“I’ll be ready,” he said, his voice low but resolute, and she had to fight the totally irrational impulse to reach across the gate and hug him. “See you tomorrow.”
She watched as he climbed back on his mountain bike and pedaled quickly away. At the end of the street, he turned and rode hard up the hill toward the Woodrose Mountain trail and she whispered a little prayer there in the garden for him—and for Maura and Taryn and Brodie and everyone else who had been affected by that fateful night.
* * *
“COME ON, TARYN. STOP complaining.”
Evie was frowning. She was disappointed in her, Taryn could tell.
“You can do this. I know you’re playing games with me. I’ve seen you do this before. I only need you to take five little steps and you can hold on to the bars the whole time. Work with me here.”
Everything ached. Her legs. Her back. Her head. It took too much work, and for what? She would never be right again. It was easier to stay in the chair, where people didn’t expect her to be normal.
Once Evie knew she could do it, she would make her walk again and again and she hated walking. She looked like a dork and she had to fight for her balance like a big, stupid baby. “I can’t.”
“I know you can. It’s only five little steps. If you can bead that bracelet you’re wearing, you can take five measly little steps.”
“It’s…boring.” That was a lie but she didn’t want to say the truth.
Evie snorted. “You think it’s boring for you, try being the one nagging at you all the time. It’s not exactly a thrill a minute, sweetheart.”
She smiled, even though she hurt. She couldn’t help it. She liked Evie. She was pretty and funny. Sad, sometimes, though Taryn didn’t understand why.
She liked Evie—but that didn’t mean she wanted to work so hard.
“How about another deal?” Evie asked. “You finish the walking you need to do, then we’ll do your stretches. If you quit complaining about it, we can work on another bracelet if you want or maybe a pair of earrings. I’ve got bead stuff in my car.”
Taryn saw the mountain through the window and the sunshine. She had missed sunshine in the hospital, so much. “Outside? With Jock?” She never could speak French. Jacques was too hard for her mush-mouth. She would keep trying. She might hate walking but she loved Evie’s darling dog.
“Sure. It’s a lovely morning. When we’re done, we can sit on the deck and work on your manual dexterity.”
“I don’t…want to work on m-manu…that.” Some words were still so hard for her dumb mouth. She could think it just fine but when she tried to speak, it was like her mouth froze up, like Stacy Jacobs did last year at cheerleading tryouts. “No work. I only want…to bead.”
“Too bad for you. You can’t have one without the other. Come on, let’s try one more time.”
With a sigh, she stood up. Evie wouldn’t stop nagging until she did it, so she should just give in. She managed to move one foot forward, then the other. The third time, Mrs. O. came to the door. Her face looked funny.
“Ms. Blanchard, we have a problem.”
What problem? Taryn froze, holding on to the rails, wanting to hear.
“What’s wrong?” Evie asked.
“Someone’s at the door and…I’m not sure what to do about it.” Mrs. O.’s round face was pink, her mouth tight as if she had eaten something bad.
“Oh.” Evie looked weird, too. Kind of nervous. “Er, who is it?”
“That boy is here. He wants to see Taryn.”
A boy? She looked in the mirror at her ugly, curly hair, at her workout sweats, at her dumb, twisted legs.
“What…boy?” she asked.
Mrs. O. looked more upset. “That boy. The Beaumont boy.”
Oh. Taryn let out her breath. Just Charlie. No big deal.
Evie still was nervous and maybe a little guilty. “It’s all right, Mrs. Olafson. I told him he could come to visit.”
Mrs. O. was quiet for a long time. “Mr. Thorne won’t like this. Not at all.”
Evie’s cheeks turned kind of pink. “I’m fully aware of that.”
“It’s not right, after what he’s done, having him here. Not right!”
Taryn frowned. Why was everyone mad at Charlie? She didn’t understand it at all.
“It’s tricky, I agree.” Evie sighed. “Look, he met us at the bead store yesterday and Taryn very much enjoyed talking to him. He stopped by my place last night to ask if he could visit again and I couldn’t see the harm in it.”
