by Liz Flaherty
But, while they laughed, tears drew salty lines down Promise’s pale face and Carol exchanged hollow-eyed looks with Grace and Faith.
“I know it’ll be hot,” Carol said as she put the wig in place for the first time, “but there’s just nothing I can do about that.”
It was an excellent wig. Really it was. Its strands caught the sun and turned to flame on Promise’s head just like her own hair did, its curls framing her face in a natural way. The false eyelashes were as long and curly as her own, the drawn-in brows a perfect match for the ones she’d copied from a picture of herself.
“It’s wonderful,” Grace said. “So is the scarf with the bangs attached and the turban. Those are what I’d wear,” she told Promise. “They don’t itch.”
“Oh, shoot, you’d just go around bald and glare at everyone who stared at you, like you were daring them to make something of it.” Promise grinned at her in the mirror and Grace grinned back, though the effort made her cheeks quiver.
Faith took a comb and flicked the curls of the wig toward Promise’s cheeks. “There’s our Promise,” she said in a voice that would brook no argument. And she was right.
One thing about being a person like Faith, Grace decided, was that people believed what you said. She hugged her sister hard, even if that did get Faith started on flipping Grace’s freshly tinted hair around too.
As Promise weakened, she gained strength in her quest to end her relationship with Steven. When he tried to be supportive, she informed him with a cold-eyed stare that she didn’t have time to bolster his inflated male ego. For only the second time since their engagement ended—while he was doing his first residency—she took his diamond off her hand and nestled it into her jewelry box.
The night before her second chemotherapy treatment, he suggested it was time he return to Knoxville. He wanted what was best for her, he maintained stoically, and it was becoming obvious that he wasn’t it.
Promise didn’t even glance up from her book. “That would be a good idea,” she said politely.
He shoved Rosamunde out of the way and went outside. Grace followed.
“Don’t kick my cats,” she said quietly. “This is so horrible for Promise, how can you even consider leaving?”
“Yes,” he said, turning between Mrs. Willard’s sheets and glowering at her, “it is horrible for Promise. Well, you know what, little sister? It’s horrible for me too. I think you’re the only one who’s enjoying it.”
“Enjoy…” The word stuck in her throat, and she stared at him mutely. She lifted a corner of a pink-flowered sheet to check it for dryness and wadded it in her hand.
Her brother’s anger was almost palpable. “Yeah, you’re the real heroine, you know. You got your hair cut because she had to. You’re sharing your house with her and probably sticking her rent checks back into her account because you won’t take her money. You sit up with her when she’s sick. Jesus, the other day you were even throwing up in sympathy. Do you care that much, Grace, or do you just like being placed on a pedestal by a town that’s never looked at you twice.”
Silence hung heavy between them, pain resonating like a nauseating heartbeat. Grace said, “And I thought Papa was dead.” She stared down at the sheet wadded in her hand, wondering how it got there, then dropped it and went into the house.
A while later, as she brushed polyurethane onto the floor of her father’s old bedroom, she heard Steven’s motorcycle pass the house on its way out of the drive. She wondered where he was going even as she told herself she didn’t care.
His cruelty sat heavily, though, and soon she closed the can of glaze and placed her brush in a plastic bag.
“Jonah,” she said, going into the living room. “I’m going for a walk. Will you keep an ear out for Prom and Maxie?”
He eyed her over his reading glasses. “Sure, honey.”
Dillon was in the guesthouse, and she considered going there but dismissed the idea. If she didn’t watch what she was doing, she was going to find herself dependent on Dillon Campbell. If there was one thing she had learned growing up as Robert Elliot’s daughter, it was to not depend on anyone. It was okay to love them, like she did Promise and Faith and Steven, even though that love sometimes caused pain. Depending on them was something else entirely.
She walked through Peacock’s downtown, mostly closed up tight as a drum for the night. Maeve Malone’s tavern was open, and the Cup and Cozy, of course, and Deac Rivers was probably still in the office at the Methodist church, but the “closed” signs were in the windows of Carol’s shop, the fabric shop, and the dry cleaner’s. Even the grocery store shut its doors at six, so a person had to go to the convenience store out past the Deacon’s Bench if they needed a gallon of milk.
The cemetery looked like a park from the road, with all its trees and green-painted benches and paved paths, but once inside the gates, the difference was clear. Grace walked to her parents’ graves without having to check to see where she was. She didn’t come here when it was expected of her—she hadn’t hit a Memorial Day in all the years her mother had been dead. But when the lilacs were their most fragrant, the roses their reddest and the leaves of autumn at their peak, she piled the blooms in urns set on the base of her mother’s stone. Sometimes she stayed and talked to Debbie, telling her all the family news and relating the latest Magpie adventure.
Tonight she sat beside the pink-tinged marker and leaned against its cold surface. She’d wanted them to engrave an angel on the marble so that God would know where to come and get Debbie when He was ready, but Robert had glared at her and told her to shut up her foolishness. So the stone was cold and austere, with just Debbie’s name and the dates of her birth and death. Grace hated it.
