He looked as if she’d just hit him with a bucket of ice water. He glanced down at the ground, his voice hoarse when he finally said, “When something that bad happens to someone that good, it’s not easy to accept.”
Olivia’s heart hurt with the words, for the woman whose life had ended too soon, for the husband and daughter she had left behind, and selfish though it was, for the love he had obviously felt for her.
The air between them had changed for the moment, like a sudden break in a brewing storm.
“I don’t think we ever realize our humanity more than when we can’t fix the bad things that happen to people we love,” she said softly.
“It’s a hard lesson,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking at the gravel beneath his boot. “Figuring out that for the most part, we really aren’t in control of anything. At least not the big stuff.”
“You really believe that?”
He looked up and met her gaze head on. “Yeah, I really do.”
“You didn’t used to look at life that way.”
He laughed, a short, disillusion-filled laugh. “Yeah, well, I guess that’s what growing up and becoming an adult really means.”
“Is that what you’ll teach your daughter?”
Surprise widened his eyes. He started to say something, stopped, then gave her a long, steady look. “I wouldn’t do that to her childhood.”
Olivia folded her arms across her chest. She found it impossible to reconcile the John from her youth with this John. The John she had known at seventeen had been the first person ever to tell her she could do anything she wanted with her life. And to her that had been meaningful. The world is open to you, Liv. You have everything it takes to be anything you want. It’s all inside you. All you have to do is let it out. She heard the words clearly now, remembered one night when they’d been out to a movie Olivia had loved, and she’d confessed to him her secret desire to write. When she was a girl, she’d kept journals, filling the pages with made-up stories and fragments of her own life as well. She’d been thirteen years old when her father had found a story she’d written about some kittens she’d discovered under an old house near where they lived. He’d had the pages in his hand one afternoon when she’d come home from school, and for one buoyant moment, she’d been sure he was going to tell her how much he liked it. Instead, he’d flung the pages across the floor and told her she’d never make straight As in school if she spent all her time going on about sentimental junk like that.
Olivia had stopped writing her short stories.
And so, the night John had told her she could be anything she wanted to be, she’d wanted to believe him. That was the John she’d missed so terribly over the years. But the man standing in front of her now bore little resemblance to that boy.
“So why exactly did you come back here?” John leveled at her now, his face again an unreadable mask. “I can’t imagine there would be anything in Summerville of interest to you.”
“This used to be my home, too.”
“You didn’t seem to have any trouble forgetting that,” he said.
The storm was back.
It was stunning to discover how quickly her self-proclaimed indifference could collapse beneath the sting of his words. “Things aren’t always exactly what they seem, John.”
He took a step back. She’d surprised him. That much was clear.
Olivia clamped her mouth shut. Enough. Standing there in the middle of the Dickson’s Feed parking lot, where memories of John were piled high like cast-aside hand-me-downs, anger seeped up inside her.
John thought he had the corner on the right to be furious over something she had done to him. The irony of that was almost more than she could hold inside another second longer. She had done to him. She was the one who’d had all choice taken away from her. Who’d been swept along on the consequences of someone else’s behavior. She was the one still paying for those consequences today.
He thought she had run off to make a better life for herself and despised her for that. How would he feel if he knew the actual truth?
She’d come here wanting to put the past to rest. But standing in front of him now, she could not bring herself to say the words. To explain. To ask for forgiveness. The truth could only result in one thing. John would only end up blaming her as much as she blamed herself.
JOHN KEPT TO the speed limit on the drive back to Rolling Hills. For one crazy instant back there, he’d wanted to go after Liv and ask her what she’d meant by that remark. Things aren’t always exactly what they seem.
As far as the two of them were concerned, things seemed pretty clear to him.
She was sorry about Laura. He’d hardly known what to say to that or how to respond. How could he talk to her about Laura? This woman he hadn’t seen in fifteen years had been the one shadow in his marriage. Liv was the woman he had never forgotten, never gotten over, never stopped dreaming about at night when his unconscious mind took over and left him unable to shrug off the wants of his own heart. How could he talk to Liv about Laura when there were still moments he felt as if he might choke on the guilt of that?
But for a few moments, when Liv had looked at him with sympathy in her eyes, he’d felt a connection between them, a bond of empathy and a once-complete knowledge of who the other one was, what they were made of. No matter how much he might like his assessments of Liv Ashford to be true—a woman who’d decided there were bigger things in the world for her than him—he’d seen a glimpse of the Liv he had known fifteen years ago.
And it shook him to his center.
Since the moment he’d discovered she was back in Summerville, the anger inside him had been on autopilot, taking him where it would. He didn’t like what he was seeing in himself. Or what his anger said to the world about his respect for the woman who had loved him the way most men would be grateful to have been loved.
Laura deserved so much better than that.
The truth was she had deserved a hell of a lot better than him.
And a hell of a lot better than the illness that had taken the life from her.
With the thought, grief and guilt struck up inside him, like the sudden clanging of brass instruments, the sound in his head a stark contrast to the peaceful silence around him.
