Dandelion Wishes

by Melinda Curtis

  Will wasn’t an artist. He couldn’t distinguish passion in a painting, this one or otherwise. What he did see was the burned silo frame, the empty parking spaces along Main Street, the lack of life. Now that she’d put some distance between them, his brain kicked back into gear.

  He hurried to catch up to her. “How prophetic that you painted the town without people, since that’s where it’s headed if the town council doesn’t rezone the Henderson property.”

  “You see everything too literally.” There was strength in her voice again, although her eyes still had a worried slant.

  “It’s why I’m good with computers.”

  “And why you stumble with people.”

  “Do you know why everyone under the age of sixty left Harmony Valley?” Will managed to speak in a measured voice, as if he were an outsider with nothing at stake. “They had mouths to feed, college bills, mortgages. The town council forced them out with a no-growth policy that was shortsighted. It’s why everyone left.”

  Emma frowned.

  Sensing he was near scoring a point, Will pressed on. “You heard what Sam said. It takes emergency services thirty minutes to get here. Heaven help someone if there’s a fire. Or worse.” With the advanced age of Harmony Valley’s older residents, it was only a matter of time until tragedy arrived.

  His father drove by, his white pickup truck headed toward the center of town. He saw Will and waved.

  “Harmony Valley has a volunteer fire department.” Emma’s information was maddeningly out-of-date.

  “Had. They shut it down when Felix failed the fitness exam. Property-insurance rates increased when they lost that service. That’s what finally broke Agnes’s daughter. She couldn’t afford to live here anymore.”

  Emma stopped at the corner of what had been the town’s grocery store. Its brick wall was faded and crumbled at the base. El Rosal had picked up the grocery slack, selling staples out of their restaurant lobby. She cocked her head as she considered him. “Are you telling me you’re only building this humongous winery and investing in town so they can restore emergency services? There’s nothing in it for you?”

  Will didn’t refute her quickly enough.

  “Come on. Spill it.” She laughed.

  A few minutes ago her laughter had danced across the bounds of his anger. Now he recognized it as something more—her armor against the world. Against him.

  She smirked. “I can wait all day. Cleared my calendar, remember?”

  He didn’t want to tell her about his hopes for Tracy. He knew what her response would be—worse than Slade’s. But he didn’t see that he had a choice. “You’re going to take this wrong.”

  “Try me.” Her grin lit a fire in his gut, challenged him to defend his intentions.

  They were good intentions. And good intentions deserved a good defense. Always. “I want Tracy to work here. At the winery. Or somewhere in town.”

  “There you go again.” Emma’s hands bobbed and floated and accused. “Wrapping Tracy up, boxing her in, shipping her off. Taking charge when you know Tracy wouldn’t want this.”

  “I know what I’m doing. You may consider it overbearing—”

  “Consider?” She huffed. “Do you have a plan for everyone in town? Including me?”

  If she hadn’t read him so well, he might have denied it or changed the subject.

  But Emma was too perceptive. “You do! I should have known.” She gestured for him to continue, quickly.

  “All right. Since you want to know. I have no concrete plans, only preferences.” Not all of which would see the light of day, like kissing Emma. He definitely wasn’t making plans for that, but some niggling part of him refused to let go of the idea.

  “Give. What are you thinking?” That grin again. Soon to disappear. “I can’t wait to hear your preferences about me.”

  She wouldn’t appreciate hearing what he had to say, but she’d asked and it was better to lay it out in front of her now. Her reaction might squelch his attraction to her. “I’d like some council members to retire so we can accelerate progress in town. I’d like to tear down some buildings that aren’t up to earthquake code. This is California. You never know when or where the next big one will strike.” He pointed to the crumbling brick at the bottom of the old grocery-store wall. And then came the personal stuff. “I’d like Tracy to give up her half of your apartment and move in with Dad. I’d like you to go paint somewhere far away from Tracy.” And him. “I’d like you to—”

  “That’s enough.” Emma’s chin was up, along with her hackles. “I get your point, especially when it comes to me. You don’t care about this place or anybody but yourself.”

