by Arlene James
For some reason that irritated Tate. He found himself sprawling all over the place, trying to close the distance, which just caused her to draw up tighter. Disgusted with himself, he got up to get a glass of iced tea.
“Anyone else want a drink?”
He hoped that everyone would want something so Lily would have to help him or that Lily would want her own and follow him into the kitchen to get it. Unfortunately he seemed to be the only one thirsty. Taking himself off to the kitchen, he slammed around getting ice into a glass and tea poured over it. Carrying the tumbler back into the living room, he sat himself down again—in the corner opposite Lily.
Before long Isabella crawled up onto the sofa between them. She put her head in Lily’s lap and her feet in Tate’s and proceeded to sing quietly to herself. Lily, who didn’t seem to have much interest in baseball, bowed her head over Isabella’s, her long pale hair creating a wavy curtain around them, and just as quietly sang along. The two of them giggled, and Lily playfully shushed Isabella before they started in on a second song.
Tate couldn’t help smiling at them. When he looked up, he caught his mother watching him watch Lily and Isabella. She quickly looked down at the magazine she had opened on her lap, but her small, knowing smile stayed in place. He mentally recalled some of the things he’d said to his mother about this woman.
Lily? Oh, Isabella is particularly taken with her, and since I’m her SOS Committee contact, she’s naturally going to be around at times.
I kind of feel sorry for that Lily Farnsworth. She’s shy, doesn’t make friends easily, and since I’m her official SOS host I feel we ought to include her in what we can.
The town owes a lot to the newcomers, you know, especially that Lily Farnsworth, and she’s been so patient with Isabella that I feel sort of responsible for her.
He wondered if his mom understood his interest in Lily, then mentally snorted. She’d probably seen it before he had. Ginny had always been clear-eyed about things. She’d seen that him and Eve marrying so young had been as much about Eve’s living situation as about their feelings for each other. His parents had wanted him to go to college after high school like his older sister, but Eve hadn’t had that option. The friend with whose family Eve had lived after her grandmother’s death had been all set to go off to college herself, which meant that Eve needed a new situation, but she couldn’t support herself working part-time at the grocery store, and she didn’t want to leave Bygones and any chance of being with him. The only solution had been to marry and make a home together. Ginny had supported his decision. She hadn’t liked it, but she’d understood it. He’d gone to college online and long distance, making the drive to and from Manhattan twice weekly while working full-time on the farm, building his own house and doing his best to prove that the decision to marry had been right.
Eve had felt neglected, and he hadn’t even seen it until his mother had pointed it out to him. That was when they’d decided to have a baby. Eve had been talking about it for a while, but he’d been focused on other things. Suddenly it had seemed like a good idea. Eve would have a baby upon whom to focus her attention, and he could take care of his business without worrying that she felt lonely, and he’d liked the idea of being a dad.
The amazing thing was how blind he’d continued to be after Eve’s death. He’d refused to see that staying out of church was hurting everyone around him but God, himself included, while all along God had been patiently waiting for him to wise up and come home. He’d focused on his own pain and loss, to the exclusion of everything and everyone outside his own immediate family, until the whole town had been threatened with extinction. Even then, it had taken a little girl’s second birthday wish and a shy, sweet woman with a pink rosebush to make him see what he needed to do and where he needed to be. The question was, where did he go from here?
It was a question he’d tried to avoid, but it suddenly gnawed at him, wouldn’t leave him alone. He could barely keep from squirming.
His dad erupted with a cheer, throwing himself forward in his chair and howling at the TV. “Run, run! Slide in there. Safe! Yahoo!”
“Your father’s whole day is made,” Ginny quipped, waving a hand at Tate. “The Royals go into the ninth inning four runs ahead.”
“That’s enough of a breather for me,” Tate declared, on the edge of his seat. “How about you, Lily?”
Her head came up. “I beg your pardon?”
“You interested in watching the rest of this game?”
She glanced around, blinking as if just becoming aware of her surroundings. “Uh, I’m not much of a baseball aficionado.”
“So you don’t mind missing the rest of the game?”
“No.”
“Great. Let’s go then.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Lily helped Isabella sit up then rose to her feet. Isabella bounced onto her feet, too.
“Not you,” Tate instructed, waving Isabella back. “You’re staying here.”
“Why can’t I come?”
“Because I said so.”
“But—”
“You want your cake, don’t you?” her grandmother asked quickly.
Isabella’s eyes lit up. “Yum.” She dropped back down onto the sofa.
Tate grabbed Lily’s hand and hauled her out of there before he could think better of what he was doing. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to analyze it. He was taking a chance, but so be it. Things would either work out or they wouldn’t.
“Thank you for dinner,” she called to his parents as he dragged her from the room. “I enjoyed myself.”
“You’re welcome,” Ginny called after her.
“Come anytime!” Peter yelled.
“Bye, Lily!”
“Bye, Isabella. See you soon.”
Tate pushed through the kitchen door and out onto the porch. They were halfway to the truck when Lily asked, “What’s the hurry?”
He stopped where he was and turned to face her. “No hurry. No hurry at all. I just thought we’d go for a drive before the sun sets.”
