John Riley's Girl

by Cooper, Inglath

  “Somebody ought to be able to do something,” Hank said.

  The cell phone in John’s pocket rang. “You go on up, honey. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Okay, Daddy.” She sprinted off across the yard, disappearing through the back door even as he reached for the phone, punched a button and said, “Hello.”

  “Hey. Hear you’re havin’ a reunion out there.”

  John looked down at the grass, gave a renegade dandelion a booted swat. “Hey, Cleeve. Wish I could deny it.”

  “What’d I tell you about being the nice guy?”

  “I’m not feeling too nice these days.”

  “Well, this oughta at least qualify you for sainthood or somethin’ darn close.”

  “Somethin’.” John smiled, Cleeve’s intention, he was sure. Getting John to smile had been one of Cleeve’s goals for the better part of the past two years. It wasn’t often he succeeded, but Cleeve was a firm believer in humor’s ability to heal most of life’s gashes. “When’d you get back?”

  “Just last night. Late. If they weren’t willing to pay so dang much for a good bale of horse hay down there, I’d find somewhere other than Florida to sell it. Takes me a few days to catch up on my beauty sleep.”

  “Not that you’re vain or anything.” Cleeve Harper ran a dairy on the other side of the county. He was the closest thing John had to a best friend, if men admitted to such things. They’d known each other since the first day of first grade, had both been into horses and cattle when other boys they’d grown up with had been playing with construction sets and footballs.

  “You gotta admit it’ll be interesting to see how all those girls turned out tonight.”

  John tipped the bill of his baseball cap back, rubbed the spot in the center of his forehead where a dull ache had begun. “There’s that, I guess.”

  Cleeve chuckled. “So you think she’ll—”

  The cell phone squawked, then blanked out for a second.

  “I didn’t catch that,” John said when it cleared up again.

  “I said, do you think she’ll come?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  Just the words sent a warning signal off inside John. All his vital organs seemed to have locked up, and breathing suddenly required a conscious effort. “Why’re you askin’?”

  “I actually got a chance to watch her on that news show while I was waiting on somebody yesterday morning. She’s pretty damn good. And good day, she turned out to be a beautiful woman.”

  “Yeah?” John tried for indifference. The few times he had accidentally caught a glimpse of her on TV, he had seen very little in Olivia Ashford, cable news anchor, to remind him of the girl he had known. But then he’d wondered if that girl had ever existed outside his imagination, anyway.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure she’s too busy with the glamorous life to come to a high-school reunion.”

  “No doubt.” John aimed the subject in another direction altogether. “Macy comin’ with you tomorrow night?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, John. Half the time I don’t know whether she’s even coming home at night.”

  “You in the mood for a lecture?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, let me know when you are.” Cleeve had a knack for picking women who needed fixing, the majority of whom seemed to always end up on the other side of just-beyond-repair.

  “Those calves are ready for you to pick up.” Cleeve said, his turn to change the subject.

  “I’ll probably get over there this weekend. Maybe on Saturday.”

  “All right then. See ya tonight.”

  “Yeah, see ya.” John snapped the phone shut, shoved it in his pocket and refused to stew over Cleeve’s wife and the rumors that kept crossing his path when they were the last thing he wanted to hear. Besides, he couldn’t get away with crediting the burning in his stomach to the woman he personally thought was making his best friend miserable. No, that went to another woman. To his left, the breeze caught the flag on top of one of the big white tents and flapped it back and forth, while his thoughts went swerving to the part of the conversation that had shaken him up inside like a runaway roller coaster.

  In truth, it had never even occurred to him that Olivia Ashford might come this weekend. Had he thought it the remotest of possibilities, he would never have agreed to have the reunion here, much less be anywhere within the vicinity himself.

  But there’d been no reason even to entertain the notion. She had left Summerville without so much as a backward glance just a few weeks after graduation, and in all the years since, he tried not to think about her. Ever.

  There were just some things in life better left alone. For him, this was one.

  “Daddy!” Flora hung halfway out the screen door at the back of the house, waving at him. “Aunt Sophia says the cookies are getting cold!”

  The impatient summons from his seven-year-old daughter reminded John that he was standing in the middle of his front yard, dwelling on a past that had nothing to do with the present—a past that no longer mattered. He waved at Flora. “Be right there!” he said, and headed across the yard. Olivia Ashford wasn’t even real to him, anymore. She was just a memory.

  Nothing more than a memory.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Starting Points

  CLEEVE HARPER DROPPED his cell phone into the front zipper pocket of his overalls, leaving the antennae sticking out one side. The reception here on the farm was hit or miss at best, and he’d taken to driving around in the air-conditioned interior of his tractor with his phone pointed toward the heavens like the new-millennium farmer he was, as if to miss one call would send his crops into a tailspin.

  Summerville’s very own GQ farmer. That was what John called him. He’d even taken a picture of Cleeve one afternoon planting corn and sent it in to the County Times. Cleeve still owed him for that one, matter of fact.

  He and John had always been that way with one another, ever in search of the next one-up. They were like brothers, looking out for each other as brothers would. It was this, and only this, behind John’s thinly disguised disapproval of Cleeve’s two-year marriage to Macy. Not a doubt in Cleeve’s mind as to the truth of that, and still, it stung in the way of something a man knows to be true but just isn’t ready to face up to yet.

