Wildflowers from Winter (21 page)

“Please?” She held on to the door frame and did her best impersonation of puppy-dog eyes. “I need a distraction. I’m going crazy cooped up in here.”

Robin’s eyes closed for a long moment. Bethany forced herself to wait.

“Okay, fine.”

A sense of victory flitted through her. A simple trip to Lowe’s, and she was ready to pump her fist in the air. Not a good sign. Batting away the disquiet rustling around in her mind, she tapped the door frame with her palm. “Great. I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen.”

The ends of Robin’s damp hair darkened the shoulders of her blue sweatshirt. Her face hung slack, eyes glassed over and far away. Bethany forced her attention back to the interstate and passed a pickup hauling a trailer loaded with farm equipment and scattered bits of hay. “When’s your next doctor’s appointment?” she asked.

“Two weeks.”

“Are you excited?”

Robin shrugged.

“You’ll get to hear the heartbeat this time, right? That’ll be cool. Don’t you think?”

Robin replied with nothing more than a whispered, “Hmm.” An acknowledgment of the question—not to be mistaken for an actual answer. Out of conversation starters, Bethany stopped fighting the silence in the car and let it have its way. She flipped her blinker and steered into the right lane when a sonata—possibly Chopin—issued from Robin’s lap.

Robin yanked the phone from her purse and pressed it against her ear. Bethany stared at her from the corner of her eye. Sometimes Bethany could hear Robin’s phone play the sonata’s notes over and over through the walls of their bedrooms, until whoever called got sent to voice mail. Other times—like now—Robin acted as if her phone held some sort of magical solution. Like if she answered it quickly enough, Micah would come back from the dead.

Bethany exited Interstate 80 and turned through a green arrow while Robin propped her elbow on the console, her face no longer the expressionless mask she’d worn moments earlier.

“On Saturday?” The confused words
swoosh
ed into the air.

A muted chattering sounded from the other end of the phone line.

“Will I have to say something?”

More vague chattering.

“Thank you. I’ll try to make it.” Robin pressed the End button with the pad of her thumb and let the phone drop into her lap. She’d either forgotten to say good-bye, or hadn’t bothered.

Bethany turned into Lowe’s parking lot. “Who was that?”

“The mayor.”

“Of Peaks?”

“They want to recognize Micah.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Mayor Ford said he’s going to recognize Micah at the New Year’s Eve ball. For his service to Peaks.” Robin’s eyelids fluttered. She gave her head a slight shake and brought her fingertips over her lips. “He organized a countywide coat drive for the homeless each winter, and he was a volunteer firefighter. He served on the county fair board too.”

The fair board?
Chicago most definitely did not have a fair board.

“The mayor called to invite me.”

“Are you going to go?”

“Will you come?”

Bethany recoiled. Go to Peaks’s New Year’s Eve ball? Socialize with the locals? Sit through a meal while her table mates discussed cash crops and pigs? The idea reeked of small town. But Robin looked at her as if Bethany’s saying no to the invitation might push her off the edge of some invisible precipice. The whole purpose of going to Lowe’s was to pull Robin away from the edge, not scoot her closer.

“Evan will go, won’t he? I bet he would take you.”

“I need you to be there.”

She squirmed. Why her? She wasn’t much more than a houseguest. Beyond the mandatory “Hi, how are you,” the two of them coexisted in solitude. “Why do you need me, specifically?”

Robin didn’t answer right away. She looked out the window while Bethany pulled into a parking spot and shut off the ignition. “Remember senior year, when Mr. Burny asked us all to write an essay about the most important relationship in our life?”

Bethany nodded slowly. She’d forgotten all about that essay. “He made us stand in front of the class and read them out loud. Genevieve Winters quoted First Corinthians and dedicated the whole thing to her future husband.”

“Debbie Carter wrote about Chris Samson.”

“His head swelled to the size of a watermelon.”

“You wrote about me.”

Bethany’s smile fell away. She had.

