by Abby Gaines
“Scared?” Meg asked.
Sadie almost said terrified, then realized the question was aimed at Daniel.
“Only because it’s so important,” he said tenderly.
Fighting an uncharitable gag reflex, Sadie snapped open the car door and clambered out.
“Sadie, honey.” No lingering disappointment over the date issue, just the warmest welcome in her mom’s hug. “It’s so good to have you home.”
Pain and loss welled in her throat. “You, too,” Sadie choked nonsensically. It had been so hard these past weeks, pretending to be thrilled for Meg, watching Daniel lavish his attention on her best friend in a way Sadie had to admit he’d never done with her. Suddenly she was exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to collapse on her old bed and pull a pillow over her head. But first… “Mom—” she beamed with all the conviction she could fake “—let me introduce you.”
Before she could utter the words she’d been steeling herself for, words she hadn’t yet quite managed to say in her own head—This is Daniel, Meg’s boyfriend—a truck pulled up at the curb. A shiny black Ford F-150, which in this former farming hamlet had the desirability factor of a Ferrari in the city.
The man who climbed out was broad shouldered, lean hipped, laconic in jeans and black T-shirt.
“Trey,” Meg squealed. As her brother hit the central lock, she ran out onto the road and threw her arms around him.
“Yeah, yeah, Meggie.” Trey Kincaid made a halfhearted effort to disengage. Their sibling relationship was a blend of loyalty and sniping in varying proportions. For the past ten years sniping had been dominant, but absence must have temporarily tipped the scales in the other direction.
Meg dragged Trey to the curb—not that she could have budged him an inch if he didn’t want to move—chattering all the way.
“Hi, Sadie.” Trey’s dark gray eyes met hers, then swept her powder-blue T-shirt and darker blue wrap skirt with a familiar, distracted, slightly puzzled scrutiny. As if he wasn’t quite sure how she fit in around here but wasn’t interested enough to find out. “Won that Nobel Prize yet?”
Reminding herself she was on an I’m-so-happy-being-single kick, she shot him a dazzling smile. “Hello, Trey.”
Trey’s chin jerked back, and he looked harder at her. “Uh, hi,” he said as if he’d forgotten he’d already said that. His gaze flicked over her curves, down her legs, then up again. He looked confused. Then alarmed.
Good grief, he thought her smile was about his supposed gorgeousness. Sadie hadn’t attended Andrew Johnson High, the local school, but she knew from Meg that as quarterback, Trey had always had a bevy of cheerleaders around him—the attention had obviously gone to his head and stayed there.
Still, his arrival had allowed Sadie to recoup her inner calm. She turned back to her mother and felt almost relaxed as she said, “Mom, this is Daniel.” She swallowed. “Meg’s boyfriend.”
Her mother hugged both Daniel and Meg. “Don’t you two make the cutest couple?” Her gaze darted in Sadie’s direction, the nearest she would get to expressing regret that her daughter’s big romance had fallen through.
Meg introduced her brother to her beau. As the two men shook hands, Trey subjected Daniel to a long, hard scrutiny.
“You finally chose one who looks like he can hold down a job.” Typical of Trey not to bother to hide his surprise. But then, he’d never possessed the good manners Sadie admired in Daniel. Then, too, Meg had had some “interesting” boyfriends over the years.
“He’s a doctor,” Meg said proudly. “And a Tigers fan.” Trey was a longtime supporter of the Memphis Tigers baseball team.
“Did you see that whitewash against the Braves last week?” Trey asked. He and Daniel spent a minute rehashing the game. As they talked, Daniel laced his fingers through Meg’s and smiled down at her.
Sadie looked away, though she’d been forced to observe far worse recently.
“Do you fish?” Trey asked when the baseball conversation petered out.
Daniel’s gaze wavered. Sadie couldn’t picture him sitting in a boat for hours on the off chance a fish might come along. “Happy to give it a try,” he said.
“June’s not the best time,” Trey said, “but maybe I can take you out fishing someday soon. I know a good spot.”