  Of course, John had his own off-limit subjects. And Olivia Ashford was one of them. What had possessed Cleeve to needle him about her this afternoon, he didn’t know. Maybe it was just seeing her on TV and thinking it was a shame they had gone their separate ways all those years ago. If any two people had ever belonged together, he’d have said it was the two of them.

  But then with his track record, he wasn’t likely to be asked to talk to Oprah’s audience on the subject of relationships.

  Cleeve trudged up the brick walkway that wound through the backyard to his house, kicking red mud from his boots as he went. A short hallway led to the kitchen where Macy sat at the kitchen table, checkbook and calculator in front of her, a weekend-size suitcase on the floor beside her.

  Not this again.

  She looked up, the neutral expression she’d been wearing changing in an instant to one of displeasure. “Cleeve. How many times do I have to tell you to take your boots off before you come in this house? You’re getting that awful red clay all over everything. And you know how impossible it is to get out.”

  Cleeve looked down at his boots, the sides refusing to let go of a clump or two of dirt. For the first year of their marriage, he’d done what she asked, taking the dang things on and off so many times during the course of a day that he’d practically gotten dizzy from it. Macy liked a clean house. Not exactly something he could fault her for, but what he had initially taken as a wife’s admirable desire to keep an orderly home, he now realized was more about controlling his every move than anything else.

  “Where you headed, Macy?”

  “To visit Eileen.”

  “But I asked y
ou to go to my class reunion with me.”

  “Cleeve.” Her drawn out use of his name implied that he’d just managed to make the world’s dumbest assumption. “I haven’t seen my sister in weeks. And besides, those are all people you went to school with. What in the world would I have in common with them?”

  “You married me?”

  She sent him a look from under her lashes that underlined her previous implication. “Would you want to spend an entire weekend at one of my reunions?”

  “If you wanted me to be there, yes.” Cleeve folded his arms across his chest and studied her. Sometimes he wondered if he had any idea who she was. This was his third marriage, ashamed as he was of that fact, and he’d been hell-bent and determined this one was going to work. He’d met Macy at church at one of those group-counseling sessions for divorced people trying to figure out how not to get themselves in the same predicament again. They’d only dated a few months, but he’d been sure she was the one. Macy was completely different from any other woman he’d ever been involved with. Serious. Responsible. Only recently had he begun to wonder if he’d been mistaken. Pious and domineering might be better descriptions.

  He sighed, pulled a glass from the cupboard by the sink and filled it with water from the tap, taking a few substantial swigs as if he could somehow douse the anger simmering inside him.

  “Can’t you use one of those paper cups I leave on the counter for you?” Macy asked, her voice heavy with the burden of his sin. “I just finished doing up all the dishes, and now there’s another glass to wash before I go.”

  Cleeve swung around, his gaze clashing with the disapproving one of his wife. He was going to his high-school reunion tonight. A milestone of sorts. Fifteen years ago, he would never have believed he’d end up here. If someone had given him a crystal ball and let him take a look at what lay ahead he’d have denied the possibility of this being his life. I’d never be that stupid, he would have said.

  He would have been wrong.

  “Have a good weekend, Macy,” he said, plopping the glass on the counter, then stomping down the hall and out the back door, glad of the trail of red dirt he’d left behind.

  RACINE DELANEY was looking for a special dress. A wow-’em dress. A dress that said, “Bet you didn’t know I could look like this.”

  She just hoped there was one in Joanne’s Fine Things—Summerville’s only specialty boutique—that she could afford.

  She pulled a sleeveless periwinkle-blue filmy thing from the rack and held it up for a better look, a hand at shoulder and hem. Not bad. Not stunning, either. But then with a chest as flat as hers, and a face that was no longer wrinkle-free, who was ever going to call her stunning, anyway?

  It was exactly the kind of dress she’d hoped to find, not too sexy, but alluring in a simple way.

  What the heck did she know about such things? A girl who’d lived most of her adult life in a mobile home with her very own conditioned response to tremble as soon as her husband’s car pulled into the driveway. No more, though. That was over. The end. And she was determined to find some happiness for herself. Maybe she’d meet someone this weekend. Someone nice. Someone interested in living life like it was a picnic instead of a war zone.

  A diesel truck rumbled down the street outside the shop. She glanced out the window and recognized Cleeve Harper’s silver Ford pickup, the twang of some top-forty country tune loud enough to damage ear drums. She wondered what he was trying to drown out.

  “Hello, Racine. Could I help you with something?”

  Racine looked away from the window. Joanne Norman hovered nearby. Her voice dripped honey, which seemed appropriate since her short, round frame resembled that of a bumblebee in the black-and-yellow-striped skirt and sweater she wore. Racine had never felt comfortable in this store, aware that Joanne’s eyes always seemed to question whether or not she could really pay for whatever it was she’d picked out.

  “I, ah, thought I might try this on.”

  “It’s lovely,” Joanne said. “Although not the most practical buy in the shop at that price.”

