Country Bride

by Debbie Macomber

  As she drove down Main Street, she saw quite a few people inside Maura’s bookstore, Dog-Eared Books & Brew. Book-club night, she remembered somewhat guiltily. Traveling the summer art-fair circuit had contributed to her missing the regular book club most of the summer. She would do better in the fall, she promised herself.

  And Maura. She needed to be a better friend there as well. Maura seemed to be coping since her daughter’s death. At least she’d returned to work—Evie had spoken with her several times when she had stopped into the bookstore and coffeehouse to grab a latte.

  Returning to a regular routine had probably helped with the overwhelming guilt. And really, what else was a grieving mother supposed to do? Life had to go on. Bills had to be paid, obligations met, friendships maintained to the best of one’s ability.

  Evie remembered those efforts all too well, erecting that facade to the world, as if she were like some old building in a frontier ghost town somewhere—an elaborate face that concealed emptiness behind it.

  As she headed toward her usual parking spot behind String Fever and found it blessedly empty despite the crowds, she made a mental note to take Maura to lunch as soon as she had the chance, perhaps when her time with Taryn was done. Like it or not, she and Maura shared a bitter legacy, mothers who had both lost children. The circumstances of those respective losses were very different but she had some small understanding of the deep and abiding sorrow that would never quite leave Maura.

  She headed toward the small walled garden in back of the store, not surprised when Jacques didn’t greet her there. Claire’s adorable eight-year-old, Owen, had agreed to walk him a couple times a day while Evie was working at the Thornes’. Owen had probably let him back into her apartment after they’d walked around Miners’ Park a few times.

  Jacques would enjoy the next day at the Thorne house, playing with Taryn under the guise of therapy. She was already coming up with a variety of ways to incorporate him into their routine. How would Brodie feel about a nonshedding dog swimming around in his pool, chasing after whatever she could convince Taryn to throw at him? she wondered.

  In the garden, she paused to enjoy the quiet calm there, the mingled scent of flowers and soil and sun-warmed brick and the vast spill of stars overhead that seemed so much closer here in the Colorado mountains than they ever had in California.

  Her muscles ached from several days spent working with Taryn and she reached her arms high overhead and behind her back in one of the sun-salutation poses. She held it for a few moments and felt the healing energy flow through her.

  Beading sometimes worked just as well to soothe her mind and calm her spirit, but she wasn’t sure she had the energy or focus for anything right now but that long soak and the very pleasant mystery she was supposed to have finished for the book-club meeting that night.

  “Excuse me.”

  The voice behind her startled her so much she lost the pose and nearly tipped over backward into the garden. She whirled around and in the pale streetlight, she saw Charlie Beaumont standing just outside the gate.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just, um, riding by and saw you pull up.”

  Did the kid do nothing from sunup to sundown but ride his mountain bike around town? she wondered. Charlie was seventeen, beginning his senior year of high school, certainly old enough for a little autonomy, but she had to wonder if his home life was so very unpleasant he had to spend all day trying to escape it.

  She ought to tell him to go away. She still felt more than a little guilt at not telling Brodie the truth about who had been helping Taryn that morning at the bead store, and for deflecting the girl’s attention when she would have told her father herself.

  The moment hadn’t seemed right, not when Evie and Brodie seemed to have developed this fragile and rather lovely sort of truce between them.

  “It’s okay,” she answered, and walked back toward the gate that he was leaning against. He could easily have opened the latch and come inside but for some strange reason, perhaps the fine tension she sensed in the boy, she had the feeling he needed that physical barrier to keep anyone from getting too close.

  “Thanks for your help today,” she said. “I think Taryn had a good time. She was showing her bracelet to everyone all afternoon.”

  “Yeah. Well. That’s what I, um, wanted to ask you. I was wondering, um, can you, that is, is there anything I can do to help you with Taryn? I was thinking I’d like to visit again, if you thought that would be okay and everything. I could maybe take her for a walk or...or help her catch up with homework or something. Or we could make another bracelet. That was okay.”

  She narrowed her gaze at something in his tone. “That depends. Why the sudden offer?”

  “I just want to help her. That’s all.”

  “It has nothing to do with your trial coming up?”

  He looked away. “I told my dad about going to the bead store today and he thought it would be a good idea if I tried to help Taryn some more. Show the judge I have, you know, genuine remorse and stuff.”

  “Do you?”

  He didn’t answer for a long moment, just turned his gaze to the dark, craggy silhouette of the mountains looming over them and that glittery spread of stars. When he looked back at her, his eyes were as shadowed as those mountains. “Have you ever wanted to start your life over again?”

  “Yes,” she answered quietly. “I think everybody probably has at some point. But I’ve learned after three decades on this earth that while you can’t start over, you can change direction. It’s not always easy, but it’s possible.”

  “I don’t know about that. I just want to come see Taryn again. Do you think it would be okay?”

  Evie mulled how to answer him. On the one hand, Taryn had responded to Charlie that morning with amazing enthusiasm. In a week of working with her full-time, Evie hadn’t seen the girl light up like that for anything else, not even the crappy MTV reality shows.

  On the other hand, only one word. Brodie.