The day took on a surreal hue. As far as Sadie knew, Trey had never put himself out for one of Meg’s admirers. Now he was offering to share his fishing spot on the lake, a local legend whose exact location was known only to him.
Meg kissed Trey’s cheek. “I figured you guys would love each other.”
“How could I not love anyone related to you?” Daniel grinned. “Trey, I hope you’ll take that in the spirit it’s intended.”
Trey chuckled.
Ha, ha, ha, Sadie thought sourly.
Polite as always, Daniel turned to include Sadie’s mom in the conversation. “I’ve heard so much about you and your family, too, Mrs. Beecham. I feel as if I know you already.”
Sadie tensed.
“Call me Mary-Beth,” Sadie’s mother said. “Though why Meg should tell you about my family, I can’t think.”
“I meant from Sadie,” Daniel explained. “She’s the one who got me and Meg together.”
He slung an arm across Sadie’s shoulders and kissed her hair somewhere above her right ear. One of those gestures she’d interpreted—misinterpreted—to mean she was special to him. Even now she couldn’t help melting against him just the tiniest bit, and imagining for a nanosecond that this had all worked out differently, that she and Daniel—
She realized Trey’s gaze had narrowed on her. That while everyone else listened to Meg rattling on about Sadie’s incredible intuition, introducing her and Daniel, he had been observing her.
“Feeling the heat, Sadie?” Trey asked. “You’re wilting.”
At barely five o’clock the temperature was nowhere near the mid-nineties that had dominated the afternoon. She straightened away from Daniel. “I’m fine, but thanks for your concern,” she said crisply.
“This is wonderful having you all here together,” Mary-Beth said. “Tomorrow’s barbecue will be just like old times.”
Not quite. In the old days, Meg’s father, Brian, had presided over the grill alongside Sadie’s dad, and her oldest brother, Logan, regularly defended his record for consuming the most burgers in one night. But Brian and Logan Kincaid had died in a fishing accident when Sadie and Meg were high-school seniors.
Trey had given up his college football scholarship to take his father’s place running Kincaid Nurseries, the family garden center. Turned out he was a natural businessman, just as he was a football player—over the years he’d added more garden centers in surrounding neighborhoods.
“Let’s get you all settled in,” Nancy said to Meg and Daniel. “Trey’s staying for dinner tonight, so we’ll have some time to get to know each other ahead of our busy weekend.”
Sadie watched Daniel and Meg walk up the path through Nancy’s spectacular front garden. Her own parents’ garden was equally impressive—Sadie’s mom and dad had taken turns presiding over the Cordova Garden Club, and Kincaid Nurseries was the club’s number-one sponsor. As next-door neighbors, the two families were a match made in heaven.
Sadie turned away before she could watch Meg and Daniel walk into the house. Shutting her out.
One weekend. I can survive one weekend.
THERE WASN’T QUITE a full complement of Beechams around the seventies glass-topped table in Sadie’s parents’ dining room that night. Sadie’s older brother Jesse, his wife, Diane, and eight-year-old twins, Hannah and Holly, came to dinner, along with her sister, Merrilee, three years younger than Sadie, and her husband, Ben, and infant son, Matthew.
But Sadie’s younger brother, Brett, and his wife, Louisa, had stayed away. Two of their three preschoolers were recovering from chicken pox and today was officially the last day of their contagion. They’d be at tomorrow night’s barbecue. Kyle, her oldest and o
nly un-attached sibling, had breezed in, claiming he had to rush off to see his latest girlfriend, but he was still sprawled in his seat opposite Sadie. Her brothers and sister had all remained in Cordova.
“It’s like Grand Central Station around here,” Gerry Beecham, Sadie’s dad, said. “Wives, husbands, kids… and to think you and I worried we might have an empty nest, Mary-Beth.”
Mary-Beth blew him a kiss from the far end of the table.
“It’s a shame we don’t have you here more often, Sadie, love,” Gerry continued.
Sadie’s bungalow in uptown Memphis was just over half an hour away. Her parents acted as if she lived on the other side of the country.
“Sadie was never going to stay a Cordova girl,” her mother said fondly.
