m sorry, sweet pea. I’m a little grumpy today.”

  “It’s okay, Daddy,” she said. “Did you stay up late last night?”

  “A little bit.”

  “You always say I’m grumpy if I don’t go to bed at my regular time.”

  “You’re right. I do,” he said.

  He got up from the table, dumped his half-eaten waffles in the trash and stuck his plate in the sink.

  “There was a lady outside my window last night.”

  “Really?” Flora had enough imagination for ten children her age, and it wasn’t unusual for her to make up stories for him. He liked to hear them. In fact, most nights she told him bedtime stories before she went to sleep. She was much better at it than he was.

  “Uh-huh. She was crying, so I gave her some tissues.”

  John dropped the dishcloth in the sink and swung around to look at his daughter. This didn’t sound like a fairy tale. “What lady?”

  “Her name was Olivia.”

  The hurricane of pain throbbing in John’s head blew up to a category four. “You talked to her?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  An arsenal of emotion assaulted him, one bullet at a time. Disbelief, incredulity—and a sudden undeniable wave of concern for a woman who should mean nothing to him. “Are you…what did she say?”

  “That she was here for the reunion. And that she knew you.”

  “Why was she crying?”

  “I don’t know. But I think I made her feel a little better.”

  Soapsuds dripped from John’s hands onto the spotless kitchen floor.

  “Are you okay, Daddy? You look funny.”

  He took Flora’s dishes and put them in the sink, a little too fast so that the edges clinked together. “Get your stuff, sweet pea, or you’re gonna miss the bus.”

  For the next half hour, John put his brain on autopilot. He drove his daughter to the end of the driveway and waited with her until she had climbed on board and had sat down in the same seat she sat in every day, second row by the window.

  He kept a rein on his feelings until the bus pulled away. He headed in the opposite direction toward town to do the weekly run for bag feed. A dozen different emotions raged through him. He did not, repeat not, want to think about Liv crying last night!

  The only emotion he could deal with where she was concerned was anger. And he had every right in the world to be angry! What made her think she could just saunter back into town, show up at his farm bold as daylight and strike up a conversation with his daughter?

  His anger at Liv was comfortable, like boots with a couple years’ wear on them. But edging it out was something else. All the way to town, his daughter’s voice kept penetrating the haze: She was crying.

  He had seen Liv Ashford cry twice in his life. Once, in school, when her math teacher had died of leukemia. And another time when a stray puppy she’d been secretly taking care of in an old shed near her house had been hit by a car while meeting her at the school bus one afternoon.

  Both times, seeing her with tears sliding down her cheeks, despite her efforts to hold them back, had torn him up inside. Both times, he’d pulled her in his arms and held her, wanting to absorb her pain, take it as his own so she no longer felt it.

  The feelings came back now, strong and clear. He’d been a seventeen-year-old boy, and there was nothing more he’d wanted in the world than to spend his life making sure she never had a reason to c
ry.

  She was crying.

  Why?

  The question wouldn’t leave him alone.

  John forced himself to heed the speed limit all the way into Summerville, even though he itched to take his frustration out on the accelerator beneath his foot.

  Ahead on his right hung the big white sign for Dickson’s Feed. Dickson’s had been a fixture in Summerville for the past forty years, and the old brick building with its clay tile roof had once served as a train depot.

  John swung the truck into the parking lot, the tires spitting gravel behind him. He backed up to the loading dock, revving the engine a little louder than he needed to, got out, slammed the door and took the back stairs three at a time. His boots thumped loudly on the dusty old wood floor of the warehouse.

  Otis Olinger was stacking feed bags against a sidewall. He’d been working at Dickson’s for as long as John could remember. A stiff wind would have blown Otis into the next county, every bag a small battle between him and the fifty-pound sacks. At the sight of John, he stopped, wiped a hand across an overheated brow and said, “Hey, John, you’re never gonna guess—”

  “Hey, Oat.” John marched on through the warehouse. “I’m a little short on time today. Catch ya later, okay?”

  “But John—” He didn’t hear the rest of whatever it was Otis had been about to say. Because holding court in the center of the feed store’s front room was Liv Ashford and two reporters from the County Times.

  John stopped short as if he’d just run head on into a rock wall, his attention nailed to Liv’s face. She was smiling. And for an instant he was glad because he couldn’t seem to shake the image of her crying. He had forgotten how a smile transformed her. Or maybe he had refused to remember, and wasn’t that a lot different from forgetting? She had on one of those summery outfits women wear, a sleeveless top and shorts the color of green grapes. Her arms and legs were lean and fit, the muscles long and defined. His pulse kicked up a few beats; attraction surged through him, as unwelcome as it was undeniable.

  “Well, this oughta be a little extra seasoning for your story, boys.” The voice gave John a jolt. It was Harvey Dickson, the store owner, standing next to Liv, wearing a grin wider than that of most million-dollar lottery winners. The squash-colored CATERPILLAR hat on his head had two big grease stains on either side of the C and R. His overalls were due for a run through the washing machine, but the two-inch gaps between his cuffs and his well worn boots showed a strip of bleach-white socks. He was holding an introductory arm out in John’s direction like a game-show hostess pointing out the next car up for giveaway. “John here’s Olivia’s old beau. ’Livia worked here in high school. She told you that, though. Soon as John discovered that he was in here practically every day buyin’ something for those horses. Got in a heap of trouble with his daddy for running up their charge account every month.” This speech was followed up by a knowing chuckle.

