The food was served buffet style from both sides of the table, and each dish was as delicious as the next. The band played as people filed back and forth to the dessert table and the first polka brought most everyone to their feet. Dawn found herself dancing with numerous uncles, cousins, old classmates of Randy and Cindy’s, and the father of the groom.
Randy remained with the wedding party, participating in pictures, toasts, more pictures, and more toasts, all the while trying to keep an eye on Dawn, who seemed not to miss him at all. She was dancing with someone else each time he looked, and twice he saw her waltzing with Doug Hathaway, someone he never liked much and now liked even less. Well, at least she wasn’t bored, he told himself. But did she have to look like she was having the time of her life? She was laughing. What on earth could Hathaway be saying that could be that amusing?
When the band took a break, Dawn excused herself and went to the ladies room. It was a busy place. Anne made her way up next to her at the vanity.
“Having fun?”
Dawn nodded, smiling. “Yes, but I don’t think I’ll be able to walk tomorrow. I can’t remember dancing this much.”
Mary Lou appeared and leaned close to the mirror to inspect her eye makeup. “You and Doug Hathaway do make a cute couple.”
Dawn stared, ignoring the innuendo while trying to place which man she was referring to. With the band playing so loud, names blended with the beat. “You mean the one that...?”
Anne intervened while compulsively fluffing Dawn’s hair with her pick and adjusting the comb. “He’s the one that always steps on your feet, wears enough Canoe to float a battleship, and talks about his vacation in Las Vegas.”
Dawn laughed. “Oh, that one!”
Mary Lou laughed as well, in spite of herself. “He took that vacation over five years ago. To hear him talk, you’d swear it was yesterday.”
Anne headed into one of the stalls then, complaining for all the world to hear about having to hike her dress up to her chin just to pee, and Dawn chuckled.
“Randy and I were childhood sweethearts, you know,” Mary Lou said, right out of the blue and sounding just a wee bit tipsy. “For years. And pretty seriously if you know what I mean.”
Dawn gazed at her with a somewhat indifferent expression. Not coming as much of a surprise, at least that information explained the attitude. “Really?”
Mary Lou nodded, and applied a very heavy coat of crimson lipstick, which she then blotted on a paper towel three times. “Yep, me and him were something else.”
Dawn smiled. What was there to say?
Anne emerged, washed her hands, and the three of them zig-zagged their way through the crowd to the door. Randy was waiting for Dawn in the hallway. He grabbed her hand and pulled her close, his eyes glistening from the champagne.
“I missed you,” he said, kissing her.
Dawn laughed and tried to step back a little. He was holding her much too close. “Have you been smoking?”
Randy nodded and kissed her again. “Steve, Marvin’s best man handed out cigars. We really hammed it up for the pictures.”
Anne smiled and waved over her shoulder as she edged past them, but Mary Lou held her ground. “I was telling Dawn all about us,” she said.
Randy glanced at her and frowned. Just then someone shouted, “Single men over here. It’s garter belt time!”
“Quick!” Randy said. “Let me go!”
Dawn laughed, shaking her head as he darted around the corner. And with a heavy sigh, Mary Lou walked away.
Aunt Helen motioned from across the room for Dawn to hurry to where the single women were assembling for the tossing of the bouquet. But Dawn very discreetly turned the other way and appeared not to see her waving with such fervor.
Randy caught the garter. Mary Lou the bouquet.
The photographer linked them together for more pictures, even had them kiss for one, and the band picked up where they’d left off with another polka. It turned into one of those dances where one constantly switches partners.
Randy didn’t care to polka. He actually wasn’t much of a dancer, and found himself on the sideline, watching Dawn and smiling. He hadn’t even had a chance to tell her how beautiful she looked.
The bride and groom slipped out some time between eleven and eleven fifteen. There were shouts and hoots when the band leader made the announcement. And then the evening started to wind down. Randy put his glass on the bar and headed across the floor to dance with Dawn. But Doug Hathaway beat him to it. His mother and father appeared at his side. “Well, what do you think?” Liz asked.
“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think it could’ve been any better.”
Liz nodded proudly. “Thanks to everyone.”
Randy agreed, still watching Dawn.
“You could always cut in, you know,” his father said, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.
Randy laughed. “Oh no.” He wouldn’t give Hathaway the satisfaction.
“Then allow me.”
Randy played innocent observer as his father intervened, and smiled at the tender way Dawn gripped his father’s arms.
“So...” Mr. Iredell said. “Are you having a good time?”
Dawn nodded and smiled. “Very. It was a beautiful wedding.”
Mr. Iredell glanced at his son across the room. Randy was shaking his head, wondering what his father was saying. “So you two are quite an item, I take it.”
Dawn smiled. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “But I do love him, if that’s what you mean.”
Mr. Iredell grinned. “Precisely.” When he gave his son a nod, Randy straightened his tie and walked over to dance with Dawn, for the first time all evening.
The last dance of the night.
