Dress Me in Wildflowers

by Trish Milburn

  Farrin smiled for the camera one last time, her facial muscles quavering from overuse.

  The cameraman looked over at Charise Tolley, the editor from Vogue, and nodded.

  “That should do it, Farrin. Thanks for being so patient.”

  Farrin released the smile and stepped out of the harsh glow of the lights. “Can I send you the bill for the massage I’m going to need?”

  Charise laughed. “Sure.”

  Justine edged up to Farrin. “You need to go, now. Your flight is at 6:10.”

  Farrin glanced at her watch. 3:47. She turned to Justine and opened her mouth to speak.

  “Your ride is waiting. The luggage is in the car already. Here are your tickets.” Justine handed them over.

  “Have I told you lately you’re awesome?”

  “Watch out, my head will swell and you won’t be able to stand me.”

  Farrin laughed, and she noticed how the sound caused some curious stares from the other people in the room. Had she been such an ogre before?

  “Big trip planned?” Charise asked.

  “Visiting some friends.”

  “I hope it’s someplace warmer. I could use a trip to the Caribbean about now.”

  Farrin didn’t elaborate. She hated the sense of shame that rose in her when she thought of someone like Charise seeing where and how she’d grown up. No one could help where they were born or into what circumstances, but that still didn’t make her want to shine a spotlight on it. She had no desire to have magazines showcasing her as a rags-to-riches story. She’d much rather stay with pieces like the one on spring styles for which they’d just completed the photos.

  Once out of her office, she raced to the waiting car and balled her hands in her lap as the driver battled the traffic to LaGuardia. Her stomach clenched as she willed the lines to move faster through security. Only when she sank into her seat on the airplane did she relax. When she let go of the tension, exhaustion filled the void.

  Since her return to New York, she’d been nearly as busy as before she’d visited Oak Valley. A blur of meetings, fittings, consultations, photo shoots, phone calls, benefits...one day simply faded into another. Most days, she thrived on the high pace. Others, she wanted to burrow further underneath her covers and watch DVDs and have someone else live her life for a day or two.

  Even before they took off, her eyelids grew heavy. By the time they were airborne, she was slipping off to sleep.

  Farrin slept soundly all the way to Knoxville, only waking when she boarded the smaller plane that would take her to the Tri-Cities Airport. If she hadn’t slept a wink in weeks, however, she wouldn’t have been able to sleep on the puddle jumper. The bottom fell out of her stomach each time the little plane shook or suddenly dropped a few feet. The other passengers didn’t seem worried, but all she could imagine was one of those drops not stopping until metal hit earth. She wasn’t afraid of flying, but this flight was enough to cure that. To hell with saving time, on her next visit she was driving from Knoxville.

  When she pulled into Faye’s driveway, the distance between the car and the front door seemed insurmountable. Maybe she’d sleep in the car and make the trek in the morning. A gust of wind that heralded a coming storm buffeted the side of the car. No, she’d rather have a sturdier structure surrounding her if a powerful storm blew through.

  The increasing wind whipped her hair around her face as she opened the trunk to retrieve her bags.

  “Need some help?”

  Farrin yelped and banged her head on the trunk latch. Tears sprang to her eyes. She jumped again when someone touched her, one hand pulling her arm away from where she’d lifted it to the injury and another carefully pushing her hair aside. She jerked her gaze upward. Drew.

  “Doesn’t look like it broke skin. Sorry I scared you.”

  “Where did you come from? And why are you here?”

  He pointed his right thumb back toward Faye’s house. “I ran into Faye at the grocery. She was worried about you traveling in this storm, so when she invited me over for dinner I figured she wanted someone to talk to so she could keep her mind occupied. She tried to call you, but the call didn’t go through.”

  Farrin looked down at her purse. “Oh, I turned off the phone on the plane and forgot to turn it back on.”

  He offered a hint of a smile. “I bet that doesn’t happen often.”

  “No. Can’t remember the last time I had the phone off except during flights.”

