One More Summer

by Liz Flaherty

  The chapter ended to more applause and Grace pointed at the old-fashioned schoolhouse clock on the wall. “Well, shoot, we’re about out of time for this week.” Her disappointment was so acute, Dillon believed her. She loved this as much as her audience did.

  Then the chanting began again. “Magpies! Magpies! Magpies!”

  Grace smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh, yes, the Magpies. Goodness sakes, how could I forget them?” She settled back into her rocker, her feet crossed and tucked in front of her once again.

  “Well,” she said in a confidential tone, “you all remember the Magpie family. There’s Mama and Papa and all the little Magpies and their friends. With all those young’uns about, there is always trouble. Always.” She shook her head sadly. “You’re just never gonna believe what they’ve gone and done this time. Why, their mama’s fit to be tied, and Papa Magpie is so undone by it he’s been seen sittin’ down at the Cup and Cozy for hours on end. Just hours, I tell you.”

  She proceeded to tell the story of how young Ben Magpie and his friend Tom spent the night in Mama Magpie’s beloved gazebo and—on a dare by Ben— Tom walked the perimeter rail of the gazebo and fell off and broke his nose. The incident caused quite a furor in the neighborhood because Tom’s previously beautiful nose was now quite—well, for kindness’s sake, Grace would just say odd-looking. But beautiful Serena Magpie smoothed everything over so that Papa Magpie didn’t have to hang around the Cup and Cozy anymore and Mama Magpie was calm enough to attend the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society.

  As the laughter rose around him, Dillon rubbed his nose in rueful memory and caught Faith’s glance. He started to mouth, “Hello, Serena,” but the tears on her cheeks stopped him.

  When the story hour—and twenty minutes—was over, Grace had trouble getting through the crowd. She spoke to every child who spoke to her, calling him or her by name and asking a question and waiting for the answer. Although she was unfailingly polite to the adults in the crowd, she didn’t take the time to talk to them and they didn’t seem to expect it.

  “Hi,” she said when she reached the bookcase where Dillon stood with Faith and Promise. “Are you all ready for tomorrow?” she asked Promise.

  “All set.”

  Grace turned to her sister. “Ah, Faith, don’t.” She hugged her, long and hard, giving Faith a chance to collect herself. “You know, if you keep bawling every time I tell a story, people are going to be saying you’re in early menopause and they’ll be feeling sorry for Grant and those rotten kids.”

  Faith lifted one elegant shoulder in a shrug remarkably like her sister’s. “What can I say? Peacock’s a small town. Anything, up to and including early menopause, is news.” Her gaze veered to the clock. “I need to get home. Prom, you ready? Grace, do you want a ride?”

  “Sure,” Grace started to say, but Dillon’s arm around her waist stopped her.

  “I’ll bring her home after she changes and we have coffee at the Cup and Cozy,” he said firmly.

  “Now, see here, Campbell—” she began.

  Promise and Faith walked away laughing, snagging Maxie and Jonah as they went.

  It had been a wonderful kind of day, Grace decided, especially considering its inauspicious beginnings as Maxie’s “housekeeper.”

  She worried for a moment, as she creamed the makeup from her face, about Maxie’s lapses. Maxie’s doctor didn’t seem concerned, describing the episodes as “signs of aging,” but they didn’t feel right to Grace. Neither did the grayness that sometimes showed on Maxie’s face, even through the makeup she wore both religiously and heavily.

  Wrapped in her chenille robe, Grace sat in the chair by her window and relived the lunch at the Deacon’s Bench and the coffee at the Cup and Cozy. Until today, only the storytelling and the kids who attended it had made her feel glowingly, vibrantly alive. Had made her think, even for a little while, that she could conquer not only the future but the past as well.

  She felt the same after lunch with Dillon, when they’d left the restaurant with his hand at her waist. When the wind in the open car blew her curly bangs down into her eyes, he’d smoothed them back with the same hand, trailing it down her cheek before replacing it on the steering wheel. Sensation rippled and hummed through her, ending with a warm tingle between her thighs.

