John Riley's Girl

by Cooper, Inglath

“Liv.” Her name came with brakes attached. John pulled back, rolled over onto the grass beside her and stared up at the sky, his breathing heavy. She knew where they were headed. That there was a point past which there would be no turning back for either of them.

  A string of minutes slid by while they lay there, letting reason regain control.

  He reached out, entwined her hand in his, held it up and rubbed her thumb with his. “I loved you so much, Liv.”

  There was anguish in his voice, questions behind the words. Emotion knotted in her throat, tears blurring the sky above them. He had loved her. Here, now, she felt the truth of it and let it flow through her. All those years ago, she had not trusted that love for what it was. Had not trusted it to protect her, forgive her. That had been her mistake. Because love as strong as theirs had deserved truth. Above all things, it deserved truth.

  Didn’t she owe him now what she had not given him then? The truth. Even if it did what she had feared it would do all along? Make her forever responsible in his eyes.

  She unclasped her hand from his, stood and then moved a few yards away from him, her arms wrapped around her waist. Terror tripped through her, raising her heartbeat so it pounded in her ears. How many times had she played this scene in her mind, how to tell him, what to say? But each of those had merely been rehearsals for a play she had thought would never be staged.

  This was the real thing.

  He stood behind her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at his face, but felt his concern, knew it was there in his eyes.

  One more moment, and she might never give in to the fear lashing over her like whitecaps.

  “What is it, Liv?” John’s voice was low, caring, alarmed.

  She tried to answer, but couldn’t. The words had been buried for so long that she could hardly find a way to begin.

  He waited. She felt that, too. As if he knew this was something that needed its own time.

  She clasped her hands together, fixed her gaze on a puffy cloud high in the sky, drew in the sweet scent of the peaches all around them. And said the words. “We were going to have a baby. I was pregnant. I’d only known a week or so—I was so scared I hadn’t found the nerve to tell you yet. But I was sick in the mornings, and my dad…he figured out why. He decided to teach me a lesson with a belt one night when he was well on the other side of a bottle of vodka. I lost the baby, John. I lost the baby.”

  Olivia heard her own voice, thought it odd that the words sounded as if someone else were saying them. And it felt that way, as if she’d had to numb herself to be able to say them at all.

  Around them, birds continued their conversations with one another. One of the mares swished her tail at a fly. Somewhere high above, a jet engine droned. Normal sounds. Life-affirming sounds.

  John’s hand touched her shoulder, tentative at first, and then sinking in, holding on, as if without her, he might fall. “Liv. Liv.”

  The anguish in his voice enfolded her heart and squeezed tight. He reached out and pulled her in to him, fast and hard, as if he couldn’t get her there quickly enough. He wrapped his arms around her and anchored her to him. Olivia turned her face into his chest and closed her eyes. Here. This was where she’d yearned to be all those years ago. She felt so many things at once, emotions she hadn’t allowed anywhere near her heart because it was impossible to live a normal life when she did so. Normal meant smiling and laughing and acting as if her heart had never been broken in half. But here in John’s arms, she let the hurt seep up and remembered her anguish, the grief that had only gone dormant, but had never actually died.

  That grief wrapped itself around her now, and her shoulders shook with the force of it. She wasn’t aware that she was crying until John pulled back. And she saw her own grief mirrored there in his eyes.

  She had never seen such pain on a man’s face, and her heart broke all over again for the fact that she was responsible for putting it on John’s. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish so much that I had done something…that I could have prevented it from happening.”

  “Liv. Honey,” he said, his voice breaking and then, “What could you have done?”

  “Told you sooner. Left home long before then— I don’t know. Something.”

  “Don’t.” He put a finger to her lips. “You were seventeen years old. I should have been the one to do something. I should have taken care of you—”

  “No.” She touched the back of her hand to his left cheek. “Don’t. I couldn’t bear it if you felt guilty over something you never even knew about.”

  Olivia actually ached for the hurt she knew John was feeling. And at the same time, on another level that had nothing to do with selflessness, there was something freeing in sharing the awful secret with the only other person who had lost as much from it as she had.

  “I’d give anything in the world to be able to go back and change it, Liv.”

  “When I decided to come this weekend, I never intended to tell you this.”

  “Didn’t I have a right to know?”

  “I told myself a thousand times it wouldn’t change anything. And it won’t. You weren’t to blame. Then or now.”

  “How could I not feel responsible?” The words were ragged with emotion.

  “We were teenagers. There were things about my life I never told you. You had no way of knowing.”

  “I should have known,” he said. “I should have known.” He pulled her to him, tucked her against him and just held her there. The two of them in possession of something that had changed their lives, turned their merged paths in different directions. Forever. Never to be the same.

  And there in that old fruit orchard, where the baby that had been theirs was very likely conceived, they held onto each other because that was all they could do.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Reckonings

  JOHN FELT as if his entire world had been upended. There was no other way to describe what was going on inside him. An earthquake of emotions had left a mile-wide chasm in the center of his heart. A permanent crack that would be as much a part of him from this point on as the skin that covered his bones.