“No harm in it? How can you say that?”
“Charlie is my…friend.” The words were a struggle, especially the F but she kept going until it sounded right. “Please, Mrs. O. Can he come in?”
The housekeeper frowned even more than Evie. “Mr. Thorne won’t be happy about this. Not happy at all.”
“I’ll talk to him about it,” Evie told her. “You don’t have to get involved, I promise. I’ll take full responsibility. I’ll be certain to tell him you objected but I insisted and you didn’t have a choice.”
“It’s not right,” she grumbled, but after a minute she left the room and soon came back with Charlie.
Taryn had seen yesterday that he was growing his hair a little. She liked it better short and a little in his face.
“Hey.” His shoulders were slumped as if he was in the school counselor’s office. Maybe he didn’t really want to be here.
“Hi, Charlie. Thanks for coming.” Evie smiled a little. “We were just working on walking. Taryn, why don’t you show Charlie how far you can go?”
She gave Evie a secret glare where Charlie couldn’t see. Evie knew she couldn’t piss and moan about it now, in front of him.
“Not f-fair,” she muttered.
Evie grinned at her. “I’m a sneaky thing, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Taryn said but she laughed, too. She felt better with Charlie here. He was her friend and he’d come to see her and she suddenly didn’t mind that Evie made her work so hard.
“Come on over, Charlie,” Evie said. “You can stand on her other side and hold her arm. You’ll have to catch her if she decides not to work anymore.”
“I won’t,” Taryn said.
Evie grinned. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
She didn’t want to look stupid with Charlie here. When he grabbed her elbow, she took a deep breath and thought as hard as she could to make her leg move right. Yay! It did. She moved the other one. Double yay! She went seven steps, more than she ever had. At the end of the room she stopped, tired.
“Now back,” Evie said.
She glared at Evie, who just smiled at her.
“This is awesome,” Charlie said. “I had no idea you could walk so far. Way to go, T!”
What else could she do but turn around and walk back the other way? By the time she had walked back to her wheelchair, she knew she was sweaty and gross. Charlie wouldn’t care. He was her friend and he didn’t like her that way. He had liked Layla. But Layla was dead now. Taryn tried not to think about that, since it made her knees shake.
“Here’s your chair. Take a breather for a minute and we’ll try one more time, maybe not as far next time.”
She was such a wuss now. So tired all the time. She was glad for the chair and sagged into it. “Can I…have a drink?”
“Of course!” Evie exclaimed. “I’ll run into the kitchen and grab us all water bottles.”
When she left, Charlie pulled a chair up beside her. “Seriously, Taryn, that was amazing!”
“Not…really.” She couldn’t go far at all on her own, only a few steps. Maybe she’d have to go back to school with a walker. If she ever went back to school, anyway. Her dad didn’t want her to. Maybe she’d have to go in the special-ed classes now.
“Trust me. You’re rockin’ it. I had no idea, Taryn.”
What he said made her feel warm and happy inside, not so tired, and she was superglad he’d come.
“How long have you bee
n able to walk?”
“A few…weeks.”
“You’re going to be hiking up the Woodrose trail before you know it.”
“Evie says…that.”
“She’s right. I thought, you know, that you’d never be able to walk again. That’s what everybody said. I know how much you used to like to ski and mountain bike and the cheerleader stuff and I…that’s been really horrible, you know? Thinking you’d be in a wheelchair your whole life.”
She looked away from him, toward the weights and stuff in the room. She still thought maybe she would be in the wheelchair, at least if she didn’t start working harder. It hurt to work and she was tired of hurting. Hurting meant she was getting better and she wasn’t sure she was supposed to get better.
“Hey. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay.”
He looked upset. Sad and mad and kind of scared at the same time. “It’s not okay. What I did. I mean, Layla. Jeez. And you.”
“Don’t talk…about Layla.”
He slid back in his chair, more upset. “I know. I know.”
