The All You Can Dream Buffet (31 page)

He caught her arm. “Wait.”

She stopped.

“That was disrespectful, and I’m sorry to be an ass. Kinda hard to switch gears that fast.” He skimmed his hand over her arm. “Friends?”

She tipped her head sideways. “You’d rather be friends than talk to me?”

He shrugged. “Not really. It’s just—” He shook his head.

“Okay.” She touched his face. “You know where to find me.”

When the rain began to fall, Ginny napped, luxuriously curled up with Willow, the drops pattering lazily on the roof of the Airstream, a warm quilt pulled up over her ears. Thankfully, she did not dream. Not about Jack, or Matthew, or anything else.

It was still raining off and on when she got up. She changed clothes for dinner, putting on jeans and a warm sweater. She covered Ruby’s dress with a trash bag, tying the end to protect the hem from mud splatters as she walked up the hill. She opened her umbrella and whistled for Willow. “Let’s make a dash for it, baby!”

And dash they did, keeping to the grass to avoid the muddy road. The chickens were all tucked in their beds. A light shone in Valerie’s Airstream, parked beneath a copse of pine trees, and Ginny had to stop for a moment to admire it. Willow trotted on, head down miserably, and Ginny had to run to catch up.

They entered the cottage through the screened-in porch. Ginny wiped Willow down, cleaned her feet, and took off her own shoes. She left the umbrella to dry. “Smells good in here!” she called.

“I’m baking a sweet potato pie,” Valerie said as Ginny came into the kitchen. The windows were fogged over from the cooking.

“Mmm.”

Ruby shelled peas at the table, holding the bowl in her lap. She had an efficient rhythm of cracking a pod, skimming out the peas with a thumbnail, tossing aside the empty pod, grabbing a new one. “Want to help?” she asked. “There are a lot!”

“Sure, but, first, do you want to see your dress?” She shook out the bag and pulled it backward over itself, revealing the two-layered gown beneath.

“Ginny!” Valerie exclaimed. “Did you do that
today
?”

Ruby leapt up, nearly spilling the peas. She grabbed the bowl at the last second and set it on the table. “Ooooh! It’s beautiful! Can I try it on?”

“Of course. I want to be sure it fits.”

Ruby carried it into the other room.

“Where’s Lavender?” Ginny asked.

“Still napping. I popped in to talk to her a little while ago and she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe a stomach bug.”

“Or food poisoning!” Ginny touched her belly in memory. “That was awful.”

“I never did hear the whole story.”

“It’s pretty bizarre, actually.” She washed her hands. “What’s next?”

“You can peel the potatoes.”

It was a tiny room, but there was just enough space for the two women to stand side by side. Valerie chopped onions for what appeared to be a stew. The smell of sweet potato pie, squash and cinnamon together, twined through the air. Cozy.

The two of them had become close when Valerie had a crisis in her marriage. She suspected her husband of an affair—which turned out not to be true that time—and confided in Ginny, who confided her own unhappiness, though not all the details. That month-long exchange cemented their friendship from then on. When Val’s husband was killed, she wrote endless,
long, wailing emails to Ginny, who read every word, commented as needed to keep the healing flow going, and let it trail away when Valerie found her widow legs.

“So,” Valerie said, smiling.

“So,” Ginny answered.

Val washed green onions. “You’re never going back to Kansas, huh?”

“Never.” Ginny picked up a big russet and started to peel. “When I got food poisoning, I ended up at this lake where there were almost no people. I was too sick to keep driving, but it was a little dicey, you know? And I didn’t have my phone and all that, but I was so sick I had to stop.”

“Scary.”

“Yeah.” In her mind’s eye, she was back in the trailer, with the drunk hunters—or whatever they were—banging on the door. “These guys tried to get in, but Willow scared them off, and the next thing I knew, it was morning.”

“Oh, my God. You passed out?”

“I think I was running a very high fever. It had the feel of that kind of delirium.” Ginny finished the first potato and dropped it in a bowl. “The weird part is that I’d made friends with this trucker on the road, and—this is the weird part—somehow I texted him from my dead phone. He backtracked a long way to find me, and he took care of me in the night.”

Valerie stopped chopping and rested her wrists on the counter. “How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. It’s like a completely weird thing.”

“It wasn’t just him saying that?”

“No. He didn’t know where I was until I texted.” She shook her head, carefully keeping the peel in a single strip around the potato. “And that phone was absolutely dead. You saw it.”

“That gives me the creeps a little,” Valerie said. “Maybe he’s a ghost, your trucker. Like one of those teenage stories.”

Ginny laughed. “Oh, he’s real.”

“What’s going on?” Valerie said quietly.

“I don’t know yet.” She met her friend’s eyes. “I have so much to tell you guys.”

“Don’t start without me!” Ruby swished into the kitchen, and they turned. She held out her arms. “Ta-da!”

Ginny let go of a delighted laugh. “You look amazing!” The blue offset Ruby’s bright-blue eyes, and the bodice left her shoulders bare and revealed a voluptuous cleavage. The skirt swelled over the baby bump and swished outward, silvery and sparkling.

“I feel like the moon goddess in this,” she said, spinning in a circle.

“It’s appropriate, too, because that’s your blog.” Ginny tugged the skirt a little. “I’m delighted that it fits so well.”

“I hope it doesn’t keep raining!” Ruby spun one more time. “Okay, let me go change, and don’t say a word till I get back.”

They waited. Valerie wiped her onion-ravaged eyes. “I should have made my daughter do this.”

“What’s she doing? I saw the light on in the trailer. It looked very homey.”

“Probably reading. That’s her default mode. She is the biggest reader I’ve ever met, and I’m pretty serious myself.”

“Me, too.” Ginny finished another potato. “What are we doing with these? Chop or grate or slice?”

