by Linda Joyce
“If I thought Lia would agree to dinner with you and believe everything was normal, I’d say ask her,” Craig said. “But, we all know, you asking her out now would be the same as writing Warning, Amelia on the billboard at the entrance to town. She sees through you like cellophane.”
“If she could see through me, then she wouldn’t be asking Karl out,” Lucas muttered through a clenched jaw. His frustration shot up like mercury rising in a thermometer facing the Midwest sun.
“I don’t like it. Craig, why don’t you take your sister out for a family dinner?” Amelia together with Karl, under any circumstances, would push his blood pressure into the danger zone.
“She’s barely speaking to me.”
“Talk her into it. Charm her. That way, we all know our secret is safe.” He couldn’t tell Craig about his attraction to Amelia before he’d had a chance to show the woman he loved how much she meant to him. In his plan, they’d break the news to her brother together. But first, he had to get past the guards holding Amelia’s heart in lockdown. Zoë was right. He’d had chances in the past and blew them, but he was resourceful. Now he’d create a new one.
“Karl is our decoy.” Zoë rose. “Got to get back to the horde. See you both tomorrow.”
“Glad that’s settled,” Craig said, digging into his food.
Lucas frowned as Zoë rejoined her family. Karl a decoy? That idea churned his irritation like a carnival round-up ride, the twirling centrifuge. Somehow, he had to move Karl out of the picture.
“Hey, where are you?” Craig waved his hand. “Look, I know you said you were through with my plan to get Amelia back to the city, but I need your help, man, one last time. Have a chat with Karl. Tell him no more than two dates. I’m going to protect Amelia’s interest and will do so until I die. She’s moving back to the city. That’s the end of that.”
Lucas grunted. “Okay. This one last time.”
He’d help, but only because it served his interests, too, and an idea began taking shape, and soon he’d allow his feelings for Amelia to unfurl.
But was Zoë right? Was he too late?
Chapter 5
Lia sat alone on the wide back deck with her legs stretched long in a chaise lounge. Gentle breezes ruffled her hair and whispered through the corn. A few birds warbled, calling to each other in the nearby trees. A butterfly danced from flower to flower in the garden surrounding the deck. She flipped her robe closed to cover her legs. Her mood matched the overcast sky. Low hanging clouds brought hope for a chance of rain to water the crops. Yet the same gray clouds dragged in dreariness, hid sunlight, and swept cheerfulness away. Compared to this time last year, her heart lifted buoyantly, but would it ever totally heal?
She sipped Earl Grey tea strongly dosed with cream and sugar and tried to distract her mind from the movie playing repeatedly in her head, the one from a year ago when the whole town and half the county had turned out for her parents’ funeral. With Craig by her side, they’d greeted everyone and thanked them for coming. The funeral at the Methodist church seemed more like a bad dream. She’d pinched herself through the entire service. To her ears, each breath she took produced a roar like that of water rushing over a dam. The noise drowned out most of the service. When the funeral home attendants simultaneously closed the caskets on her mother and father, she had drowned in tears.
The painful memory remained emblazed in her mind. With the sleeve of her robe, she dotted the tears now trickling down her cheeks. If Lucas hadn’t been there that day, she might have died of heartbreak. He was solid. Salt of the earth. A man deserving of praise and respect, and in her case, adoration. Her lips gravitated to his. Just thinking of him warmed her. He personified the best of every ancient hero she’d ever read about, but when it came understanding her feelings for him, Lucas hadn’t connected the dots any better than Lois Lane had between Clark Kent and Superman. How could Lucas not see her feelings for him?
Last year during the funeral service at church, she and Craig had sat alone in the first pew. Just the two of them, like orphans. No family came from Louisiana. No long-lost Midwest cousins arrived. Lucas and his sister, Megan, sat in the middle of the pew behind them. Zoë and her big family flanked them. Craig maintained his composure—actually, the ordeal left him numb, shocked, emotionless, so much so it frightened her. She, on the other hand, had emoted enough grief for the two of them.