She wanted to cry, but not in front of Charlie. Evie came back with a tray just in time.
“Mrs. Olafson reluctantly made some lemonade. I don’t think she poisoned it but maybe I ought to taste it first. If I keel over, you can call the paramedics. Make sure that cute Dougie Van Duran comes to give me mouth-to-mouth.”
Taryn smiled a little. She was glad Evie came in then. She couldn’t think about Layla. It hurt more than walking a mile.
My fault, Taryn thought. All my fault.
* * *
ONCE IN A WHILE her harebrained ideas seemed to work.
Charlie stayed for forty-five minutes, just as he had agreed the day before. It was the perfect length for a visit. Long enough to be fun and encouraging but not so long that Taryn grew bored.
Between Charlie and Jacques, Taryn didn’t have time to show fatigue or petulance. When she started to show signs of wanting to stop, Jacques would come up beside her and nudge her hand or Charlie would say something funny or snarky and she would laugh, take a breath, and try again.
The petulance and general grouchiness Evie had been dealing with since Taryn’s release from the care center was nowhere in evidence. It seemed to have magically floated away on the summer breeze. Taryn was laughing and talking in her hesitant way and, best of all, doing exactly what Evie asked of her. By the time Charlie glanced at his watch and announced he had to leave, Taryn was even taking three or four shuffling steps with only the walker to support her, quite miraculous progress.
“Come back,” Taryn ordered Charlie before he left.
The kid had stared at her with a range of emotions on his pretty, preppy-boy face and then he nodded. “I’ll be back in a couple days, if it’s okay with Ms. Blanchard.”
What else could she say? Despite her misgivings about Brodie’s reaction when he found out, she couldn’t overlook Taryn’s astonishing attitude shift, nor could she afford to lose this momentum.
She only hoped Charlie wouldn’t flake out and decide he’d done his part and no longer needed to hang out with a girl who had serious limitations on her ability to make witty banter.
Evie decided she would just have trust that the boy would keep his word and come again. She had a strong feeling Taryn would be heartbroken if he dropped off the face of the earth again.
Brodie still wouldn’t approve of the boy visiting and Evie felt more than a little squeamish about allowing it when she knew perfectly well he would object. She ought to tell him tonight just what she had done, but somehow she knew that would ruin everything.
She usually tried to be a scrupulously honest person but she couldn’t risk his forbidding the boy to come again before Evie even had a chance to see if today’s incredible progress with Taryn was simply a fluke.
Besides, what he didn’t know, and all that, right?
“That was f-fun,” Taryn declared, after Charlie had left. Evie doubted she even noticed she was using her left hand to pet Jacques’s head. The bones in that hand had been crushed in the accident and she usually complained when Evie tried to make her use it.
“See. I told you therapy wasn’t so terrible.”
“With Charlie, maybe.”
Evie shook her head, refusing to be goaded into a response, despite Taryn’s implication that regular therapy wasn’t a barrel of laughs.
“It’s too nice to be indoors today,” she declared. “We don’t have many of these nice late-summer afternoons left. Let’s see if we can have lunch outside again today and maybe we can make something with those beads I told you I had in the car. I was looking on my calendar this morning and remembered someone has a birthday next week. Any guesses?”
Taryn screwed up her features, thinking, then she smiled. “Grandma!”
“Right. And I brought some beading supplies as well as a collection of some of my favorite glass beads. You can pick the colors you think your grandmother will like.”
Brodie’s landscaper had created a lovely spot, she thought a few moments later, after they were settled out on the big, multilevel deck that terraced up from the swimming pool. Brodie had added temporary ramps so that she could move Taryn from level to level.
She couldn’t imagine a more perfect afternoon than sitting here on Brodie Thorne’s lovely deck while a warm breeze, sweet with sage and pine and mule-ear daisies, rustled the leaves of the aspens around his landscaping.
A mountain bluebird flitted in the trees. A sign of luck. She watched its color amid the green, aware that in a few short weeks all the leaves would be turning and the bluebirds would be flying someplace else to spend their winters where they could find food.
