“Let’s just say they aren’t what they were when I inherited this farm. But, not to worry, we may still be around in time for Lily Rose to take over. Right, Little Rosie?” Uncle Grant raised his glass to her.
Lily Rose smiled, but she had only been half following the adults’ conversation. Sipping her hot cocoa, with Rebel lying at her feet, she had been more involved with taking in the scene before her: Uncle Grant and her father chatting about business, her mother interjecting once in a while. Although Aunt Martha had not spoken much that evening, Lily had never seen her appear lovelier, her serene face framed by a cloud of dark hair, her fine-boned hands folded in front of her. Lily knew that without children, Aunt Martha considered her to be like her own, and Lily truly treasured her summers with her aunt and uncle. She didn’t want to think about a future when they couldn’t run the farm any more, or to even begin to contemplate a future where there might be no farm at all. For now she wanted to bask in the sounds of their voices, the candlelight illuminating their faces, the softness of Rebel’s fur against her legs—taking comfort in being surrounded by family.
* * *
After Christmas, and the Long family had returned home, school started up again. Lily was eager to compare notes on the holidays with her best friend, Elizabeth Barnes. A tall, slender girl with strawberry blond hair, Elizabeth had moved to Cumberland Falls from Harlan when both girls were in second grade. The first time Lily met her was when they’d been playing dolls with some classmates. While the others talked about who their Barbies would marry and how many babies they’d have, Elizabeth impatiently asked, “But what will your Barbie do?” That was when Lily knew she’d found a kindred spirit.
Since then, the girls were nearly inseparable. Because her parents both worked—her father as a research scientist and her mother as a teacher—Elizabeth often ended up at the Longs’ house after school, which turned into dinner, and then an invitation to spend the night. Carrie Ellen always treated Elizabeth like another daughter, and Lily considered her best friend better than having a sister. So, after being apart for almost two weeks, Lily and Elizabeth had a lot to catch up on. The first time Elizabeth spent the night after the new year, Carrie Ellen made cabbage rolls for dinner because she knew how much Elizabeth loved them.
After tucking them into bed, Carrie Ellen said with a wink, “I know you girls aren’t going to sleep right away, but please don’t stay up too late. You have school tomorrow, you know.”
“We won’t,” the girls chorused.
But at ten o’clock, after her parents had gone to bed and the house was still, Lily and Elizabeth were still awake, sitting cross-legged and facing each other on Lily’s bed.
“You know what we should do?” Elizabeth said.
Lily shook her head.
“Go out and slide on the river. It’s iced over tonight.”
A worried look creased Lily’s brow. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Of course. But you have to take risks if you want to experience something wonderful. Don’t you think so?”
Although she still had some misgivings, Lily agreed that the iced-over Cumberland River would be a wonderful sight. It rarely froze, but this winter had been unusually cold, with fierce snowstorms up in the mountains that moved down into the valley with their strength hardly diminished.
The girls bundled up and, giggling, snuck past Carrie Ellen and Alexander’s door, where Alexander was heard to be mightily snoring, and went downstairs. The moment they entered the kitchen, Rebel raised his head and padded after them, eager to join in the adventure, but Lily stopped him at the door. She couldn’t risk having Rebel outside and running around with them.
“I’m sorry, boy, but you can’t come with us,” she whispered as Rebel whined in protest.
Bracing themselves against the frigid temperatures, Lily and Elizabeth walked down the street to its end, where the Cumberland River normally roared. Tonight, though, it was eerily silent. Moonlight shone on the sparkling ice stretching before them, eclipsing the few lights from houses along the shore. When Lily turned back to look at the sleeping town, she thought how no one would know if she and Elizabeth disappeared beneath the surface of the river. Facing forward again, she saw that Elizabeth had already walked out onto the ice.
“Come on!” she shouted to Lily.