He’d failed his wife in many ways. But the failure that loomed largest was his inability to love her as a wife deserved to be loved by her husband. Because the truth was with Liv he’d found the other side of himself. Knew that she was meant for him. With Liv there had been a click, a fit, a deep satisfaction of knowing they’d been made for one another—he’d believed that with all his heart, with an almost arrogant certainty that they would spend the rest of their lives together.
But then Liv had left, and he’d felt as if someone had let the air out of his life, leaving him flat, empty, torn up with the kind of hurt a person didn’t get over.
And he hadn’t gotten over it.
This was the part he’d never admitted to himself until now. After she’d left, he’d gone on with his life as a man must who has accepted the end of a relationship that turned out not to be what he’d thought it was. But the truth was he’d closed down a part of himself after that, simply locked it up, hung a big Access Denied sign out front.
And he’d never let Laura in, never loved her with the freedom that can only come from an unscarred heart.
This, he regretted.
This, he would change if he could. But it wasn’t in his power to change the past. The only thing he could affect was the here and now. Being angry at Liv said things he did not want said. A man with indifference in his heart didn’t act the way he’d been acting.
At the barn, John backed the truck up to the feed-room door, got out and started unloading the bags of grain. He’d just reached for the last bag, hefted it onto his shoulder when Sophia walked up.
“Hot work,” she said, handing him a glass of lemonade. “Thought you could use this.”
John took the gla
ss, wiped his cheek on the shoulder of his shirt and said, “Thanks. It’s a little warm out here.”
Sophia hesitated, shuffled from one foot to the other, then reached in her apron pocket and pulled out a plain white envelope. She held it out to him. “I have no idea if now’s the time for this or not, John. It feels like it might be, so I hope I’m right.”
He reached for the envelope, glanced at the front and recognized Laura’s handwriting. Alarm jolted through him. “What is it?”
“I haven’t read it,” she said, her expression serious in a way he rarely saw it. “Before she died, she asked me to give it to you when I thought you might be ready to make another life for yourself. I don’t know if you are or not, son. But it’s time you did.” She thwacked him on the shoulder, the gesture awkward, affectionate, and he could see tears in her eyes now. “I’ll be in the house if you need me.”
She left him standing there then, the envelope pressed between his thumb and forefinger like some foreign object he wasn’t even sure how to hold, much less what to do with.
A red bird flitted by, landed on a nearby white azalea, sang a note or two, then flew off again. John stood frozen to the spot. The screen door at the back of the house wheezed open, then flapped closed, the sound reverberating through him.
He looked down at the envelope. Part of him wanted to know what was inside, but another part did not.
He stuck it in his pocket, went in the barn and got Eli out of his stall. He snapped a single-tie to the halter of the two-year-old gelding, squirted him with some fly spray, then saddled him up and led him out of the barn. Despite the warm weather, the young horse was full of himself, doing his best to jig all the way out the gravel road leading away from the barn.
They passed a field lush with orchard grass. Eli balked a little, wanting to stop and graze. John urged him on, and they soon left the tempting field behind, following an old dirt road that led to the hills on the backside of the farm. By the time they reached the top, Eli was sweating, and John’s shirt was sticking to his back. He got off, led the horse to the creek and let him have a short drink.
The temperature was just slightly cooler up here, the soft stirring of air a welcome relief from the June sun that had beat down on them most of the way up. An oak tree threw shade across the spot. John sat down on the trunk of a maple that had fallen last winter during an ice storm. He looped the reins on the jut of a broken limb and let the gelding nibble at the grass growing along the edge of the creek bank.
It was cool and peaceful here, this place John had come to often in his life, maybe his favorite on the farm. He wasn’t sure he ever came consciously, but he always seemed to wind up here whenever he had something going on inside him that needed consideration. When he was younger, it was here where he’d always seemed able to put a label on things, figure out how to fix them. As an adult, that hadn’t always proven true. Not with Liv. And not with Laura.
He pulled the envelope out of his pocket and stared at it a full minute before turning it over and slitting the top open. He slipped the paper out, unfolded it with a good amount of trepidation and began to read.
John,
I hope this letter finds you at a very different place from where you’ve been these last few months. I know this isn’t where any of us thought life would take us. At least not so soon. And I’m sorry for it, for you, me, Flora, all of us. But this is what is. And I have faced it, made peace with it.
Thank you for being here for me, for taking care of me, for loving me. I know that you have. I don’t think we’ve loved each other in exactly the same ways, but it’s all right. It’s been more than enough, John. I want you to know that.
There are so many things I wish I had the courage to say to you face to face. But I’m selfish, I guess, and although I want to clear my conscience of what I am about to tell you, I can’t face the possibility that you might hate me for it.
A month or so after we were married and moved back to the farm, a girl came to see you. You and your father were away that weekend, and I answered the door. She asked for you. I told her you weren’t here, but that I was your wife and could I help her? She was shocked by what I’d said. She had walked to the house, and I regret that I didn’t at the least offer her a ride somewhere. I’d like to think I was under the influence of jealousy and fear of losing you. But even that doesn’t excuse what I did.