  He would be furious if he knew she was even considering this. He hated Charlie. Really, how could anyone blame him? Charlie had been drinking and driving recklessly and lives had been changed forever because of it.

  She understood Brodie’s perspective. If someone had caused any injury to her child, she would be ready to climb up into their faces like Smokey Bear’s vicious mama.

  She weighed the decision for a moment longer, then sighed. Bottom line, Brodie trusted her to make the right choices for his daughter. He had given her full authority to oversee Taryn’s care plan while she was directly working with the girl and to organize the treatment for whomever succeeded her. Yes, she had demanded it but he hadn’t been grudging in his agreement.

  She could make the argument that by allowing Charlie to visit, she was only doing what she deemed best for the girl. How could he argue with her if Evie told him she had determined the most effective way for Taryn to achieve her goals was through peer interaction with the very person Brodie blamed for causing her injuries in the first place?

  Anyway, what was the worst he could do? Fire her? She hadn’t wanted the job in the first place and was only doing it as a favor to Katherine. If he threw her out, she would be right back where she wanted to be, working at String Fever and fighting to reclaim her hard-fought peace and serenity.

  The assurance didn’t ring quite as true now as it might have a week ago but she decided she was too tired to dwell on that right now.

  “Let’s make one thing clear.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said warily.

  “If I agree to let you visit Taryn, I’ll insist on one supreme condition. You need to be perfectly clear in your head about this, got it?”

  “That depends.”

  “You need to decide right now what your motives are in doing this. Are you wanting to help Taryn in
order to influence a judge and jury about how remorseful you are, or do you want to help her because in your heart you know it’s the right thing to do and that you owe it to her? Let this be your moment to change direction, Charlie.”

  She expected him to say no. The surly, petulant kid she’d seen around town likely would tell her to go straight to hell.

  Instead, he looked up at the stars again and the dark mountains and this quiet garden that seemed far from the bustling nighttime activity of the town around them, then turned back to her, his face still in shadows. “Yeah. Okay. I guess that’s fair.”

  Her stomach swooped somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. Crap. Now what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t very well tell him she’d changed her mind in the last twenty seconds.

  She would just have to let him come to the house, and she would figure out how to deal with Brodie’s wrath later.

  “All right. How does ten tomorrow morning work?”

  “Okay. What else would I be doing?”

  “Not my problem. We’ll see you at ten, then. Plan on about forty-five minutes the first day and we’ll see where things go.”

  He nodded and started to go, then turned back. “Thanks, Ms. Blanchard.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Taryn’s not exactly easy to work with right now.” She debated adding the harsh truth, and decided Charlie needed to hear it. If Brodie could hear her right now, even he would have to admit her heart wasn’t always soft and bleeding with compassion.

  “You need to prepare yourself, Charlie,” she warned, her voice colder than she intended. “Today at the bead store was a breeze compared to most of our therapy. It’s grueling, painful, frustrating work reteaching someone how to do virtually everything. I haven’t spent one day working with Taryn when she didn’t end up in tears at some point.”

  Angry tears, usually, but she didn’t tell him that, especially since his face was ghost-white in the shifting moonlight.

  “If you go through with this,” she went on, her tone slightly softer, “you need to be ready to confront, up close and personal, exactly what challenges she’s facing now. You won’t be able to hide from it, Charlie. You will know that every frustration, every single exercise she has to do, every painful muscle spasm I have to put her through, is because of you.”

  He looked stricken and she felt a little as if she’d kicked Jacques and Chester and every other innocent dog she’d ever known. Except Charlie wasn’t innocent, she reminded herself. He had made stupid, terrible choices and Brodie was right about one thing, at least. His family was doing him no good trying to protect him from the consequences of those choices.

  “I’ll be ready,” he said, his voice low but resolute, and she had to fight the totally irrational impulse to reach across the gate and hug him. “See you tomorrow.”

  She watched as he climbed back on his mountain bike and pedaled quickly away. At the end of the street, he turned and rode hard up the hill toward the Woodrose Mountain trail and she whispered a little prayer there in the garden for him—and for Maura and Taryn and Brodie and everyone else who had been affected by that fateful night.

  * * *

  “Come on, Taryn. Stop complaining.”

  Evie was frowning. She was disappointed in her, Taryn could tell.

  “You can do this. I know you’re playing games with me. I’ve seen you do this before. I only need you to take five little steps and you can hold on to the bars the whole time. Work with me here.”

  Everything ached. Her legs. Her back. Her head. It took too much work, and for what? She would never be right again. It was easier to stay in the chair, where people didn’t expect her to be normal.

  Once Evie knew she could do it, she would make her walk again and again and she hated walking. She looked like a dork and she had to fight for her balance like a big, stupid baby. “I can’t.”

  “I know you can. It’s only five little steps. If you can bead that bracelet you’re wearing, you can take five measly little steps.”

  “It’s...boring.” That was a lie but she didn’t want to say the truth.

  Evie snorted. “You think it’s boring for you, try being the one nagging at you all the time. It’s not exactly a thrill a minute, sweetheart.”

