Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart)

by DeStefano, Anna

  “Shut up, Dru.” Brad pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back, his arm propped on the couch. It was long enough for his fingers to nearly reach the other side. He studied the rug between them. “You were always more than that. And if whatever Vi’s decided to do is okay with me, why would you fight it?”

  Dru moved across the parlor until she was in front of him.

  “It’s not okay with you.” It was infuriating, the thought of him going along with Vivian’s plans. “This is your house. The Dream Whip is your family’s business. Whatever scheme Vivian’s concocted with Horace because she’s feeling obligated to do more for me is a mistake.”

  Not to mention the fractured fairy tale that he and Dru could live and work peacefully together.

  Brad laughed, wry, humorless. “Vivian—feeling obligated to do anything she doesn’t already want to do?”

  “I don’t care what she thinks she wants.” Dru gestured at Horace. “I don’t care what this guy’s let her talk herself into, while they’re spending practically every evening having dinner together here. Your grandmother seems to think,” she said to Brad, “that I don’t know about their dates the nights I’m working. The Dream Whip is a gossip wormhole, between dinner rush and closing prep. I hear everything about everyone in this town, at least the things people think I’m dying to know. I don’t care—”

  “You should care, my dear.” When Horace was irritated, his drawl grew even more distinguished and Baptist-tea sweet. “She—”

  “No,” Dru said to Brad. “You should care. You should be spitting mad about this. And you should know better than to think it’s going to work.”

  She looked around her at the mismatched, dated décor and furnishings that spoke of history and roots and generations of belonging, of permanence, no matter how strained Vivian’s relationship had sometimes been with her grandson.

  “This is yours.” Why couldn’t he be a selfish ass again, now that she needed him to be? “It’s all you’ll have left of your mom and grandfather and Vivian. You should want this. You should fight me and Horace and even your grandmother to keep this in your family. Don’t let some leftover idea of making up for our past be an excuse for not giving a damn about things in Chandlerville.”

  “But he already gives a damn about things here.” Horace studied Brad’s silence. “He has for quite some time, haven’t you, son? It’s just that Vivian’s finally of a mind to get you two to deal with your problems out in the open. ‘Enough,’ and I’m quoting here, ‘with that boy wasting time being a silent champion. He’s either ready to own up to whatever he feels for Dru Hampton and me and this house and the Dream Whip, or I’m selling the lot of it and setting them both free.’”

  “Champion?” Dru swallowed the dread climbing up her throat. She stared at Brad in disbelief. Whatever he feels for Dru Hampton . . . “You’ve hardly been home in seven years. You stay with Travis when you’re here. Even over Christmas, you act like a visitor in this house. You never stay for more than a single night, while I go out of my way to give you and Vivian space. You’ve hardly stepped foot in the Dream Whip since you left for Savannah. You and your grandmother speak like once a month over the phone. Where on earth would she get the idea that you care—”

  “He’s the one who asked Vi to put you up here.” Horace leafed through another set of notes. “It was his idea at first for his grandmother to give you a room and a full-time job when you turned eighteen, so you would stay in town.”

  Dru dropped into her chair. Brad stared at the pattern on the rug between them, as if it held the answers to the world’s mysteries.

  “You . . .” She didn’t know how to say it, any more than he seemed to. “You asked Vivian to help me?”

  And if she didn’t miss her guess, that wasn’t all.

  Those invisible handcuffs closed a little tighter, as she recalled Brad’s skill as a radKIDS instructor.

  He’d said he’d been involved with the program in Savannah almost as long as she had here. Which suddenly made it seem much less random—Vivian’s agreement to be the first business owner in Chandlerville to fund Dru’s training, and to cover the expense of starting and running the nonprofit program.

