Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart)

by DeStefano, Anna

  “Will you wait just a damn minute?” he said.

  “So we can make even more of a spectacle of ourselves?”

  People were betting on when they’d kiss. Vivian had set them up, again, and the entire restaurant was in on it. And Dru had invited half of Chandlerville to the Whip tonight for a front-row seat at the show.

  “Was this your grandmother’s plan from the start?” she demanded. What did it matter who heard at this point? “Has Vivian been on some kind of demented matchmaking bender all this time—throwing us together not because of the business, but because she was expecting something like this to happen?”

  Brad wasn’t letting her go. Struggling pressed her body more tightly against his, so she stopped. She glanced around at the dining room filled to brimming with eavesdropping friends and neighbors.

  “What?” Brad asked. “What exactly do you think is happening? No matter what I’ve done to help around here, no matter how happy you seemed just now, you’re as pissed at me again as you have been for four weeks. Well, seven years and four weeks.”

  “I . . .”

  What was happening to her?

  How had she not guessed what Vivian was up to? Had Dru wanted that badly not to deal with what was happening between her and Brad?

  And why did she care so much what Willie or Walter or anyone thought about any of it? Pretty much all of Chandlerville had been having a field day gossiping about them the entire holiday season. Rustic Thanksgiving decorations had come down; sparkly Christmas ones had taken their place. The window dressing was different on her and Brad’s pact to keep the peace and ignore the homespun fallout in their community. Not much else had changed.

  Except that the more successful she and Brad had become at the Dream Whip, the more Dru realized how good a fit he was for the restaurant and Chandlerville and . . . her. And the less it felt as if she’d welcomed him home only because Vivian asked her to.

  Be sure of what you want, Joe had said, before you throw away something you’ll never get back.

  “What’s changed?” Brad held her close. The welcome shock of it set off bells and whistles and long-ago desires that didn’t feel so long ago. “What’s bothering you the most, Dru? That people are rooting for us to be together? Or that some part of you is afraid you want this, too?”

  This.

  Her heart pounded away against his. She shook her head. Where were her excuses and rationalizations and hard-earned resentments? Where was the woman who’d been so furious when she’d learned he’d been involving himself in her life for years?

  Vivian’s hospice team was upping her meds daily. She was lucid much less frequently, for shorter periods of time. Her coordinator had warned them that tonight, tomorrow, maybe the next day, Dru and Brad and Horace would talk with Vivian for the last time. They’d assure her that everything she cared about would be in good hands. And they’d tell her good-bye.

  Then Dru and Brad would be where, exactly? The only thing she could see clearly anymore was how much losing him again would hurt.

  “I . . .” She what?

  Love is a risk you shouldn’t protect yourself from.

  “I . . .” She slid her hands up his chest, just like she had at sixteen.

  He smiled slowly, dangerously—shocked, but not that shocked.

  This had been coming. He had to have felt it, while they both tried to ignore the temptation of brushing past each other at work, sharing a tiny kitchen at home and the even tinier bathroom upstairs, visiting with Vivian together whenever they could make the time, a united front filling Vi in on everything that was happening.

  “This is trouble,” he whispered. “No kissing. Remember?”

  “Please, Brad, let me . . .”

  And then Dru was kissing him, for all the memories she didn’t know how to forget, the questions she didn’t know how to ask, the tomorrows with this man she couldn’t let herself dream of again, not yet, maybe not ever. But she suddenly couldn’t go another minute without having at least this to remember once Brad was gone.

  It was crazy.

  It was careless.

  But she ignored the cheers and clapping around them. Someone who sounded like Travis said, “It’s about time!” She ignored that, too, and threw her arms around Brad’s neck, squealing when he hauled her closer, up onto her toes. She kissed him for everything she was worth, just as she had years ago.

  How could she have forgotten how good this felt?

