John Riley's Girl (2 page)

She dropped the card onto the desk, overcome with a wave of nostalgia for some precious things she had lost long ago. She swiveled her chair away from the desk and settled her gaze on the D.C. skyline outside her office window. So many buildings. So many people. In comparison, Summerville was another world altogether. Had it changed? Were the people there any different than they’d been fifteen years ago? Was the dilapidated old house she’d grown up in still standing? Was the farmer’s market
still held downtown every Saturday morning rain or shine? Was John still there?

With the name a memory came floating up and emotion knotted in her throat. Lori working the summer of their junior year at the Just-a-Minute Drive-In. Olivia and John parked out front in his battered old Dodge pickup boasting four different layers of paint. He’d bought it himself with money he’d saved working summers on his dad’s farm, and he couldn’t have been more proud of it had it been bought right off the assembly line. Olivia sitting in the middle of the seat, her shoulder tucked under his arm. Lori ducking inside the rolled-down window and telling them not to order any fries because Cecil Callaway had just dropped a fly in the deep fryer.

She could still hear John’s laughter, the deep, full rumble that had never failed to warm her, fill her with something satisfying and secure. She had loved to hear him laugh, had taken delight in being the one to make him do so. And as strange as it would have sounded to anyone else, considering that nearly every cheerleader at Summerville High would have given up her spot on the squad for a date with John Riley, it was his laughter that had drawn her to him when he’d asked her out at the beginning of their junior year.

There had been so little laughter in her own house. Her father had long before convinced himself he had nothing to laugh about. And Olivia had
learned early on to censor hers if she wanted to avoid the frown of disapproval that always followed.

To her, John’s laughter had held the power of a healing touch, made her feel that everything would be all right. She’d been wrong about that part. Laughter didn’t fix anything; it just made things a little more bearable.

She could have asked Lori about him. Wished now with an ache that she had. But then what good would it have done? John had made another life for himself, moved on to someone else.

Olivia picked up the card, read it again, then stuck it back in the envelope. She thought of the possibilities in her immediate future—a chance at the main anchor position for her network, a position someone starting out in broadcasting could only dream of.

This was a good change, the kind that should fill a person with satisfaction and a feeling of success.

She got up from her desk, went to the window that took up nearly one side of the corner office and looked down at the traffic below.

With all that, why then this feeling of rootless-ness, as if her entire existence were only surface-deep and the slightest unbalancing would topple her over into nothingness? Why was it that she lived her life like someone afraid that a snap of the fingers would make it all suddenly disappear?

There was something about hearing Lori’s dis
appointment that made her wonder: Why can’t I go back?

It would be so great to see you.

Why not?

For so long, she had avoided too much thought of the place where she’d grown up, the people she had known there. She’d ignored it, as if in doing so the memories would eventually disappear altogether.

But life didn’t really work that way, did it? Wasn’t it only in facing up to those things with the power to haunt that a person ever stood a chance of overcoming them?

And Olivia had never done that.

She’d just walked away, closed the door.

Fifteen years ago, she had needed to cut all ties to her home. To maintain even one would have been to remain piped into things too painful for her to hear. And so she had shoved her entire life there into a box that she’d sealed up and vowed never to open.

But Lori’s call had brought front and center recognition of exactly how much she had lost fifteen years ago. Not just John and the future they had planned together. But so many other things, as well. A friendship whose equal she had never again found. And the simple right to revisit the place where she had grown up. Rocky as that childhood had been, it was hers.

Standing here above a city where she had never
felt as if she really fitted, Olivia wondered if maybe it was time to go home. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reclaim some of the past—own up to it and then put it away for good. This time with peace and acceptance.

Was she strong enough to do that and walk away again?

There was only one way to find out.

Should Have Said No

H
E DESERVED
a good swift kick in the pants.

Any man who let his home be turned into a three-ring circus for a weekend deserved nothing less.

