John’s arm tightened around her waist, the adjustment slight enough to make her wonder if it had been her imagination, if he himself was aware of it. They danced there among classmates who had married years before and were still together, among others who had renewed old friendships, old attractions.
But for Olivia, for the duration of that song, it was just the two of them, dancing alone under the stars.
DID THEY HAVE any idea how right they looked together?
From the vantage point of Cleeve Harper’s arms, Racine decided there was something about the two of them that seemed predetermined long ago. John Riley and Olivia Ashford just fit, they complemented one another the way a man and woman should.
The recognition of it hit her with a little stab of envy. It was a shame they couldn’t see what the rest of the world saw.
“You’re a good dancer.”
She glanced up to find Cleeve looking down at her with an odd expression in his eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re pretty good at railroading a girl onto the dance floor yourself.”
“A man does what he must,” he said, smiling.
Racine sighed. If she knew what was good for her, she’d let him find another partner after this song ended. But for reasons she’d be the first to admit weren’t in her best self-interest, she ignored the voice of common sense, and they danced on a while longer. Cleeve told her silly jokes with corny punch lines in his boisterous voice. And Racine laughed. The kind of laughter that made her stomach hurt. She hadn’t done a lot of laughing the last few years. Doing so now with Cleeve felt like taking up exercise after years of being sedentary.
The music slowed down, and Cleeve drew her in a little closer. Attraction swirled inside her, and she wished, just for a moment, that this was real, that they were both free to pursue it.
Cleeve told her about the alfalfa he’d baled that afternoon, the prettiest he’d had in a couple of years. Racine asked questions, basic stuff—how do you know when it’s ready to cut? Do you really get up at three-thirty every morning to milk the cows? She’d always loved the idea of living on a farm, of having animals to take care of, fields to walk in.
It was obvious to her that Cleeve loved what he did every day of his life. She recalled a few of the comments she’d overheard Macy Harper make to other people in the post office, of how she lived for the day when she could convince him to sell that stinking place.
“You and Jimmy split for good?”
Racine looked up at Cleeve’s for-once serious expression. “Signed the final papers three days ago. That’s pretty much for good as far as I’m concerned.”
He appeared to consider that, sent his gaze off to the other end of the crowd and then wound it back to her face where it stayed. “You are one stunning woman, you know that, Racine?”
Warmth welled up inside her, followed arms and legs to fingers and toes. If laughter had been scarce in her life, then compliments had become extinct. She’d forgotten how good they could feel coming from a man to whom a woman felt a definite attraction. There was no denying it, she was attracted to Cleeve Harper. He thought she was stunning. And so it took every bit of fortitude she could muster to say, “Thank you, Cleeve. But I make it a rule not to get into this kind of conversation with married men. If you ever find yourself outside of that institution, then give me a call. I sure do like compliments.”
THE DJ HAD decided it was time to change the mood with the next song, sending the intensity level of the music back up to a nine or so on a scale of one to ten. John and Olivia parted with awkward politeness. She went one way. He went the other. He found a spot on the sidelines where he made a good effort to get a handle on the feelings storming through him, old tangling up with new until he failed altogether at differentiating between the two.
John’s gaze fell across Liv where she stood now, some fifty yards away, talking to Lori, their heads tipped together, smiles on their faces. The ease of their friendship was apparent, even from this distance, their gestures familiar and their laughter frequent. Some well-buried part of him envied that. Or maybe it wasn’t so well-buried.
With distance as a shield, he let himself study her now. In his arms just minutes before, he’d barely been able to look at her, afraid that if he did, he would never look away again. And so he’d absorbed her presence like a blind person using his other senses. The smell of her, something fresh and appealing like spring rain. The feel of her, the skin of her hand soft in his. The sound of her breathing, a little too breathless for a woman as fit as she appeared to be.
“Y’all looked awfully good out there.”
Cleeve had sidled up beside him, the expression on his face wavering between hope and chagrin. Hope, surely, that John wasn’t going to deck him. Chagrin, most certainly, because he knew he was in the doghouse. “So, what exactly do you think I should extract for the price of that little stunt?” John asked.
“My first born?”
“That’d be letting you off easy.”
“Aw, come on, John. The signals going off between you two could knock a satellite out of orbit. Am I wrong about that?”
“Dead.”
“Disagree, old buddy. I know lust when I see it. Not that I think there’s anything logical about it. I mean it would have been a lot simpler if Mother Nature had made physical attraction an analytical thing. Set it up as a point system. Ten merits for niceness. Like does she brake for small animals? Is she kind to children?” He scratched the stubble on his jaw. “And maybe ten merits for cooking skills. Does she make great coffee or lousy coffee? Can she make a mean steak and potato, or are you going to be stuck eating peanut butter sandwiches every night for the rest of your life?”
John folded his arms across his chest and gave his friend a long, hard look. “Does this theory of yours apply to you and Racine?”
Cleeve attempted surprise and failed. “She’s a nice gal who’s had a pretty good run of bad luck.”
