Dandelion Wishes (19 page)

“Or me,” Flynn chimed in.

The jury was still out with Tracy. She stared at the rows of grapevines, silent.

“I have one question.” Emma stood, her hands in her back pockets as she stared at Will. “Do you forgive me for the accident?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
RACY
HADN
’
T
FELT
this good since before the accident.

Nearly two weeks into the project, she loved working on the float. Emma wanted no part of the painting, so Tracy did everything. She loved the smooth regularity of the stroke of the brush. She loved the banter between Flynn and Slade, and the
pop, pop, pop
of Emma working the nail gun.

The float took form when Emma worked. Will, Flynn and Slade mostly argued about the length of boards and the size of cardboard they were cutting. It seemed like they had to double cut everything. Things would have gone smoother if Will had taken charge. They made decisions by committee and sometimes they didn’t agree.

But not everything was perfect.

Tracy hated the way Will looked at Emma when he thought no one was watching, as if Emma had stomped on his heart. What did he expect when he hadn’t said that he’d forgiven her for the accident? And she hated how awkward it was in the barn when she and Emma worked alone, or when Will and Emma were working on something together.

Finding Emma in her bedroom that day was like being back in the rehabilitation hospital where anyone could walk in while Tracy was changing. No one respected your privacy. But for Will to have let Emma in her room was the worst of betrayals. She hadn’t talked to either of them since. She’d drawn out her hurt until it seemed too late to accept their apologies. Instead, Tracy poured herself into painting as her own form of recovery.

When her work was done, she snuck off to visit different residents in Harmony Valley. She never went back to the same house twice. Nope, she visited a different person each time and carefully told them her story. A therapist had once said that the more you spoke about a tragedy out loud, the easier it was to bear.

Tracy didn’t know about easier. She just knew that it felt good to talk about the accident. She told Felix about the rescue workers while she held a fuzzy white kitten. She told Agnes about the wild and crazy Mediflight ride over a cup of tea. She traded walker war stories with Mildred as she baked cookies. And every day her speech felt smoother, easier. Who needed shock therapy? She could control aphasia all by herself.

Just not in time to be the town’s Grand Marshal. The thought still made her feel sick.

And then one afternoon, while she was painting, alone for once since Emma had print ad work to do and the men had gone into town, an SUV pulled into the barn doorway.

“Excuse me.” A handsome man with the slick smile of a salesman got out of the passenger side.

Tracy felt a moment of panic. This stranger would expect her speech to be smooth. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for Will Jackson.”

He was checking out her legs. No one had looked at her legs like that since Las Vegas. A tiny thrill raced up her spine. “He’s...uh...not here.”

“Can I wait?”

Tracy opened her mouth to say yes, but realized if she did, she’d have to make polite conversation. “Who. Are you?”
Not now. Don’t start talking like an idiot now.

“I’m Quinn Yardley, Action News in Santa Rosa. I was hoping to do an interview with Will Jackson about a winery he’s starting.” He closed the gap between them and reached up, extending his hand. “And you are?”

“Tracy.” Her hand felt like a limp noodle in his. “Jackson.” And then her hand convulsed, capturing his.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
Play it cool. She released his fingers.

“Will’s sister?” Quinn’s smile broadened like a snake’s mouth right before it unhinged its jaws to swallow its prey. “It’s always great to have additional insight on a story. You don’t mind if we ask you a few questions.”

The driver of the SUV had been standing near the car door. He retrieved a camera from the backseat.

“I...uh...” Tracy drew back, nearly tumbling on to the gelato parlor she’d been painting.

“I didn’t think you’d mind.” Quinn turned to his cameraman, pulling a microphone out of his pocket. “Is there enough light in here?”

Tracy could feel her throat closing up and her tongue thickening. The air lodged inside her lungs.

“There’s enough light, but she’ll need to come down off that trailer.”

“No,” Tracy croaked.

Quinn looked at her as if she was refusing the highest of honors. “No? It’ll only take a few minutes. What is it you’re painting?”

“You need...to go.”

“Now, Tracy,” he said in a cajoling voice, the same tone of voice her therapists used when they wanted to make her feel guilty for not completing an exercise when she was too tired, too demoralized or too angry.