  It was exactly the opposite. He cared more than he wanted to admit. He should leave and let her think poorly of him. Instead, he tried to reason with her. “Careful, Emma. You’re letting emotion get in the way of logic. I care more than you know.”

  “Then you have a funny way of showing it. I have emotions. I express them. And I respect free will.” Her hands fisted her skirt. “It’s Tracy’s future. The same for the town. And my life. They’re our choices, not yours.”

  Her verbal jabs landed, striking a nerve. Will’s shoulders pinched. She was acting as if he didn’t care when he often felt he cared too much. It was why he pushed so hard for change.

  But she wasn’t finished. “I agree the town council should try to restore emergency services, but don’t fault people like my grandmother and Mayor Larry for trying to protect the town’s heritage and way of life just because you can’t recognize how important that is.”

  Another blow landed. He was supposed to form a negative opinion of her, not the other way around.

  “Protect their lifestyle?” Will closed the distance between them until he could smell the flowery scent of her hair. He lowered his voice until she had to angle her head toward him to capture every word. “They grew pot up on Parish Hill. Did you know that? I left that out of my little history lesson last night at the council meeting, but apparently it was once a vital part of the economy here.”

  Emma choked on a lungful of air, so close he could reach out and kiss her. “That’s not true.”

  His mouth worked over potential arguments, but his body kept urging him to use his lips in a completely different way.

  Clamping his mouth firmly shut, Will took a step back. Then another.

  “Ask Rose.” He crossed the street, heading toward Slade’s house, away from the accusations he resented, away from the grin that burned up his insides, away from the attraction that had him wanting something he could never have with Emma.

  Her in his arms.

  * * *

  EMMA MARCHED HOME under a cloud-spotted sky. The things Will had accused her grandmother and town council of. Slap-slap, slap-slap. The way he’d implied Emma took everything he said personally. Slap-slap-slap. The way the logic of his argument about emergency services made sense. Slap-slap. The way her heart didn’t want to listen. Slap.

  A lone dandelion at the side of the road beckoned. Emma marched determinedly past it.

  Will thought dandelion wishes were a waste of time. Will thought dandelion wishes spread weeds into the world. Will thought—

  Emma spun around and plucked the dandelion free. She didn’t care what Will thought. She and Tracy had been making dandelion wishes since they were kids.

  She turned toward home, stopping in the middle of the bridge over Harmony River. She tried to catch her breath. She tried to be as calm as the water flowing beneath her.

  It wasn’t possible. Not even with a dandelion wish at the ready.

  What would she wish for?

  She could wish that Will would give up on his winery and go away. She could wish that Will would realize that her friendship with Tracy transcended accidents, mental challenges and artistic
blocks. Or wish away the pull of Will’s appeal on both an artistic and a physical level. Or wish to erase that near kiss. And the suspicion that Will had wanted to kiss her again as they’d argued on Main Street.

  Emma huffed. All her wishes involved Will.

  Because Will needed to go away.

  She blew the dandelion fluff out over the water.

  The seeds twirled and pirouetted in a cluster that dispersed in the air before drifting slowly down to the water. Harmony Valley might change, but dandelion wishes would not.

  Emma’s pulse calmed. Her frustration ebbed.

  After the last fluff had disappeared downriver, Emma headed home. She let herself in the back door and poured a glass of lemonade, drinking it on the rear porch steps. In her self-appointed role as Harmony Valley’s unofficial protector, she should shadow Will the rest of the afternoon. But that near kiss felt like a dodged bullet, and Emma wasn’t ready to risk another showdown.

  She stared at the landscape, wondering what Tracy was doing, wondering if she could go find her and try apologizing again. It was probably too soon. Her attention turned to her surroundings. The lawn sloped gently toward the bending river, framed on one side by the eucalyptus grove and wild blackberries, and on the other by Granny’s vegetable garden. It was the perfect place to paint.