She heard Steven before she saw him. He moved with too much energy to ever be quiet, and she would have recognized his step anywhere, anytime. It always amazed her that he and Dillon moved at the same pace when they were together, both with long-legged ease, yet Dillon’s step was measured and nearly silent, Steven’s just the opposite.
“Gracie.” He knelt before her, his knees cracking in the crisp evening air. His face was a mask of grief. “I am so sorry.”
She nodded. She knew he was, but she didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to hear reasons or excuses. Sometimes, if she pretended words hadn’t been said, she could forget them. Sometimes. That was how she’d lived with Robert Elliot her entire life.
Her brother glanced past her at their father’s grave. “I’m not like him,” he said. “Even if that’s how I sounded, I’m not. Although I have no more excuse for talking to you that way than he ever did.” He tilted her chin so she had no option but to face him. “It will never happen again.”
“All right.”
His mouth quirked in a half-smile. “But I am your brother. I will at some time in our lives say things that piss you off royally. When I do, Grace, don’t let me get by with it. Fight with me the way you do with Dillon.”
She nodded again. She had no intention of telling her brother she would never fight with him. He would want to know why not, and she just wasn’t up to explaining. She wasn’t sure she could.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“What do you think I should do?” He emphasized the word “you” slightly and eased himself into a sitting position.
Good heavens, no one except Promise and Dillon ever asked her opinion. Grace remained still so long that Steven gave her knee a nudge. “Don’t give me the silent treatment, either. I’ll just badger you till you talk to me again.”
“I’m not,” she assured him. “I’m thinking.” What do I tell him, Mama? Your Golden Boy is hurting. How can I make it better?
“You were right in the first place. You should go back to Knoxville,” she said finally. “A cardiac surgeon is what you are, and people need you back there. But you should come here weekends and days off—you can pay someone to fly you here if you don’t want to drive or ride that black monster. Promise doesn’t
want to be your whole life—you know, all the courses of the meal—but she doesn’t want to be the leftovers in the back of the fridge, either.”
“What if something happens to her while I’m gone?”
She grinned at him. “Why do you think I’m here on my pedestal, big brother? It’s to make sure nothing happens to her.”
He gave her hair a tug. “Brat.”
“You can’t stop bad things from happening, Steven. All you can do is what feels right.” She didn’t tell him she bargained with God all the time to keep the bad stuff to a minimum if she could. She wasn’t sure he’d understand.
They talked a while longer, and it seemed they were more comfortable with each other than they’d ever been. When she rose stiffly from her seat against Debbie’s stone, he got up too.
“I’ll give you a ride back.”
“No, you won’t. I’m afraid of that thing, and you ride like the demons of hell are after you.”
“Well, then, I’ll walk you back. Dillon can bring me after the bike later.” He laid a hand on their mother’s tombstone. “Mama would come hauling ass after me if I let you walk home alone in the dark.”
“Do you still miss her, Steven?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Me too.”
What on God’s green earth was Grace doing in the backyard in that robe that was so old it had taken on the color of gravel? Dillon stood on his porch, fresh out of the shower and wearing only a pair of shorts, and watched her. It was eleven o’clock at night, for God’s sake, and she was taking Mrs. Willard’s washing off the line.
“You need some rest,” he said, going to the other end of the clothesline and unpinning a pink-flowered sheet.
“I took a nap this afternoon when Prom did. I had to get these in, though. Mrs. Willard knows if I cheat. I’ve tried.”
They met in the middle, folding the last sheet together.
“When I have the bed and breakfast,” Grace said, rubbing her cheek on the soft cotton, “I’m going to use this kind of sheets. They’re expensive, but they wear like iron and feel wonderful from the first washing to the last.”
He nodded, moving to the other line to help with the towels and thinking about seeing her sturdy body wrapped in those soft sheets. Preferably on his bed. He cleared his throat. “What about towels?”
“Egyptian cotton, and I want to use colored ones that will coordinate with the rooms. I’ll probably only do that until someone steals them the first time, but I think they’ll be grand.”
He tried to imitate the way she snapped the towels out, then folded them in a couple of easy motions, using her knee as a third hand. He failed miserably and confined himself to the washcloths.
“Is that something you really want to do?” he asked. “The bed and breakfast, I mean.” The cats wound around his legs and he bent to scratch their heads absently.
“Most of the time, it is. I want to have something that will support me. I don’t have the skills to get a job that pays well, and it’s not Steven and Faith’s responsibility to make sure I grow old in comfort. I like taking care of things, and that’s largely what running an inn is.”
“You might get married, have a bunch of kids as perfect as Faith’s twins.” The idea of Grace being married to someone, having his babies, bothered him, but so did thoughts of her growing old alone in Elliot House.
It was obvious he’d watched too many made-for-television movies about older women the world preyed upon.
She stilled for a moment, the green towel she held folded in half against her bent knee. “No, I won’t.”
She snapped the towel so hard Dillon was pretty sure he heard the threads in the hems break.
“How about some coffee?” he asked, when Mrs. Willard’s laundry was a neatly folded stack in the plastic basket.