  “You look tired. Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t have the thing melded to your ear.” He reached into the trunk and grabbed her bags.

  Farrin didn’t argue. All she wanted was to curl up under the handmade quilt on the guest bed and sleep until she woke. No alarm clocks. No phones. No sounds of the city.

  Faye met them at the door and pulled Farrin into a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried about you on that tiny plane with all this wind. We’re going to get the remnants of Hurricane Edgar tonight.”

  “Glad I didn’t know that before I got on that flying toothpaste tube.”

  Drew disappeared down the hallway with her bags.

  Farrin caught a glimpse of him as he slipped into the kitchen. “He seems right at home here.”

  “Drew has been a sweetheart. He makes sure I’m okay and that I don’t get too lonely.”

  Farrin sank onto the large ottoman. “Faye, you’re friends with everyone in Oak Valley. I can’t imagine you lonely.”

  “Oh, I’m not lonely for friends . . . just family sometimes. I get to see Tammie and the kids fairly often, but I miss having a man’s voice in the house I guess.”

  Farrin reached over to where Faye sat in her favorite chair and squeezed her hand. Harvey Kern had died of a heart attack five years before when Farrin had been in Paris for a show. By the time she got the message, Faye had already buried her husband of nearly forty years. And with Tammie’s older brother Ross stationed in Germany, Faye probably did have an emptiness of male interaction.

  Drew returned to the room with what looked like a balled kitchen towel. He stepped up beside her. “Here, put this on your head so you don’t get such a goose egg.”

  “What happened?” Faye asked.

  “I startled Farrin and caused her to bang her head on the trunk of her car.”

  Faye started to rise, no doubt to play nurse.

  Farrin raised her hand to stop her. “It’s okay, really. No broken skin.” She lifted the towel-wrapped ice pack to her head and glanced up at Drew. He looked so good in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She realized that every time she’d seen him during her first trip back to Oak Valley, he’d been wearing a suit and tie. He looked fabulous in them, but the casual attire seemed more natural.

  She lowered her gaze. Maybe that bonk on the head was a little more serious than she’d realized.

  A gust of wind hit the west side of the house, causing timbers to creak, then the sky opened up, the rain hitting the roof so hard conversation would have been difficult. Faye clicked on the TV, and a very angry red and green radar image greeted them.

  “This is a dangerous storm moving northeast. We’ve had a report from spotters on the ground that a tornado touched down between Johnson City and Elizabethton. The radar imagery has calmed a little since then, but we urge you to stay indoors until this storm passes. Heavy rainfall will cause streams to rise quickly.”

  The weatherman continued his warnings, ones Farrin had heard and been forced to heed countless times during her childhood. Every time a serious storm had raged through, she had been convinced it would pick up their trailer and deposit it in the river two miles away. But they’d had no safer structure in which to take shelter. That all they’d lost was some roofing was more than a minor miracle.

  All she’d wanted when she arrived here tonight was to go to bed. But with the images of her childhood home rocking as winds punched it, would she be able to sleep a wink? A chill settled on her and sank deeper, though whether from the sound of the col
d rain outside or the ice pack on her head, she didn’t know.

  “Do you have some hot chocolate?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’ll make you some,” Faye said.

  “That’s okay. I can do it.” She needed to move, work the kinks out of her joints and get some warmth flowing through her body.

  Drew followed her into the kitchen. “Need any help?”

  “Hmm, the last time you asked me that, I cracked my skull.”

  “Sorry.”

  She waved away his apology. “It’s okay. You want some hot chocolate?”

  “No, I’ll be going in a few minutes.”

  Farrin looked out the window over the sink into the black night. “In this?”

  “The worst will blow over quickly.”

  She didn’t like the idea of him driving down rain-slicked roads with trees swaying overhead, threatening to topple when their roots gave way underneath the saturated ground.

  “Will this damage your gardens?”

  “Depends on the path of the storm. Hopefully, I’ll just have to pick up some limbs.”