  His kiss shattered her, and then he deepened it. She felt the wall she’d built between them in her heart crack open, setting free every soul-deep thing she’d ever felt for Brad. A boy she’d idolized, who’d wanted her even as he’d turned her away. A man who’d proven he was committed to keeping his word to her and his grandmother. A hardworking friend who was someone Dru and the Dream Whip staff could count on. He’d been kind and funny and considerate, selflessly flying under the radar, never once taking credit for all he’d done to make things better.

  While he’d been away from Chandlerville, she’d lost herself in her work with her kids and her family and community. She’d been happy with her life here. Now, somewhere between fighting with him the last few weeks and learning to like working with him, she’d gone and let herself grow even happier.

  Which really sucked.

  Because he’d said nothing to make her think he wasn’t headed right back out of her life soon.

  I’m not afraid, she’d told her foster father when all of this had started. Weeks later, it was still true.

  She was absolutely terrified—of loving and losing Brad all over again.

  Chapter Nine

  “I hear you two had a very big evening,” Vivian said just after midnight.

  Brad and Dru had driven separate cars to Harmony Grove. He’d endured her silence as they’d walked together to his grandmother’s room. Dru hadn’t said a word since she’d kissed him senseless behind the counter at the Whip, even though she was clearly having second thoughts about it. After disengaging herself from him behind the registers, for the rest of the night she’d thrown herself into taming the mess in the kitchen and dining room. She hadn’t given him another chance to ask what the hell was going on.

  “I’m surprised you made it by so early,” Vi said, “what with the restaurant having its biggest sales night ever.”

  Brad squeezed his grandmother’s hand. He sat in one of the chairs beside her hospital bed, trying not to let his shock show.

  She looked even more pale and fragile than she had that morning, when he’d stopped by to go over tonight’s promotion. She’d heard it all already, from him and Dru and countless friends—so many people making a point to stop by for a minute or two, whatever Vivian could handle, to share the latest news. But his grandmother never tired of hearing it.

  She was wearing her WHIP IT T-shirt under the robe she never went without. She was cold all the time now. But she seemed more awake than earlier. More herself.

  Dru took the chair beside him, sadness dimming her forced smile.

  “Willie’s closing the place up for us,” Brad explained. “He said he didn’t have any other plans.”

  “Except for bringing over my winnings from the pool?” Vivian chuckled at Dru, who was shaking her head.

  “You’re incorrigible,” Dru said. “You know that?”

  She flashed an indulgent smile about Vivian’s unapologetically inciting drama from her hospice bed. Brad gave Dru credit for not letting on how pissed she’d been earlier.

  “My husband always said I should have been a professional gambler,” Vivian replied. “‘Never bet against Vi,’ he’d say. ‘Just hand her your wallet instead, and tell her to go buy herself another cuckoo clock.’ Every time a bill came for a new one, he’d ask me why I was wasting my time with a small-town businessman, when what I needed was a high-rollin’ sugar daddy to support my clock habit. Then he’d make sure all my beauties were wound before we went to bed at night.�
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  Brad chuckled. He and Dru had listened to Vivian’s stories over and over the last few weeks. She’d repeated this one more than once.

  Horace was there, too, in that tiny room full of shadows and honesty and a long, full life drawing to a well-earned end. These last days, the lawyer was always at Vi’s side. The hospice nurses said he left each morning for about an hour, to change clothes and shower and return. Whenever Vivian’s meds took her away, he’d catch a little sleep on the couch in the corner.

  Standing at the end of the bed, he patted her foot. “Butler was a good man.”

  “He was a scoundrel.” Vi winked at Dru. “And a good, hardworking, unshakable scoundrel is a tough thing to come by in this world. I highly recommend you pick one up.”

  Vivian started coughing. They waited for her oxygen feed to help her regain her breath. Talking became more taxing by the day, as the progression of her disease and the increasing dosage of her pain meds accelerated her body’s decline. She smiled fiercely, composing herself. She took Dru’s hand.