  All these years, Dru had seen herself and Vivian as a team. Vi had paid her to work her butt off at the Whip. She’d backed Dru putting so much time into their community, helping the local kids. They’d done a lot of good together. Dru had thought maybe Joe and Marsha had gone to bat for her at first, hitting up their unpredictable neighbor for help on Dru’s behalf. And she’d tried to repay every cent of the confidence they’d all placed in her.

  The last seven years absolutely couldn’t have been about Brad’s guilt instead, over his starring role in Oliver’s leaving. Brad was supposed to be the villain in this story, not her silent benefactor.

  Horace had lost himself in his documents, leaving Dru and Brad to figure things out. Dru willed the quiet man sitting in front of her, a man she’d once thought would be the love of her life, to look at her. To tell her that this was all a misunderstanding. When Brad finally lifted his eyes, he flinched at whatever he saw on her face.

  “Why?” she asked.

  The room spun. Why would he do something that would keep her from hating him as much as she needed to, and wait until now to let her know? The life she’d made for herself in Chandlerville was reshaping itself into something she didn’t recognize, far faster than she’d expected.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Chapter Five

  “I was trying to do the right thing,” Brad said to Dru the next morning at the Dream Whip. “Every letter I sent you after I left was returned unopened. You blocked my calls and texts. Even if you hadn’t, and I’d told you years ago that I’d asked Vi to give you a job and a place to stay, we’d have fought over it, and—”

  “And we couldn’t have that, could we?” Dru said.

  She’d left him high and dry last night. She’d calmly walked out of the house before he could answer her question, and before Horace could finish going over Vivian’s will. Brad had spent a sleepless night trying to figure out how to help both her and Vivian now, without causing Dru more pain in the process.

  “I was staying out of your way,” he said. “In Savannah. And I was happy to do it. I was building my own new life, while Chandlerville’s clearly worked out for you. If a small part of that was me asking Vi to help you, what’s the harm?”

  “You’ve stayed away from Chandlerville all these years . . .” She looked as if she might laugh. Or cry. “For me.”

  “That’s not what I said. I—”

  “That’s what you did.”

  “I did it for me, Dru.” At least at first he had. “I had a lot to prove to myself. It took years, and I’m still paying my dues on the force. We’re understaffed and underfunded, just like everyone else these days. There’s very little chance to take time off, except for personal emergencies. At least that means I have several weeks of leave banked now, so I can be here as long as Vi needs me.”

  Dru didn’t look like she was completely buying it. Truth be told, neither was he. He could have come home more. He would have, except eventually running into Dru would have resulted in exactly the kind of drama they’d endured yesterday afternoon at the YMCA, and last night at the house.

  He’d never expected to be put on the spot like this—Dru discovering that he hadn’t been the complete bastard she’d thought he was.

  “You’ve been pulling strings with Vivian,” she said, “asking her to help me. Because you feel guilty about Oliver?”

  “Can the bullshit, Dru. Stop overreacting.”

  He told himself to cool it, too, even though blowing off steam would be a hell of a lot more satisfying.

  “Vivian and I haven’t been colluding to control your life. You have no reason not to take what she’s offering you seriously, as crazy as she’s gone about doing this. And you know it, or you’d have stayed and finish
ed working this out last night.”

  It was early—too early yet for him to visit Vivian at the hospice center. By the time he’d made it to Harmony Grove last night she’d been asleep. And when he’d returned to the house, Dru still hadn’t been there. According to Travis, she’d turned up at their parents’ and slept on Marsha and Joe’s couch. Travis had mentioned that she got to the Dream Whip before dawn on Saturdays, prepping for a day of burgers and fries and shakes, as well as the farm-to-table organic salads she’d convinced Vivian to begin selling a few years back.

  Vivian had let it slip once that she’d fought the idea. But within a week of being added to the menu, the healthier options had been selling well, and she’d begun trusting Dru’s instincts. The resulting menu expansion, according to the financials Brad glanced at on Vi’s home computer each time he was in town, had become the most profitable segment of the Dream Whip’s business. All of which he’d be happy to share with Dru if she’d let him—instead of looking as if she might smack him with the same enthusiasm she was currently using to flatten her hamburger patties.