“Grate. I’m making hash browns.”

Ruby swirled back into the room and settled at the table with her peas. “Okay, now talk.”

Ginny said, straight out, “I think I’m getting a divorce.”

“What?” Valerie said. “Because of the trucker?”

“The guy with the voice?” Ruby gave a little shiver. “I get it.”

“No,” Ginny said. “Not because of that. Not because of anything to do with this trip except that I never want to go back to Kansas again. I can’t believe I finally got out of there.”

“So, why? He won’t leave Kansas?”

“No,” she said again. And, slowly, “Because I don’t want to be with him anymore. I haven’t wanted to for a long time, but that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to leave, you know?”

“I told you I knew you were miserable,” Ruby crowed, throwing a pea that hit Ginny on the arm. “Ha!”

She picked it off the counter and tossed it back. “There is more, actually.”

Valerie turned, eyes dark and still. “He didn’t abuse you?”

“No.” Ginny took a breath and told them what she’d never told another living being. “We haven’t had sex in twelve years.”

“Oh, Gin!” Valerie said softly. “Twelve years?”

“I know.” She picked up another potato. “I tried everything.
Let’s go to counseling, let’s see the doctor, let’s talk about this, for God’s sake,
but nothing.”

“Twelve years?” Ruby said. “That’s half of my life!”

“I feel like an idiot that I put up with it for so long.” She paused and met Valerie’s eyes. “I just didn’t know what to do.”

“Is he gay, maybe?” Ruby asked. She nibbled peas out of her palm as if they were candy. “It happens a lot, you know.”

“I’ve thought about that, but he didn’t seem like it before the sex stopped.”

“Does he have any guy friends he hangs out with?”

“Yeah, they’re all ex-football players. Married, guy’s guys.”

“See?” Ruby grinned. “You should ask him.”

Ginny shrugged. “At this point, I don’t care anymore.”

Valerie touched her shoulder. “Have you told him that you want a divorce?”

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I wrote an email that I wasn’t going to send, and then I sent it.”

“No!” Ruby let go of her robust laugh, then covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes glittered. “How Freudian is that?”

Ginny laughed, too. “I know. I feel bad that it happened like this, but it gets it out in the open. Only trouble is that he’s not accepting it. He thinks I’m going to come to my senses.” She put the quotes around the words with her fingers.

Lavender, coming into the room, said, “It sounds like you have come to your senses.” She sat at the table with Ruby, looking wan but sturdy, and plucked a handful of peas out of the bowl to nibble one at a time. “I knew you were going to leave him the minute you bought that trailer.”

“Maybe I did, too,” Ginny admitted aloud. “I’ve been looking for a new life since my daughter left home ten years ago.”

Ruby leaned over and pressed the back of her hand to Lavender’s face. “You’re still so pale. Are you feeling better?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine. It’s just a touch of something.” She popped peas into her mouth. “I’m not going to hide in my room while you all are here.”

Valerie stirred the pot. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do?”

“Zero. I only know I’m not going back to Kansas.”

“You’re welcome to stay here while you figure it out,” Lavender said. She plucked another handful of pea pods from the bowl in Ruby’s lap and split one open. “Are you comfortable enough in the trailer to live in it for a bit?”

“It’s only been a week, but I think so.” In her mind’s eye rose a vision of herself camping on a beach somewhere, waking up to the sound of waves crashing on the shore. A sense of possibility swept her, smelling of morning. “Maybe I want to wander around a little. I thought it would be lonely on the road, but it wasn’t.”

“I’m heading down to San Diego to be near my parents,” Valerie said. “If you like, you can caravan with us.”

Ginny didn’t want to say straight out that she wanted to be on her own, so she smiled and said, “I’ll think about it.”

The rain didn’t let up, so they set the table in the tiny kitchen and crowded around it for dinner, just the five females. Noah was nowhere about. “He said he’d come for dessert,” Lavender said, “but he’s in a mood.”

“He showed me the still this afternoon,” Ruby said, dipping a chunk of bread into her stew. “It’s pretty cool.”

“I helped him with feeding the chickens,” Hannah said, throwing a long look at Ruby. “He wasn’t grouchy
then.
”

Ruby grinned. “Well, you know, I can be pretty irritating.” She jumped suddenly, making a little squeaking noise, and put a hand on her tummy. “Yikes! That was a big kick!”

“That’s a very active baby. He’ll be running you ragged by the time he’s one,” Valerie said. “That’s how it was with my Louisa. And she was a nonstop girl.”

Ginny felt uncomfortable at this mention of one of the dead sisters. Hannah wiggled her leg under the table, making Ginny think she felt uncomfortable, too.

But Valerie’s face was smooth and serene as she continued. “Kalista was so lazy in the womb that I kept worrying
about her. Hannah here”—she nudged her daughter with an elbow—“made me so fat I was afraid I would pop like a balloon.”

Ruby said, “Was Kalista lazy when she was born?”

“Not really,” Valerie said. “She was a quiet baby, an observer. I’d say she was like that as she grew up, too, wouldn’t you, Hannah?”

She stared at her plate, gave a tiny shrug. “I guess.”

“You’re the middle sister, right?” Ruby said.

“Yep.”

“And the reader. Neither of my other girls liked to read. It’s as if Hannah is reading for the whole world.”

“Why are we talking about them like this?” Hannah said, slamming her hand down. Spoons rattled.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Valerie asked calmly. “We loved them. It’s nice to think about them sometimes.”

“I don’t like thinking about them. It
hurts
! I wish I could forget they ever existed.” She pushed back from the table and leapt to her feet, but by the time she was standing, Ruby was there, putting her arms on Hannah’s shoulders.

“Wait! I know something about this, I promise.”