Later, about a month after the funeral, the first time Lia had ventured to town, she waited in line at the Sunflower Café and overheard a conversation. An elderly woman whispered, not so quietly, that she’d never seen a more gallant gesture than Lucas’s at the funeral.
“My heart ached when the Brittons’ caskets were closed. Amelia began wailing to wake…well, the dead. Lucas climbed over the pew—never minding anyone—and cradled Lia while she sobbed. That man held her like she was the most precious thing in the world.”
Lia pretended she hadn’t heard a word, but on her way out of the shop, the elderly woman grasped Lia’s arm, squeezed, nodding, she said, “Lucas is a keeper.”
Lucas had offered comfort that day. He folded her into his arms while she trembled and cried until she had finally caught her breath.
She still couldn’t recall the rest of the service.
But she remembered Lucas’s strength, the safety of his embrace. When she’d buried her face next to his warm chest, his heart beat with life when everything else around her reeked of coldness and death.
And, she remembered with great clarity, much later that night, his kiss. Warm. Loving. Tender.
“Good morning!” Craig slid the glass door to the porch open. “Thanks for making coffee for me.”
Startled, she shook her head to clear the clouds hanging around. Had she fallen asleep? She lifted a finger to her lips, expecting to feel the lingering heat of Lucas’s lips. When she didn’t, the measure of disappointment surprised her.
“You’re welcome. Are you ready for today?” she asked, her voice throaty, as though she’d just woken.
Craig squeezed her shoulder before sliding into the chair next to hers. “It’s been a hard year.” The graveness of his voice let her know he, too, experienced the gravity of the day. “A year of firsts.”
“No Halloween party in the barn, no Thanksgiving dinner. Christmas without them. Ringing in the New Year without seed catalogs and dates for farm equipment auctions,” she whispered.
“Amelia, you can’t hide this holiday season. We only get out of life what we put in it. Our world didn’t completely die because we buried them. They’ll haunt us if we don’t set aside our grief and get on with living.”
Lia reached for his hand. “You’ve managed that quite nicely. Promotion at work. New sports car. I know you’re trying to do the big brother thing for me. Believe it or not, I’m stepping into new shoes today.”
“Something you found in one of those boxes in the barn?”
Lia chuckled. “Well, I meant it figuratively, but now that you brought it up. Yes, I found a box with new shoes. I’ll wear them this afternoon. They’re scandalous for a memorial service. Purple suede with gold platform bottoms. Totally like Mother.”
“Speaking of firsts, you asked the newbie out on a date?”
“News travels fast. You haven’t been home for twenty-four hours and you know all the latest gossip. Yes, I have a date with Karl next Saturday. I don’t want to talk about it, at least not until tomorrow. I just need to feel today… I know this service will be different from last year’s, which had me quaking in my boots. I’d never before lost control like that.”
“Yeah, you worried me,” Craig said so quietly, she almost didn’t hear him.
Gentleman Jack ran up on the deck with a stuffed toy pheasant in his mouth. He dropped it at Craig’s feet, then plopped, and rested his head on the toy, as if he, too, understood the sadness of the cloudy day, and also why neither of them had come out with him to play.
“You have to help me clean.” Lia rose and swatted at Craig�
��s shoulder trying to lighten the mood. “Do you remember how to do that?”
“Hey! My cleaning lady only comes once a month. I do it the rest of the time.”
“Well, then, Mr. Janitor Junior, you clean the guest bathroom. I did the rest yesterday morning. I’ve got biscuits to make and a ham to put in the oven. You can help by setting the dining room table for the buffet.”
She turned on the CD player. Faith Hill kept them company while they worked at their chores before going to their rooms to change for the memorial service.
From her dresser, Lia picked up a framed photograph of her parents taken on their last vacation. There were days when the frame lay face down. She couldn’t bear to look at it. Other days, she carried it from room to room, needing the comfort of their smiling faces. She would’ve never made it through the year had she not come back to the farm. Craig would have to get used to the fact that she intended to stay. She had accepted his move a half-day’s drive away. Now she wanted his moral support about her decisions. She would get back to the business of living.