You made sure of that. Sadie quashed a flare of resentment. Sending her to a boarding school for gifted children at age ten, after her elementary-school principal had her IQ tested, had not been an act of rejection. Her parents had been proud but overwhelmed by the prospect of “raising a genius to fulfill her potential,” as the principal put it. They’d sent her away for her own good.
She speared three beans with her fork. “I really don’t live that far away,” she muttered, knowing she was wasting her time.
Going to college at Princeton had widened the distance between her and her family, and now it seemed her default setting was “away.” Even when she was right here.
She tried to concentrate on the conversations rippling around her—the dramas of the PTA, a new cupcake recipe, a camping trip to the Smokies planned for later in the summer. But her family always considered her “above” such mundane topics, so no one asked her opinion or shared their cupcake tips. Not that she would have known what to do with them.
Sadie’s mind wandered next door. She wondered how Daniel was getting along with Nancy. Fabulously, of course. He was the kind of guy every mother dreamed her daughter would bring home.
“Sadie?” Her father said.
She jolted back to the present, and realized everyone was looking at her. “Sorry, I was daydreaming.” She thought back. Hadn’t Merrillee been complaining about her cupcakes not rising?
“Did you wait too long before putting them in the oven?” she asked her sister. “If the baking powder released its carbon dioxide gas too soon—” She broke off. “Hey, I wonder what percentage of global warming is caused by bakers forgetting to put their cakes in the oven.” She chuckled…and realized everyone else was staring at her, baffled.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t hilarious. But Daniel would have got it. Would have laughed.
Sadie blinked, hard.
“I was asking when we’ll get to see that garden of yours, love,” her father said.
“Uh…it’s not quite there yet.” Sadie didn’t like to admit to the atrocious state of her garden—the love of everything botanical was one thing she shared with her parents, who between them had four green thumbs and sixteen green fingers. All of her siblings had inherited both the talent and the enthusiasm.
Shame the gene pool hadn’t had one green digit to spare for Sadie. When she’d bought the bungalow two years ago, she’d had visions of creating a lush, peaceful, enticing landscape.
Her failure was a constant frustration, all the more aggravating because it didn’t make sense. As a seed biologist, she knew the theory of plants inside and out. She had the passion, too—a beautiful garden could bring tears to her eyes, and she loved getting her hands dirty. But her attempts to actually grow anything seemed doomed to failure.
“I haven’t had much time for gardening, I’ve been so busy at work.” She switched to a topic she could tackle with a hundred percent confidence, before the questions got too probing. “We’re looking at developing new strains of wheat with a higher protein content.”
She started on a layman’s description of the project. Five minutes later she was pleasantly surprised to realize she still had her family’s attention. Usually eyes were starting to glaze over by now. “Anyway—” she gave a little laugh, unnerved by their rapt expressions “—I’m loving it.”
“It sounds great,” Merrillee said encouragingly.
“Right over my head, sis.” Jesse swished his hand above his spiky haircut to demonstrate. “I wish I had your brains.”
“Your life sounds super fulfilling, Sadie.” Diane, Jesse’s wife, smiled kindly.
“Uh…thanks.” How odd. That sounded like the sort of comment you made when you were— Wait a minute!
The reason everyone was listening with such interest to wheat-protein statistics wasn’t that they’d developed a sudden interest in crop biology. Sadie would bet a million bucks that her mom had told them she had a boyfriend, and then told them they’d broken up.
They felt sorry for her!
Her cheeks grew hot. “I’m really, really happy with the way things are right now,” she said emphatically. It would have been true, too, if she hadn’t made the mistake of falling in love with Daniel.
“Of course you are, dear,” her mom said. A chorus of overearnest agreement ran around the table.
“It’s just, balance is important,” Kyle said. “I’m not saying you need to get married—” his shudder made everyone laugh “—but there’s more to life than work.”
Her oldest brother was a firefighter, as well as a serial dater. Sadie’s other siblings also had careers they loved. Jesse had a graphic-design business, Brett was a town planner, Merrillee had trained as a nurse. All smart, busy people. But somehow more…multidimensional than Sadie. They’d managed to stay connected to one another.