“Sure. Come on in and I’ll—”
“No. Let’s go to the guesthouse and I’ll make it. You can sit on the couch and put your feet up and I’ll show you my etchings.”
What he showed her was Chapter One of his new book.
He’d never done this before, had never shared so much as a character name with anyone before the manuscript was a fait accompli. At first, he’d been embarrassed—cool guys in the freshman class at Peacock High School didn’t write stories. They played football and lied about their sexual prowess. By the time he was in his first year of college and selling short stories and humorous essays to small publications, it had become a superstitious habit. As long as no one saw his work, it was good. Once someone else read it, it became flawed.
Since Grace was in the room and had given him this new fairness fetish, he admitted to himself that he’d done his share of football-playing and lying about sex too. He admitted something else as he went into the tiny kitchen and poured their coffee into mugs.
She’d been right about his last book.
It surprised him that her perusal of Chapter One didn’t make him nervous, although the sight of his glasses on her face did make him grin. Her arms hadn’t been long enough to bring the typed pages into focus. While she read, he wrote, squinting at the screen.
He concentrated on Chapter Ten, placing Rosamunde in her favored spot on his knee. The next time he looked at Grace, she was reading the half-page that ended the chapter. She held her hand out.
“What?” he asked.
“I want the next chapter.”
“You’re not going to tell me what you think?” He hiked an eyebrow at her.
“Not unless you let me read the next chapter.”
He gave her the next eight. “The marks with red pen are changes,” he explained. “I edit on the computer, but every time I print out a hard copy, I find a bunch more crap that needs changing.”
When she was in the middle of Chapter Two, he gave up on trying to type without his glasses and sat on the couch with the remote control in one hand and his mug in the other. “Mind if I watch TV?”
She shook her head and held out her empty cup, her eyes never straying from the pages in her lap.
He refilled their cups, then settled down to watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for at least the tenth time.
“I used to pretend Jimmy Stewart was my father,” she murmured a while later, holding out her cup again.
When he sat down again, he tugged her over so she leaned against him while she read. He couldn’t be Jimmy Stewart, and God knew he didn’t want to be her father, but he could keep her comfortable.
With the following cup, he put his legs up on the couch and drew her between them. It was like moving a mannequin. She never lifted her eyes from the typed pages she held.
It was either the supreme compliment to his work or else she hated the damn thing and didn’t want to say so until she was done and could tell him she hated it all instead of just one chapter.
The warmth of her skin sifted delightfully through the chenille of her robe. He was happy he wasn’t wearing a shirt or long pants to dilute the sensation.
She was reading Chapter Nine and Jimmy Stewart was filibustering in Congress when Dillon saw that her face was wet with tears.
He lifted the shawl collar of her robe to wipe her eyes and mop the moisture from her cheeks. In the process, he became entranced by the curve between her neck and shoulder. He remembered kissing her there, remembered the salty-sweet tang of her skin.
Looking further down, he saw that she wore nothing under the robe. At least as far as her waist, where the tied belt cut off his voyeuristic vision.
“Why are you crying?” Maybe if he talked and concentrated on ignoring those perfect little breasts, he would stop thinking about them.
“What?” She sounded irritated by his interruption.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not. I never cry.”
“Oh.” Her nipples were soft, and he envisioned their tips stiffened between his fingers. Between his lips. He thought about his palms lifting the dubious weight of the mounds, shaping them to create a cleavage they’d never f
orm on their own.
His hands moved to the belt of her robe. He didn’t loosen it, just fiddled with the ends of the belt until one of them flipped up and disturbed her reading. She wriggled in a gesture of irritation, and Dillon thought he might die on the spot.
If he died before she finished Chapter Nine, he never would know if she liked the book. He moved restlessly against the arm of the couch and laid his hands together where the belt was knotted at her waist.
Only it wasn’t knotted. She’d only turned the ends over each other once. All he’d have to do is tug lightly and the whole thing would come undone.
The very idea of it almost undid him.
She laid down the final page of Chapter Nine just as the movie ended. She turned to face him, the movement of her hips against his groin causing him to close his eyes. When he opened them again, he encountered hers. Luminous and smiling.
“It’s the best thing you’ve ever done,” she said.
Hell, he hadn’t done anything yet. “What?”
“Let’s see if you can keep it going.”
Oh, the book. She liked the book. Relief settled on him like balm on an itch. But then, there was that other itch. “I’m glad you like it,” he said, and slanted his lips across hers.
Her response was immediate, her mouth opening under his. She tasted of coffee and the warm flavor that was inherently Grace. Salty-sweet, with a hint of spice drawn through the combination like a sensual ribbon.
He took the papers from her lap and put them on the floor, not caring that they fanned out across the hardwood. He fumbled for and found the remote control and clicked its red button to the off position.
The sudden quiet of the room was punctuated only by the sound of the central air conditioner and the steady thrum of two hearts beating as one. Dillon reached to turn off the lamp at the end of the couch, leaving the cottage’s living room lit by the soft glow of the vanilla-scented candles he bought from Little League baseball players and burned to freshen the cooled air. He kissed her again, gently, and smiled against her mouth when her tongue teased the edges of his lips.
