Larkspur Road

by Jill Gregory

  “That’s what you think?” Winny stared at her incredulously. “So it’s true. No one ever told you what happened. Any of it. All these years, I figured they passed down the stories about the family tramp. The wild, no-good daughter. Winona.” She drew a breath and stared out the window at the hospital, at the half-empty parking lot.

  Mia had the feeling she was seeing something else.

  Not a tidy hospital shaded by willow trees near a park where children played. Not a town where people called out to friends and shop owners knew all of their customers’ names. She was seeing something dark, something ugly. And far away.

  “The night my father ordered me to leave his house, I tried to tell him the truth. What really happened. I tried to tell all of them. But they wouldn’t believe me,” she said heavily. “Not my parents, not my sister—they believed Henry. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.”

  Mia pulled up at the curb in front of the hospital, her throat tight at the bitterness in her aunt’s voice. It was 11:32. But if she didn’t find out right here and now why Winny had been forced from her home, her aunt might never choose to talk about it again.

  “I’ll believe you, Aunt Winny, I promise. Whatever it is.” Reaching out, she placed her hand over her aunt’s thin, veined one with the defiantly bright fingernails. “Tell me what happened.”

  Winny closed her eyes for so long, Mia thought she wasn’t going to reply, but finally she opened them and stared—not at Mia—but into the distance, at something, or someone, Mia couldn’t see.

  “It was two weeks before the wedding,” she whispered. “I was in the kitchen, alone, making a dish to bring to my aunt’s home. She was hosting a small dinner party in honor of Alicia’s engagement. My mother had one of her headaches—she was resting in her room before dressing for the party. My father and Alicia were on an errand. And Henry showed up at the front door early to see my sister.”

  Mia watched as a young woman was wheeled out of the hospital, a newborn baby nestled in a pink blanket in her arms, her husband at her side, carrying a small suitcase and a clutch of release papers and instructions.

  “What happened then?” she pressed quietly.

  “I told Henry Alicia was out, and I tried to close the door.” Winny spoke in a monotone. “But he grabbed it and held it in place. Then he pushed right past me, into the hall, bold as you please, and declared he’d wait for her.”

  From the park a few streets away, the sound of children’s laughter floated like faint music to Mia’s ears, but Winny didn’t seem to hear it. Just as she hadn’t seen the woman and the baby. She seemed to have forgotten that they were parked in front of the hospital, that Doc Grantham was waiting to check her foot. She was back on her family’s farm, trapped in the past, facing a man who’d hurt her.

  “Instead of waiting in the parlor, like I told him, Henry followed me into the kitchen. I ordered him to get out, but he…he wouldn’t go.” Anger shimmered in her eyes. “He pushed me against the wall. Hard. Covered my mouth with his hand. I was scared, fighting him. Struggling to get free, but he just laughed. He told me he still wanted me, that he kept thinking about me. He told me we could still have fun times together, that no one need know. I kicked him—I was trying to get away. But I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I couldn’t get away.”

  Mia felt sick as her aunt drew a deep breath.

  “Suddenly Henry pulled his hand from my mouth. He pinned my hands to my sides and held me against the wall beside the pantry and he kissed me. I tried to twist away but he only held me tighter…and he…he wouldn’t stop….”

  Disgust shook Mia to her core. Even though it had all happened long ago, pain still trembled through her aunt’s voice and glazed her eyes.

  “I tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t let me go. He just laughed at me and started groping me—” Winny broke off with a shudder. “And then Alicia and our father walked through the kitchen door and found us like that. It must’ve looked like we were embracing…kissing.”

  “No. Oh, no.” Mia didn’t even realize she whispered the words aloud. But her aunt seemed not to have heard.

  “Soon as Henry saw them he shoved me away and pretended he was shocked. He told them he’d been waiting for Alicia to return, passing the time with me to be polite. He told them I suddenly threw myself at him, kissed him, and he was caught off guard—” As Mia’s breath froze in her throat, Winny’s mouth twisted. “They believed him. My own family. My own sister. They wouldn’t listen to a word I said. They thought I’d actually do something like that. That I’d hurt my sister.”