  She hadn’t opened up when Brad knocked on the front door of the Dream Whip. Thank God for the key Vivian still kept on the hook beside the kitchen phone. He’d let himself in. Stepping back into the restaurant he’d grown up in had stopped him cold—red upholstered booths and chairs, white tabletops, everything edged in vintage chrome that might have looked beaten up to some. To him, all of it, especially the spacious counter in front where people were greeted and orders were placed and staged before they were carried out to waiting tables, would always feel like home.

  He’d pushed through period swinging doors to the kitchen. The cramped space beyond was still overcrowded with industrial-grade appliances that hadn’t been state-of-the-art when he’d worked there as a kid. He’d found Dru elbows-deep, forming by hand the all-beef, secret-spiced patties that would become mouthwatering burgers when she opened the joint at eleven.

  “I didn’t need your help when I was eighteen,” she finally said. She flattened another patty onto a paper-covered sheet pan. “I don’t need it now.”

  “You didn’t have anywhere else to go. You wanted to stay in Chandlerville.”

  “You don’t know that.” She kneaded a handful of the fresh ground beef that Watson’s Butcher Shop delivered seven mornings a week, every day except Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving.

  “I know you.” That was why he’d repacked his things into his duffel bag that morning. He’d bunk with Travis the rest of his stay in town, so he didn’t run Dru out of Vivian’s. “This town and having a place in it you could call your own is all you’ve ever wanted. So I asked my grandmother to help, five years ago. It’s your doing that Vi wants you to stay now. I’m sure everyone else in Chandlerville does, too. Horace told me you’re a Girl Scout leader, a volunteer at the Y beyond radKIDS, a tutor at the middle and high schools. You help out the Dixons when they need you, on top of the work you do at the restaurant and how much more Vi’s depended on you at home the last few years. You’re dug in. You’ve made a good life for yourself and everyone around you. Don’t piss that chance away because you’re still mad at me.”

  “Another chance that’s going to be because of you, whether I want it to be or not?”

  “So what? The only person who cares about you and me anymore is you.” Brad saw her blink as if he’d slapped her. “That’s not what I meant. I care about your happiness. I want you to have whatever Vi wants you to have.” Surprisingly, he realized that he did, even if it meant he lost the house. “But for this to work, you’re going to have to get out of your own way about us.”

  “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Why not?” The pros and cons had rolled around in his mind until dawn. “Travis forgave me. So did your parents and Vi. No one else in Chandlerville knows me well enough anymore to care about what happened when we were in high school. Meanwhile the business is solvent. It’s thriving in hard economic times. And your fingerprints have been all over how Vi’s run things for years. You’ve been invaluable to her here and at home. What does it matter if keeping a piece of that for yourself has anything to do with me?”

  “It matters to me. Making my way on my own, working my butt off to get what I have and to pay people back for everything they’ve already given me, matters to me.”

  “And you don’t like the idea of one of those people being me,” he said.

  She sighed. “No.”

  She’d been fearlessly independent as a kid, though she’d adored her foster family. Brad wondered how much Dru still thought that she’d just gotten lucky, that the stars had magically aligned when Family Services chose the Dixons for her.

  She’d said as much to him once, when they’d been close: that it never really felt real, the life she’d stumbled into in Chandlerville. Maybe Vivian had figured that out, too, and this was her way of pushing Dru into accepting that she could stop fighting so hard to earn things that were already rightfully hers. Only now Dru had their teenage baggage to deal with, while she tried to wrap her head around Vivian’s final plans.

  “What about my kids?” Dru asked. “Did you let guilt make you think you should involve yourself in your grandmother’s funding of my radKIDS program?”