It was two forty-five before they got back to the house and just after three when Dawn curled up in Cindy’s bed and fell asleep. Not a sound could be heard throughout the house when she woke at seven and tiptoed to the bathroom, wide awake. She brushed her teeth and tiptoed back to Cindy’s bedroom, opened the curtain and looked outside, then sat down on the bed and saw the note Cindy had left for her on the dresser. Wrapped inside, was her mother’s necklace.
Dawn,
Thank you. I was honored to wear your mother’s
blue diamond. I hope you are a keeper. Randy says he
thinks you’re going to break his heart. Please don’t.
Love, Cindy
Dawn folded the note and lay her mother’s necklace on the night stand. She thought she heard a soft tap on the door, and crept over, quietly cracked it open, and when no one was there, lowered her eyes and smiled. There was a cup of steaming hot coffee on the floor, heavy on the cream, just the way she liked it. She picked it up and took a sip, sugared to perfection.
She closed the door, put on a pair of jeans and a sweater, finished the coffee and went downstairs. The kitchen was empty, but the coffee pot was full, so she helped herself to another cup, and when she heard some activity outside, walked out to investigate.
Randy was coming from the barn with his dad.
“Morning!” Mr. Iredell said, waving.
Dawn waved back.
The dogs ran up onto the porch and milled around her. She petted each one, making a big fuss over them, and smiled at Randy as he started up the steps. “Thanks for the room service,” she said, and he nodded.
“I knew you’d be up.” He kissed her and smoothed a lock of hair off her face.
His father walked on into the house, the dogs trailing behind him, and Dawn and Randy sat down on the porch swing.
Randy steadied it with his feet.
“This is nice.” Being here felt like a different world to Dawn. It was a different world. And one soon full of delicious aromas emanating from the kitchen.
“Breakfast.”
The rest of the morning and afternoon went much too fast for Dawn. She and Randy had taken a long walk. He gave her the grand tour. Practically every tree and rock sparked a differ
ent childhood memory or story. He explained which part of the house had to be rebuilt after the fire, how his mom had insisted it be done exactly the way it was before, minus the droop in the kitchen floor. And Dawn laughed. Then they hiked to Randy’s favorite hill. A “phenomenon” he called it, with a slope so upright it felt as if they were literally standing as they laid in the grass and stared up at the meandering forms of the clouds.
“It’s so quiet,” Dawn said. No planes, no jets, no sounds of any traffic, just the gentle rustling of the leaves and the distant lowing of a cow.
It was here, amidst “his” heaven on earth, that they made love for the first time in a week. Hidden in the reeds, and on his own turf, Randy couldn’t help thinking this. Slowly, gently, without a care in the world. Later, hand in hand, they walked back.
Dinner was roast chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn put up from the garden, and angel food cake with strawberries and real whipped cream. Afterward, while Dawn helped with the dishes, Randy went out to the barn with his father to give the pigs a going over. Then they packed to leave.
Soon they were fastening their seat belts and settling in for the flight back. Dawn closed her eyes as their plane taxied to the runway, remembering the warm embraces from Randy’s parents and how they made her promise to come back real soon. She smiled and gripped Randy’s hand, thinking about Aunt Helen and the wedding, the dancing, the polkas, and the white farm house already miles behind them. It would be dark by the time they landed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The following morning it poured and poured and never let up. No lightning or thunder, just rain. But it was a deluge. The shedrow was a mess, the horses restless and itchy, and for the first time since anyone could remember, the track closed early for training. Word had it, the stewards considered it too dangerous.
“They’re gun shy!” Tom shouted over the din, referring to the horrendous spill in the third race the day before. “Dawn, give me that bucket!”
Dawn had to scrape the ten pounds of mud stuck to the bottom of her boots first, then trudged her way down, and she and Tom did their best to wipe off Red before he put him in his stall.
“What happened?” Dawn asked.
“They’re not sure,” Tom said, following her into the tack room for a cup of coffee. “Three of the horses had to be put down, one right on the track, and two more hauled off. You should’ve seen the gawkers.”
Ben glanced up from reading the racing form and nodded in disgust. It was something that never made sense to him, how people’ll flock down to the fence to see something like that.
“That poor mother fucker couldn’t even stand,” Tom said, as he thought of the one that had to be put down immediately. “They held up a tarp, and people were still trying to see. What the fuck do they want to see anyway?”
Dawn shook her head.
Tom turned and noticing Barn Kitty, laughed. “Hey, little puss puss.” He leaned down and picked him up. “You look like a drowned rat.” He wiped him dry with a towel, the cat meowing mournfully the whole time, then launched him onto the top saddle. Barn Kitty glared down at him, flicking his paws. “Don’t mention it,” Tom said, and laughed again.
Dawn fixed them both a cup of coffee, handed him his, and sat down next to him. “Did any of the jocks get hurt?”
He nodded and raised his cup, his way of saying thank you, and continued. “Yeah, two.” He identified them, but their names didn’t ring a bell with Dawn. “Johnny got banged up too, but he was checked out and released. Kincaid is the one that’s serious I guess. Only I hear, they can’t operate on him because of some illegal substance they found in his blood.”
Dawn shook her head.