  “I’m not really looking for practical,” Racine said, even as she heard the curiosity in the other woman’s voice. No doubt Joanne was wondering what a woman who worked in the post office sorting mail would be doing with a dress like that.

  Joanne pulled a pink cotton skirt and blouse off the rack in front of her. Sweet. Sunday-schoolish. “This is really cute.”

  It was cute. Much more like something she might have ordinarily picked out. She wavered a moment, sending a doubtful glance over the periwinkle blue. Maybe she was being silly to think she could pull off a dress like that. But she didn’t want cute today.

  “I’ll think about it, Joanne,” she said, taking the pink outfit and draping it across the chair beside her.

  “You do that. And let me know if I can help with anything else,” she said, heading for the register where a short, white-haired lady was waiting to pay for a scarf.

  She glanced toward the window again. Cleeve had stopped at the gas station across the street. He was talking to Leroy Jones, who’d been running the gas station as far back as her memory went. Cleeve’s back was to her, and she noticed he had nice wide shoulders. He had changed little, if any, since their high-school days. On the outside, anyway. Why was it that guys like Cleeve always ended up with women like Macy?

  But then if anybody understood putting up with the faults of a spouse, Racine did. There was always tomorrow, and it was sometimes easier to convince yourself it would get better by then than it was to walk away.

  A long time ago, Racine had been more than a little smitten with Cleeve and had almost gotten up the nerve to flirt with him the summer before their senior year at a picnic out at Carson Lake. But she’d lost her courage, and looking back on it now, she knew he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. Guys like Cleeve had been way out of her league then. And were now.

  She sent a glance back out the window where he was still talking with Leroy and then held the dress up to the mirror again. Was she really asking for anything so extraordinary? Just a good man who maybe saw something a little bit special in her? She’d once had some pretty lofty dreams. But her wants in life had gotten a lot simpler. And if she’d learned one thing in all those years since they’d left high school, it was that there was no point in wasting time wanting things you could never have.

  THE SIGN WAS the same. Rolling Hills Farm. The Rileys. Since 1918. Hand-carved on dark cherry wood and mounted on one of two matching brick columns that marked the entrance to one of the prettiest pieces of land Olivia had ever seen. It hadn’t changed. The name fit the farm. Two hundred acres or so of virtually flat pastures surrounded by a background of rolling hillsides that amounted to a sum total of a little over a thousand acres, if she remembered correctly.

  She had arrived in Summerville late that afternoon after the four-hour drive from D.C., then checked into Lavender House, the bed-and-breakfast where she was staying for the weekend. Michael was driving down Saturday morning. She’d tried to talk him out of it since he had a couple of work commitments that prevented him from coming before then.

  “You cannot go to a fifteen-year reunion without a date!” he had insisted. “Not done. Unacceptable.”

  She’d given in, finally. Now, she wished he’d come with her today. The message from Lori waiting at the front desk had nearly made her repack her car and head back up the interstate.

  Of all places, why did the thing have to be moved to John’s farm? Of all places!

  She’d tried calling Lori several times, only to get her answering machine. Not surprising. As the main organizer of the reunion, she’d no doubt left hours before.

  Olivia had succumbed to a long shower and set about calming the flock of internal butterflies making her nearly lightheaded. There was a single question reverberating in her head: How could she possibly go out to Rolling Hills?

  His wife would be there. And children. What about children?
/>   Of course, he would have children. Maybe even teenagers.

  Heavens, they were old enough for that.

  The possibility peeled back a few layers of indifference beneath which lay a reserve of pain left untapped for years on end. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought of it. But somehow, here, with the imminent possibility of seeing them—at his home—the prospect cut deep.

  But then she’d come here looking for closure, hadn’t she? Here was her chance. Had she really thought anything about it would be easy?

  She was certain John hadn’t given her a second’s extra thought, but had gone on with his life, living it the way people do.

  On that note, she had gotten dressed and left the bed-and-breakfast before she could change her mind, pointing her car down roads she remembered as if she’d driven them yesterday. Rationalizing the entire way that John probably hadn’t even aged well, had gained forty pounds, or lost hair. In all reality, she wouldn’t even recognize him.

  Outside of storybooks, wasn’t that the way real life usually worked?

  Olivia parked her car near the farm’s entrance sign, got out, quickly hit the remote security alarm out of habit, and set off up the asphalt road. No backing out now. She had never imagined walking up this driveway again. The years rolled back now like the curtain at a Saturday afternoon matinee, and she saw herself getting off a Greyhound bus on a cold January afternoon, her too-thin wool coat inadequate protection against the wind cutting into her skin. She’d walked the four miles from the bus station out to Rolling Hills, her heart sticking in her throat every time she heard a car coming, terrified one of them might be her father.

  The impetus propelling her down that long road to John’s house had been some comic-Cinderella notion that he could fix what was broken inside her. But any hope of that had collapsed beneath the reality of John’s front door being answered by someone with smooth, beautiful skin, dark liquid hair. Someone who called herself John’s wife. “He and his father have gone to a horse show this weekend up in Culpepper,” she’d said, the words clear to Olivia’s disbelieving ears. “Is there anything I can help you with?”