Sadie drew in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of summer shrubs wafting through the open window. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t connected. It didn’t matter that her lack of a boyfriend emphasized the differences between her and her family. If they truly understood how important her work was—not just to her, but to the planet…
One look at their concerned faces said she’d be wasting her breath. That was what she loved about Daniel—he did understand. She sneaked a glance at the gold carriage clock on the sideboard, the one First Cordova Bank had presented to her father after forty years’ service. It was stuck on three-thirty—surely it must be ten o’clock by now. She made a show of yawning and stretching. “I’m beat. I think I’ll go to bed.”
Merrillee looked at her watch. “At ten past eight?”
“Can’t handle the pace, city girl?” Jesse teased.
Rats.
She resisted the urge to point out that, since annexation, Cordova was part of the city. “I’ve been putting in some long hours at the lab.” She excused herself as she pushed her chair back. “By the way, Merrillee, you have baby spit on your shoulder.”
Okay, so that was petty.
“Would you like some cod-liver oil to help you sleep, honey?” her mom asked. Mary-Beth believed cod-liver oil solved every conceivable problem. Sadie had once tried to explain that despite its high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, it wasn’t a cure-all, and in fact its high vitamin A content made it nutritionally risky, but her mom didn’t want to know.
Sadie turned down the offer, along with the predictable next offer—a cup of hot cocoa—and hurried upstairs. As she left the room, Merrillee was dabbing with her napkin at the ever-present stain on her shoulder.
Safe in her old bedroom with the door closed, Sadie donned her pajamas—red tank and plaid cotton pants—in case anyone wanted proof she was tired.
Her bedroom window looked onto Meg’s. As kids, they’d held up signs to each other, illuminated by flashlight when necessary. After Sadie left for boarding school, their nighttime communications were limited to vacation periods, but they’d continued nonetheless. When Sadie and Meg graduated to cell phones, they’d sat in the chair they each had by the window, feet propped on the sill, so they could see each other as they whispered conversations after lights-out.
They’d been closer than sisters.
Now Meg’s curtains were closed. Surely she and Daniel
hadn’t gone upstairs already? And surely Nancy wouldn’t put them in the same room? Sadie’s stomach twisted.
She hadn’t asked Meg if she and Daniel were sleeping together yet. Meg’s job often took her away overnight, so Sadie was unsure if her friend’s absences were due to that, or to staying at Daniel’s. Normally they talked about everything—at least, Meg shared all the details of her more exciting life. This time, Sadie hadn’t asked and Meg hadn’t told.
Trey’s truck was still parked out front. Behind it was a faded red Buick LeSabre.
Did Trey have a girlfriend over? The only person Sadie knew who’d driven a LeSabre that color was the minister at Cordova Colonial Presbyterian. His daughter had been in Meg’s class.
She couldn’t imagine Trey dating the minister’s daughter. And it probably wasn’t the same Buick.
But what if it was? And what if the reason Nancy had invited the minister over was that Meg and Daniel—
“Shut up,” Sadie ordered herself. “Meg’s never dated anyone longer than six weeks. This won’t be any different.”
She plunked herself into the chair and opened the novel she’d started reading last night—Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. She’d read it years ago, but she and Daniel had been debating Dostoevsky’s views on the evils of rationalism, and she wanted to refresh her memory.
She couldn’t settle…. After three pages she closed the book and fished her old bird-watching binoculars out of the depths of the closet. But she was at the wrong angle for next door’s dining-room window.
“Blast,” she muttered.
She had to know who was visiting.
Back to the closet, this time for the gray hooded jacket with the broken zipper she’d left behind on her last trip home. She pulled it on over her pajamas. If she got caught leaving the house by the back door she’d say she was stepping out to smell the flowers.
They would buy that.
As it turned out, her family was having a riotous good time discussing the twins’ eccentric social-studies teacher and Brett’s son’s grass allergy—Gerry didn’t believe in it, but he wouldn’t dare say that tomorrow night when Brett was here. No one noticed Sadie sneaking out.