Tentatively, Lily edged out onto the river, sliding a little in her smooth-soled school shoes. Although she had gone ice skating a few times, she never felt comfortable with the ever-present sensation of almost falling, with losing control over the very ground beneath her. When she reached Elizabeth, she just stood there, hoping to keep her balance. Elizabeth, however, was taking full advantage of the slipperiness and trying to twirl with her arms flung wide. Opening her mouth, she gave out a pure scream of joy that echoed through the wintery night.
“Elizabeth!” Lily hissed. “What if someone hears you?”
After giving an exaggerated look around, Elizabeth said, “Who’s going to hear me? Everyone’s in bed. Why don’t you try it?”
“Me?” Lily squeaked, then cleared her throat. “Ahhhh!”
“Ahhhh!” Elizabeth imitated her in a high-pitched, whiny voice. “You can do better than that.”
Doubling up her fists, Lily threw her head back to the big black sky and screamed so loudly that Elizabeth clapped her hands over her ears. But when she lowered her hands, she was smiling.
“That’s more like it. How did it feel?”
“Good,” Lily replied, surprised at herself. As soon as the sound had left her throat, it was as if something had been cleared away and her senses were now heightened. The moon seemed brighter, the cold sharper; she had never felt more alive.
“Okay. Now let’s try something else.” Crouching down and then jumping up into the air, Elizabeth declared to the sky, “I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up!”
Lily paused for a moment as she regarded her closest friend with new curiosity. “Do you really think you’re going to do that?” she asked, although she had no doubt that Elizabeth could and would do anything she set her mind to.
“Of course, I am! What do you want to do?”
Lily took a moment to consider. If anyone else had asked her, like one of their classmates at school, she would have replied with what was expected, that she wanted to find a husband and have a family. But she knew this answer wouldn’t satisfy Elizabeth, and come to think of it, it wouldn’t satisfy her, either. Thinking back to Christmas at Red Rose Farm, Lily remembered sitting in the study and dreaming of going away. It wasn’t that she didn’t love spending time at the farm, or respect where her parents were from, but she knew there was more for her out there, beyond Appalachia.
“I want to go to New York City,” she confessed.
“But you’ve never been to New York City,” Elizabeth pointed out, ever practical. “What are you going to do there?”
“I don’t know,” Lily said quietly, “but I’ll think of it when I get there.” In that instant, she was never more sure of anything in her life. It wasn’t a question of if she would get to New York City, it was when. Maybe she could go to school there, then maybe she could find a job after completing school. However long it took, she would find her way to the big city.
“That’ll be fun,” Elizabeth quipped. “Me the astronaut in the stars and you the . . . whatever you’ll be . . . in New York City.”
“At least New York is closer,” Lily countered.
Elizabeth laughed. “You’re right. But let’s promise each other that we’ll make it happen.”
“Okay,” Lily replied, taking her friend’s hands. The moment she did, Elizabeth pulled her farther out onto the ice, making her give a yelp in terror.
“How do you think you’re going to handle living in New York if you can’t do this?” Elizabeth asked. “Just let go and try to enjoy yourself.”
Closing her eyes, Lily allowed Elizabeth to pull her around in a circle until they were spinning, feeding off each other’s mo
mentum, creating their own little orbit. When she opened her eyes again, she felt like she was about to take flight. Laughing, clutching each other, so dizzy they could hardly feel each other’s freezing hands in the cold, the two girls twirled under a moonlit sky bright with possibilities.
* * *
On a Sunday in the beginning of February, Lily Rose sat in the little white church in town, holding her mother’s hand. In a ritual that had been in the Long family as long as Lily could remember, she and Carrie Ellen sang hymns they both knew by heart while Alexander proudly sang in the choir. As the last notes faded away, she had already started dreaming about the lunch that sat waiting for them on the stove back home: chicken and dumplings, green beans, creamed corn, and a pineapple cream pie. During the walk home from church, Lily noticed how low the fog was and how a light, cold rain had begun to fall. She stared up at the big, pine-covered mountain that almost began in her backyard and thought how beautiful the snow would be up there by now. She hoped the rain might turn to snow and that they might get an inch or two so that she and the dogs could play outside.
