John Riley's Girl (18 page)

Fork in the Road

S
HE WAS GONE
.

And she hadn’t said goodbye.

John had searched the hallway three times already end to end. No sign of her.

Damn.

In Flora’s room, he went to the window with its view of Fourth and Main. He anchored a palm against the wall and stared at the cars driving by while something painful rolled through his chest.

He had no one to blame but himself. He’d been a perfect ass since he’d looked up to find her in the doorway. All he could think was, dear God, did he have the guts to love this woman again? Could he take care of her? Protect her as he had not been able to before?

What if he couldn’t?

The door opened. He swung around, his heart leaping into his throat. It was Cleeve with an enormous stuffed gorilla tucked under one arm. “Hey,”
he said, disappointment sluicing through him even though he was glad Cleeve had come.

“Heard about the little rodeo queen,” Cleeve said.

“She just fell asleep a few minutes ago.”

Cleeve waved him out into the hall. “I don’t wanna wake her up. Just wanted to make sure y’all were okay.”

“She’s going to be all right. Gave us a heck of a scare.”

Cleeve shook his head, and John could see the relief on his friend’s face. “I just passed Olivia pulling out of the parking lot. She was here, I take it?”

John sighed and looked his friend in the eye. “I think I blew it.”

“You plannin’ on doing anything about it?”

John shoved a hand through his hair and acknowledged his own uncertainty. “What if it doesn’t work out between us?”

“What if it does?” Cleeve set the gorilla down on the floor beside him, the banana in its hand flopping to the side. “Macy’s been having an affair.”

The admission caught John like a right hook to the jaw. “Ah, hell, Cleeve.”

The wattage in Cleeve’s smile looked as if it took effort. “Thought I’d make up one of those signs— Woman Wanted. Must Have Good Tractor. Please Send Photo of Tractor.”

It was just like Cleeve to throw a piece of life-
changing information out with a wall of humor in front of it for protection. But John had known him a long time, and he heard the seam of pain running through the words. “I’m sorry.”

“Three strikes, and you’re supposed to be out, huh?”

“Those are somebody else’s rules,” John said. “I’m beginning to wonder if the game’s not played a little better when we don’t try so hard to act like we have the whole thing figured out. I don’t have any of it figured out, Cleeve. All I know is I love Liv, that I don’t guess I ever stopped loving her, and I’ve never been more scared of anything in my life.”

“So back to my original question. What if it does work out between you? Be pretty great, huh?”

“Yeah. Pretty great.”

“I guess it’s like those cliffs out at the lake we used to dive off in the summertime. It was a lot safer standing on that ledge watching everybody else take the plunge. But it was a hell of a lot of fun jumping in.”

John nodded, smiling.

“So. Looks like we’ve both had a little epiphany this weekend.”

“Big word for a cowboy.”

“I’ll get you a dictionary.”

It was as close as the two of them ever got to a heart to heart. But there was one thing John could not deny. This weekend had led them both to a fork
in the road. Cleeve had decided the direction he intended to take. Now John had to do the same.

I
T WASN’T AS IF
she hadn’t known the risk.

She’d driven out to that barn last night with her eyes wide open and had known exactly what was at stake. She and John were adults, and they hadn’t made each other any promises.

The Summerville Town Limits sign was just ahead on the right. Olivia had promised Lori she would come by on her way out of town. She had to hold it together until then. She had a four-hour drive ahead of her. There would be plenty of time for playing what-ifs. Like the rest of her life. So she turned the radio up extra loud. Kept her window rolled down and the sunroof open.

But the music was no dam for the tears in her eyes or the ache in her heart.

Something flashed in her rearview mirror.

She looked up. John’s truck. A simultaneous rush of hope and gladness anchored itself in the center of her chest. The mind could throw out rational, it’s-for-the-best placards all day long, but the heart had its own agenda, said what it wanted to say.

He flicked his lights.

She eased the car into the gravel parking lot of Atner’s Country Store.

He had gotten out of the truck. She lowered the
window, schooled her features into neutrality and hoped her eyes weren’t as tear-swollen as they felt.

He stopped beside her door, looked down at her with eyes that were serious, and something else, too. Humble?

“Liv, we can’t leave things like this,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have come. You need to be with Flora.”

“Sophia is with her. She’s fine. Will you leave your car here for a little while and come with me?”

She should have said no then and there. That would have been the safe thing to do, the logical thing. But aware of that as she was, she nodded once, pulled the car into one of the store’s parking spaces and got out. She didn’t want to expect anything. Didn’t want to
want
anything. But logic stood no chance against a heart that had yearned as many years as hers had.

Inside the truck, the silence between them was uncertain, full of questions that felt as if they could never possibly have an answer. They drove a couple of miles before John flipped the blinker and turned onto a dirt road that edged alongside a field of boot-high grass.

“I bought this land a few years ago for cutting hay,” he said. “All right if we sit out here?”

Again, she nodded, not ready yet to trust her voice enough for words.

A quarter mile or so off the main road, he
stopped, cut the engine, and they got out. John sat down on the front bumper and patted the spot beside him.

