by Liz Flaherty
When he found her mowing the yard in the dark, he had flagged her down and told her to leave it. He’d mow in the morning, goddamn it. She screamed at him—screamed at him, no less—that it was her yard and she’d mow whenever she damn well pleased.
She got downright unfriendly when he opened the hood of the tractor and jerked the spark plug wire off and put it in his pocket. When he mowed the yard the next morning while Steven walked around wearing goggles and whacking at things with the Weedeater, she ignored them both and changed the oil in that godforsaken car of hers. She ended up with oil on her face and he’d wanted to wipe it off just to touch her. Even if she was being a bitch. Which she was.
On Saturday night she came downstairs in her robe and took wine and a library book into the parlor, closing the pocket doors with a snap. He sat on the porch with his notebook and listened to Jonah and Maxie’s stories about the sixties and Steven’s hilarious narrative of the first heart transplant he’d watched, but the porch seemed empty.
He missed her. Sarcasm, icy reticence and all.
God, was a week really only seven days?
“What about you?”
Promise’s voice came to him from afar, and he stared at her, wondering what he’d missed while he was off in la-la-land thinking about that damn Grace.
“What about me?” he asked, pouring more coffee from the thermal server Grace had slammed onto the porch table between them before going to the library for Story Hour.
Promise placed the letter she had just read into one of the stacks they were using to categorize his mail. “Don’t you close yourself off too?”
“Me? No.”
“Then tell me about Iraq.”
Well, hell, what were they doing talking about him? Didn’t Promise have enough to do what with worrying about herself and being Grace Elliot’s best friend in the bargain?
“What’s to tell?” he said lightly, reaching for another letter. “I went. It was ugly. I came home.”
“But you came home from France, not Iraq. And Steven came and got you. Friends you had there called him because they were concerned about you. You came home, you resigned from the wire service and you stayed drunk for several months. Wasn’t that how it went?”
“Not exactly.” He kept his voice even and careful, his eyes open so that visions of the tortured past couldn’t flash before them. “I went to France from Iraq because there was something I had to do. It was…overwhelmingly difficult. I had a case of the disease of the twenty-first century, clinical depression, and some friends overreacted and contacted Steven. He…helped, and we came home together. I did resign from the wire service because that part of my life was over, but I didn’t stay drunk. Didn’t even get drunk? I was on medication. Where did you get that part of it?”
Promise grinned at him. “From the tabloids.”
“Steven told you the rest?”
“In fits and starts and bits and pieces, although Grace figured out the depression part on her own. We’ve all known each other for a very long time. We understand things like that.”
“But you’re the only one who really knows Grace.”
The sadness hit her eyes even before the smile slipped from her face. “Yes.”
They read the letters in silence for a while, then Promise gave a dramatic recitation of one of the marriage proposals that was in his mail, and he ended up laughing.
“So, Grace knows all that about me?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” Promise was reading, and her eyes widened. “Dillon, you should probably go for this one. She included a photocopy of her right breast. It’s awesome.”
Dillon ignored the paper she held out. “She’s never said anything. Only asked about places I’d been.”
“Steven swore her to secrecy. I remember they were arguing because she said you should sue the socks off those tabloids. Then Steven said, ‘How do you know it’s not true?’” Promise smiled at him again. “She said she just knew, like she knew when that woman went on talk radio about him that that wasn’t true, either. Shut Steven right up.”
Dillon chuckled. “Sounds like a Kodak moment.”
“Oh, it was.”
He went back to the guesthouse before Grace came home from the library. If she wanted to be rude some more, she was going to have to find him first.
He saw her through the window when she arrived, though, stopping her tin can of a car in front of the garage with a squeal of aged belts and a puff of smoke. Steven met her at the edge of the driveway, taking the bag she carried and talking to her as they moved toward the house. Grace’s hands twisted together as her brother spoke. When he raised his arm in seeming emphasis, she flinched and backed away.