“I will. Not. Be on. Camera.” Tracy drew a breath. “You. Need to...to leave.”

Quinn looked at her as if she were a curious lab specimen.

She hated herself for being imperfect. She hated aphasia.

“What’s all this?” Emma appeared in the doorway wearing her old paint-splattered overall shorts and a messy ponytail. “Who are you?”

Quinn stepped forward and introduced himself.

Emma took one look at Tracy’s face and ignored his outstretched hand. “Gentlemen, you’re trespassing.”

“We didn’t mean to upset anyone,” Quinn said smoothly, lowering his voice. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing is
wrong
with her,” Emma said in icy tones that matched the temperature of Tracy’s insides. She walked over to the nail-gun compressor, turned it on and took aim at the tire of their SUV. “Now leave, before walking becomes your only option out of here.”

“We won’t come back,” Quinn said, as if that meant something to either one of them.

Emma stood guard until the SUV disappeared down the driveway. She shut off the compressor but remained facing the driveway. “I’m so sorry, Tracy.”

Tracy barely heard her as she ran out the back door.

* * *

N
O
ONE
WAS
working on the float.

Flynn and Slade had bought groceries in Cloverdale. After dropping them off at their respective houses, Will had driven to the barn. The women were nowhere to be seen.

“Tracy? Emma?” He unloaded the lumber and additional cardboard he’d picked up. They’d underestimated their need for materials since they’d overestimated their skill at carpentry. Well, Flynn was skilled, but Will and Slade didn’t like to let him have all the fun. Hence the wasted supplies.

“Tracy? Emma?” Will walked around to the back of the barn, calling for them again. He followed the trail to the river. When he reached the trees he found Emma sitting on the bank tossing pebbles. “Hey. What’s going on? Where’s Tracy?”

Emma didn’t say a word. She just kept winding up and pitching stones.

Will sat down next to her. She hadn’t talked to him during the entire build other than to ask him for a hand. He’d missed their sparring. He’d missed her superior grin. He’d missed her.

Emma’s cheeks were streaked with tears. Her breathing was ragged. “I’ve lost Tracy,” she said in a small voice.

He slipped an arm around her and pulled her close, as he’d been wanting to do since the night he’d kissed her.

Emma turned her face into his shoulder and sobbed once. Just once. And then with a huge, shuddering sigh, she sat up and lifted her dark, watery gaze to his.

“People think she’s broken,” she whispered.

Will used to be among them. Now he viewed her aphasia more like a handicap in a horse race. Tracy carried more weight than the rest of them. Life would be harder for her, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t run.

“She’s not broken.” Emma straightened, but kept her gaze locked on his. “She’s so much smarter than I am. And quicker at putting things together up here.” She tapped her temple. “How could anyone look at her and think there’s something wrong with her?” She disengaged herself, grabbed a sizable rock and threw it into the river. A line drive. He remembered teaching her and Tracy how to throw a baseball. Emma had been awkwardly enthusiastic, determined to conquer the skill in her own way.

She drew a deep breath. “Do you know what I see when I look at this river?”

“Water?” His attempt at humor fell flat.

“I see browns and greens, eddies and currents, the sparkle of a fish beneath the surface.” She scooted away and angled herself to face him. “I see motion and calm, slowness and speed.”

“I get it. You see depth when you look at Tracy. So do I.”

“But you see her with conditions. You don’t see the total beauty of her. You don’t hear the emotion when she talks. It comes out in spurts, but it’s there. She’s there, multilayered and beautiful.” Emma stood up. “Exactly as she’s always been.”

She was right. Will couldn’t see beyond the challenges Tracy faced and the limited tools she had to meet them. It was like the first day they’d raced up Parish Hill when he’d realized Emma was a dreamer and he was a realist. The distance between their outlooks was vast and unbridgeable.

“The world sees her the same way you do, as if she can’t get as far in life as anyone else.” Emma looked out on the river, her face drawn in sadness. “I’m the reason the world sees her that way. And she knows it.” Her gaze dropped to his as she stepped back. “And now I know why you can never forgive me.”

Will sat on the bank, watching Emma leave him.