“Oh. That sounds like fun.”
“Yeah,” he said, surprised, given that the idea had just occurred to him. “You haven’t had a chance to see much around here, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Good. Then I’ll show you around.”
“Great.”
They loaded up and set out. For almost two hours they drove around the countryside, first around the Bronson acreage, all two thousand of them—or as many as could be reached by vehicle. Then they set out to explore the remaining compass points. He showed her the Happy Havens Animal Shelter, various farms and ranches, the little country chapel tucked into a pretty dale, the lovely old bridge built over a babbling creek, everything he could think of that might interest her.
“This land isn’t as flat and featureless as I first thought it was,” Lily said after a while. That surprised Tate. He wasn’t sure why, really. The plains of Kansas had long been stereotyped exactly as she’d described them. Having lived here his whole life, however, he’d always known their intricacies. Some part of him had assumed that Lily recognized their subtle beauty, too. And perhaps she did.
As they drove, the sky darkened to solider blue, the clouds at last scudding away, their underbellies painted with fiery reds and oranges as the sun sank below the horizon. The blue gradually gave way completely to gray and gray to black liberally sprinkled with diamond-bright stars and a three-quarter moon that hung so low he could almost reach out and touch it.
“We don’t have stars like this in Boston,” she said dreamily when he turned the truck at last for town.
He chuckled. “I expect you do, but the city lights probably hide them.”
“No doubt you’re right. Even in Bygones, the stars don’t shine as brightly as they do out here.”
“I’d like to see Boston one of these days,” he said casually.
She smiled as if remembering all her favorite pla
ces. “There’s a lot to see.”
“Do you miss it?”
She sat up very straight. “Not really, no. I did at first. Everything was so convenient there, and I’ll always love certain things about Boston, not to mention my family and friends. But I don’t miss it. The city seems terribly busy now. This…this is home.”
Tate nodded. It was what he’d hoped, what he’d wanted to hear.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked after a time.
“Anything,” he answered, and he meant it.
“Will you be attending church regularly now?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I was foolish to stay away so long.”
“Coraline says it was because you were angry with God.”
“It was. At first. I just couldn’t understand how He could allow Eve to die like that. I still can’t.”
“But you got over being angry?”
“Yes, I suppose I did. Somewhere along the way, I realized that, though God may have let Eve be taken from me, He had also given me Isabella.”
“But you stayed away from church anyway.”
“Out of pride, I suppose, and habit. And sheer idiocy.” He sighed and added, “But that’s all behind me now. I got it straight between me and God last night. I’m not saying I have everything figured out, but I know where I need to be from now on.”
“I’m so glad,” Lily told him softly, her eyes glistening behind her glasses.
Tate answered her smile with one of his own. “Say, you know what? I’m going to need some new clothes. That suit I wore this morning felt like it was strangling me.”
“Yes, I noticed that it was a bit tight across the shoulders.”
“Maybe Isabella and I ought to run into Manhattan tomorrow and do some shopping.”
“Or you could go with Kenneth and me on Tuesday,” Lily suggested timidly.
“Sure. Or you could go with us and meet Kenneth there,” Tate said, smiling. “No reason for Kenneth to tag along on a shopping expedition if he doesn’t have to.”
“Right,” Lily agreed, flashing a wide smile. She ducked her head, and Tate laughed, for no other reason than he felt like it. She laughed, too, and they finished the drive in comfortable silence.
“I’ll call Kenneth and explain things to him,” Tate told her.
“I’ll work it out with Sherie. She doesn’t normally close up the shop, but I’m sure she can manage it.”
“Maybe we can make a day of it then,” Tate said, “since we’re going all that way.”
He watched her big blue eyes go soft behind the lenses of her glasses. “That sounds wonderful.”
“I’ve been meaning to drive Isabella by my alma mater. This would be a good opportunity to do that. I may not be a lawyer, but I do have a degree in animal husbandry, you know.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“Now you do. I hope you’re suitably impressed.”
She laughed. “I am.”
“Good.”
“Just one thing,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Bring your old suit coat with you. Maybe it can be let out.”
“Okay. Worth a try.”
Meanwhile he’d be praying that he wasn’t making a gargantuan mistake, that Lily would ultimately see things his way. Otherwise shopping might be the only future they’d ever have.
Chapter Fourteen
She would not jump to conclusions. All her life Lily had formed crushes on unattainable men, usually from afar. Few had even known of her regard; one or two had. The latter had either chosen to ignore her or—in one particularly humiliating case—to laugh at her, treating her short-lived regard like a cross between his due and a joke. In this case Tate had made it plain that he didn’t want to marry again or have more children. Given her history and his, she would be more than merely stupid to get her hopes up.
Besides, if Tate was going to change his mind and marry again, Bygones was filled with more likely candidates than her. Lily ran into them everywhere she went on Monday: tall, curvy Melissa Sweeney with her long red hair and bright green eyes; blue-eyed, brunette Allison True, a local girl returning home to Bygones; Whitney Leigh—Tate liked girls who wore glasses, after all—even Sherie, who smiled so brightly these days that she lit up any room she entered. Tate was bound to have noticed, or soon would, all the young women at church who had cast such admiring glances at him last Sunday.