  After they’d ridden the horses back to the house, he’d driven Liv into town and dropped her off in front of the bed-and-breakfast. Both of them had been quiet, as if unsure of what direction to take with one another, as if what had been said up in that orchard needed its own time. Even now, disbelief and truth still felt as if they were sitting on the surface, and like oil and water, they didn’t mix.

  Liv had been pregnant with his child. And he had never known.

  He felt sore inside, as if he’d been in a bad car wreck, every inch of him bruised. And at a complete loss as to what he should be feeling.

  In two days the map of everything he’d thought to be true of Liv and himself had been completely redefined, and there wasn’t a single place he recognized from this angle.

  He turned into the driveway at the farm. Flora waited for him in the front yard, perched on the edge of the wooden swing he’d hung for her from the gnarled limb of an oak tree.

  He sat for a moment, one hand on the steering wheel, and watched her.

  We were going to have a baby. I was pregnant.

  Liv’s words came back at him with jagged edges that left him feeling shredded inside.

  How could he not have known? How could something that monumental, that important, have taken place without him knowing? How could he have failed to be there for Liv? For the baby? Their baby.

  How could something so awful happen to her, and he hadn’t known?

  Maybe the emotion inside him should have been rage. At her father. At what they had lost. At what had torn them apart.

  But all he felt was sadness. Sadness for a child he had never had the chance to know. Sadness for lives that had taken completely different directions than those they’d planned.

  And blame. As the boy who had loved Liv, who had made her pregnant, he should have known. He should have known.

&nb
sp; A wave of loss swallowed him whole. They could have had a little girl like Flora. Or a little boy. The possibility was a vise on his chest, squeezing, pressing down so hard, all the air left his lungs.

  John lunged out of the truck and headed for the swing.

  “Daddy, will you push me?” Flora sang out.

  “Yep.” He stepped behind her, pulled the swing back and then gave it an easy push.

  “You smiled a lot today,” she said over her shoulder, pumping her legs to make it go higher. “Olivia’s nice.”

  “She is,” he said, his voice a note or two off.

  “Will she come back to visit us again?”

  “I don’t know,” John said.

  “Did she used to be your girlfriend?”

  The question startled John enough that he missed a push, and the swing slowed. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Sophia said she was.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “Is she gonna be again?”

  “She doesn’t live here anymore.”

  Silence. John gave the swing another push.

  “If you get a girlfriend, will I still be your daughter?”

  John stopped the swing, stepped around and picked Flora up, folding her into his arms. “You’ll be my daughter forever, baby. Nothing will ever change that. You’re a good girl. No daddy could have a better daughter.”

  She pulled back and peered up at him through moist eyes. “I’m not always good.”

  He ruffled her hair and hugged her again, his heart weighted with love for her and the realization that he did not know what to feel about the loss of a child whose existence would have meant Flora would not be here.

  IN HER ROOM, Olivia got in the shower, leaving the water on cool as if the shock of it might jolt some of the confusion inside her into some kind of certainty that telling John the truth had been the right thing.

  Had it?

  She dropped her head back and let the water sluice down her face.

  She didn’t know what to make of the awkwardness between them when they had parted earlier. He’d dropped her off outside Lavender House with a casual, “See you tonight, Liv.” As if he’d needed to put emotional distance between them again.

  But then what did she expect?

  Olivia had no idea what the outcome of finally telling John the truth would be. Whether, as she had always feared, he would end up feeling she could somehow have prevented what had happened. Or whether they might both be able to put it to rest, with sorrow that would forever preface thoughts of what might have been, but also with acceptance of the fact that sometimes the world brought to a person’s doorstep things that were unfair.

  Olivia did not regret coming here this weekend. Even after all these years, this trip back had brought her own healing to another level. One of realization. She finally accepted that she had done nothing to deserve what had happened to her.

  She, Olivia Ashford, had been a victim. And for the first time in her adult life, she let the word sink in, take root.

  A victim then, yes. But no more. She would not spend the rest of her life as prisoner to her past. To do so would be to allow what had happened all those years ago to have final say. Telling John today had been the most crucial step out of that cage.

  A little door had opened inside her, and light came through the small crack. Always, her past had occupied a dark part of herself. She’d kept it closed up and sealed tight. There had been purpose in opening it today, her need to give John the truth, at last. But maybe there was something more, too.

  Maybe it was time to turn what was left of the bad into something good.

  MICHAEL ARRIVED at Olivia’s room just after five-thirty.

  She opened the door, wishing now that she had insisted he not come.

  “Hi,” he said, leaning in to peck her cheek.

  “Hi. Have you already checked in?”

  He nodded. “Showered and ready to go.”

  “Bet you’re tired.”

  “No, actually,” he said, stepping past her into the room. “I napped on the plane.”

  “I hate that you came all this way just for one night.”

  “I’m not. So tell me about it. You haven’t fallen in love with any old boyfriends, have you?”