  Farrin concentrated on fixing the hot chocolate, trying to ignore the odd way the kitchen seemed to shrink with Drew standing in it. Fatigue, that’s all it was. She’d be able to think straight in the morning. As she sipped the first delicious warmth, she sensed him staring at her.

  “Do you ever wear your hair down?”

  Tiny shivers ran across her skin, and she turned to look at him. “What?”

  He pointed to where she had her hair pinned up in her customary loose knot. “Your hair, I’ve never seen it down in any of the magazine articles or TV interviews.”

  He’d watched her? Why? She raised her eyebrows. “You read wedding magazines?”

  “Not exactly. But I’ve seen the occasional interview with you.”

  She took another sip, more like a gulp. She’d sworn to Tammie that there was nothing of the old feelings she’d had for Drew left, and yet . . . were these remnants of those teenage yearnings or totally new ones for the man he’d become? Had to be the former because she’d not spent much time with him during her previous visit.

  “I cut it off once in college, and it looked dreadful.”

  “I doubt that.”

  She couldn’t stand this. All the times she’d longed for a compliment from Drew and it came more than fifteen years too late. She pulled a second mug from the cabinet and filled it with hot chocolate. With a mug in both hands, she headed for the living room. Drew waited a few seconds before following her. As she handed the second mug to Faye, the rustle of fabric behind her signaled Drew slipping into his coat.

  “You’re not going out in this, are you?” Faye asked.

  “It’s letting up, and I need to get home. Full day tomorrow.”

  “Well, you call and let me know you got home okay or I won’t sleep at all.”

  Farrin glanced over in time to see Drew smile and wink at Faye. Her heart stumbled, and she gripped her mug harder. When Drew glanced at her and held her gaze for a mere second, she knew without a doubt what all those poor deer in headlights must feel like just before the car runs them over.

  Her held breath came out audibly shaky when he disappeared into the night. She imagined she heard his footfalls as he ran to his SUV. Where had it been anyway? Parked on the street? He’d be soaked by the time he reached it.

  “I hope he gets home safely,” Faye said, worry evident in her voice.

  Farrin looked over at Faye, and it hit her again how many years had passed since visits to this house had been almost an everyday affair. “He’ll be fine. There shouldn’t be many cars on the road.”

  By reassuring Faye, Farrin helped push the thoughts of that narrow, curving road blackened by the torrents out of her mind. She sank onto the end of the couch before her legs gave way or she spilled the hot chocolate on the carpet.

  For several seconds, the two of them just watched the continuing weather coverage.

  “Drew was right. It does appear to be moving out fairly quickly,” Faye said.

  It was moving — toward the river and Drew’s house. But Farrin didn’t say the words. It was enough that she’d realized it and created worry in her own middle. There was no need to share it with Faye.

  Faye clicked off the television and sat staring at the blank screen for a few seconds. “He’s been like a second son to me.”

  “How did that happen? He wasn’t someone we hung around with in school.”

  “Oh, I know. But when Harvey died, Drew helped me through all the paperwork. I don’t understand why there has to be so much paperwork when someone dies.” She sighed, her pain of loss still evident even after five years. “Harvey and I had never really needed a lawyer. But Drew had just started his practice, and I wanted to deal with someone who wasn’t going to remind me of Harvey. I had visions of breaking down in Jerry Porter’s or Frank Jillian’s offices, and I just couldn’t face that possibility.”

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t hear in time to come back.”

  “Honey, there was nothing you could do. The Lord takes us when he’s ready, even if we’re not.”

  Farrin swallowed to try to alleviate the constriction in her throat.

  “After Drew finished all the paperwork, he’d stop by every once in a while, just to see how I was doing. He’d ask about the kids — and you from time to time.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, don’t sound so surprised. You’ve grown up to be a stunning woman.”