I just didn’t want her ever to come back. I wanted our life to go on as it was, commuting back and forth to school, living at Rolling Hills. I loved our life so much. I might not have known everything, but I knew that before we met, someone had hurt you terribly, and as soon as I saw her, I knew she was the one. It wasn’t until much later, after I found those letters, that I realized exactly what you two had meant to one another.
I wish now that I had told you, given you the chance to make a choice. But in all honesty, I’m not sure I would do anything differently. Because to do so might have meant losing you and never having Flora. And I don’t think I could ever be that selfless.
John, it’s only natural that you will grieve when I am gone. We had a lot of years together, and though I was never the woman of your heart, I know you loved me in your own way. I will ask Sophia to give you this when she thinks you are ready to read it. I want to set you free now if I can. You have been a wonderful husband and an incredible father. And I know that Flora will grow up to be something special because of you. Remember me as someone who loved you, but go on now, John. Live the rest of your life. Make it rich and full, without regrets. And know that I loved you, our daughter and our life together.
Laura
His hand let go of the letter. It fell to his side.
His wife’s voice echoed from the pages, and the first thing he felt was a well of sadness so deep it couldn’t possibly have a bottom. Laura. Lord, life was unfair. Whatever had brought them together, kept them together, the world was less without her in it.
His heart throbbed. He didn’t fight it, didn’t try to push it away, but instead let the pain play out, absorbing at the same time, the realization that Liv had come back all those years ago.
Laura had been afraid to tell him.
Liv had come back.
Why?
And how could Laura not have told him? He let that question take root and waited to see if anger would rise up. How could he blame Laura for what she had done?
The truth was, he couldn’t.
They had married fast. Some had said too fast. And when they’d met during those first months at the University of Virginia, he had been in such a fog that he wasn’t sure what his exact reasons for asking her to marry him were. He just knew they’d had something to do with trying to find a way to pull the plug on the awful hurt that had not subsided in him since Liv had left Summerville. He had never intended to hurt Laura. He knew that much. He’d been too young and too green to see far enough ahead to realize all the ramifications of an impulsiveness that had been based on his own selfish desire to forget Liv.
But even now, from a perspective shaped by fifteen years of separate lives and a good woman who had loved him, he couldn’t say that he would not have changed his life had he been here the day she had knocked on his door.
He picked up the letter, looked at the familiar handwriting again.
God help him, he should be able to, but he couldn’t say it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Comparisons
OLIVIA TOOK HER TIME driving out to Lori’s, leaving the town limits and heading out into the county, stretches of rain-blessed cornfields blending into hay fields ready for the next cutting. On the left just ahead was a country store with white clapboard and a red tin roof and two gray-haired men on a bench out front quenching their thirst with small-bottle Cokes.
Wired with a thousand different feelings, Olivia wasn’t sure which to tackle first. Her cheeks still burned from the scene with John at the feed store. He can only hurt you if you let him, Olivia.
Two more days and she w
ould be gone. They would never see each other again. She lifted her right hand from the wheel. It was still shaking.
One thing was clear. John could barely stand the sight of her.
She blinked, trying to focus on the Virginia countryside rolling by. She knew this road well. The old house where she’d grown up sat off this road, the turn just ahead on the right. She glanced in her rearview mirror. No cars behind her. She let up on the accelerator, her heart doubling its rhythm. The gravel road was still there, although vines and bushes had narrowed it to little more than a car’s width.
Should she go look? See if the old house was still standing?
But then what was the point? There was nothing there but memories whose edges had at least been dulled, if not obliterated, with time and distance.
What good would come from seeing the old house again?
Olivia pressed the accelerator to the floor, leaving the driveway behind and letting the BMW flirt with the upper end of the speed limit.
Her phone rang. Caller ID showed Michael’s cell number.
“Hey. Just wondering if you were having a good time.”
“Yes,” she said, not elaborating. “In fact, are you sure you want to come all the way down here? Not obligatory.”
“You went with me to that bore-you-to-tears black-tie thing a few weeks ago. I owe you.”
“Where are you?”
“Actually, I’m still in the city. We’ve got a big meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning. Last-minute. Appearance mandatory. Would it be a very big deal if I didn’t come until the afternoon?”
“No,” she said. “You really don’t have to come at all, Michael. Being dateless won’t kill me.”
“There are two places where showing up without a date is like twin root canals: Weddings and reunions,” he said, a smile in his voice.
She let it go then and refused to ask herself if letting Michael off the hook had anything to do with John. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Just ahead, a small green sign—Gibson Road—marked the turn to Lori’s house. Olivia followed the tree-lined road a half-mile or so, and there at the end was an all-American setting—a house very much like the house Lori had grown up in and exactly what she’d always said she wanted. It was old, maybe turn-of-the-century, a white two-story with large windows and dark green shutters. It had recently been repainted. The front porch held two hanging swings, both of which were currently occupied by four children, three with dark hair like Sam’s, one with red like Lori’s. Each of them could have been in an advertisement for Gap Kids. They were every bit as beautiful as Lori had described them.
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