  Her voice was dull now. Dulled with an old, rusty pain and the resignation that came with time. “No matter how I tried to deny it, all of it, they wouldn’t listen. My mother came downstairs in her shift and they told her. All of them stared at me with contempt in their eyes. None of them believed me. They took his word over mine.”

  Finally, she lifted her head, met Mia’s stricken gaze. “My father told me I’d been nothing but trouble from the day I was born. Told me I was to get out of his house and never return. My mother looked heartbroken, but she was angry, too. She asked me how I could do this to my sister. And Alicia, she stared at me. I’ll never forget the sadness in her eyes. She said to me in the coldest tone I’d ever heard her use—‘I know him. He’s a good man. And you’re so jealous of my good fortune you’re trying to ruin it. I’ll never forgive you.’”

  A clutch of pain ripped through Mia’s heart. Gram…sweet, kind Gram. She must have felt so betrayed. But it wasn’t her sister who’d betrayed her. And those words had ripped the two of them apart.

  “My father gave me until morning to leave, but I lit out that same night after they all went to my aunt’s.” Winny leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Before I left, I set fire to that quilt out back in the yard. When nothing was left but some fabric threads and a pile of ash, I doused the fire with a bucket of water and walked away. Never looked back.”

  Winny’s sigh seemed to hang in the air between them. “I wanted to hurt them. All of them. Especially Alicia. I wanted her to think her marriage would be cursed. Joyless. I didn’t learn until much later that it was just that. Not to mention short-lived.”

  “But…where did you go? How did you disappear so completely and quickly?” Mia had to know.

  Winny told her how she’d hitched a ride to the train station and used the little money she’d saved up to buy a ticket, heading east. In each town she came to, she found work as a maid or in a diner, staying on until she earned enough money to travel farther. She rode the train all the way to Bismarck, North Dakota, where she met her husband, Harley Pruitt. They’d moved around a lot, never had any children, and Abner was the only person from her past she ever kept in touch with. She didn’t return to Lonesome Way until well after her parents were gone and Harley was killed, struck by lightning in Abilene.

  “After Abner wrote me that his brother Bill was moving to be closer to his daughter in Boise, selling his cabin, and did I want it, I decided why not? It was far enough away from town that I figured there’d be no need to see anyone I didn’t want to see. There was nothing for me in Abilene anymore with Harley gone, so I picked up and moved back.”

  Opening the door of the convertible, Winny eased carefully out onto the pavement. She leaned on her cane. “It’s true, part of me wanted to see my sister again. I don’t know why. But when she came to see me out at the cabin…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t bring myself to open the door. I got angry all over again, and even when she begged me to let her in for just a minute, I wouldn’t. Like when you came out that first time.”

  Shock washed over Mia like a splash of icy water. Gram reached out to Winny? As she tried to absorb this, her aunt said something that made her go still.

  “Alicia said she was sorry.”

  “She…what?”

  “She said I was right about Henry and she was sorry she didn’t listen, didn’t believe me. She’d writte
n me a letter she wanted me to read. But I wouldn’t take it. Wouldn’t even open the door. Didn’t think I could ever forgive her and I told her so. She never came back.”

  Mia stepped out of the Mustang and hurried around the hood. Her mind was racing. “Did she leave the letter, Aunt Winny?”

  “On the porch. But I never opened it.”

  “Why not?” The words burst from her. “Gram apologized. Weren’t you curious to know what was in that letter? Didn’t you want to give her another chance?”

  A heavy sadness seemed to weigh down Winny’s shoulders. “In my mind it was too late. I thought it would only bring back the hurt—and for what? Nothing could be changed at that point. Or fixed. Too many years had gone by.”

  Her dark sable eyes were shiny with tears. “I should’ve opened that door. Should’ve talked to her and read that letter. I wish…I wish I’d forgiven her when I had the chance.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’ll live with that the rest of my days.”

  Suddenly she looked utterly spent. She managed to reach out her free hand and lightly touched Mia’s arm. “Guess I shouldn’t have bent your ear with all that. But I figured close to sixty years is enough time to hold a secret. I haven’t said so many words all at once since I was a child who didn’t know any better. If you want to leave before I come out, I’ll understand.”