  If she had the courage to paint.

  Emma sagged against the porch railing. Moping solved nothing. A few minutes later, she’d wrestled the wooden easel downstairs to the lawn. A few minutes more and a canvas sat on the easel. Trying to paint was better than trying to avoid thinking about it.

  At least in theory.

  Left hand clutching her sketching pencil over the canvas, Emma squinted at the landscape and fought the shakes, fought to quiet the cacophony of the accident.

  A cloud drifted across the sun, shading the landscape, sucking the warmth out of the air. Emma’s arms prickled with goose bumps. Her determination wavered.

  Maybe she could control her fears if she skipped a step—no sketching, just painting. She squirted oil paint on her wooden painter’s palette, her hands steady as set concrete. She started with big gobs of blue, yellow, red and white, then mixed colors with a brush to get different shades of brown, green, blue and gray. She didn’t usually work with more than one color at a time, but it had been so long since she’d mixed any paint that creating the shades brought a long-lost feeling of joy. But it was a silent joy. There was no musical soundtrack playing in her head. She’d take the silence as long as her talent returned.

  It wasn’t until she carefully loaded the tip of a brush with murky green that her hand succumbed to that familiar tremble. With stilted, determined strokes, Emma tried to outline the edge of the river. But it was as if she’d gone back in time. The shrill complaint of braking rubber on pavement. The warning rumble of a big rig engine. She no longer saw the river. Images from the accident flashed before her. Heart stopping. Breath stealing.

  Gasping, she stumbled back, blinked away the harrowing memories. All she’d succeeded in doing was to paint a green line that might have passed for a caterpillar if she was in kindergarten. Her shoulders slumped in defeat.

  She dropped her palette and paintbrush onto the grass, and ran into the house, intending to go up to her room. But at the end of the hall was a picture she’d painted of Yosemite’s Half Dome. The realization hit her that she’d never paint like that again.

  Emma walked out the front door, collapsing on the porch swing, listening to red-winged blackbirds chatter to each other in the eucalyptus grove. The only birds she heard in the city were seagulls. And that was a backdrop to angry commuter car horns, chants from irate protesters and the constant chatter of people on cell phones.

  Harmony Valley was special just the way it was. And yet, it wasn’t perfect. Emma didn’t want to acknowledge the truth in Will’s arguments. But how could she not? There were too many elderly people living here to have emergency services so far away. What if Granny Rose fell? What if Mr. B. had another heart attack?

  And eventually, without any new businesses and no one younger than sixty, the town would die out. Emma didn’t want that, either. But that didn’t mean Harmony Valley had to be torn down and rebuilt with cookie-cutter subdivisions. If the oak tree in the town square came down and the landscape in the valley changed, its character would change.

  Maybe Emma would be more open to the town being developed if other things in her life were certain. Granny Rose’s mental health. Tracy’s friendship and forgiveness. Her own ability to follow through on her passion.

  Every fear is silly when you say it out loud.

  Will’s words. He’d meant that some fears weren’t based in fact. But Emma had seen the world through an artist’s perspective all her life. She’d been so lost behind an artist’s lens that she’d crashed. She was lucky she hadn’t killed Tracy. Who knew that being an artist was such a dangerous profession?

  Her glance landed on the coloring book on the patio table. Emma picked it up and opened it to a fresh page, marked by a forest-green crayon.

  Emma traced the heavy black lines with the nubby green crayon.

  Lightning didn’t strike, but her heart was pounding so fiercely she couldn’t hear the birds anymore.

  All Emma had was green. Her hand barely trembled as she started shading the drawings with long, even strokes. Her mind shifted into neutral as she patiently colored within the lines. When she was done her hands were steady, her heart calm.

  Emma stared once more at Parish Hill and murmured, “Someday.”

  But when she returned her attention to the coloring book, it wasn’t a landscape she sketched in the margin, but her grandmother’s beloved face.