  Grace hadn’t been born yesterday. She’d seen Faith’s beauty grow as she fell in love with Grant and stayed that way. She’d learned from Steven and Promise’s mutual devotion that true love didn’t always include orange blossoms and happily ever after. She knew about love and its many faces and she was terribly afraid that if she looked in the mirror right now, she’d see one of those faces.

  Restless, she went down the back stairs. With Louisa May and Rosamunde at her heels, she stepped outside and lowered herself to the stoop.

  Lights were on in the guesthouse, and Grace wondered if Dillon was writing, making up for the time he’d spent with her today. He’d had his laptop with him, but she didn’t think he’d used it much.

  As she watched, the cottage’s front door opened and his image came into view. He leaned against the doorframe for a moment, then closed the door behind him and walked across the yard. He was barefoot, wearing only tight jeans with the top button undone. The glasses he wore when he worked rested on his nose and they should have made him appear more scholarly than seductive, but they didn’t. Oh, Lord, no, they didn’t. Grace’s breath grew shallow and she tried to inhale deeply but hiccupped with the effort. Idiot.

  “How’s Prom?” he asked, scooping up Rosamunde and sitting beside Grace with the kitten on his knee.

  “All right. The doctor gave her a mild sedative so that she’d sleep tonight.”

  He gave her a sideways glance. “And how’s Grace?”

  “What?” No one ever asked how she was. It was both the blessing and the curse of being healthy as a horse and so plain as to be invisible.

  “I know how I’d feel if it were Steven.” He scratched Rosamunde’s chin, sending her into squirming ecstasy.

  Watching, Grace empathized with the cat.

  “He’s been the most constant thing in my life since we were in kindergarten together,” Dillon went on. “He knows all there is to know about me and still speaks to me. Not politely or anything like that, but he still speaks.”

  She nodded, her heart aching too much to reply. Oh, Promise. Please, God.

  “That gazebo’s a mess,” he observed.

  Her gaze drifted toward it, her mind acknowledging the torn screens and chipped paint, the old green roof with shingles torn or missing. It had been twenty-one years since she’d set foot in the gazebo, but she imagined the floorboards were rotted too. They’d been dry and splintery when—

  She shivered, the skin on her arms turning to gooseflesh.

  Dillon laid an arm over her shoulders. “Cold?”

  She wanted to turn into the casual embrace, to put her arms around his waist and press her face to his shoulder and feel his steady heartbeat against hers. She wanted to feel his hand in her hair and on her face again. She wanted to be in the backyard and not see the gazebo, not be reminded. She wanted to forget that which could not be forgotten. Oh, Lord, yes, she wanted.

  If wishes were horses, her father’s sneering voice reverberated in her mind, beggars would ride. Wishes and wants and pretty things aren’t for the likes of you, girl.

  Dillon’s voice interrupted her reverie. “You were wonderful at the library today. You had the audience, including me, right in the palm of your hand. It was spectacular.” His tone was matter-of-fact.

  She sat still, letting the praise wash over her. He said wonderful. Take that, Papa.

  Her father had considered her reading at the library a waste of time. “No one wants to listen to you go on with your silly stories, much less look at you for an hour. They have better things to do.”

  There was, she knew, no getting back at a dead man, but Dillon’s words—“beautiful” and “wonderful”
—were ones Robert Elliot had not considered his younger daughter worthy of. Dillon saying them filled a spot in her heart she hadn’t even known was empty.

  “Thank you.” She almost wriggled with pleasure, but stopped herself just in time. “That’s what you do with your books, you know. At least, until the last one. Don’t you get that response from your reader mail? Confirmation that you’ve held their interest and given them what they wanted?”

  “I don’t know. I never see my mail. There was so much of it there for a few years that I hired a service to answer it, and the publisher sends the mail directly to the service. They send me a summary and bill me, so I know I still get a whole bunch, but I don’t read it.”

  “You should,” she said firmly. “It might give you back whatever you lost so this book will be better. What do you call it? Perspective, that’s it.” She answered herself before he could.