Dillon frowned, tempted to go out and interrupt the conversation even though he was sure neither of them would thank him for his interference.
His sister. She’s his sister.
He opened the computer file that contained Chapter One of his novel-in-progress, remembering the words in the letter Promise had read aloud, and saw immediately what the disappointed reader meant.
What Grace meant.
May as well make this book one she’ll like.
When the knock came at the door, he didn’t stop his editing, just yelled, “Come in,” and went ahead with what he was doing. He knew the caller was Grace—he’d felt her presence before he heard her footsteps on the porch. She stood just inside the door, waiting for him to pay attention. That was okay. She could wait. It wouldn’t bother him a bit.
“Promise’s first chemo treatment is tomorrow.” She spoke anyway, and she said something he couldn’t ignore. Damn it all to hell and back.
“I know.” He highlighted and typed over a truly terrible paragraph. What had he been thinking when he’d written that?
“She wants the four of us to go to dinner at the Deacon’s Bench tonight.”
“Sure. What time?”
“Seven.”
“Okay.”
“Fine.”
She had turned to go when he said, “It’s a nice day. You want to leave early and walk there with me?” That’s it. Give her a whole mile in which to chew my head off.
“All right.”
Promise’s voice was muffled. “Do I look funny?”
Grace emerged from the dress she’d just dropped over her head and frowned at Promise. While the calf-length summer dress the other woman wore did nothing for her figure, it also made light of the present lack of symmetry on her chest.
“No funnier than usual.”
“I don’t want to embarrass Steven.” She left Grace’s room, returning to the bathroom.
Grace followed. “What do you mean, embarrass Steven? I thought you were ending the relationship. Again.”
“I’m trying, but it’s a little difficult to do when he’s always around, being nice, being comforting. He goes to sleep in his room and when I wake up he’s in the other bed in mine. If my arm hurts from the exercises I have to do, he rubs it. When I try to talk to him about his future, he says there’s no point in talking about it if I’m not going to be a part of it. He’s impossible, and I love him more all the time and I don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe you should marry him and put you both out of your misery.”
“What if I die next year?”
“Then you will have had this year.” Grace glanced at the clock. Mostly because she couldn’t bear to look at Promise. “I have to go. I’m walking up to the Deacon’s Bench with Dillon. You want to zip this for me?” She presented her back. “You’re not going to die. God doesn’t have enough nail polish in heaven to keep you color-coordinated.” From my smart mouth to God’s ear. Please.
Dillon was in the kitchen talking to Steven when Grace ran down the back steps. He wore khakis and a light blue shirt. The sun had streaked his dark blond hair and his tan had deepened to a golden brown. He looked undeniably gorgeous, and she thought for a moment about how incredibly average she was. Suddenly, she understood Promise’s fear of embarra
ssing Steven.
She wished she’d worn her other summer dress, the flowery one she wore the day of Promise’s surgery. Dillon liked that one. This one was just a slip of yellow silky stuff that she seldom wore because the shoulder strap fell down all the time and because she didn’t have a bra to wear with it.
But Dillon said, “Pretty,” and smiled at her as though she hadn’t treated him like bacon grease in a nudist colony all week. “You ready?”
She nodded and moved toward the door, then realized both men were staring at her feet. “Well, damn,” she muttered, and turned and ran back up the stairs, descending again in sandals.
As they walked up Lawyers Row under the shade of the giant maple trees that lined the street, she said, “I’m sorry.”
He raised a questioning eyebrow.
“You make me—” she hesitated, then blundered on, “—feel things I haven’t felt before, that I don’t want to feel. You make me want what I can’t have. And,” she added crossly, “you slay my damn dragons.”
If he laughed at her, she decided, she’d kill him quickly and walk on.
“That goes both ways,” he said. He took her hand to cross the street, then kept it in his when they reached the other side.
“What does?” She meant to reclaim her hand, stiffened her fingers with the intention of doing so, but instead the fingers curled around his. Wonderful, now she couldn’t even control her own body parts. Her bladder would probably go next.