  * * *

  WHAT WAS WRONG with Emma?

  From behind blackberry bushes near the river, Tracy had tried to psych herself into talking to Emma. She’d watched her start to paint and then throw down her paintbrush in disgust. Emma never gave up on a painting after a few short minutes. And when she’d stomped out to the front porch, Tracy couldn’t squelch her curiosity. She’d stayed hidden in the eucalyptus grove as she rounded the house. Emma wasn’t getting any additional paint supplies. She was sitting in the porch swing, coloring.

  Tracy worked her way back around to the blackberry bushes bordering the backyard, but the canvas was facing the house so she couldn’t see what Emma had painted.

  When Emma told Tracy that she should wait to move back to the city until she’d had more therapy, Tracy had wanted to run away. She’d wanted Emma to say she’d do whatever Tracy needed, whatever she wanted to make her happy, not treat her like an invalid.

  Tracy would die of embarrassment if Emma caught her spying, but she had to find out what was on that canvas. Emma had mentioned some injury and Tracy was curious. Had she broken her fingers or wrist? Was her vision wonky?

  Tracy darted out from the cover of the blackberry bushes. It took her ten seconds to get to the easel. Her breath came in labored gasps and her leg muscles shook as if they’d give out at any moment.

  And there was Emma’s latest masterpiece. A green worm.

  No wonder Emma was upset. It looked like a finger painting. Tracy had made better pictures than that in therapy.

  She picked up the brush—it still had green on it—and painted antennae on the worm. And then wings. Lifting the palette, she dabbed white polka dots on the creature. She filled in the blue sky, plastered the bottom of the canvas with black. Finally there was no blank bit of canvas left.

  Power surged through her veins. She’d done something without permission and now felt like she could take on the world. And all because she’d painted a picture on a canvas. Wait until Emma found out.

  Tracy grinned, admiring her work once more. And then terror struck.

  Oh, dear God. Emma was going to come out here and discover what
she’d done. She could be watching her right now.

  Tracy spun around, her nervous gaze darting to the windows and doors, but no one came out.

  How would she explain this? Will would think she needed to see a psychiatrist, or at the least that she missed the rudimentary arts and crafts at Evergreen. He meant well, but he thought a mosquito bite meant she’d contract the West Nile virus.

  What was she going to do? She didn’t want anyone to know. Not Will or Emma. She didn’t want to be sent back to the hospital.

  She dropped the palette and brush on the grass, grabbed the canvas and ran.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “WHAT’S UP, WILL?” Slade stepped out of his kitchen onto the back porch, looking like he’d been in earnest negotiations and had lost. Black hair bunched to one side as if fisted in frustration; tie knot loose, the ends flapping in the breeze. “You don’t even like basketball.”

  In the middle of trying to make a layup into the rusted hoop bolted above Slade’s detached garage, Will didn’t bother answering. Emma was his problem, not Slade’s.

  The ball bounced off the rim and into the grass separating Slade’s driveway from Old Man Takata’s. When Slade hadn’t answered the door, Will had needed something to wear down the sharp edge of frustration.

  “I heard you knock,” Slade continued. “But I was on the landline with my divorce lawyer. This lack of cell service is starting to get old. I may have to purchase my own communications tower and put it in the backyard.”

  Will picked up the ball and gestured toward the house. “I was beginning to think you had a woman in there.”

  Slade came down the steps and held out his hands, asking for the ball. “A woman? No woman is coming inside this house ever again. Do you know what the bridge club calls this place?”

  “No.” Will passed the basketball to him.

  “The Death and Divorce house. No family has lived here untouched. The idea of a woman in there makes me cringe.” Slade dribbled twice on the cracking pavement and then put up a beautiful, arcing shot that went through the orange metal hoop without touching it. And Slade did it in khakis, dress shirt and a tie, with a grin that dismissed his earlier annoyance with his ex-wife’s legal maneuvering. “Correction. The idea of anyone in that house makes me cringe.”