From the door of the brood mare barn, John Riley watched the half-dozen workers in his front yard hammering tent stakes into the ground, transforming the state’s biggest cutting-horse farm into the stage for his fifteen-year class reunion.

When a water pipe had burst at the Community Center earlier that morning, flooding the place and rendering it unusable, Lori Peters had called John in a panic, vowing indebtedness to him for life if he would agree to have the weekend-long reunion at Rolling Hills. In the face of her desperation—
Please, John, I’ll never ask you for another favor as long as I live. The park is already booked this weekend, and there’s nowhere else we can rent last-minute big enough for all these tents
—there weren’t many excuses he could have made without sounding
like a selfish jerk. So here he stood, cursing the decision that ensured there was no earthly way he could get out of going to the thing now.

On a normal day, Rolling Hills Farm was not an inactive place. In the summer heat, horses were worked early, starting at 6:00 a.m. There was usually a tractor or two running somewhere within earshot, a cow calling for its calf, a mare nickering for her foal. But the reunion being staged on his front lawn had turned it into nothing short of chaos.

Given the choice, he’d gladly snap his fingers and make it all disappear, the Great Party Setup’s cotton-candy-pink van and all.

Across the yard stood a man in overalls, a sleeveless T-shirt and a tattoo of a rooster on his left arm. He hammered a tent stake into the ground, straightened and, without missing a beat, sent a stream of tobacco juice arcing over his right shoulder. It landed on a cluster of snow-white azaleas encircling the base of an old oak tree.

Anger launched John straight across the stretch of grass between the barn and the house where he lit into the man like fire on October leaves.

“Those were my wife’s flowers you just spit on,” he said, the words curt.

The man wiped the back of his hand across the tobacco leak at the corner of his mouth. “Hey, bud, I’m really sorry.”

“Next time maybe you could have a little more courtesy for where you’re aiming.”

“No problem.” The man grabbed his tools and trotted back to his truck, lobbing worried glances over his shoulder as he went.

John snatched the hose from the side of the house, turned on the faucet and rinsed every speck of tobacco juice from the flowers, turning them white again.

He looked down the hill at the farm spread out below with its bright spots of color. After Laura had found out she was sick, she had begun planting things everywhere. Pear trees, peach trees, boxwoods. Her favorite had been the white azaleas. She had never said it, and John would never have put his thoughts into words, but he knew it had been her way of leaving something of herself behind. When he had first realized what she was doing, he couldn’t look at her without going off by himself and crying in impotent rage. He had never let her see him. And it was now one of his greatest regrets. He’d wanted to be strong for her, to pretend that everything was going to be all right, when they both knew that it wasn’t. He wished now that he’d let her see his sadness. He’d tried to do what he thought was the right thing for her. It was only after she died, unexpectedly one night, that he realized she would never know how great his loss had been.

And for that he couldn’t forgive himself.

Looking back on it, he’d thought going on with their lives was the right thing to do. If they saw the doctors, underwent the treatments, then she would get well. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work? Part of that had to be
believing
she would get well. If they talked about the possibility that she might die, then it might happen.

And it had.

He hung the hose up, stomped back across the yard to the white-and-green barn where Hank Owens stood in the middle of the big sliding doors, arms folded across his chest, a frown on his weathered face.

“I know I’m a jackass, Hank. I don’t need you to tell me again.”

Hank stopped him at the door with a gloved hand. “I don’t blame you for tearing into his butt. I saw how hard she worked on those darn flowers.”

A mixture of approval and disapproval laced his voice, deep and resonant, like a Baptist preacher’s at a revival. To most of the world, Hank was an intimidating man. He had shoulders wider than a stall door, hands callused from decades of hard work, legs slightly bowed from a lifetime of sitting on a horse. He had been at Rolling Hills longer than John had been alive, and John had no illusions about who was the glue that had held the place together in the first few months after Laura had died.

“It’s been almost two years, John.” Compassion
softened the rough edge of Hank’s voice. “Maybe you oughta talk to somebody about this. Somebody impartial.”