  The two reporters grinned. One had a ponytail longer than Flora’s and a fan of gold studs in his left ear. The other wore khaki shorts and hiking boots that looked as though they’d never seen the dust of a trail.

  As for Liv, all the color had drained from her face. And she wasn’t smiling anymore.

  John felt as if someone had dropped a big weight on his chest, and for the life of him, he couldn’t move it.

  The ponytailed reporter said, “Hey, could we get a shot of you two talking over there by the register? This’ll be great! Like first loves seeing each other again for the—”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The first refusal came from Liv. The second from John. They were said in unison, with equal fervor.

  Silence, stiff as new leather, got a stranglehold on the group, and they all stood there, frozen, as if someone had zapped them with a big pause button.

  John broke the moment, backing up and heading for the door. “Put that feed on my tab, Harvey,” he threw out. “I’ll load it up myself.”

  IF ONLY THE FLOOR beneath her would just open up. Olivia tried to speak, but couldn’t.

  Coming here had been a bad idea. Lori had called this morning to confirm that she’d be coming for lunch and Olivia had decided to spend a couple hours in town looking around before heading to Lori’s. Spur of the moment, she’d decided to drop in at Dickson’s and say hello.

  Across from her, Harvey shook his head with a see-I-know-what-I’m-talking-about look on his face. “Some things never change,” he said. “You always could get that boy worked up.”

  The two reporters he’d called at the sight of Olivia—“you don’t mind, do you? A store can’t buy this kind of advertising!”—were looking as if they’d just had the plug pulled to a best-selling lead.

  “I really have to be going, Mr. Dickson,” Olivia said, suddenly feeling there wasn’t enough air in the old store. “It was really good to see you.”

  “Well, you too, Olivia,” he said. “Now don’t be a stranger.”

  Despite her eagerness to leave, Olivia tried to make her exit look as casual as she could. Not that she imagined for a minute she’d succeeded.

  As fate would have it—or maybe it was just sheer bad luck—the truck parked a few yards from her car belonged to John. And he was standing on the edge of the loading dock, throwing bags of horse feed onto the long bed at an Olympic-relay pace. Adrenaline poured through her. Her legs began to shake as if she’d just downed a few shots of espresso.

  She intended to keep walking. The problem was her feet weren’t following the directions from her brain. But the sight of him, while she stood there grounded, did not go unappreciated. With each bag he hefted and threw, a navy polo-type shirt strained at the width of his shoulders. And they were nice shoulders, broad like those of a man who used them daily, for work, not play.

  To get to her own car, she had to walk right by him, which meant she had to make her legs move. Plus find the ability to speak—ironic considering articulation in awkward moments was part of the reason a major network paid her an exorbitant salary every year. But not one word came to mind now. She had somehow become both immobile and mute.

  She pulled the remote from her pocket and aimed it at the car door. The beep sounded doubly obnoxious with John slinging feed bags in her peripheral vision.

  “You locked your doors at Dickson’s?”

  His voice sent another jolt of surprise pounding along her nerve endings. So he had actually decided to acknowledge her presence. Maybe that could have meant something except that the derision coating the words was thick as peanut butter.

  She forced an offended glare in his direction. “Habit.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re a city girl now.”

  There was nothing subtle about the jab, and the tone, as well as the words, hit her between the ribs. “So what exactly is the problem, John?” The question came out sounding breathless rather than disdainful—like she’d just run five miles. Uphill.

  “No problem here.” The pace of his feed-bag slinging accelerated. On the way to a world record now, for sure.

  “I’m sorry if my being here this weekend is upsetting to you. But I have as much right to be here as anyone else. Unless they put you in charge of culling the guest list.” Olivia had just given a perfect rendition of a pursed-lipped librarian.

  He paused long enough to give her a steamy, somewhat disbelieving stare, as if he couldn’t quite imagine such words coming from her mouth. He continued with his slinging. Two more bags, and he stopped altogether, his face set. “I don’t appreciate you talking to my daughter behind my back.”

  So that’s what this was all about. It took her a few seconds to find a response. “That was an accident.”

  “I’m not sure what that means, but how it happened doesn’t matter. I don’t want it to happen again.”

  A pickup truck pulled into the parking lot, the muffler loud and rusty-sounding. The plates said, Farm Use. It rumbled to a stop in the spot beside John. A man got out, his face
and arms brown and sun-toughened. He threw up a hand. “Hey, John. Been meaning to call you on that orchard-grass hay. I could use about five hundred square bales this time. Think you’ll have that much to spare?”

  “Should be able to fix you up. Looks like we’re gonna get a nice second cutting as long as things don’t get too dry.”

  Olivia watched the exchange as if she were viewing it from behind one of those glass partitions like they use on cop shows: she could see them but they couldn’t see her. John’s whole demeanor had changed, the look on his face friendly, likable. With her, he’d been as unyielding as the concrete side-walk beneath her feet. The transformation now made her ache for a time when the sight of her had brought light to his eyes and gladness to his face. Much as it had amazed her, even then.

  “Sounds good,” the man said to John, dropping a curious nod at Olivia, then heading up the steps and into the store.

  A couple of cars rolled by on the street just out from the parking lot. One had the window rolled down and the base notes of some rap tune kept time with the thumping of Olivia’s heart. Between John and her, a stretch of silence hung large and awkward like the wash on an old clothesline, weighed down in the middle.

  “I’m really sorry about your wife, John,” Olivia said now, the words coming out in a rush, almost before she’d realized her intent to say them.