Tom explained how the accident happened. He’d ponied a horse in the race and saw it firsthand from the quarter pole. “The horse behind Johnny clipped heels with him, bobbled, and a horse run up on him. That jock fell off; I think it might’ve been Kincaid. Another horse tried to jump over him, he was half up and half down, and ended up rolling him like a bowling ball. Then his jock fell as well. And after that it got really ugly.”
Dawn shuddered.
Randy stopped in right about then, but didn’t need to hear about the accident. He’d just come from treating one of the gruesome survivors, whose future at this stage was questionable, and he was on his way out for a full day of farm calls. He asked Dawn if she could come help him, but she said she was meeting Linda, and walked with him just outside the tack room to explain.
“She paged me.”
Randy nodded. “I know, I heard. What’s up?”
“I don’t know, but she’s never paged me. She says it’s really important, otherwise...”
Randy gave her a quick kiss and ran through the rain to his truck. “It’s all right. I’ll see you later.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” he yelled from behind the wheel. “Why don’t we cook hamburgers or something.”
“What?” Dawn stared through the rain. “I don’t have hamburgers.”
Randy laughed. “I’ll bring a grill and buy some.”
“Are you serious?”
Randy waved.
Dave Bacardi arrived with donuts and Tom repeated the story. This time it wasn’t just one illegal substance found in Kincaid’s blood, but two. He gave Dawn first dibs on the donuts to show how grateful he was for her curing him of his itch. “It was the soap powder, you genius you!” She helped herself to two of the three custard-filled. And then came the lightning and thunder.
Dawn glanced up as Linda approached the table, started to smile, and changed her mind. “What’s the matter?”
Linda sat down and shook her head. “You’re not going to believe it.”
“Okay, try me.”
Linda hesitated, searched Dawn’s eyes, and fought back tears. “It’s my mom and dad.”
Dawn swallowed hard. “Are they...?”
“Oh, God...no,” Linda said, apologizing. “It’s not that. I’m sorry.” She’d been so wrapped up in her own feelings, she never thought... “They’re fine. It’s just...” She clasped her hands in a helpless gesture. “They’ve separated.”
“What?”
Linda nodded. “Can you believe that?”
Dawn shook her head. “No. Why?”
“Are you ready for this? Mom’s seeing someone.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Yes. She told me herself. She says she’s in love.”
Dawn just stared a moment, then glanced around the club dining room, and leaned close. “Does Uncle Matt know?”
“Oh, yeah,” Linda said. She took a big drink of ice water.
“And...?”
“I don’t know. It’s like he doesn’t care.”
“Does he know the guy? Is he...?”
“In the business? No.”
Dawn nodded, uncertain if that was good news or not.
“He’s a cabbie.”
“What?”
“A cabbie. That’s all he does. He drives a cab.”
Dawn just sat there, then crossed her arms on the table and sighed. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s quite simple,” Linda said, mimicking her mother’s love-struck voice. “Her car broke down, it had to be towed, she took a cab, and that was that.”
“Wow.” Dawn sat back and just shook her head again. She didn’t know what to say.
“And there’s more. Harland’s had him checked out. He’s a recovering alcoholic and in debt up to his ears. He’s after her money, that’s all there is to it.”
“Now wait a minute.” Dawn disagreed, but fell quiet as the waiter approached the table. When the man left with their selections, she leaned close again. “I don’t think in all fairness to your mother...”
Linda held up her hands.
“I’m serious. Now listen. All right?”
Linda shrugged.
“There’s always two sides to a story.”
Randy
wasn’t kidding earlier. He arrived with hamburger meat, buns, Ketchup, mustard and pickles, barbequed potato chips, and a portable tabletop gas grill, which he set up on the terrace. “It was on sale,” he said. “Do you have garlic salt?”
Dawn stared. “I don’t know.”
Randy laughed. “Do you want to check?”
Dawn went into the kitchen and returned with a container and a frown. “Well, I found some. But...” It was half full but hard as a rock.
Randy popped the lid and held it up to the light. “This’ll do.” He pried it loose with the end of a fork and sprinkled it onto the already sizzling burgers. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked, sitting down next to her on one of the two chaise lounges.
Dawn hesitated. “My Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Matt have separated.”
Randy looked at her a moment. “So that’s what Linda wanted to talk to you about?”
She nodded. “I can’t believe it. They’ve been married for twenty-nine years.”
Randy glanced at the burgers. “What happened?”
Dawn shrugged and then sighed in a manner that made it obvious she didn’t really want to share this with him. “Apparently she’s seeing someone else.”
Randy didn’t say anything.
“According to Linda, he’s a cabbie.”
“A what?”
“He drives a cab.”
“I see,” Randy said. “The low-life fucker.”
Dawn looked at him. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What’s the point then?”
Dawn stared. The point? Maybe she didn’t have one. But if the man were in the business, even remotely related...
“Let me guess,” Randy said. “Linda thinks he’s after her mom’s money.”
Dawn raised an eyebrow, went to shrug, but nodded instead. Linda’s mom didn’t really have any money. In fact, Dawn wondered if her Aunt realized that, and she was sure Linda wouldn’t know either, for that matter.
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