“So they can tell me how it’s normal to be angry because my wife died long before I figured out how to make her happy?”

Hank shook his head and managed to look more worried. “She was happy, John.”

“Not the way she could have been if I—”

“If you’d what?”

“Nothing,” he said, putting brakes on the conversation. Talking about it didn’t do any good, anyway. He couldn’t change any of it—couldn’t go back and make himself a better husband. No matter how much he might wish for the chance.

“You gotta get a handle on this, son. Somehow. Someway.” Hank’s words were low and insistent. “If not for anybody else, then for her.” He tipped his gaze toward the road at the foot of the driveway where a school bus had just slowed to a halt.

The stop sign popped out from the side, warning lights flashing. The door opened, and out bounded Flora, pigtails bobbing, her Black Beauty lunch box in one hand, a Barbie backpack slung over her other shoulder.

She looked both ways before crossing the road, just as John had taught her. His heart swelled. She walked until she reached the gates to the farm, but
as soon as her sneakers left the main road, she was off and running, up the long driveway to the house.

In the months after Laura had died, he had insisted on picking Flora up from school every day, but she had wanted to ride the bus and had finally told him so. “Daddy, I’ll come back. I won’t leave like Mommy did. I promise.” Her intuition had been entirely too accurate for a seven-year-old. Enough so that he had given in and made it a daily struggle not to let her sense his irrational fear that he would somehow lose her, too.

She was skipping now, zigzagging back and forth on the hardtop driveway. Halfway up, she stopped and picked a cluster of yellow buttercups, which he knew would be for Sophia.

He waited where he was, raising a hand in greeting when she looked toward the barn and caught sight of Hank and him. She made an all-out sprint across the grass then, the smile on her face putting that now-predictable squeeze on his heart. The strength of I’ll-do-anything-for-you love was something he had never understood until he experienced it firsthand.

“Daddy!” Her voice was strong and clear, and it carried across the wide expanse of lawn that stretched between the house and the brood-mare barn.

“Hey, sweet pea. Looks like you could just about outrun Naddie today.”

The sound of his daughter’s laughter was the only thing capable of thawing the coldness Laura’s death had left inside him. Flora loved nothing more than being compared to Nadine, the two-and-a-half-year-old filly who was all but guaranteed to become cutting-horse royalty.

Nadine’s entrance into the world had been anything but easy. They had nearly lost her, and once her spindly legs had found their way to the ground, the mare had rejected her. By all logic, the foal should have died. But she had more than her share of fight in her. John had his own belief about the connection between the young horse and his daughter. From the first moment Flora had stuck her hand through the rails of the foal’s stall, a bond had formed. Flora had witnessed her own mother’s extraordinary will to live, and John could only think that on some level, she and the young filly both understood what it was to fight for life and refuse to let go.

Ten feet from the barn door, Flora dropped her backpack and lunch box, and whirled at John like a tiny tornado, launching herself into his arms.

“Whoa there, little pony.”

She giggled again, locking her arms around his neck. Sweet emotion flooded through him. Love. Pure, simple, undiluted, unconditional. There were no strings attached, no “I’ll-love-you-forever-ifs.” It simply was.

“Are we having a circus, Daddy?”

“All but,” John said, ignoring Hank’s look of disapproval. “No, honey, those tents are for a class reunion.”

“What’s a reunion?”

“It’s when a bunch of people get together and talk about things that don’t matter anymore.”

“Oh. If it doesn’t matter, then why are you having it?”

“Because sometimes grown-ups have to do things they’d rather not do.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re grown-ups.”

More head shaking from Hank.

“Hi, Hank,” Flora said from her position in John’s arms.

“Hey, itty-bitty.” Hank tugged on one of her pigtails. “How was school today?”

“Good. Guess what I did?”

“Something smart, I’ll bet.”

“I drew a picture of Naddie.”

“Can I see it?”