  “My dear,” she said, “the secret to gambling on people is not to worry if you’re right, or what will happen if you’re wrong. It’s to go all in, no matter what happens. Figure out what you think. What you want. Then go for broke as often as you can. Just like you did with my Bradley and the Dream Whip tonight. Like I did, when I bet on the two of you being able to mend fences once you decided to work at it. Is it really so bad, everyone throwing money at Willie while we waited for you to come to your senses?”

  “You’re a troublemaker,” Dru said. “Have you and your henchman here been angling from the start for Brad and me to become more than business partners?”

  Vivian gave Horace a wistful smile that became something more, something desperate, as if she were free-falling and Horace was her Superman, there to catch her and make everything okay.

  Horace patted her foot again, waiting for Vi to compose herself.

  “Well, I’m a bit of a scoundrel, too,” she finally admitted. “I tend to think that’s what Butler liked best about me.”

  “I know it’s what I like best,” Brad said, his gaze locking with Dru’s.

  He stood, bizarrely jealous of Vivian and Horace. Their love for each other was obvious, as deeply rooted as it was unexpected. It was the kind of connection he’d been missing all these years, since he’d left Dru behind in Chandlerville. She might have been the love of his life. She still could be. Working together since he’d returned, kissing her tonight, had only brought that home more clearly.

  But only if she was willing to go all in with him, too.

  He kissed his grandmother’s cheek. Straightening, he brushed his lips across Dru’s temple, needing the comfort of it. When he curled his arm around her shoulder, she leaned against him, accepting having him near, the way she’d relaxed into him at the Whip. It was a simple moment, only a flicker of trust. But she’d turned to him twice now.

  Dru had claimed him tonight, admitted to wanting him in front of the packed restaurant. What that meant, he had no idea. Where they went from here was an even bigger mystery. But it felt like a beginning that he could hold tight to, on this suffocating night full of too much letting go.

  “You got my winnings?” Vivian asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He pulled out the wad of cash Willie had sent along.

  “Keep it.” Vivian closed her eyes, time passing, drifting, a peaceful smile spreading across her thin face.

  Brad laid the money beside her pillow and took her hand again.

  His grandmother’s touch seemed barely there. “You and Dru use it for the restaurant. The house.”

  She glanced at Horace in another moment of naked understanding. The mild-mannered Southern gentleman looked as if he wanted to fly his damsel away, so no harm could reach her.

  “Thanks to your help,” Vivian said to Horace, “I know that my Butler’s pride and joy is in good hands.” She refocused on Brad and Dru. “I know the business and the house mean as much to you as they always have to me. Or the two of you wouldn’t have put up with each other and me and the gossip and nonsense long enough to make tonight happen.”

  Dru scooted to the edge of her chair. She covered Brad’s hand, where he still held Vivian’s.

  “You mean that much to us,” she said.

  Vivian closed her eyes again, nodding.

  Brad hadn’t let himself dwell on it yet—a world without his grandmother in it. He’d kept himself too exhausted, working hard for Vivian and Dru, to really face this moment.

  His grandmother eased her touch free, leaving Brad and Dru’s hands together. And then suddenly he could feel Dru needing him, clinging to his fingers, instead of pulling away.

  “The rest is up to you now,” his grandmother said. “Don’t—”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Dru whispered. “Like—”

  “I’m ready.”

  Vivian gazed around: at photos of Brad’s mother and grandfather on the table beside the bed; at a small circle of table clocks perkily ticking away on the ledge beneath the garden window; at fresh-cut flowers arranged on every flat surface, half the town keeping the Hearts in Bloom florist in business making sure Vivian knew she was loved and remembered.

  Brad had even lugged in a Christmas tree last week. Dru had made the time to decorate it, using vintage ornaments she’d dug from Vivian’s attic, treasures Brad remembered from his childhood. An ancient elf on the shelf had made an appearance, too, most of its felt suit rubbed away. Vivian had enjoyed ferreting him out from the creative hiding places visitors stashed him while she napped.