  “I’m not running my life based on mistakes I made when I was barely old enough to shave, Dru.” It was one of the first positive steps he’d taken, turning loose of what he couldn’t go back and change. “And no one talks Vivian Douglas into anything. She was intrigued by your proposal when you pitched the idea for the Whip to sponsor something that would make the community better. My being drunk off my ass half the time when I was a teenager, and sleeping with Selena Rosenthal, and the mess that night made out of all of our lives, had nothing to do with Vivian asking what I knew about radKIDS. Or me telling her she should support the program. It was good for the business; it gave the restaurant a stronger profile in the community and let the public see some of the good Vivian’s been doing behind the scenes. And it was good for you.”

  “And the life I thought I was building for myself”—Dru pounded a beef patty flat, creating a sad-looking pancake instead of the kind of juicy, rounded burger Brad could still form in his sleep—“was somehow still about you, even after you rejected me when we were kids. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

  “Nothing. Don’t feel anything about me.” Something in his chest squeezed, making the words nearly impossible to get out. “Just know that I pushed you away when we were kids because Oliver asked me to, not because I didn’t want everything you were offering me that night. Accept that I was trying to do the right thing then, just like I was when I encouraged Vivian to help you. Then let it go, so we can deal with what she needs from us now.”

  “You . . .” Dru’s bottom lip trembled. “You wanted me back then?”

  “Yes.” She deserved to know that, even if it didn’t change a damn thing.

  He was standing between her and the door to the front of the place. He was close enough to block her escape through the back if she decided to run from him again. She was still wearing the same clothes as last night, loose jeans and a pink Chandlerville Chargers sweatshirt and beaten-up sneakers with no socks. Her short, softly curling hair looked finger-combed. There wasn’t a whisper of makeup to soften the shadows beneath her eyes. She was disheveled and sleep-deprived. She looked better to him than his best dreams.

  He didn’t say that he’d never stopped wanting her. She didn’t need that from him. He’d promised himself yesterday at the Y not to push her to be part of his life again, even temporarily. But now too much was at stake for her, for him not to try.

  “You won Vi over, Dru. You’ve made a difference in Chandlerville and Vivian’s life. You’ve made a difference in my life, too.”

  Her head snapped up. She stared at him as if she couldn’t take another bombshell. But it was time to put all of his cards on the table.

  “You got me interest
ed in radKIDS,” he explained, “the same time you did Vivian. I lobbied for the same kind of program in Savannah, and I got my captain interested. I’m the new crime prevention officer he’s created a position for. I get to work with families and kids and women and minorities and whoever else needs me, helping them better protect themselves and each other hundreds of miles away from here—because of you.”

  “While I’ve been oblivious the entire time.” Dru gave up on the hamburgers and walked to the sink.

  She turned her back while she washed up.

  “It wasn’t important that you knew. And the home you’ve made for yourself here is all that matters to Vivian now. It should be all that matters to you. Not my mistakes when we were kids.”

  She turned off the water with enough force to make the faucet squeak. She dried her hands on the oversize apron she’d tied around her trim waist, and then she unwound the strings and threw the thing onto the counter beside pots and pans that had been scoured at closing the night before.

  “This is all just . . . too much.” Her attention was fixed on her raggedy sneakers. “Please tell me why you can’t seem to ever be straight with me, Brad. It’s been so long since I’ve felt like I understood anything about you. About us. And now we’re supposed to live together? Work together?”

  “I’ve never lied to you. Not even about Selena. I told you the God’s honest truth when you asked me what happened, even though I knew it would hurt you, ruin things for us, and get back to your brother. I shouldn’t have gotten drunk with her when she broke up with Oliver and came looking for me to console her the night I’d pushed you away. I shouldn’t have slept with her. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life—the way Oliver lost it when he found out about everything, including you and me kissing. He was my best friend. I wish I could go back and undo my part in what happened. I wish I could have kept you from losing him in your life. But I didn’t lie to you. Just like I’m being straight with you now.”