True to You

by Becky Wade

  So, almost the same thing.

  Nora typically stationed Blake at the village’s outdoor fireplace, dressed in homespun clothes and a blacksmith’s leather apron. Nikki and Amy roved across the property, chatting with visitors. Sometimes they gave tours. Sometimes they answered questions about Washington’s history while churning butter, gardening, sewing, or cooking.

  She spotted Nikki working in the vegetable garden next to Crownover House and moved in that direction, Randall walking alongside her.

  Randall was already dressed in his red-and-white basketball uniform for the game she’d be driving him to in an hour. His basketball shoes had seen better days. Even so, he carried them around in a backpack that also contained a small towel, wristbands, and a sports bottle of water stuck in the outside pocket. He’d patiently explained to Nora that his basketball shoes were for basketball only. He’d ruin them if he wore them on other surfaces. So he wore his regular sneakers to the games, then, like Mr. Rogers, sat down and changed his shoes.

  Nora had never been good at any sport, and she’d certainly never cared whether she won or lost the games she’d been forced to play in gym class. She’d classified herself as a noncompetitive, sportsmanlike person. Thus, it had come as a surprise to sit in the bleachers at Randall’s games and find it necessary to battle the urge to chew her fingernails, scream in indignation at the refs, and boo the opposing players. She permitted herself the occasional burst of applause or polite “Woo-hoo.” Keeping it at that required Herculean self-control.

  Since they had time to kill before the game, she and Randall were on their way to help the historical interpreters set up the children’s craft scheduled for this afternoon.

  Nora had spent the morning doing laundry, buying groceries, making insightful comments on her favorite book blogs, updating her Goodreads status, and promoting the events on Duncan’s upcoming American tour to publicize his independent film. Even after all that, she’d had an overabundance of time, so she’d made a Bundt cake recipe that had been passed down through her family since 1896.

  Every single thing she’d spent the morning doing had been tinged with a tang of desperation because she was working very, very hard not to think about John.

  Two kids were hanging over the white picket fence that framed the side garden at Crownover House, watching Nikki hoe weeds. An older man, probably the boys’ grandpa, stood behind them, eyes glazed at the sight Nikki presented.

  “So here I am hoeing. Here in my vegetable garden. Here at this house I own,” Nikki was saying.

  Nora had given Nikki, Amy, and Blake the title of interpreter for a reason. They weren’t reenactors. They were simply charged with the task of introducing details of pioneer life to the people who came through. For her own entertainment, though, Nikki sometimes liked to take a little holiday to nineteenth-century Washington in her imagination.

  “It sure is hard to be me.” Nikki sliced at the weeds with her hoe. “My chores are pretty much endless. I’m the gardener, dishwasher, cook, maid, mother to my ten children, seamstress, keeper of the chicken coop, and butcher, which is . . . disgusting, if I do say so myself. I’m not the kind of woman who’s okay with grabbing a chicken by the neck and spinning it around in the air.” She raised her face, a look of tragic determination on it, Scarlett O’Hara style.

  Randall giggled. He was a fan of Nikki’s.

  Nikki’s beleaguered gingham dress strained to confine her hips and bosom. She’d accessorized the dress with a straw hat, pink Swatch watch, long fake French-manicured fingernails, cubic zirconia earrings, and the Fitbit she’d recently purchased to help motivate her to lose weight. Her silver eye shadow and burgundy lip gloss appeared to have been applied with a trowel.

  “Sometimes I wish I could jump into the future.” Nikki wiped her brow dramatically.

  “You’re here!” one of the boys called. “You’re here, in the future!”

  Nikki started. “I am?”

  “You don’t need to work in a garden to grow your food,” the other boy said. “We have grocery stores.”

  “What!” Nikki exclaimed.

  “And we have microwaves! And nobody has to grab chickens by their necks and spin them around.”

  “Well, in that case”—Nikki set her hoe against the side of the house—“I think I’m done gardening for the day.”

  “And we have computers!”

  “And Wii!”