But only at the farm.
As if she, too, had been planted in the spring with the crops, she’d put down new roots in familiar ground, and then grown, just like the crops, from seeds to stalks. Her grief had followed the seasons, gray in winter, lightened in the spring, and brightened during the summer. Her paintings reflected the changes in her, too. The family memories were gifts of joy now.
“Amelia, you ready?”
“Almost. Meet you in the car.”
The breeze blew the clouds away while she dressed. Climbing into Craig’s car, she breathed in the smell of new leather. Craig was doing well for himself, for that she was thankful.
She rode in silence next to her brother and focused on the bright sky. Its cheeriness irritated her sadness like an annoying loose tooth—even if you didn’t mess with it, you still knew it was there.
She tried putting aside dreary thoughts to experience the beautiful rays of white light illuminating the countryside, images she’d love to capture with oils, but the joyfulness of the scene was wasted, overshadowed by her dark mood.
“I wonder if everyone will be there?” she said, thankful Craig had chosen silence over the noise of the radio.
“I’ve never known anyone to RSVP to a memorial service, but everyone we invited responded to the invite for the potluck afterward,” Craig said quietly.
Lia fidgeted with the cuff of her blouse. The purple suede heels she had discovered in her mother’s locked room in the barn added New Orleans pizzazz to the conservative black skirt and white silk blouse. The purple in the flowered scarf draping her neck matched the purple in the shoes. While her mother lived, Lia would’ve never considered wearing them, too loud and too attention-grabbing. Her mother would be thrilled to know she’d moved past some of her too conservative ways, and while she would never fill her mother’s figurative shoes, she appreciated her mother’s colorful flamboyance more now than ever.
“After the first month or so, I stopped going multiple times each week to visit them,” she said, breaking the silence. “It got too cold. After that, I went only once a week.”
“Wait. You’d said you visited their graves only a couple of times all summer.”
Pressure built in her chest. Anxiety pinged like quick-firing pistons. She licked her lips, stalling before uttering the truth. In their younger years, Craig would’ve swatted her for lying. “We went together for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and that was the last time I stood graveside…”
“Spit it out, Amelia. We discussed your obsessive need to haunt the cemetery.”
“Craig, you don’t understand,” she said quietly. “I feel so guilty about shutting mother out when I left for college. I was terrified I relied on her so much that I would fail at school…or life, if I didn’t stand on my own. As a result of my rejection of her, she left me a legacy of boxes. Each and every one reminds me of her.”
“You’re wrong. She left you a legacy of memories and an example of how to live an honest life, be a good wife, and raise a happy family. Can’t you see that?”
Lia snorted. “I do hold the memories dear. But I’m an artist, and I want to farm. My decision to stay doesn’t diminish mother’s dream for me.” She raised her voice, “It’s part of why I love it here. But you’re unable to see that about me!” Clearing her throat, she composed herself. “I’m as capable of running the farm as I am painting, well, almost. As for the wife business, at this rate, I’ll be an old maid forever. I can’t manage anything beyond a second date.”
“There are suitable men in the city,” Craig grumbled.
“That doesn’t do me any good here, now does it?”
“We’re almost there. Let’s not fight.” Craig reached over and squeezed her forearm.
For a few minutes, her heightened anxiety subsided to a slow churn. Her brother had taken her mind off the purpose for his visit—to give grief a final rest.
Lia crossed her legs, bouncing her foot while she twisted her mother’s engagement ring on the middle finger of her right hand. Mother had never declared her wishes. Did she want the ring to go to Craig for his someday-bride? Craig had decided she should keep the one-carat ring their father had given their mother. If he ever married, his bride would wear a modern new setting. Something to go with his new image, she suspected.
Having a family, a husband and children, without her mother to share in the joy colored the future with a shadow of gray. Today’s memorial service was an important event. A marker of the passing of time. A year of grieving had come to an end. The rawness of her loss had healed, but a small scab remained. She fully expected it to scar. She picked at it mentally. Emotionally, it needed more healing time. Why had she taken her parents for granted?