Oh, Tate had kissed her, true, but when had Lily Farnsworth ever been any man’s likeliest prospect?
Still, she looked forward to Tuesday with almost painful anticipation. Lily had dated. Of course, she had dated. She had been asked out to the odd dinner, movie, party, concert…A few times she had even dated the same man repeatedly. Sadly, none of those men had really interested her—or she them. They had each stopped calling; she hadn’t minded.
This wasn’t even a date, and yet she couldn’t have looked forward to it more. She was going to spend a whole day with Tate and Isabella. Beyond that, she dared not contemplate.
She dressed with care, pairing skinny black jeans with a long sleeveless top of cool blue lace. To this she had added skimpy yellow flats and a long wide yellow scarf that could double as a shawl in the evening. She had twisted two long strands of hair at each of her temples and caught them loosely at her nape with a small gold clip. Silver earrings and a number of silver and gold bangles on her right wrist completed her ensemble.
Despite a busy morning Lily couldn’t help watching the clock. Even as she discussed and took orders for a wedding anniversary, two birthdays, a college acceptance, a mortgage pay-off and a club luncheon, Lily kept an eye out for Tate. When he finally arrived, however, he took her by surprise, slipping in with Isabella as a customer left, so that she didn’t hear the bell herald their arrival.
“You look great.”
The sound of his voice made her jump, turn and laugh.
“Thank you.”
Isabella beamed at her across the counter, her carroty hair tamed into two thick braids that lay flat against her head. “Daddy says I can buy a new top on account of the hem’s coming down on my old one.”
“Is that so?” Lily replied, feigning ignorance. She shouldn’t be so happy, but she couldn’t help it.
“Are you ready to go?”
“I can’t leave until Sherie gets here.”
“Oh. We’ll walk down to the pet store then and exchange a duplicate gift.”
Lily checked the clock on the wall. “Won’t be long.”
Sherie came in less than ten minutes later, and Tate returned with Isabella not long after that. Lily grabbed her handbag, gave last-minute instructions to Sherie and led the way out of the store.
As soon as they reached the truck, Isabella presented her with a piece of paper.
“I almost forgot!”
It was another coloring, this time of a rosebush with pink roses. She had drawn butterflies on it.
“How lovely. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Lily remarked as Tate handed her into the front seat of the truck. “After seeing all those childhood mementos on your mother’s kitchen walls, I got to wondering where you keep Isabella’s.”
“I have a special place for them.”
Lily waited for him to walk around and get inside. “It’s just that my mother had a very organized system. She always displayed our artwork and awards on her desk at work for two weeks. Then it went into a special box. At the end of every year, she sat down with my sister and me to choose two special pieces for each of us to go into a keepsake book. Of course, if it didn’t fit in the book, it wasn’t saved, but now Mom has a very nice, orderly, year-by-year record of our childhood.”
“Oh? That sounds…organized. At least it doesn’t take over the whole house that way.” Tate started up the truck. “Dad says that there was a time when my sister’s and my junk completely took over his and Mom’s place. You know how it is, though. Stuff falls apart and gets lost. Only t
he most tangible things seem to remain. Those don’t seem like the kind of things that usually fit into a book.”
He eased the truck out into traffic and drove toward Granary Road.
“No,” Lily said, “they’re not.”
“The keepsake book is a good idea, though, for all those colorings and certificates and such. As for the other things, I guess I’ll keep hanging them on my bedroom wall.”
“So that’s where you keep them,” Lily said.
“Mmm-hmm. After I cleared out Eve’s things, it always looked kind of bare, so when Isabella started presenting me with her artwork, I used it to fill the empty places, and one thing led to another.” He shrugged, turning onto Granary and heading south. “Now it’s one of my favorite rooms in the house.”
“I got almost one whole wall covered,” Isabella put in from the backseat. “That leaves three more. I’m saving one in case I get a baby sister someday.”
“Isabella!” Tate scolded. “We’ve talked about that.”
“I know, Daddy.”
“There aren’t going to be any baby sisters.”
“But, Da-a-ad.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
Isabella said nothing more, and neither did Lily. She imagined that they were both equally disappointed by Tate’s attitude.
* * *
“What do you think?” Tate rolled his shoulders inside the sleek black suit coat.
Lily smoothed her fine hands over his back. “Sleeve length is good. Fits well in the shoulders, but it needs taking in at the waist.”
“We can handle that,” the salesclerk assured them, producing a thin piece of chalk. A small, dapper man of middle years, he quickly marked up the suit, including the hem on the pants.
“The thing is,” Tate told the man as he worked, “we need it done by close of business today. Also, I have another suit coat that needs letting out, if possible.” Lily produced the gray jacket and showed the clerk where it needed attention.
The salesclerk checked his wristwatch. “Give us until 9:00 p.m.”
“All right.”
“Perhaps you’d like to take a look at our dress shirts and silk ties, as well. We have a two-for-one sale going on.”