Wildflowers from Winter (25 page)

“Didn’t they do a great job?” Mrs. Delner asked.

“I’d say so.” Mr. Delner came closer to give our handiwork his full attention. “What an intriguing design.”

Robin beamed. “That was Bethy’s idea.”

Mr. Delner looked at me then and smiled so handsomely he reminded me of my dad. Before his accident. Warmth filled my entire body.

He turned to Mrs. Delner, his smile still firmly in place, my warmth growing all the warmer. “Looks like we have a budding architect on our hands.”

Two things stuck in my mind. Mr. Delner said
we
, as if I belonged to them. And Mr. Delner called me an architect.

TWENTY-FIVE

R
obin pulled two shirts off the hanger and clutched them to her chest. Something inside her refused to toss them onto the sparse pile on the floor. So far, she’d taken four of Micah’s sweatshirts from the back of their closet—the ones he hadn’t worn in a good two years—and dumped them onto the carpet, proud of her accomplishment.

She’d just talked with her father on the phone. He’d asked how she was doing. Fine, she’d said. Then he inquired about Micah’s clothes. He told her cleaning out her mother’s closet had been one of the hardest things he’d done after she died, but also necessary. He told her to buck up and clean it out. Tough love.

So that’s what she was doing. Or attempting to do. Three months and Micah wasn’t coming back to wear his clothes. If she thought those first couple days before the funeral had been difficult, it was nothing compared to the emptiness that made up her current existence. At least then shock had cushioned the blow. Now a pressing darkness weighed upon her soul, and there was nothing she could do to get out from beneath its suffocating presence.

She took another of his shirts from the hanger and pressed it against her nose. It didn’t smell like Micah. She inhaled deeper, trying to pry the buried scent from the fabric, but nothing came. She pulled another shirt from its place and breathed it in.

Nothing.

“No.” The sharp word sliced through the closet.

She snatched another. Then another. And another. Until she’d ripped every single shirt from its spot, and the barren hangers rocked on the bar. None of the clothes smelled like Micah. Not a single one. They lay in an odious pile, mocking her from the floor.

“You can’t have his smell too. I’ll get it back.”

She didn’t stop to examine the logic of her one-way conversation with God, or the fact that He hadn’t stolen Micah’s scent to heaven the way she accused Him of doing. Nothing about her actions was logical anymore anyway.

She clutched the discarded clothing against her chest, hurried to the basement, and stuffed the washer full. She dumped in a large dose of fabric softener, the kind Micah loved, and stared at the wall for the entire twenty-five minute cycle. As soon as it buzzed, she threw the load into the dryer and waited for his clothes to dry. Before the cycle finished, she wrenched out the heavy bundle, raced up to their bedroom, uncapped his cologne, and doused his clothes in the fragrance.

Come back to me, Micah. Come back
.

She repeated her plea with every spritz from the bottle. When there was nothing left to spray, she got down on her knees and buried her face in the cloying scent, her tears staining the fabric, her sobs muffled by the warm, semidamp laundry until a throat cleared behind her.

Robin sat up, hair plastered to the wetness on her cheek. She pushed the strands away and found Bethany standing in the doorway, surveying the pile of dress shirts and pants on the floor. The concern on Bethany’s face brought Robin back to her senses. She was a mess. An absolute mess. Her attempt to clean out Micah’s closet could not have gone any worse. The look on Bethany’s face was nothing compared to the look that would be on Micah’s if he could see her now.

“Robin? What are you doing?”

She tried to give Bethany a self-deprecating smile, but the gesture fell short. So she held up a shirt with one hand and wiped at her eyes with the other. “I thought I would clean out Micah’s closet. It’s not going so well.”

Bethany walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Why does this have to be so hard?” Robin asked.

Bethany didn’t answer right away. Probably because there was no answer to give. Difficulty came with death. Robin knew that. She’d experienced it when she lost her mother.

Yesterday, she’d Googled the stages of grief, searching for an end to her own, and had no problem diagnosing herself. She was stuck somewhere between anger and depression, her mind waffling between the two. When she read the last stage—acceptance—she’d burst into an irrational bout of tears. Not because the stage felt so far away, but because she was afraid of reaching it. As taxing as this was right now, with every breath a battle, at least her pain linked her to her husband. If she let go of the pain, wouldn’t that mean letting go of Micah? How could that ever be a good thing?

“Why don’t you let me do it?”

Robin brought the shirt into her lap. “Because it’s my job.”

“Says who? Why should it be your job to clean out Micah’s closet?” Bethany slid down the bed and joined her on the floor. “Since when did you become so masochistic? If cleaning out Micah’s closet causes you pain, don’t do it.” Bethany looked at her belly. Robin’s oversized T-shirt rested over the small bump. “You have enough to deal with.”

She envisioned Micah up in heaven, cheering. He’d tell her to stop holding on so tight. He’d tell her to let go. She stared at the pile of clothes. They were just clothes. No amount of cologne would turn them into anything else.

“I have something that might distract you.” Bethany reached out and touched Robin’s hand, a smile on her face. “I found you a café.”

“A café?”