Rumblings from a truck behind them drew her attention. A horn beeped.
“Who could be so rude?” she demanded. Craig shrugged, but his mouth moved into a lopsided grin. She flipped down the visor and adjusted the mirror.
Lia’s hand went to her throat. Her chest tightened. Her eyes darted to the mirror again and locked on Lucas’s smile. He waved. Heat rose in her cheeks while tingles traveled to her toes. Thinking of Lucas was like straddling barbwire. Either way she moved, it hurt.
A year ago, he’d kissed her. In the moment of that kiss, life wrapped her in a cocoon. She kissed him back. She’d waited for so long for that kiss. Her heart sang with joy, ecstatic as if she’d found a pot of gold in a cornfield after a tornado.
Only then to have Lucas snatch it away.
For the entire the last year, she’d waited for a repeat performance. It never came. The boy she’d fallen in love with had grown into a man, and neither boy nor man wanted her. The strain between them made them barely friends. “Of course, it’s Lucas Dwyer.”
Unrequited love was not the glorious thing poets made it out to be. Over-romanticized drivel. Lucas would never know how often she painted and watched for his truck to pass on the road. The sunroom with its walls of windows provided an exceptional view of the few vehicles coming and going.
Each week, then each month, since Lucas last kissed her, her hope dwindled. Just once, she wished he’d stop by the farm to see about her. Really see her, not check up on the crop, or do something for her brother.
Where had the passion and tenderness he’d given in her most desperate hour disappeared to? His reputation didn’t include irresponsible behavior. In fact, his actions were usually the complete opposite. He considered every decision he made before he acted. But in her case, had he just overreacted to her tears? Pondering, she refused to accept any conclusion, at least not a satisfying one. The only good thing after that kiss—she’d poured her heart into her painting.
She sighed. Wouldn’t Lucas be surprised if he knew she’d dreamed of him?
“I hope he doesn’t pass us. Your new car will be covered with dust,” Lia said.
Craig glanced in her direction. She smiled saccharine-sweet. “After all, th
is isn’t St. Louis. You’ll have to drive all the way to town for a carwash.”
“I’m not worried about the car. I am wondering about you, though. Amelia, what’s up with you and Lucas? You’ve been down on him from the moment I got home. He’s family. The only way we, meaning you and I, could be closer to him is if…”
“If what?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” Craig shook his head. “Let’s not fight. I’m sure the anxiety of the service is weighing on both of us.”
Rising apprehension bit at her nerves. Her shoulder muscles tightened. If a distraction didn’t happen fast, she’d lose what remaining composure she possessed. This time, Lucas wouldn’t be there to comfort her in the middle of a breakdown.
“Why, I don’t know what you mean, big brother.” Lia winked an eye repeatedly while bobbling her head and shrugging one shoulder.
“Great! Comic relief. Keep that up,” Craig chuckled. “Dress up like a Zombie. You’ll be a hit at Halloween.”
Lia went still. “You know we don’t get trick-or-treaters out here.”
“Just several more reasons to be in the city. Trick-or-treat in your neighborhood. Halloween parties at school and in the West Bottoms.”
“Drop it, Craig. You gave me a full calendar year. I won’t fail. There’s a good crop waiting for harvest. I’ve got enough boxes to help pay the bills. And, I’ve got some income from my art work. I’m not going back.”
Craig heaved out a deep sigh. “You’re stubborn, just like Dad. Everything might work out this year, but what about next year, and the year after? Amelia, I’m begging you, go back to the city and paint. Become a famous artist. Become the toast of the town. Become teacher of the year, but don’t ruin your life waiting on corn.”
“When we get to the cemetery, don’t you dare let on that we’ve been fighting,” she snapped. “Not in front of everyone. Mom and Dad would be so embarrassed. It would break Mom’s heart.”
“Amelia, you’re breaking mine.”