  Olivia threw him a startled glance and saw that he was teasing. “Ah, it’s been good. I’m really glad I came.”

  He sank down in the wingback chair in the corner of the room. “So have you thought any more about the promotion?”

  “A little.”

  “I’m surprised you can sleep for thinking about it.”

  Olivia glanced at her watch, deliberately skirting the subject, and realized that she’d actually thought very little about it. “We should probably head on over if you’re ready.”

  “At your disposal,” he said.

  During the drive out to Rolling Hills, he talked about work, what had been going on since she’d left Thursday morning. And it was like hearing about someone else’s life. She felt removed from it, as if it didn’t belong to her.

  She forced herself to respond at the appropriate points in their conversation, answering his questions on how everything had gone so far, but her mind was elsewhere, at a picnic table beside a country diner, in the front seat of a Dodge truck, under an old peach tree with achingly familiar arms around her.

  At the farm they got out, and it felt more than a little strange walking up the driveway with Michael. No sooner had she made the admission than another one made itself known. She cared what John would think when he saw them.

  “Beautiful place,” Michael said.

  “It is.”

  Lori was waiting at the edge of the yard. She waved and weaved her way through several people, a welcoming smile on her face. “Hello,” she said, sticking out her hand. “You must be Michael. Olivia said you were coming.”

  He smiled. “I am. I did.”

  “Michael, this is Lori,” Olivia said. “My best friend for longer than either of us wants to admit.”

  They talked for a few minutes and Michael complimented the reunion set-up. He had a way of putting others immediately at ease, and Olivia could see that Lori was pleased by his comments.

  “Well, he seems like a nice guy,” she said when Michael went to get them a bottle of water from one of the coolers across the yard. “Just friends, huh?”

  “Very nice. And yes, just friends.”

  Lori led her to a couple of chairs positioned beside a crape myrtle bush. “So where were you all day?”

  It was hard to miss the hopeful note in her friend’s voice. Olivia thought about telling Lori everything then. What had happened all those years ago. The fact that she’d just told John today. But not yet. The secret had been hers for fifteen years. It seemed right to let John have it to himself a while longer.

  “I think being here has made me remember parts of who I used to be, who I wanted to be,” she said now. “And maybe I’ve realized that it’s okay to still want some of that.”

  Lori reached out and squeezed her hand, the simple gesture one of understanding. And Olivia thought how nice it was to have a best friend again.

  “STANDS OUT like a sore thumb, doesn’t he?”

  John and Cleeve were standing in the hamburger line. John was trying not to look in the direction of either Liv or the man who’d arrived with her an hour earlier. “Big-shot producer,” Cleeve had announced a couple of minutes before, having garnered his information from Zelda Ayers who’d heard it from Thomasa Conroy.

  Illogical as it was, a stun gun couldn’t have had more of an effect on John than Liv showing up with someone tonight. It was the last thing he’d expected. Jealousy burned inside him like a hot coal.

  But then what had he thought? That she didn’t date? That she’d lived a life of celibacy since she’d left here?

  The truth was he hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t let himself then and didn’t want to get anywhere near it now.

  But he was human, and he cou
ldn’t help taking a long look at the man. He could have stepped out of the front window of some fancy men’s department store. His clothes had a different look to them from those of most of the other men at the picnic supper. He was wearing some kind of fancy golf shirt, the kind that cost a hundred and fifty dollars or better and linen shorts with a crease so sharp John could have sliced his hamburger bun with it. His haircut wasn’t the barbershop kind like John’s, but clearly said seventy-five dollars or more.

  Despite the fashion statement, he made short work of putting himself out in the middle of the crowd. He moved from group to group, talking to people, smiling and nodding at things John was sure he must have little, if any, interest in. And all the while his eyes kept going back to Liv who was talking to Lori over by the drink table.

  John couldn’t keep his own gaze from straying in that direction. She looked incredible tonight. Her hair was up in some sort of twist that was somehow both sexy and innocent. His hands itched to pull out the pins holding it in place and tangle his fingers in its fullness.

  Seeing her with another man tonight was like being punched in the stomach. It brought him to the full-blown realization that somewhere deep inside him, despite his own need to find footing with it, he had begun to think of everything that had happened today as a beginning, as a turning point that might somehow hold sway with the future.

  “You’re in love with her again, aren’t you?”

  Cleeve’s assertion was issued with uncharacteristic quiet, although there was no missing the certainty in his voice.

  “It’s not that simple, Cleeve.”

  “Not too many things are. But hell, John, for whatever reason—and I believe there is a reason because I’m a man who happens to think the guy upstairs knows what he’s doing—you and Liv went your separate ways. But if something is meant to be between the two of you, why can’t it just start with now instead of with then?”

  John thought of all that Cleeve didn’t know and wondered if any of it actually changed the basic truth of what he’d just said.

  “You and me,” Cleeve fishtailed a hand between them, “our roads have been a little different, but from where I stand, it looks like we could both end up with a missed-out banner draped across our front porch. And I’m beginning to think I don’t wanna be one of those guys.”