Flora unzipped her book bag, pulled out a piece of green construction paper with an orange horse on it.

“That’s a mighty fine likeness,” Hank said.

“It sure is,” John agreed.

“Can I go see her?”

John set his daughter down. “You know Sophia’s got your snack waiting.”

“Just for a minute?”

“All right.”

She took his hand, then held out the other for Hank, skipping between them down the center aisle of the barn and chattering about her day along the way. He and Hank responded at the appropriate moments, smiles on both their faces. Hank loved her as if she were his own, and John was glad of it. If Laura had taught him anything, it was the value of love. That you could never have too much or give too much. He only wished he’d learned that lesson sooner. It was such an easy thing to give. Or it should be, anyway.

Outside, they crossed another expanse of grass and made their way into the barn where the two-year-olds were kept. A chorus of whinnies announced their entrance.

“I believe Miss Nadine knows you’re here,” Hank said.

“She always knows, doesn’t she, Hank?”

“Yep. She sure does.”

Hearing her name, the filly let out another loud whinny from her stall some twenty feet away.

“Just a minute, Naddie.” Flora darted into Hank’s office and charged back out a couple of seconds later with the filly’s customary afternoon carrots.

John and Hank shook their heads. By the time they caught up with her, Flora was already in the stall. The chestnut filly used her soft muzzle to gently poke about Flora’s body in a game of find-the-carrot. Flora giggled when Nadine nosed her right pocket and followed it up with a prod at her armpit. The horse reached around then and found what she was looking for, the three carrots sticking out of Flora’s back pocket. She let out a soft nicker that clearly meant: “I won—now give them to me.”

“Okay, okay.” Flora pulled one from her pocket and gave it to the young horse, who took one polite bite at a time, her beautiful head bobbing in enthusiasm.

“She looked pretty good on the lunge line this afternoon,” Hank said. “The stiffness in that right leg seems to have worked itself out.”

“No bute?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Let’s baby it a while longer, though.”

“Daddy?”

“What, sweet pea?”

“When can I ride Naddie?”

“Right after you start dating.”

Hank shook his head again and chuckled.

Flora gave him a look that would no doubt be perfected by the time she actually
did
start dating.

“Someday,” he said, refining his answer. “Nad
die’s still green, honey. Popcorn is exactly what you need right now.”

“But Popcorn is slow.”

“Slow is good.”

A rumble sounded in the sky above the barn. Just as John reached to pull Flora out of the stall, a military jet roared over, so low it sounded as if it had grazed the very top of the barn roof. Nadine snorted, danced sideways, eyes wide, head high.

“There’s got to be something we can do to get them to alter their flight path,” Hank said as the sound faded. “Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

John sighed. He’d made a dozen phone calls. All to no avail so far.

The farm lay in the direct path of the drills the jets conducted periodically. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their schedule so that they never knew when one would thunder over, so low they could see the pilot if they looked up.

“It’s all right, girl,” he said now to Nadine. And then to Flora, “Sophia’s going to fuss if you don’t get those cookies while they’re warm. Why don’t you go on up to the house now?”

Flora reluctantly said goodbye to Nadine who let out a protesting whinny.

“I’ll be back,” she promised. “Be good.”

“Fat chance,” Hank said. “As soon as you get out the barn door, we’ll have Miss Prima Donna on our hands again.”

Flora giggled. “She’s not bad, Hank.”

“Oh, just perfectly willing to kick the stall door down if you don’t come when she wants you to.”

“I’ll make some more calls about the jets, Hank,” John said over his shoulder as he and Flora headed out of the barn.

“Somebody ought to be able to do something,” Hank said.

The cell phone in John’s pocket rang. “You go on up, honey. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She sprinted off across the yard, disappearing through the back door even as he reached for the phone, punched a button and said, “Hello.”

“Hey. Hear you’re havin’ a reunion out there.”

John looked down at the grass, gave a renegade dandelion a booted swat. “Hey, Cleeve. Wish I could deny it.”