  Mia gazed into that proud, stubborn face. Winny was fighting it with everything she had, but two tears leaked from her eyes. Sympathy, sadness, pain, and regret all seemed to thicken in Mia’s throat.

  She reached out without thinking and wrapped her arms around the old woman’s shoulders. For a moment she just hugged her tight.

  “I’ll be here, Aunt Winny,” she whispered. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll be gone when you come out. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Mia sat for a while, the engine running, trying to absorb it all. It hurt to know that Gram had tried to make peace and Winny hadn’t accepted her overtures. She ached for her grandmother. Yes, Gram had made a terrible mistake, but she’d lost her sister forever because of it. She’d died without reconciling with the one person she should have been closest to.

  Mia couldn’t imagine what it would be like to never speak to Sam again.

  So many years wasted, she thought. Sisters who grew up together spending their lives as strangers.

  But at least Gram had us, she reflected. Mom and me, Samantha and Britt. She had Martha and Ava, all of her quilter friends, and everyone in town who loved her.

  Winny had only her husband and the folks she met while moving from place to place. And Abner. Everyone else, everyone in Lonesome Way, still thinks of her as an outsider. Someone who’s never belonged and never will.

  She drew a breath as she remembered she hadn’t told Winny yet that they were meeting Britt for lunch at A Bun in the Oven.

  Could be a problem.

  Her aunt would probably just as soon ride a six-hundred-pound bull out of a rodeo chute than face the citizens of Lonesome Way in broad daylight.

  But the past is gone. And Winny’s not that wild and scorned young girl anymore. If things are ever going to change, why shouldn’t it start now? Today.

  Mia pulled away from the curb, into a parking spot, thinking that sharing sandwiches and cupcakes and lemonade at the most popular spot in town might be as good a way as any to begin.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Forty-five minutes later, Mia, Winny, and Britt were seated in one of the comfortable middle booths at A Bun in the Oven, enjoying spicy turkey wraps and creamy cole slaw accompanied by cups of icy lemonade. Pink frosted cupcakes sat beside each plate. All three women were trying to act as if Aunt Winona came into town for lunch every day.

  For a while there, Mia had thought Winny would never agree to set foot inside the bakery. Her aunt had sat in the car and refused to budge, insisting they pick up burgers or fried chicken from the drive-through and take it all back to the cabin.

  “You can’t avoid people in this town forever,” Mia had reasoned. “It’s been almost sixty years since you left, Aunt Winny. You don’t have any reason to hide from anyone.”

  “No one ever liked me in this town.”

  “They’re going to like you just fine now.”

  “The last time I came here to buy something at Benson’s Drugstore two years ago everyone stared at me. Dorothy Winston, Ava Todd…all of Alicia’s friends.”

  “Nobody’s going to stare. And if they do, you and I will stare right back. We’ll get Brittany to help and all three of us will stare them down.”

  A guffaw broke from her aunt’s lips. Then she’d grown quiet. Finally she said, “You’re not going to give up on this, are you? Then we may as well get it over with before we starve to death.”

  As they walked toward the bakery, Gram’s friend Martha Davies hustled out of the Cuttin’ Loose. She stood outside her pink-painted door and watched Winny hobble alongside Mia.

  “Told you they’d stare,” Winny muttered under her breath.

  For the first time Mia was uneasy, worried now that Martha might say something that would hurt her aunt. Today the salon owner’s hair was tinted such a deep wine color it looked almost purple, and on her long, thin frame she wore belted tan slacks and a striped green and tan silk blouse. At least five bright rings sparkled on her fingers.

  “Winona,” she said suddenly. “Tell me the name of that nail polish you’re wearing.”

  Winny blinked at her. “Nail polish?”

  She stared down at her nails, which shone vivid pink in the sun.

  “I have a metallic pink in my shop, and a coral pink and a blush pink, of course, but yours is prettier. Zestier, you know, not so demure. After you reach a certain age, nobody wants to be plain old demure. I know I don’t!” Martha grabbed her hand, beamed down at her fingernails. “So what’s it called? What’s the brand? Don’t you know?”