“You make me want things, too, make me feel unexpected things. You make me mad—damn, woman, but you do make me mad—but I kind of like it when it’s you. It’s like fighting with Steven only your weird sense of fairness makes it different. And,” he finished quietly, holding her gaze, “I think you’ve slain a few dragons for me, haven’t you? Things like ‘knowing’ I wouldn’t stay drunk for several months. Like knowing I had a raging case of depression but not mentioning it.” His finger lifted to her face, then drifted down its outer edge, stroking gently over the line of her jaw and ending at her lips with a light tap.
When she got her breath back, she said, “I imagine clinical depression is a hard thing for a southern man. For any man, maybe, but particularly a southern one. You can admit to yourself you have it, you can treat it properly, but it’s sure not something you want to talk about over beer with the guys.”
“That about covers it. I don’t even talk about it to Steven, and he’s the one who force-fed me medication and threatened to call my mom in Arizona and tell her I was being a bad boy if I didn’t get off my ass and fight it.”
They fell into step again, and it seemed that they walked closer together. Grace detected the clean scents of his soap and toothpaste, felt the warmth of his arm where it nearly brushed hers.
“What things?” she asked. When he raised his eyebrow again, she clarified, “What things do I make you want?” Are they the same as what you make me want?
Silver glinted in his eyes. “Things there isn’t time to tell you now. They require candlelight at the very least, the moon for optimum atmosphere. Things that go with glasses of wine and—” he lifted her shoulder strap into place, his fingers lingering warm and seductive under the strip of cloth, “—silky things and bare skin.” In the shade of an elm tree near the Deacon’s Bench, he lowered his head and kissed her, sending light and heat simmering through her in waves. “Things like that.”
Dillon thought this might be what heaven was like. All friends. All laughter. Well, mostly laughter, with a few tears drizzled around the edge of it. They talked nonstop, the four of them, laughing over Dillon’s broken nose, Steven’s cigarettes in Promise’s purse, and the time Grace released all the frogs in the biology lab at the high school. They drank jewel-toned wine and saluted each other with toasts that ranged from elaborate to ridiculous and all points between.
Promise coaxed Grace into telling a Magpie story, and when it was done, the occupants of the surrounding tables applauded. Jean Rivers came out of the kitchen with a cheesecake for four. “Entertainment costs,” she said, placing it on the table in front of Grace. Then she walked around and kissed Promise’s cheek “for luck.”
As the restaurant emptied, they stayed at their table. They drank cup after cup of the special blend of coffee offered by the Deacon’s Bench.
Dillon’s knee pressed against Grace’s bare one under the table and she didn’t move hers. His arm lay across the back of her chair and when she leaned back, it dropped to her shoulders. She stayed where she was.
They discussed everything, having widely divergent views on all subjects from politics to euthanasia to what was the best cartoon ever shown on Saturday morning television.
Jean finally told them if they stayed any longer, she was going to have to put them on the payroll, so they left, waving to each other in the parking lot and pledging to meet on the back porch for a nightcap.
Dillon put an arm around Grace’s neck and leaned close to speak confidentially. “You know, I don’t think Prom’s having much luck breaking off that relationship.”
Since he was so close to her anyway, and they just happened to be standing under the same elm tree that had shaded them earlier, he lowered his lips to the slope that bridged the area between her neck and shoulder and drew his tongue lightly over the swoop of skin.
He chuckled when her murmured agreement lowered to a hum. “You taste salty,” he whispered, and raised his head to take her mouth. “And sweet.”
At that moment, Promise’s car pulled to a stop beside them. Steven rolled down the driver’s side window and eyed them. “Campbell, am I going to have to kick your ass for manhandling my little sister right out in public?”
Dillon laughed and didn’t remove his arms from around Grace. “You’ve got me real scared, Steven, but she’s not seventeen anymore and you’re not her old man.”