  She smiled, even though she hurt. She couldn’t help it. She liked Evie. She was pretty and funny. Sad, sometimes, though Taryn didn’t understand why.

  She liked Evie—but that didn’t mean she wanted to work so hard.

  “How about another deal?” Evie asked. “You finish the walking you need to do, then we’ll do your stretches. If you quit complaining about it, we can work on another bracelet if you want or maybe a pair of earrings. I’ve got bead stuff in my car.”

  Taryn saw the mountain through the window and the sunshine. She had missed sunshine in the hospital, so much. “Outside? With Jock?” She never could speak French. Jacques was too hard for her mush-mouth. She would keep trying. She might hate walking but she loved Evie’s darling dog.

  “Sure. It’s a lovely morning. When we’re done, we can sit on the deck and work on your manual dexterity.”

  “I don’t...want to work on m-manu...that.” Some words were still so hard for her dumb mouth. She could think it just fine but when she tried to speak, it was like her mouth froze up, like Stacy Jacobs did last year at cheerleading tryouts. “No work. I only want...to bead.”

  “Too bad for you. You can’t have one without the other. Come on, let’s try one more time.”

  With a sigh, she stood up. Evie wouldn’t stop nagging until she did it, so she should just give in. She managed to move one foot forward, then the other. The third time, Mrs. O. came to the door. Her face looked funny.

  “Ms. Blanchard, we have a problem.”

  What problem? Taryn froze, holding on to the rails, wanting to hear.

  “What’s wrong?” Evie asked.

  “Someone’s at the door and... I’m not sure what to do about it.” Mrs. O.’s round face was pink, her mouth tight as if she had eaten something bad.

  “Oh.” Evie looked weird, too. Kind of nervous. “Er, who is it?”

  “That boy is here. He wants to see Taryn.”

  A boy? She looked in the mirror at her ugly, curly hair, at her workout sweats, at her dumb, twisted legs.

  “What...boy?” she asked.

  Mrs. O. looked more upset. “That boy. The Beaumont boy.”

  Oh. Taryn let out her breath. Just Charlie. No big deal.

  Evie still was nervous and maybe a little guilty. “It’s all right, Mrs. Olafson. I told him he could come to visit.”

  Mrs. O. was quiet for a long time. “Mr. Thorne won’t like this. Not at all.”

  Evie’s cheeks turned kind of pink. “I’m fully aware of that.”

  “It’s not right, after what he’s done, having him here. Not right!”

  Taryn frowned. Why was everyone mad at Charlie? She didn’t understand it at all.

  “It’s tricky, I agree.” Evie sighed. “Look, he met us at the bead store yesterday and Taryn very much enjoyed talking to him. He stopped by my place last night to ask if he could visit again and I couldn’t see the harm in it.”

  “No harm in it? How can you say that?”

  “Charlie is my...friend.” The words were a struggle, especially the F but she kept going until it sounded right. “Please, Mrs. O. Can he come in?”

  The housekeeper frowned even more than Evie. “Mr. Thorne won’t be happy about this. Not happy at all.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it,” Evie told her. “You don’t have to get involved, I promise. I’ll take full responsibility. I’ll be certain to tell him you objected but I insisted and you didn’t have a choice.”

  “It’s not right,” she grumbled, but after a minute she left the room and soon came back with Ch
arlie.

  Taryn had seen yesterday that he was growing his hair a little. She liked it better short and a little in his face.

  “Hey.” His shoulders were slumped as if he was in the school counselor’s office. Maybe he didn’t really want to be here.

  “Hi, Charlie. Thanks for coming.” Evie smiled a little. “We were just working on walking. Taryn, why don’t you show Charlie how far you can go?”

  She gave Evie a secret glare where Charlie couldn’t see. Evie knew she couldn’t piss and moan about it now, in front of him.

  “Not f-fair,” she muttered.

  Evie grinned at her. “I’m a sneaky thing, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” Taryn said but she laughed, too. She felt better with Charlie here. He was her friend and he’d come to see her and she suddenly didn’t mind that Evie made her work so hard.

  “Come on over, Charlie,” Evie said. “You can stand on her other side and hold her arm. You’ll have to catch her if she decides not to work anymore.”

  “I won’t,” Taryn said.

  Evie grinned. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  She didn’t want to look stupid with Charlie here. When he grabbed her elbow, she took a deep breath and thought as hard as she could to make her leg move right. Yay! It did. She moved the other one. Double yay! She went seven steps, more than she ever had. At the end of the room she stopped, tired.

  “Now back,” Evie said.

  She glared at Evie, who just smiled at her.

  “This is awesome,” Charlie said. “I had no idea you could walk so far. Way to go, T!”

  What else could she do but turn around and walk back the other way? By the time she had walked back to her wheelchair, she knew she was sweaty and gross. Charlie wouldn’t care. He was her friend and he didn’t like her that way. He had liked Layla. But Layla was dead now. Taryn tried not to think about that, since it made her knees shake.

  “Here’s your chair. Take a breather for a minute and we’ll try one more time, maybe not as far next time.”

  She was such a wuss now. So tired all the time. She was glad for the chair and sagged into it. “Can I...have a drink?”