“Like you said, Mother Nature’s not always logical. And I saw the way you were looking at her out there.”
Cleeve sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why Macy ever married me. I can’t remember the last time she actually smiled at me. We’re like two strangers living under the same roof. Seems like married people ought to like each other well enough to smile once in a while.”
“I was just wondering when you were going to wake up and smell that particular pot of coffee.”
“Why does all this stuff between men and women have to be so complicated?”
“I sure as heck don’t know the answer to that, Cleeve, but do me a favor, okay? I don’t need you playing matchmaker between Liv and me. You’re wasting your time.”
“Aw, John, I wasn’t going to—”
“How long have I known you?”
“Long enough?”
“Right. So don’t bother to deny what you had in mind.”
“One thing I do know,” Cleeve said, an uncharacteristic note of seriousness in his voice. “You’ve had sadness in your eyes and on your face for too long. I didn’t see it when you were dancing with Olivia just now.”
John’s denial never made it to his lips. Because it was then, standing there beside his oldest friend in the world, that he put definition to what he’d felt out there with Liv a little while ago. Happiness. It had been happiness.
CHAPTER NINE
Detours
OLIVIA INSISTED ON staying to help Lori clean up. It was almost twelve-thirty, and nearly everyone had already left.
Olivia’s feet hurt. The strappy sandals she’d worn all night had rubbed a blister on the side of her foot. Lori had one on her heel. They both took off their shoes, and with sighs of relief, walked around barefoot, laughing. Lori shook her head. “Can you imagine fifteen years ago either one of us letting go of our vanity long enough to admit we had blisters?”
“So there’s one positive thing about getting old,” Olivia said, still smiling.
The cleanup was minimal. The two of them folded tableclot
hs, filled a couple of trash bags with plastic cups and plates, righted a few chairs that had fallen over, picked up stray cigarette butts. And for the better part of an hour, while they worked, they talked about who had changed the most, the least, how Sally Amos had six children and still managed to have one of the best figures there—where was the fairness in that?—about anything and everything except what Olivia knew Lori had been dying to ask for the past two hours.
“So what was it like?” Lori finally succumbed to her curiosity.
“What’s that?” Olivia asked, buying time.
“Dancing with John.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t his idea. Cleeve didn’t give him a choice.”
“So that explains the first song. What about the second and the third?”
For that, Olivia didn’t have an answer. Because she’d wondered, too.
THEY LEFT Rolling Hills shortly after 1:00 a.m., telling each other to be careful and promising they would talk in the morning.
Olivia wasn’t in the least bit sleepy, even though she’d barely slept the night before. She was wide awake, finally able to take apart the evening’s events now that she was alone with no one to interpret her silences.
She’d only seen John one other time after they’d danced together, and that had been a mere glimpse of him heading through the yard toward his house just before midnight. Something as inane as a dance between two people who had been all but forced into the act should not have stirred up such a hornet’s nest of memories. But it had, and for Olivia it was imperative that she put them to rest because they could only lead her into a nowhere of what-ifs and maybes.
She followed the road back to town at well under the speed limit, unaware of her intention to take the turnoff onto 134 until she’d actually done so. The road led across a double set of railroad tracks and down a narrow stretch of hardtop that ran through what had been farmland when she’d lived here. There were now two subdivisions where there had once grown corn and winter wheat. It hardly looked like the same place.
Within a couple minutes, she left the subdivisions behind, and the road turned to country again, her headlights illuminating fields dotted with big round bales of hay, modest homes whose value wasn’t in the size of their structure, but in the space around them. Having lived most of her adult life in cities where buildings were spaced inches apart, Olivia had a new appreciation for this.
Another few minutes, and there it was. The turn lay just ahead. She tapped on the brakes. Her mind said no, but something else pushed her on, some need to see if the old place had changed.
The road wasn’t paved. Time had filled it with potholes and made it almost impassable. She steered the car around them as best she could. The tires dropped off every few seconds, spinning and groaning their way back over the edges. Bushes had grown out into the road, swatting the sides of the car as she passed. The road wound on for a quarter mile. And then, the house was there in front of her. She stopped the car and sat there staring at it, her heart pounding.
It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.
The words marched through her head, a silent mantra she had long ago accepted with the objectivity that had come from a therapist walking her through the past, forcing her to look at it, assess what she could have done differently, what she could not have done.
She reached in the glove compartment for a flashlight, then got out, the heavy ka-thump of the closing car door too loud in the stillness.
The house looked much the same, and yet different, like a person who has aged beyond fairness. The basic features hadn’t changed, but were burdened now with neglect. The paint on the white clapboard had faded and peeled. Vines climbed the sides of the concrete block chimney and the front steps sagged in the middle. The right side of the porch drooped like a sad, resigned smile.
She went around back, wading through knee-high grass. The screen door that led into the kitchen hung limply to one side as if someone had landed it a good left hook. The breeze tipped it back and forth, and it creaked in protest. Olivia lifted the door and placed it on the other hinge. Silence. She thought she might have preferred the noise.