After the family had finished lunch, the telephone rang. As Alexander went to get it, Lily thought about the day’s sermon about helping one’s neighbor. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” the minister had quoted. Dimly, Lily overheard her father give reassurance to the person on the other end of the line before coming back to his family.
“Farmer Evans’ mare is getting ready to foal and he needs someone to come out to help,” he announced. Although Alexander mostly treated dogs, cats, and other small animals at his office in town, he was trained to care for farm animals as well. When no one else was available, the local farmers often called on him for aid, and he was never known to refuse anyone.
“Doesn’t Farmer Evans live over in Eolia across the mountain?” Carrie Ellen asked. “Surely you’re not thinking of going over there in this weather.”
Lily turned to look out the window, where the gray fog now lay across the valley like a thick blanket, and rain continued to fall in a steely mist.
“The foal is breech and needs to be turned,” Alexander explained. “If there’s any chance of saving both it and the mare, I need to go.”
“All right,” Carrie Ellen relented. “Will you need me to come with you?”
“Yes, another pair of hands would be useful.” Alexander smiled gratefully at his wife.
“Can I come too?” Lily spoke up. She’d seen horses give birth at Red Rose Farm and marveled at the way the newborn foals were able to stand just moments after taking their first breaths.
“You’d better stay here,” Carrie Ellen told her. “Your father and I might be late, and you have school tomorrow.”
So reluctantly, Lily watched as Alexander collected his medical bag and Carrie Ellen other necessities for their trip. She and Rebel stood in the doorway and she waved her parents goodbye as they got into the van with the words long veterinary home on the side and headed down the lane. After the van turned at the end of the street and disappeared, she settled down by the fireplace for an afternoon of reading with Rebel lying comfortingly beside her.
Rather than focus on her book, however, Lily started to daydream as the afternoon wore on. This year her school was celebrating Valentine’s Day with a Sadie Hawkins dance, and Lily was trying to muster up enough courage to ask Duncan Rice to be her date. By now they’d more than just noticed each other in the hallway, and had even spent some time talking to each other by the water fountain. Lily liked how Duncan always had a smile on his freckled face; the fact that his ears stuck out didn’t bother her, nor that his shaggy, sandy hair desperately needed a trim. He made her laugh, and she thought that maybe it would be fun to go to her first dance with him.
“Lily and Duncan sitting in a tree . . . ” Elizabeth would whisper whenever he approached Lily at school. “Just go ahead and ask him already.”
But Lily was too shy to bring it up. Maybe she would do it first thing Monday morning, since the dance was just over a week away, and then she could start thinking about what she would wear. She was sure that her mother would have some ideas, and Carrie Ellen was such a good seamstress that she could finish a dress in no time at all.
With that important matter settled, Lily glanced out the window and noticed that the ice was growing thick on the sidewalk. She wondered what was taking her parents so long to get home, but knew that if it was snowing heavily on the mountain, they would have to stop to put chains on the tires. Her heart quickened as she thought of the times her father had gotten out of the car in the relentless snow while she and her mother looked down into the long, oh-so-murky ravine. She always wondered why there weren’t guardrails, not understanding the politics of impoverished areas like eastern Kentucky. What she did know was that it could take an hour or more for her father to finish putting on the chains, and then it would be a long drive down the mountain to get home.
Various scenarios started to flood Lily’s mind as she and Rebel kept vigil by the window. To calm herself, she put her arm around Rebel’s neck and laid her cheek against the dog’s soft fur. Rebel gave her face a comforting lick and settled his nose between his paws, as if to indicate he would stay by Lily’s side no matter what happened. As the day started to fade, Lily searched in vain for the lights of her parents’ car at the end of the street. Any moment now, she reasoned, she would see the van turn the corner. Her parents would come through the door, Alexander would set his medical bag down by the stairs, and Carrie Ellen would say they were sorry for being late. Then she’d start dinner, and at the table Alexander would tell the story of the foaling. Lily would be so proud of her father for helping his neighbor, for bringing new life into the world.