“You said we knew how to be there for each other without filling up the space with words. You said we didn’t try to pretend things were good when they were crappy.” A ghost of a smile tugged at Robin’s lips. “I remember you used that word too, and Mr. Burny scrunched his nose.”

“Mr. Burny always scrunched his nose.”

“You said when we first met, I made breathing a little easier.” Robin picked at the black rubber lining of the window. “I remember sitting in class, thinking the same thing. I never would have made it through my mother’s death without you.”

Something heavy rolled onto Bethany’s chest. Mrs. Delner had been the mother she had always wanted—warm and outgoing and beautiful. Her death had been incredibly hard. But being there for Robin had provided some distraction from her own grief.

“Micah was my whole world, Bethy. And now he’s gone, and having you with me—I don’t know—it just makes breathing a little easier.”

Bethany chewed the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to encourage Robin’s inexplicable dependence. When she left—and she would be leaving soon—she wanted to make it as painless as possible for her old friend, but despite her misgivings, she caught herself nodding. Agreeing to escort Robin.

It wasn’t until they were inside Lowe’s, browsing the display of paint samples, that Bethany remembered something. She’d just agreed to go to Peaks’s annual New Year’s Eve ball. The one honoring Pastor Fenton.

TWENTY-TWO

B
ethany fingered the black twill fabric of her dress as she walked toward Shorney’s Terrace, the only banquet hall in Peaks. She had attended the ball once before, way back in junior high, when she’d gone as Robin’s guest. As a kid, she’d worn a corduroy skirt one size too big and a mustard-colored cardigan her mother found at the local Goodwill. The stark contrast between her outfit and Robin’s brand-new party dress dominated her memory so much that she couldn’t recall what the adults had worn. So she settled on the knee-length sheath she’d purchased last year for one of Dominic’s business dinners and crossed her fingers that she wouldn’t repeat her childhood offense.

When she and Robin approached the queue of people behind the double doors, she let out a long breath, unaware she’d been holding it in. She would support Robin through the evening and ignore as many familiar faces as possible. Still, just in case she did get roped into awkward conversation with old classmates, she’d spent a long time in front of the mirror, hoping for the right look. She found that as opposed to her previous experience, her high-belted waist and black pumps gave her a sophistication others in the crowd lacked.

She raised her chin, pulled her winter wrap over her bare shoulders, and hugged her Marc Jacobs clutch purse to her chest. The winter chill nipping at her cheeks and fingertips subsided as soon as she stepped inside the
banquet hall. At one time, the oak floor and wide staircase leading to the second-story ballroom might have impressed her. Now all she could think was that the place could use some renovation. Palladian windows, marbled flooring, and well-placed pillars would add some visual weight to the ground floor. She moved to the staircase with Robin and grazed her fingertips over the metal balustrade. The urn-shaped pewter balusters looked out of place in the otherwise unrefined great room.

As she ascended the staircase, she angled to study the throng of guests filing through the doors and spotted the tops of three familiar heads. Clean-cut Bryan held hands with Amy—her corn-silk hair styled into a french twist. Robin said they flew into town for the evening, wanting to honor Micah, and left their kids in Arizona with Loraine and Jim. Evan entered behind them, his suit coat covering impossibly broad shoulders.

Bethany’s stomach tightened. She covered the silly reaction with her hand when something sparkly caught her attention. Light reflecting off a shimmery red gown. The wearer looped her arm through Evan’s. Bethany stopped at the top of the steps. Someone bumped into her from behind and mumbled an apology. She didn’t know Evan had a girlfriend.

Robin leaned over and searched the crowd. “Who are you looking at?”

Bethany nodded toward the doorway. “Bryan and Amy are here. And Evan and his date.”

A smile took shape on Robin’s face—the first real one Bethany had seen since losing Micah. “I didn’t know Diane was coming. She’s great. You’ll love her.”