  Giving Vi an early holiday had been the only Christmas plans Brad and Dru had discussed. There was an attic full of decorations to do something else with at the house. But Vivian’s dining room was still set for Thanksgiving, time standing still since she’d left.

  “I might be a scoundrel,” she said to Dru. “But a good gambler always knows when to leave the table.”

  She took several shallow breaths. Oxygen flowed through the thin tubing beneath her nose, helping very little. Horace, fiercely calm and collected, stroked her blanket-covered foot, his eyes betraying him.

  “But you two . . .” Vivian pointed a shaking finger at Dru and Brad. “There’s so much more waiting for you. More than you’ve let yourself want. It burns my hide.” She focused on Dru. “I’ve lived my life. I did what I did for my own reasons. Nothing got in my way, even after my husband and daughter were gone. I faced things head-on, win or lose. I don’t have a single regret. If the rest of Chandlerville woke up tomorrow without you here, my dear, what would you leave undone?”

  Brad inhaled to defend Dru and say the broken years between them were entirely his doing.

  But he couldn’t. He was through making excuses for her. At some point since he’d been home, he’d stopped fighting to make the past up to the innocent girl he’d left behind. He’d started wanting to build a future with the intriguing woman she’d become. A future he couldn’t have if Dru wouldn’t put even half the care she showered on everyone else into figuring out what she needed for her own life.

  She covered her mouth with her hand. Tears streamed softly down her cheeks. When Brad curled her close again, she pushed out of her chair.

  “I’m . . .”

  She backed toward the door.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered toward Brad and Vivian. “I love you.” Her hand still covered her mouth, as if she could keep the truth inside. “I love you so much. I . . . I’m so sorry.”

  She fled. In the silence she left behind, they could hear the rhythm of her sneakers running down the hallway.

  “Go after her.” Horace took one of the seats beside Vivian. She seemed to be sleeping again. The man’s expression was shredded. “For God’s sake, son, don’t waste as many years as I have letting the woman you love keep so much distance between you, she doesn’t let you tell her how you feel about her until it’s too late. Go afte
r her. Don’t stop until she lets you love her, every way you want to love her, for the rest of her life.”

  Dru had made it to her bedroom. She didn’t remember exactly how she’d gotten there.

  At some point she’d undressed and slipped into her nightgown. It was almost one o’clock. She should be in bed already, tucked beneath the quilt Vivian had given her when she’d first moved into “this drafty old place,” as Vi had called the wackiest home Dru had ever seen.

  She smoothed her hand over the soft, hand-sewn squares of the spread she’d slept beneath, summer and winter, every night since that first night, when Vi had made her feel so surprisingly welcomed.

  According to Vi, the quilt had been Brad’s favorite. He’d played on it as a baby, used it as a bedspread as a little boy, but it had remained in Chandlerville when he’d left. It was a double wedding ring. Curled beneath its fraying, patchwork perfection, Dru had dreamed dreams of a boy she’d once loved. Fantasies she’d never shared with anyone.

  She fingered a swatch with a corner that was coming unstitched—a red gingham checked square, surrounded by a flourish of white ones, covered in tiny blue and yellow flowers. She’d decorated her bedroom in yellow and blue to match the quilt’s overall palette. Her favorite color was pink. But her bedding . . . as soon as she could afford to buy her own sheets, she’d chosen a soft burgundy to match the quilt’s faded red squares.

  She’d filled her private world, she’d realized now that he was back, with hues that reminded her of Brad.

  Her bedroom door opened. She didn’t hear it as much as she sensed him there. He’d always been there, a part of the house and the half-life in Chandlerville she’d made without him. Before tonight, until she’d kissed him again and he’d kissed her back, she hadn’t let the dream of having him home get this close.

  She looked into his handsome, rugged face and felt Bradley Douglas ease into her soul, where he’d always belonged.

  “You love who so much?” he asked.

  She knew he’d ask, after the scene she’d made at Harmony Grove. But it was more than that. This moment seemed like a forever thing that had been defying their better judgment for weeks. Years.