  “Can I have your number?” their grandfather asked.

  Nikki released a throaty laugh. “Sir, I’ve just arrived here in the future.” There was no shyness in Nikki Clarkson. She spoke directly to the gentleman with humor and a fair amount of purring fondness for his gender. “Now that I’ve arrived, I’ll need time to figure out grocery stores and computers before I’ll be ready to give out my number. You are mighty handsome, though, I must say.”

  Nora caught Nikki’s eye and shook her head. No hitting on the tourists.

  The boys looked back and forth between Nikki and their grandpa.

  “If you live near here,” Nikki said to the man, “stop by the Library on the Green next week. We’ll talk.”

  “I’ll be back,” answered the grandpa. Then he and the boys moved off.

  Nikki let herself out of the fence. “Hey, cutie pie,” she said to Randall. “Did you hit anyone up for hot chocolate and marshmallows today?”

  He nodded. “Ms. Bradford.”

  “And? Did she deliver?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s because Ms. Bradford is a pushover.”

  “I object!” Nora said, but Randall was already running ahead to Golding’s Mill. Nora and Nikki followed at a slower pace. “Collecting hearts as usual, I see,” Nora said.

  When in motion, Nikki’s hips undulated more than the Nile River. “If that man has any sense, he’ll drive to the nearest department store and invest in the best cologne money can buy.” A lusty sigh. “I do like a man wearing good cologne. The men I dated before my first marriage all wore Polo and to this day, every time I get a whiff of it, my uterus trembles.”

  “Ah.”

  “If that man comes back to see me and he’s wearing Polo, I’ll marry him.”

  “A bottle of Polo is all it’ll take?” Nora asked.

  “I’d marry your Navy SEAL even without Polo. If given half a chance, I’d sop him up with a biscuit.”

  “With a biscuit?”

  “With a biscuit!”

  “He’s not my Navy SEAL, as I believe I’ve mentioned about one hundred times this past week.”

  “Then I suggest you move heaven and earth to make him yours, Nora. Take it from me, men like the Navy SEAL are as rare as wealthy gamblers.”

  “He’s taken!” And thanks so much, Nikki, for bringing up the one subject I’ve been struggling—a huffing and puffing while I tread water kind of struggle—to avoid.

  They’d reached Golding’s Mill, where an outdoor patio offered shady square footage and a fireplace that climbed charmingly up the exterior wall. She’d shut off the fireplace’s inner opening and created an outside opening instead. Weathered old beams held up the tin patio roof, and stone pavers created the patio’s floor. Custom-ordered tables of native timber built with antique tools completed the space.

  They used the patio often for village events: pioneer cooking demonstrations, evening wine tastings, talks from visiting authors or historians, al fresco dinners prepared by Merryweather’s best chefs the first weekend of September during the Antique Fair.

  Amy and Blake stood at one of the tables, unpacking a box of craft supplies. The kids would be making summer mobiles today out of sticks, yarn, pom-poms, and felt.

  Randall, Nikki, and Nora went to work distributing the supplies among the tables while Amy filled them in on the rigorous demands of her three teenagers’ sports schedules. Amy spent the bulk of her time driving them around. She fueled herself with caffeine and reassurance.

  “Grace has been invited to play on the touring team for club vol
leyball,” Amy said, with the tone of a parent whose child had been invited to walk the gallows.

  Amy had a softening body, a blandly pretty face, and a blond bob she rarely found the wherewithal to style properly. Though Amy was sixteen years older than Nora, Nora had always felt protective toward the perennially uncertain Amy.

  “Do you think I should let her play on the touring team?” Amy asked. “I just . . . I don’t know.”

  “Sure,” Randall and Blake said.

  “Of course you shouldn’t!” Nikki answered. “You’re not Cinderella. And I’m not talking about when she’s fabulous at the end. I’m talking about when she’s being worked to death by undeserving family members at the beginning.”