Bethany relinquished her grip on the balustrade. Judging by the woman’s sparkly, full-length gown and the pile of platinum curls on her head, Bethany doubted she would love her. The woman was obviously trying too hard. Bethany undid the clasp on her purse, retrieved a pack of wintergreen breath mints, and frowned at her shaking fingers. This was ridiculous. She’d come tonight out of obligation. She knew three people would
be in attendance. Pastor Fenton. Her mother. And Evan. She had every intention of avoiding all of them. Especially after her and Evan’s fight in front of Susan Sparks.

Popping the mint between her lips and rolling it to one side of her mouth, she turned and entered the ballroom. Floral arrangements adorned the center of every table. Strings of balloons hung from the ceiling, and gold, twinkly lights wound their way up plastic pillars. At the front of the hall, underneath a large banner, was a platform with a lectern positioned in the middle. The younger version of herself would have felt like a princess in this place. She took pleasure that her reaction today was nothing more than an indifferent acknowledgment that the committee who organized the event had tried very hard to dress up a country banquet hall.

People mingled while waiting to order drinks from the bar. Bethany made eye contact with a pair of familiar faces—two girls who graduated in her class—and quickly turned away. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she’d moved on to bigger and better things. It had taken two solid years in college before she stopped ducking away from unwanted attention. Two solid years before she stopped slouching her shoulders as if her diminished posture might hide her from some figurative spotlight. She wasn’t going to revert back to that nasty habit now. She had nothing to be ashamed about.

She straightened her back, squared her shoulders, and raised her chin. She didn’t need a sign on her forehead announcing her level of education, her major, her accomplishments. Let them see it in her posture. And if anybody asked, she’d be ready to share.

“Do you want to find a table?” she asked Robin.

“The mayor reserved one for us in the front—for all of Micah’s family.”

The thought of spending the evening sitting with Evan and his date made her queasy, especially if Evan planned to interrogate her about the farm.

Before Bethany could suggest a different table, Evan was beside them,
wrapping Robin in a hug. When he let go, Bryan was next. Then Amy. Then the woman in the sparkly red dress.

“I didn’t know you were in town,” Robin said.

“Oh, honey, you know me. I couldn’t miss an opportunity to dress up.” A thick southern drawl saturated every syllable.

Robin smiled, the second one that night. And Diane had been responsible for both. “This is my friend Bethany,” Robin said. Diane’s green eyes sparkled with amusement as she gave Bethany a long and deliberate appraisal.

Warmth crept into Bethany’s cheeks. Looking at Evan’s date was like staring at the tonal inversion of her picture. Diane was Bethany’s own personal negative. Her full-figured frame filled that ostentatious dress with curves, while Bethany stood like a fence post. Diane’s white-blond curls bounced around her heart-shaped face, while Bethany’s brown locks hung straight past her shoulders. Where Diane’s smile came quick and easy, Bethany guarded hers carefully. Even their voices oozed opposition. Diane’s dripped with sweetness, while Bethany had cultivated her own into something like red wine. If Diane symbolized Evan’s type, Bethany landed herself on the opposite end of the spectrum.

And why should that matter? She stuck out her hand, but the woman bypassed all personal space for a hug. Not just a friendly pat either, but an actual squeeze.

When Diane pulled her arms away, she flashed a sugar-sweet smile. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, leaning back on her heels and bumping Evan’s hip with her own. “Shame on you. You didn’t tell me Bethany was such a pretty young thing.”

Bethany’s attention darted to Evan, but he avoided eye contact. He stared at Diane instead, who looped her arm through his. Heat stirred in Bethany’s chest. She looked away from the pair, annoyed at her reaction. So Evan had a girlfriend. One who looked like Marilyn Monroe’s identical twin. So what?

When they reached the table, Evan slid out Diane’s chair, and before Bethany could object, he slid hers out as well. She draped her wrap over the back of her seat, picked up her glass of ice water, and motioned to the two empty chairs at the end of the table. “Are Gavin and Amanda coming?”