  “I didn’t pay attention.” Winny shrugged. “I bought it over at that drugstore in Livingston.”

  “We can check the bottle for you when I drive Aunt Winny home,” Mia offered.

  Martha’s eyes lit up. “Well, now, would you? That would be real nice. I’m always looking for new hair products and new nail polish for my customers. Georgia Timmons is partial to pink and told me I need a bigger selection. You tell me and I’ll order it.”

  Martha started to turn back toward her shop and then stopped, eyeing Winny’s hair. “You ever want to go more silver on top, you come on in. I’ve got a real pretty shade that will brighten you right up. I give a ten percent discount for new customers.”

  Winny stared at her. “Now why would I want to…” She caught Mia’s chagrined look and clamped her mouth closed. “That’s right nice of you, Martha,” she said after a brief pause. “I’ve never touched hair dye in all my years, but…if I can put polish on my fingernails and toenails, then why not a little color on top? I might just take you up on that.”

  Martha grinned as she headed back into the Cuttin’ Loose. Over her shoulder, she called, “Don’t you be a stranger now, Winny.”

  Winny stood stock-still for a full minute, trying to digest what had just happened.

  But now, inside A Bun in the Oven, she seemed less self-conscious as she bit into her wrap. She was clearly relishing it, and she listened closely as Brittany told them with a sigh that her mom had sent an email to Britt’s phone—she was coming home from her honeymoon early. She and Alec would be back in Butte tomorrow.

  “She’s too freaked out about Wade to stay any longer, so she and Alec changed their plans. And they’re coming to Lonesome Way the day after tomorrow because Mom doesn’t want me driving home alone, even though I told her I’d be fine.” Her face was a study in dejection. “I just wish I could stay, like…another week.”

  Even as the words left her lips, her gaze strayed to Seth at the bakery counter. He was filling a cupcake order for Joanie Hodge, the sheriff’s wife, his good-natured laugh drifting through the shop.

  “You nee
d to leave this town, Britt. The sooner the better.” Mia caught her niece’s hurt look and added quickly, “It’s not that I don’t want you to stay, honey. I do. But what if Wade’s still hanging around? He could be,” she pointed out despite the alarm that flickered in Britt’s blue eyes. “Once he realizes you’re gone he might panic. Travis said it could lead him to make a mistake. One that could get him caught.”

  “But I don’t want to go. I feel safe here now that Travis put in that security system. And you and Mom both promised I could stay the entire summer.”

  “That was before they knew that boy was stalking you.” Winny waggled a finger at her. “It’s best you go home now and lie low. Give that boy the slip. Not that anyone’s asking my opinion—”

  Winny broke off as Ava Louise Todd suddenly emerged from the kitchen bearing a magnificent three-layer cake with caramel frosting atop a cut-glass platter.

  She stopped short on her way to the front counter and stared at Winny.

  “Well, now, I guess there really is a first time for everything.”

  Winny stiffened, but Sophie’s petite white-haired grandmother broke into a gentle smile. “Welcome to A Bun in the Oven, Winona. It’s been too long since we’ve seen you in town. What do you think of my granddaughter’s shop?”

  “I think I’ll be back for a taste of more before you notice I’m gone.”

  That won her an even wider smile from Ava.

  “What kind of cake is that?” Mia wanted to know. “It looks scrumptious.”

  “Praline carrot cake. Two dollars and seventy-five cents a slice. We make two a day, every other Friday.” She winked at Mia. “And when they’re gone, they’re gone.”

  “Do you have any of your red velvet cake this afternoon?” Winny asked out of the blue.

  “Matter of fact, we do. How do you know about our red velvet cake, for goodness’ sake?”

  “Abner.” Winny shrugged. “It’s his favorite. He stops by for a slice now and then and is always going on about it. I was thinking…” She trailed off with a glance at Mia. “Abner and his brother should get back from their fishing trip by suppertime and I thought…well, he’s been so good to me, taking me to my doctor appointments and checking on me every day or so. Think I’d like to bring one of those red velvet cakes over and leave it for the two of ’em when they get back. I have a key to his cabin,” she added. “And he’d sure be surprised. I do bake him my oatmeal cookies now and again, but this would be special.”