  “It’s just that, I mean, the touring team is a good opportunity, and Dan thinks—”

  “Take that man to a hotel for the weekend and remind him why he’s enslaved by your charms!” Nikki demanded. “Then tell him what you think about the touring team.”

  “There’s a minor present!” Blake interjected. He placed his hands over Randall’s ears.

  Randall grinned the grin Nora loved, full of gleaming teeth.

  “Randall and I aren’t old enough for this conversation,” Blake told Nikki.

  “You’re eighteen,” Nikki said to Blake.

  “I’m around the same age as Amy’s kids, so it’s grossing me out to hear about moms and dads enslaving each other with their charms.”

  “Grow up, Bram Stoker,” Nikki said with a smile.

  Amy twittered nervously and glanced at The Pie Emporium, no doubt desperate for another hit of coffee.

  Nikki continued to flood Amy with marital and parenting advice, despite the fact that she wasn’t married or a parent.

  Blake ushered Randall nearer to Nora.

  Each time Blake arrived for his shift, he set out blacksmith tools. Bellows, tongs, hammer. Then he hung wrought-iron items available for sale on pegs around the hearth.

  He talked about blacksmithing to everyone who stopped by. He did a great job keeping the fire stoked. And he did a fair business selling iron items. Nora never let him anywhere near red-hot metal, however. Most of Blake’s life experiences to date had been gained from horror movies, horror books, and scary video games.

  She watched him carefully set stacks of colored paper at each spot along the table. His dyed, matte black hair swooshed across his pale oval face as he moved. Was he wearing eyeliner today?

  Sometimes Nora imagined the muscular, testosterone-laden, real-life blacksmiths of the 1870s scowling at her with accusation from their graves.

  “Ms. Bradford?” Blake said. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, since you’re a librarian, I was wondering if you know anything about the business of publishing.”

  “Only a little.”

  “I have an idea for a children’s book.”

  Blake was interested in a pursuit both educational and productive? Thank God. “That’s wonderful, Blake.”

  “I was thinking about doing a graphic novel, you know? But for kids. And it’s going to be about this evil guy named The Beheader, and he’s going to chase after people and behead them. Then this young kid is going to get powers given to him by zombies, and he’s going to confront The Beheader in an epic fight scene.”

  “Mmm.”

  “And everyone will be rooting for the kid and expecting him to win. But then—here’s the genius part—he doesn’t. The Beheader takes the kid’s severed head and uses it to obliterate the zombies.”

  “Sounds cool,” Randall said.

  “I see.” Nora had been a fiction lover all her life. She wasn’t about to discourage Blake’s creativity, even if his book sounded to her like the kind of fare that might scar kids for life.

  “And then The Beheader will have a zombie feast,” Blake said.

  Why, yes, of course, Nora thought.

  And on the heels of that, I love my employees.

  And on the heels of that, I miss John.

  They’d returned from Blakeville a week ago yesterday. Instead of diminishing, her sorrow over him kept multiplying and multiplying.

  She could recall exactly how he’d looked striding through the library in Shelton, smiling over two plates of apple cinnamon cake, slipping on his sunglasses in her car, standing on a balcony with heat in his eyes. She went back over everything she could ever remember him saying. She reread every text and email he’d sent and listened to the two voicemails on her phone.

  Nora straightened, colorful pieces of felt in her hands, and peered across the green toward the table she and John had shared at their first meeting.

  The day after she’d last seen him, she’d compiled the online articles and PDF documents she’d told John she’d email to him. She’d yet to send them, because she knew her email might very well be the final communication between them. She’d been hesitant to send the thing that would screw the lid onto their joint efforts. Plus, she’d been unable to decide whether or not to add an invite to Grandma’s party to her email.

  Every day she’d told herself to make a choice and send the email. What if he was waiting to read those papers before formulating a letter to his birth mother? It wasn’t likely he was waiting. But if he was, he’d be wondering what was taking so long. Nora’s name had never, ever been attached to the adjective inefficient. Just the idea that John might think her inefficient gave her hives.