It hit home then, in a way it hadn’t before, not in all the times she’d told him or the way his dad had warned him. This wasn’t a situation where she’d eventually come around to his way of thinking or things would miraculously become easier between them without any change of heart on his part.

Forget her fear that she couldn’t have both close relationships and be an artist.

He and Emma had no future if he couldn’t find it in himself to forgive her and she couldn’t find a way to forgive herself.

* * *

T
HE
FLOAT
WAS
close to completion. It was rudimentary, but it didn’t matter. Emma thought it was perfect. The float represented the past she loved and the future she hoped was in store for her hometown. And in two days they’d win the contest at the Spring Festival.

Emma had come back after dinner to admire the float alone. She sat cross-legged on the workbench so she could have a better view.

“It turned out pretty well, didn’t it?” Will walked into the barn holding a water bottle. The day had been warm, but was giving way to the chill of an incoming fog bank. He’d changed from cargo shorts to jeans and had thrown on a Stanford sweatshirt.

She’d been working next to him earlier and had almost laughed out loud when she’d caught him humming the chorus from
Oklahoma!
She was sure he’d been struggling not to jump in and tell Flynn and Slade what they should be doing.

“I like it.” Emma slid down, wiping sawdust from her shorts. “I’m going to miss working on it. I enjoyed getting to know Slade. I don’t believe his threats that he’d take the money and run anymore. And I’d forgotten how fun Flynn can be.” She went over and shifted a grapevine in a five-gallon container so the vines hung off the front of the trailer. “Flynn still hates the barber chair, though, doesn’t he?”

“You braided his hair.” There was something odd in Will’s tone, but Emma was paying more attention to the float than him. “Who braids a man’s hair?”

Emma laughed. That had been the highlight of her day. “His hair has grown past his shoulders. He’s got great bone structure, but who could see it beneath that baseball cap and hair?” She and Tracy had exchanged a rare grin while she’d worked on Flynn.

She stood on a step stool and fiddled with the ribbon on the sheep Slade had found online. It had arrived today. The sheep was life size, with a pink bow and dark eyes that begged for a hug. After the festival they’d decided to donate it to the nearest children’s hospital.

“I didn’t like you touching Flynn’s hair.” Will was behind her, his breath wafting gently across the shell of her ear.

Emma’s heart slowed to a limb-freezing halt. Other than the day that nosy reporter had showed up, she’d successfully avoided being alone with Will for more than a week. She’d tucked away crushes, infatuations and fascinations. She’d parted ways with what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. She was on the path of recovery, not discovery.

“Turn around, Emma.” Suddenly she recognized that tone of voice. It was the same deep rumble he’d used to tell her he was going to kiss her that day in her bedroom.

“I can’t.” To turn around meant she’d kiss him. And a kiss would only reignite feelings she’d been doing her best to ignore. A kiss could break her hold on the precipice of love, sending her tumbling down where she’d be vulnerable and lost.

“Emma.” His voice sounded weary. “I don’t like it when you braid Flynn’s hair.”

“You don’t?”

“No.” His hands settled on her shoulders, warm and heavy and full of want. “And I don’t like it when you tease Slade about his ties.” His hands circled her shoulders slowly, as if learning their shape.

“I almost nailed Slade’s tie to the gelato shop. You can’t not tease a man about that.

“Turn around, Emma.”

“I can’t.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, as featherlight as her hold on her control. Will might want her, but he could never forgive her. She knew because she hadn’t forgiven herself.

His hands glided down her arms until they came to rest over her hands. His fingers tangled with hers. He moved closer, the heat of his body begging her to turn around and close the distance between them, begging her to let him claim her.

“I can’t.” An answer to a question he hadn’t verbalized, her voice barely a whisper. She was so close to giving in, so close to crossing a line she wanted desperately to honor. Her integrity.

“Emma.” His lips pressed against the back of her neck just above the collar of her T-shirt, soft as dandelion fluff, but heavy with need.

Despite her best intentions, Emma tilted her head to one side, inviting his lips upward. He accepted the invitation, pressing his mouth beneath her ear, advancing to her jawline. She turned her head slightly, giving him better access. He accepted the invitation, the press of his lips against her flesh more urgent now, demanding she turn, demanding she accept, demanding she submit.