“Yes, there is a God.” Steven nodded. “Reason I stopped is, it appears as though it might rain. You kids want to ride home with us?”
Dillon looked from the sky to Grace’s upturned face. “Nah, we’ll risk it.”
As the taillights of the Mustang disappeared from view, Grace asked, “What did you mean?”
“About what?”
She lifted a shoulder, confusion and defensiveness warring in her signature shrug. “About me not being seventeen and Steven not being my old man.”
Dillon stared at her for a moment. “You don’t know? After all this time, you honest-to-God don’t know?”
Her confused expression darkened. “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have asked, now, would I?” she asked sweetly, and withdrew herself from his arms with stiff dignity. “I’m going home now.”
“Whoa.” He caught her hand and pulled her back to him. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I didn’t show up for the prom?”
She shrugged, and he wanted to grab her lifted shoulder and shake it.
“I assumed you changed your mind. It wasn’t like you wanted to take me. I’m sure Steven asked you to.” She lowered her gaze to the front of his shirt. “It wasn’t something I ever wanted to talk about.”
“So you just went all these years thinking I was a useless S.O.B.” Though he still wanted to shake her, he put his hands on her shoulders and used one thumb to tilt her chin until he could see her eyes again.
He remembered the night he’d teased her about the prom and the hurt that had flashed across her face. That pain was there again now, deepening her eyes, making her full lips droop a little. Even her skin seemed paler in the glow from the streetlight, the tiny scar standing out in contrast to the pallor.
“Oh, hell,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Steven didn’t know, so I don’t know why I thought you would—it was your dad, Grace. He said if I showed up, he’d have me up on statutory rape charges. I didn’t deserve that, but you deserved it even less. I was going back to school when summer ended, but you still had to live here.”
He didn’t think she could get any whiter, but she did, and for an awful moment—when she gra
sped his forearms and swayed under his grip on her shoulders—he thought she might faint.
She muttered something, and he bent his head closer to hers. “What?”
“Nothing.” With a visible effort, she pulled herself together and gifted him with a singularly sweet smile. “Thank you for telling me, Dillon. I’m glad to know.”
They were approaching the back door of the house, hurrying through the spitting rain, before her mumbled words sunk in and nearly stopped Dillon in his tracks.
He was almost sure she’d said, “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”
Chapter 14
It was August and eastern Tennessee was sweltering. The heat shimmered up from the pavement in waves and the Cup and Cozy sold more ice cream than it did coffee. The Little League baseball field was dusty and deserted, its players off seeking cooler pursuits. The air conditioning in the Methodist church broke down and Deac preached in his shirtsleeves. Mrs. Rountree thought that was “just awful,” but most everyone else considered it a good idea, the men taking off their suit coats and ties and draping them over the backs of the pews.
The mosquitoes were terrible. Grace lit so many citronella torches in the evening that she couldn’t even smell the roses that climbed the gazebo.
Promise had had two large doses of chemotherapy. She’d lost, besides her hair, twelve pounds and some of her spirit. “Sometimes,” she told Grace on her sixth straight day of violent vomiting, “I think it would be easier just to die.”
Grace helped her back to bed, then said with quiet intensity, “If you ever say that again, I’ll take away all your nail polish forever,” and went to the attic to hide.
Dillon found her there, sitting alone and morose in her mother’s old rocking chair. He picked her up as if she were a child and sat in the rocker with her in his lap. She didn’t pull away. They stayed there for the better part of an hour, rocking. Her silent, agonized tears wet the front of his shirt, but neither of them said a word. Nor did they mention the episode after leaving the attic.
Carol Whitney had shaved what hair remained on Promise’s head. Carol, Promise, Faith and Grace joked and laughed and compared Promise’s head to those of Michael Jordan and Demi Moore. Grace rummaged among the beauty products on Carol’s shelves, calling out, “Where in the hell do you keep the clear Shinola. It’s got to be here somewhere. What kind of beauty shop is this anyway?”