  Perspective, huh? Well, maybe that was all he’d lost, but it sure left a hell of a gap when it went away.

  Dillon walked the perimeter of the Elliot property after Grace went into the house. The blended scents from her profusion of flowers filled the heavy night air and he sniffed with a new appreciation. Things smelled different in Tennessee. Sharper. Cleaner. Better. He felt healed here.

  Coming to rest in one of the lawn chairs on his front porch, he crossed an ankle over the other knee and leaned back with his hands clasped loosely over his bare stomach.

  He thought about Promise, and frowned so hard a headache began to form. He rubbed his eyes behind the glasses he’d forgotten to remove. Hey, God, I know You’re busy, but she’s one of Your best. Grace is strong and all, and she’s determined to pull Promise through this on her own, but she could sure use a little help from You.

  He thought about Steven, and wanted to see him. It had been six months or so since Steven last visited Boston. Though Dillon sent flowers at Robert Elliot’s passing, he hadn’t attended the funeral, nor had Steven expected him to. In retrospect, Dillon wished he had come. It would have been the right thing to do. It would have been, in Grace’s mind, fair.

  Ah, Grace.

  He remembered the warm, sunlit sound of her laughter and that idiotic urge to weep intensified the ache behind his eyes. There had been something…haunting about her unbridled joy, like a memory that he couldn’t quite grasp. When he closed his eyes, he saw her again as she danced through her audience with two-year-old Caleb Rivers in her arms, heard the throaty sound of her laughter and the loud, exaggerated sobs of her weeping.

  “Do you want to hear a Magpie story, Mama? You always say they make you feel better. You don’t have to read to us today. I’ll tell you a story instead.”

  The memory came as clear and sharp as the scent of flowers in the Tennessee air. He and Steven had heard Grace’s voice from the hallway outside Debbie Elliot’s room. Grinning at each other in pseudo-derision, they’d slid their adolescent backs down the corridor wall and sat on the floor to listen to Grace’s husky voice relating another tale about the Magpie family.

  That day twenty-two years ago played through Dillon’s mind like a well-filmed video. He and Steven had laughed unabashedly at the story Grace spun, and so had Debbie. “Oh, baby,” she’d said, “I do love your stories.”

  Then Robert had come in, driving Grace from the room with his harsh voice and the sound of his hand striking her bare skin. Steven had stood quickly, his fists balled at his sides, and when Grace stepped from the room with her face stoic and pale, he’d led her away down the hall with an arm over her shoulders.

  How could he have forgotten that day? He’d left the Elliot house, stopping at the Ben Franklin variety store on the way and buying a wire-bound notebook because it was summertime and there wasn’t anything like that at his house unless it was during the school year.

  In his room, he’d sat on his bed and begun to write. Not about a family with the unlikely name of Magpie, but about a teenager trying to find himself in a small town. He’d tried to insert as much heart into his story as eleven-year-old Grace had put into hers. That’s what he was still trying to do.

  God, she’d been a piece of work—the little girl with the plain face. Laughing, irreverent yet tenderhearted to a fault, sharp-edged and vulnerable at the same time.

  Dillon didn’t know what all had happened to her, what events had transpired to still her laughter and take the softness from her prickly soul, but his heart ached for the child she had been.

  And he understood why her sister wept.

  Chapter 9

  “I’ve got you down as my next of kin, so don’t do anything to humiliate me. The hospital people might think it’s genetic.”

  Grace narrowed her eyes at Promise. “I’m wearing mascara and a dress to keep you from being embarrassed. I shaved my legs on a Tuesday night and even put on lipstick. What more could you possibly want from me?”

  “Well, you’ve chewed off the lipstick and you appear to have a shiner around your left eye. You could go into my little bathroom there and take care of those things.”

  “Promise Ann Delaney, you are a pure pain in the butt.” But Grace did as Promise suggested, cursing the mascara when the wand jiggled in her fingers.

  She went back to the bed. “Better? Anything else?”

  “Yes. I’m getting sleepy, like they said I would. Give me your hand.”