Looking at her reflection in the window and the dark street beyond it, Lily could envision all this happening. But what she finally saw hours later was a silent, flashing blue light making its way up Weeping Willow Lane and turning into her driveway. As if in a dream, two officers got out of the car, and with that Lily Rose’s young life was forever divided into a before, and an after.
Chapter 9
WHEN THE LAST BELL RANG at school, Lily Rose walked into the hallway, holding her math textbook with purpose as around her swirled her classmates talking, laughing, and making plans for the weekend. This was her third year at Lexington Academy, but she hadn’t made any friends to speak of, or made much of an attempt to be a part of school life. Ever since her parents had passed away, it was as if a sheet of glass separated her from the rest of the world, and through it she watched other kids being typical teenagers while she wondered what it would be like to have a normal family.
It wasn’t that Lily didn’t appreciate everything Aunt Martha and Uncle Grant were doing for her. She knew that Aunt Martha was devastated by the loss of Carrie Ellen and wanted the best for her. But she couldn’t help feeling like it was all a nightmare, and one day she’d wake up back at her house on Weeping Willow Lane, hearing the sounds of her mother in the kitchen preparing breakfast and her father getting ready to go to the office. Returning to Cumberland Falls was an impossibility, though. The Long homestead had been sold, and the family belongings moved to Red Rose Farm along with Lily, Rebel, her other dogs, and her little cat, Grey. Lily had sobbed uncontrollably when she had to say goodbye to her friends, especially Elizabeth. Their bond of big hopes and dreams was so strong that Lily was not ready to let go of her beloved friend, and finally Uncle Grant had to gently but firmly place her in a tearful heap into the car. Elizabeth promised to see her soon, but a year later, she and her family moved to Atlanta, and it would be a long time before Lily encountered her childhood best friend again.
For the first two months Lily Rose lay in the big bedroom at Red Rose Farm with Rebel and her menagerie of pets surrounding her. Winter slowly turned to spring while she gazed out at the beautiful Thoroughbreds grazing in the grass that was beginning to turn blue. Aunt Martha was so concerned about Lily’s health t
hat she had the pediatrician come by weekly, and he suggested that a grief therapist might also be of assistance. The first day in late April when Lily went out with Rebel and sat under one of the flowering dogwood trees, Aunt Martha broke down in tears of relief. She had prayed that this would mean that there was hope for Lily Rose, and so there would be. Lily slowly commenced to ride some of the older horses with Uncle Grant around the farm, and it became an everyday ritual for her to visit the horse barns and decorate the front of their stalls. Throughout the summer, she was able to heal in the comfort of the farm, but when fall came she had to start life without her parents at a brand-new high school.
As her freshman and sophomore years passed in a haze, and she went through the motions of participating in school, come junior year Lily realized that she needed to wake up and improve her grades. That was her moment of reckoning—understanding that what her life had become was the last thing her parents would have wanted for her. If only for them, she had to do better. Back at school in Cumberland Falls, Lily had always made straight As—except for conduct, of course, because she was always caught talking too much. She didn’t talk nearly as much now, but she knew it was in her best interest to start talking to someone who might help her with geometry. While Aunt Martha had suggested getting a tutor, Lily thought that was terribly demeaning. After getting a D on her most recent test, though, she decided she might be able to swallow her pride for the sake of a decent grade.
She had heard that Finn Macarney seemed to be her man. He was a senior and had scored in the top one percent in math and science on the SATs. Word had it that he rarely bothered with tutoring because he preferred playing guitar in his band, but he occasionally did have philanthropic interests. Lily didn’t know what was charitable about her challenging math skills, but she was certainly going to try to get him to help her. Knowing he had history as his last class of the day, she walked down the hallway toward him, and—using the oldest trick in the book—bumped into him, dropping everything in her arms on the floor.
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