Olivia sat, crossed her legs, then her hands on her lap. Put voice, finally, to the words she should have said back at the country store. “Don’t you think it would be simpler if we just filed this weekend away as something unexpected and went on with our lives? What happened last night wasn’t a promise of anything, John. I know that.”

Her words hung there between them for what felt like too long, stretched beyond their shape like a wet sweater hung on a line to dry.

“Liv.” He turned, angled a leg so that it touched hers. He reached out and traced a finger along the line of her jaw, a caress of wordless disagreement. “For me, it couldn’t have been anything other than that.”

“John—”

But he didn’t let her finish, going on as if he had something to say that needed to be said. “I don’t know if I can even explain in words what having you here again has done to me. It’s like it was when I loved you before. I’ll never be the same person again.”

Olivia blinked. Tears welled up, blurring her vision.

He laid his hand on top of hers, turned it over and entwined his fingers with hers, squeezing them tight.
“This morning when I saw Flora lying on the ground like that, I thought I might lose her. It felt like all the blood drained out of me. That without her, I would turn to dust and just blow away. That’s what it’s like to love someone that much. It’s not a choice. It’s like breathing. That’s how I love you, Liv. As if without you, I might stop breathing altogether. But it seems like I haven’t been able to protect the people I love most in this world, to keep bad things from happening to them.”

The words fell across Olivia, and the sincerity of them, the vulnerability of them, the recognition of the deep place from which they came, brought fresh tears to her eyes. She understood now Sophia’s quiet urging from earlier.
If we’re to have love in this life, we’ve got to be willing to face the pain of losing it.

This, then, was John’s fear. And Olivia understood it. Maybe it
would
be easier to walk away, not to give themselves a chance at a future. But then how would they ever know? And what precious things might they lose?

She pressed the palm of her hand to his cheek. “If I start my life again without you, it’s going to feel like a shell with nothing worthwhile on the inside.”

He put his arms around her, folded her into him and dipped his head into the curve of her neck. She felt his heartbeat, hard and insistent, felt, too, the force of emotion behind it.

They held each other for a long time. Moments of healing, of new beginnings. Olivia felt it in the farthest reaches of her own heart.

She leaned back, brushed her hand across his cheek. He had become the man promised in the boy she had loved long ago. And she loved him now as she had then, with every breath. “There aren’t any guarantees in this life, for any of us. We just love as long as we can, the best that we can. The very best that we can.”

He stood, took her hand and pulled her close, so that her feet barely stayed on the ground. And he kissed her, long and full, the kiss of a man claiming a woman as his own, accepting the risk and consequences of doing so. And it was what Olivia wanted to be. His. For the rest of her life. For the rest of his.

They kissed for a good long while, took their time with it like two people with the right to do so. John pulled back finally, one hand cupping the side of her neck. “So how’s a city girl like you going to work out a life with a country boy like me?” The question had lightness at the edges, but concern at its core.

“Didn’t you know I’ve always had a thing for country boys? You see, I met one a long time ago. And I never got over him.”

“Hmm,” John said, smiling now. “Should I be jealous?”

“He’s a tough act to follow.”

“I’ll give it my best shot.”

“What more could a girl ask?” And then, glancing down, searching for words, she said, “Maybe it won’t be simple at first, but I want room for this, for us.”

“Then let’s start with that,” he said, drawing her to him again. “I love you. If we let that be the center, the rest will work out around it.”

How simple the words, and yet within their structure, a lifetime of meaning, past, present, future.

“Can you stay tonight?”

“I don’t have to be back until Tuesday morning,” she said. “Let’s go check on Flora. And then I’d like to see Lori. There are a few things I need to explain.”

John kissed her again then, under the shady boughs of an old elm tree. And there they began their life together, two paths separate for so long now merged as one.

T
HE WEDDING
took place on a Sunday at Rolling Hills Farm. The guest list was small, each person there someone who really mattered to the man and woman committing themselves to one another this bright September day.

Happiness filled the air, tangible and real.

The two people standing side by side in front of the preacher were happy, the kind of happy that comes from the complete giving of oneself to another human being, and that person’s willing acceptance of that gift. It was there on their faces, easy to read.

The little girl with the long ponytail stood next to them with a huge bouquet of white azaleas in her small hands. And she was smiling.

The best man had a big grin on his face; every minute or two he would throw a glance over his shoulder at the pretty, dark-haired woman sitting in the front row. And every time he did, her eyes were on him, and he felt like a schoolboy in love for the first time.

The matron of honor had already gone through
three hankies, but the tears sliding down her face met up with the smile on her lips and melted away.

There in the front yard, a huge old oak tree cast fingers of shade across the wedding party. The dog sitting beneath it thumped its tail against the grass.

The sun shone down on the gathering, not too hot, Indian summer all the old-timers around called it. The sky was clear, so clear that from where they stood, the two people vowing to love one another for the rest of their lives could see all the way to the rolling hills at the back of the farm, and beyond if they looked hard enough.