The wooden door behind the screen was unlocked. Surprised, she pushed it open, then tossed the beam of the flashlight across the kitchen floor. All the furniture was still there, covered with dust and spider webs. Fast-food wrappers and an assortment of beer cans littered the floor as if someone passing through had set up camp here for the night.
The old red linoleum-top table and the four chairs whose seats had long since lost any cushioning were still there. The refrigerator had a cinder block propping open the door. The four-burner stove was pulled away from the wall with the electrical cord dangling over the top. The curtains were the same ones Olivia’s mother had made, off-white with now-faded strawberries on them. Equally faded came an image of her mother sitting at her sewing machine hemming those curtains, so pleased with how they’d turned out and how cheerful they would make the small kitchen. If they’d only been able to do the same for their home.
The living room was straight ahead. Olivia stopped in the doorway between the two rooms and let the light find the old couch, which for some reason was standing on end, as if someone had planned to move it out and then decided against it. Her mother’s piano sat by the window, and Olivia’s heart hurt for all the years it had sat here, for the music it had never made.
Just off the living room was her bedroom. The door was closed, and she considered leaving without opening it. But like the rest of the house, she needed now to see it. She turned the knob and pushed it open.
The flashlight beam revealed the twin bed that had been hers in its place beneath the window, the little-girl-pink spread still covering the mattresses. Her dolls sat in the corner against the wall, looking lonely and forlorn. For the most part, things were just as they’d been. She hadn’t expected that, but had imagined the place emptied by looters after so many years. She’d regretted many times not coming back for the few things that had good memories attached.
And there were a few. For the most part her father’s constant anger at the world had been directed at her mother who had spent her days trying to avoid setting off his temper. When Elizabeth Ashford had died of pneumonia just before Olivia’s ninth birthday, Olivia had simply taken her mother’s place. She had not known that life could be any other way. It wasn’t until she was in the fourth grade that she’d discovered that other people’s families were different. She had spent the night at Lori’s because her father had to stay overnight at the hospital, and she had become even more determined to hide what went on in her own house. Surely, she had done something to cause it, must be somehow responsible for it, must have done something somewhere along the way to deserve it. Families who loved one another did not live this way.
Another memory surfaced. This one she shied away from, a mere glimpse of it finding old bruises on her heart.
She had loved her father. And for much of her young life had wanted desperately to figure out why he was always so angry. Why he yelled at her mama, cut her down so that she eventually lost all confidence in her ability to do anything as simple as choosing groceries for the week. Once, Olivia had raised her hand in Sunday school and asked her teacher what God did to people who made other people feel bad about themselves.
“Do you mean intentionally, dear?” Mrs. Myers had asked, looking at Olivia over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses.
Olivia had thought about that for a second, then answered as honestly as she could because if a person did the same thing over and over again, then wasn’t it intentional? “I think so.”
“Well, dear, that would be a sin. And if we don’t ask God to forgive us for our sins and then change the things that we do wrong, we will go to hell.”
For Olivia, Mrs. Myers’s answer had felt like the time in second grade when she’d gotten hit in the stomach with a football. She’d felt sick for the rest of the class and all through church. When they’d gotten home, her mama
had put her on the couch with a glass of ginger ale and a cold cloth to her forehead, sure she’d picked up a bug of some sort. Olivia couldn’t stop crying. Later that night, her daddy had sat on the couch and let her put her head on his lap, his efforts at comfort clumsy but sincere. It had been a rare moment when her parents’ mutual concern for her allowed peace to fill the house instead of rage. And all Olivia could think of was what Mrs. Myers had said that morning, and the awful thought of her daddy ending up in hell and that there must surely be some way she could prevent that.
But she had not been able to change her father or his anger. And so, she had become a master at pretending. No one guessed what her life at home was like. Not her teachers or her classmates. She made up stories, taking bits and pieces from things she heard the other children say, changing a few details here and there, so they sounded like her own. And she wore long sleeves to hide the bruises on her arms, even in the springtime. When the teachers questioned her about it, she simply said she didn’t like to be cold.
She had made it through high school without a single teacher ever knowing. Not even John had guessed, teasing her for looking so graceful and being so clumsy.
Had she confided in him, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe she had been wrong not to do so. But she had been sure it was a flaw in her that made her father act as he had. Maybe John would see the same thing in her; maybe it would change the way he felt about her. So she’d kept quiet until it was too late for anyone to help her.
After she’d left Summerville, her father had taken a job with a construction company that moved around the country. He had died alone in a hotel room in North Carolina, and Olivia had received a call from the job foreman who had tracked her down through some insurance information in her father’s wallet. She’d had him buried in a little cemetery in Mount Jackson, Virginia, where he’d grown up and where his mother and father had been buried. It seemed hypocritical to bury him next to her mother when there had been no peace in their lives together.
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