  Grace took Promise’s hand in her own. “Are you afraid, Prom?”

  “Sure I am, but not half as afraid as I’d be if you weren’t here.” Promise’s long fingers squeezed Grace’s with surprising strength. “I just want to tell you, my own kindred spirit, that I love you. You’re the very best friend, the very best sister of the heart, the very best person I’ve ever known. Once I survive this surgery and everything that comes after it, I’m going to deny I ever told you that, but you’re going to know it’s true. Right, Grace?”

  Grace nodded. “Same goes.”

  When a tap came at the door, Grace opened it, holding her eyes very wide to contain the tears. “Your driver’s here.”

  She stood back while hospital personnel pushed the bed into the hall for the trek to the operating room. “They’re coming to take me away,” Promise said sleepily, “and they’re wearing white coats and everything.”

  “I’ll see you in a few,” Grace said, her voice husky.

  Promise’s eyes were heavy, her voice slurred. “Promise?”

  “Promise, Promise.”

  This was a hell of a time to realize just how badly he’d come to want the woman who stood at the window.

  Taking his mind in a firm grip, Dillon reminded himself that this was Steven’s little sister and for years considered to be more trouble than she was worth. She wasn’t tall, blond, or long-legged like the women he’d craved in adolescence and pursued as an adult. Her breasts were too small to fill his hands, her feet were a natural disaster and her hands looked ten years older than she was. She argued with his every word, complained about his every move, and had hated his last book. She was an unadulterated pain in the—

  She was so very alone, standing there in the surgery waiting room with her arms crossed under those tiny little breasts. He wanted to hold her close and offer comfort and ease and assurance. He wanted to stroke the soft curls, touch the velvety skin and feel the shiny scar on her cheek.

  He wanted to take her to bed and love her until the excitement and slumberous satisfaction replaced the wariness in her. Then he wanted to love her some more.

  Oh, hell yes, he had his mind in a grip, all right.

  A bump by a wheelchair and an irascible voice suggesting that he, “Move it, young man,” propelled him away from the doorway.

  “Sorry.”

  He walked over behind Grace, his hands hooked in the pockets of his tan Dockers in order to keep them off her. “Hey.”

  She jumped, her hands flying to her face in obvious alarm, and his arms found their way around her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn�
�t.” The denial was automatic, spoken in a sharp, stiff voice that made him grin in spite of himself. “What are you doing here? Is Maxie all right?” She placed her hands on his arms as though to push herself away, but something changed her mind and she let the hands rest there, her fingers moving lightly and restlessly.

  “Maxie’s fine. When I left, she and Jonah were squabbling over which iced tea jar had the artificial sweetener in it. Jonah was losing.”

  “Good.”

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  She lifted his hand so she could read his watch. “Twenty minutes. Jake Sawyer’s with her, assisting. She asked him if he would. Deac was here this morning too.”

  “Were her spirits good?”

  “Uh-huh. She was bossy and demanding and…” She fell silent when her voice failed and faded away, and he held her closer, pressing his lips against her ear.

  “Let’s go get some coffee,” he said, “maybe get you something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she said irritably, “and I don’t want to leave. What if something—” She stopped abruptly, and Dillon could almost feel her internal struggle.

  “Nothing’s going to happen. Jake’s in there to make sure of it. Now, come on. All the coffee I had this morning was what you left in the pot, and it was none too fresh by the time I got there.” That was another white lie. He’d gotten a cup to go at the Cup and Cozy before driving to Kingsport, but he saw no reason to tell her that.

  She went with him, grumbling all the way.

  Dillon interrupted her tirade to turn her toward the restaurant and open the door. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  A hostess seated them in an orange vinyl booth. Within minutes, coffee steamed in its cups between them and Grace picked at the English muffin on the plate in front of her.

  She’d even painted her fingernails the same cranberry color as was on her toes and filed them so that they were rounded instead of square. She wore Promise’s diamond ring, the one Steven had given her years ago when they were engaged, on the middle finger of her right hand, and she kept turning the ring around and around with her thumb.