Taryn seemed to be enjoying herself. She hummed some nameless tune Evie couldn’t identify, as she sifted through the soft, smooth glass beads in the tray.
“What’s…this one?”
“I bought that one from a tiny little lady with a face like a garden gnome on the island of Capri.”
“I like it.”
“You can keep it if you’d like. After we’re done with your grandmother’s necklace, we can make a simple one for you out of cord with just that charm if you want.”
“Thank…you!”
Taryn smiled her lopsided little smile at her and something gentle and warm stirred in her chest. Not good. Not good at all. She shifted, uneasy. This soft affection for Taryn scared her. She was becoming far too fond of the girl, sour moods and all. This was exactly what she’d feared, that her life would become tangled with the Thornes, Taryn and Brodie both.
She was already invested in Taryn’s recovery. She wanted the girl to overcome the roadblocks, both mental and physical, that seemed to stand in the way of her regaining many of her old skills. The last week had been challenging, yes, but also infinitely rewarding. Taryn was eating better on her own now. Her tolerance for their activities had increased, even while she grumbled and moaned about doing them.
And with increasing frequency, she was beginning to show these glimpses of her personality that Evie loved.
How would she ever find the strength to walk away?
“This looks likes the place to be on a lovely summer afternoon.”
She jerked her head to the doorway and found Brodie watching them, arms crossed and hip angled against the doorframe, his toe tapping a little in that restless way of his.
He looked quite comfortable, as if he’d been there for some time, and she flushed a little, wondering how long he’d been watching them.
She was angry, suddenly. Furious with him. This was his fault. If not for Brodie, she wouldn’t be sitting here while the carefully nurtured ice around her heart, cracked apart as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
“It’s…nice,” Taryn said, hesitating only an instant between the words. Her speech was coming along so much better than her physical skills but that wasn’t uncommon in Evie’s experience.
“Mind
if I join you two? Mrs. Olafson was just telling me that lunch is nearly ready. She’s the one who told me where to find you.”
What else had Mrs. O. told him? He didn’t seem furious with her, so Evie had to assume the housekeeper had decided to keep her mouth shut about Charlie’s visit. She ought to be making Mrs. Olafson a bracelet, too.
“Yes!” Taryn said. “You can help bead.”
“Hey, I signed up for lunch, not work.”
“Beading isn’t work. Only…fun,” Taryn declared.
He aimed a questioning look toward Evie, who shrugged. “Apparently I’ve brought her over to the dark side. I guess my work here is done.”
“Not yet,” he teased. “You still promised me another week.”
Just how was she going to make it through another week with her defenses intact when she was already beginning to care for both of them entirely too much?
“What are we doing here?”
“It’s for Grandma’s…birthday.”
He blinked, apparently taken aback. “Is that coming up? Shoot. I guess I’d better hurry to get her something. I completely forgot.”
“I thought I was…the one with the…brain injury.”
He stared at Taryn for a full ten seconds before he busted up laughing. Evie couldn’t help laughing along, charmed that Taryn would joke about her condition. Her gaze met Brodie’s and she could feel her smile die away. That sizzle of attraction sparked between them and she was once more standing in the moonlight, pressed against the door of her SUV with his mouth dancing over hers, wanting to wrap her arms around him and hold on forever.
Oh, this was so not good.
“Will you help?” Taryn asked her father.
“Sure, kid. Just tell me what to do.”
In her halting sentences, she explained the simple pattern they were using on the beads and for the next few moments of the two of them worked, dark heads bent together, leaving Evie’s mind entirely too free to fret while she worked on her own project.
She was relieved when Mrs. Olafson brought their lunch in, perhaps fifteen minutes later—until she saw the other woman’s expression. Mrs. O. looked as if she’d sprinkled alum on her tongue just before walking out of the house and Evie winced, knowing all that disapproval was intended for her, for allowing Charlie into the hallowed Thorne halls.
Woodrose Mountain Page 15