  She filled her lungs with air, then gradually exhaled. She’d go straight to her office inside the library. Right now. She’d send that email, and in it, she’d invite John and Allie to the party because she was suddenly positive that she could invite him with the right motives. Not steal-someone’s-boyfriend motives. But I’d-like-us-to-share-a-social-circle motives.

  She’d been dumb to think she couldn’t bear to see him with Allie. Of course she could bear it. The awful eight days she’d just endured had brought her to a crystallizing realization.

  She’d much, much prefer to see John from time to time in a friendly way than never see him again in her lifetime.

  Email from Nora to John:

  John,

  I hope this note finds you well! I’m sending over the resources I’d told you about. I’ve attached them below.

  On another topic entirely . . . Do you remember me mentioning my grandmother to you? She’s turning 80 soon, and my sisters and I are planning a birthday party for her. Willow, Britt, and I would love for you and Allie to attend if you’re available. It will be held at Bradfordwood on the evening of Saturday, July 3rd. If you’re free that night, I’ll mail an invitation.

  All the best, Nora

  Nora,

  Thanks for the attachments you sent.

  Unfortunately, Allie and I have other plans on July 3rd and won’t be able to come to the party. I hope your grandmother has a great birthday.

  John

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  Nora’s heart jumped into her throat when she spotted John’s name in her email inbox mid-morning on Monday.

  Since Saturday, when she’d sent her email to John, she’d been praying that God would help John understand the spirit in which her email had been written. She’d also been praying that she’d respond well to John’s response to her party invitation, whether it was a yes or a no.

  It was a no. She stared at the few lines he’d typed.

  It was a no.

  She grabbed her purse, left the library, and drove straight to the Hartnett Chapel. As she drove, disappointment drilled down into the sense of numbness laboring to protect her.

  Lord! I prayed against this. You know I did! You remember, right?

  When she came to a stop in front of the chapel, she drank in the sight as if it were the antidote to disappointment. Which in a strange way, it was.

  She mounted the chapel’s familiar steps. Like always, the knob turned easily beneath her palm and the chapel’s interior welcomed her with a hushed atmosphere a
nd the scent of old wood. She simply stood, letting the comfort of the place sink into her.

  From the time when Merryweather Historical Village had been nothing more than a wish list on a yellow legal pad, Nora had longed for a chapel.

  A year after she’d graduated from college, she’d come across a mention of the Hartnett Chapel while reading a letter written by Lena Sussex, one of Merryweather’s early residents, to her sister. Nora had scoured old records and found the plot of land belonging to the Hartnetts. Further digging had confirmed that the Hartnett family still owned the property.

  She’d called Mr. Hartnett. When he’d informed her that the chapel was still standing, she’d been euphoric. He’d given her directions and assured her that she was more than welcome to have a look.

  She immediately drove out to see the chapel. All these years later, she could still remember the rush of unalloyed joy she experienced when she saw the simple, boxy one-room building. Quite utilitarian, except for the loving embellishments that had been added. Instead of the usual white, the clapboard exterior was painted palest blue. The chapel boasted a peaked front door. The elegant, scrolling woodwork of the overhang above the door bore witness to the skill of the long-gone carpenter who’d fashioned it. The original bell still hung in the chapel’s bell tower. A sturdy, roughhewn wooden cross reached heavenward from the tower’s highest point.

  Nora had been dating Harrison when she’d first come to the chapel. They hadn’t been engaged at that time, but that hadn’t stopped her from concocting a rosy vision of the Hartnett Chapel’s role in her future wedding.

  She’d determined that she’d purchase the chapel and bring it triumphantly to her village. She’d restore it lovingly and tastefully. Since her wedding guests would be too numerous to fit inside its walls—her family was one of the bedrocks of the community, after all—she’d seat the guests outdoors in rows of white chairs. She’d use the chapel’s raised front stoop as the platform for her vows and bedeck the door with a crown of flowers. The bell tower would jut into the blue sky and all the guests would swoon over the beauty of their love and the perfection of the setting.