  “I am surprised. I could have fallen in the river and floated to the Gulf of Mexico when we were in high school and he would have never noticed. More likely now he’s noticed the dollar signs attached to my name.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Odd thing was, she really didn’t. Nothing in Drew’s actions hinted at what she’d seen so often from people in Milan to Janie’s parents, that need to get close to her because of who she was to the world, not who she was inside.

  Faye reached over and patted her on the knee. “I know you had a powerful crush on him back then, and he was a fool not to see what a catch you were. But like you said the last time you were here, you’re both different people now. You’ve grown up and you don’t have to worry about what other people think or say.”

  “It’s not like that. It can’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my life is in New York. By his own admission, Drew doesn’t like living in a city. Not to mention he hasn’t expressed any interest whatsoever.”

  Then what had that hair comment been about in the kitchen?

  “Hasn’t he? Dear, as nice as Drew is, I don’t think he would have stayed over here tonight if he hadn’t known you were on your way.”

  Farrin looked up at Faye’s light blue eyes. “I know you care about me and want to see me happy, but there’s nothing there. Never has been, never will be.”

  She rose and took her empty mug into the kitchen and rinsed it. Shuffling from the living room signaled that Faye was getting up then moving down the hall toward her bedroom. Farrin hoped she hadn’t hurt her feelings, but she’d had to put the brakes on Faye’s matchmaking before Faye thought something would come of it.

  She watched the occasional flash of lightning out the window above the sink and wondered how far Drew had gotten on his way home.

  More footsteps in the hall, the closing of a door, then running water. Now that the main part of the storm had passed, Faye was taking her nightly shower. Totally spent, Farrin retreated to the guestroom and changed into her pajamas. She was about to slip into bed when the phone rang, making her jump.

  Faye hadn’t emerged from the bathroom, so Farrin hurried to the living room and answered.

  “I’m home,” Drew said. “I might not dry out for a week, but at least I’m finally here.”

  “You should have waited until the storm passed.”

  “I think I left at the right time.”

  He’d sensed her discomfort and left because of i
t. Why did her insides melt a little at that?

  “I’ll tell Faye you called. She’ll be relieved you made it safely.”

  For several seconds, Drew said nothing. Then, “Goodnight, Farrin.”

  “Goodnight.” She hung up the phone but stood staring across the dim living room lit only with the small counter light in the kitchen.

  “That Drew?” Faye asked as she came up the hall behind her.

  “Yeah. He’s home.”

  “Good. Now we can all get some sleep.”

  Farrin returned to the guestroom doorway to find Faye standing there.

  “I’m sorry if I seemed pushy earlier. You’re right. I just want to see you happy, but I guess I must realize that you’re the only one who’ll be able to figure out what makes you happy.”

  Farrin leaned down and kissed Faye on the cheek. “You make me happy. And in a minute, curling up in that bed is going to make me positively blissful.”

  Faye patted Farrin’s face and smiled. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  But when Farrin slid into the bed and beneath the covers, she didn’t fall immediately to sleep as she’d expected. Every time she closed her eyes, she thought of Drew in that stone-and-timber home overlooking the river and wondered what the rain sounded like on his roof.

  ****

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The next morning, Farrin awoke to bright sunlight streaming through her window. After a shower and a quick breakfast of a freshly baked banana nut muffin and coffee, she headed for the inn through the crisp morning air. After the rain, the world smelled fresh and clean, though the temperature had her wrapping her coat more tightly around her. As if they felt the chill too, the leaves on the trees shivered.

  Being Friday, she knew Janie wouldn’t be at the inn and that she’d have some alone time to check out the progress. And there was quite a lot of it. She roamed from room to room, amazed at how alive it seemed now with the furniture uncovered, the windows gleaming and new paint gracing the areas that had been scuffed and worn.

  Someone had adorned the dining room table with a wooden bowl of pinecones, tree nuts and brightly colored leaves. She smiled, thinking of Dara holding her mouth just so as she arranged and rearranged the display. She’d seen her do it more than once with the wildflowers Farrin had brought back from the Cane Ridge trailhead.