Bethany nodded. “Sunshine Daisies is going out of business. It would be the perfect place to build it.”

Robin couldn’t match Bethany’s enthusiasm.

“It’s a two-story building. We could rip out some of the second-story flooring. Open it up into a vaulted ceiling with a cozy loft. Customers could look down at you playing the piano and enjoy a view of the Mississippi out the windows. Honestly, it’s perfect.”

Something inside Robin recoiled. “I don’t want to build it.” She said the words without thinking.

“You haven’t even seen the space yet.”

“I don’t need to see it. I don’t want one without the other.”

Bethany furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“The café. I don’t want it without Micah.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not how it was supposed to be.”

Bethany motioned to the pair of them sitting on her bedroom floor amid a pile of cologne-soaked laundry. “And you think this is?”

Robin wasn’t trying to be difficult. She really wasn’t. But she couldn’t just jump into the plans Bethany had laid out while Micah’s clothes spun through the wash. She couldn’t shift gears that quickly. “I think I need to be alone right now.” She hoped her request didn’t come out rude. She wasn’t trying to be mean or selfish. Especially not with Bethany, who had supported her over these last three months.

Frowning, Bethany stood. Before she exited the room, she stopped and rested her hand on the doorknob. “Please just think about it, Robin. It would be good for both of us. And maybe even fun.” She left, letting Robin contemplate that last thought.

Fun.

It was a foreign word. One that had long since fallen out of her vocabulary.
Something she used to know the meaning of—a long, long time ago. All that remained now was a niggling familiarity.

Bethany rapped on the door. Although the farm belonged to her, the farmhouse didn’t, and her presence felt presumptuous. She took a deep breath and knocked again. No answer. She glanced at her watch and, just to make sure, looked at the sky. The sun sank toward the horizon, leaving the east an inky blue and the west a mixture of pinks and oranges. She turned away from the front door and peered at the fields. A misty fog hovered over the ground. Pretty soon, all remnants of daylight would disappear. Evan’s Bronco parked in the driveway told her he had to be there somewhere.

Her flat tire this morning felt like ages ago.

She stepped off the front porch and walked to the side of the house to peek in one of the windows. The hallway light illuminated an empty living room. She tried to see into the kitchen, but the angle wasn’t right. Just as she considered peeking in the window by the back door or walking to the machine shed, something snapped behind her. She turned around to find Evan staring at her, his eyebrows raised, his two faithful Border collies panting at his side.

“This is quite an odd habit you’ve developed, spying in windows.”

She took a quick step out of the mulch like a naughty child who’d been caught peeking at Christmas presents. Evan wore the same clothes as earlier, only he had thrown a stained sweatshirt on over his white T-shirt, probably to combat the falling temperatures.

“Sorry,” she said, more mortified by her flaming cheeks than by being caught nosing around the bushes.

“What are you doing here?” His words came out curious instead of harsh, although she was sure she deserved the latter. After some distance, she
could understand his anger. Evan loved the farm as much as she loved her career. She’d be just as angry if somebody tried to take that away from her.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said.

One of the Border collies wagged its tail and barked. Evan ignored the dog and crossed his arms in front of him. “Two in one day? That must be a record for you.”

Her shoulders stiffened and she turned to go, but Evan reached out and took her elbow. “Bethany …”

Her breath caught in her throat. It was the first time he’d touched her since their New Year’s Eve dance, and something warm spread through her arm, as if she’d dipped her elbow into a pool of sunshine.

“I’m sorry.” He let go of her elbow and took a step back. “I didn’t mean to be rude. What can I do for you?”

She blinked away the fuzz in her brain. She had to make it clear that his help would benefit Robin, not her. She couldn’t imagine he’d agree to help her with anything after their morning together. “I’m worried about Robin. And the baby.”

“Is everything okay?”

She held up her hands. Rushing to his car and driving to Robin’s to check for himself would be just like him. “The baby’s fine. But I’m not so sure about the mother. You haven’t been over in a while.”

“I’ve been sort of busy. It’s calving season.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m only updating you on your sister-in-law.”

He looped his thumbs inside his front pockets and sighed. “She’s not doing any better?”

“Did you really expect her to be?”

He stared past the barn, out into the darkening fields. “I don’t know what to do. It’s like she’s shut herself off.”

“I have an idea. But I need your help.”

His eyes flicked toward hers. He waited a beat, then nodded for her to continue.

Bethany took a deep breath. “Did Robin or Micah ever talk about a café?”

“What kind of café?”

“One they could open together.”

Evan smiled—not at Bethany, but at her words. “That sounds like them.”

“I guess it was something they were planning before …” She let the thought fall away, unspoken but certainly understood. “Anyway, Robin has some great ideas for it. And the two of us have been playing around with the design. Drawing up dimensions, looking at paint colors.”

“That sounds like more than just playing.”

“It was something to do. But these past few weeks, we haven’t talked about it. Robin’s been kind of … distracted.” More like comatose. But she didn’t need to tell him that. “Today, when I saw that flower shop for sale …”

One corner of his mouth quirked. “You want to make the flower shop into their café?”

“It would be a healthy distraction. Cathartic, maybe.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“Just a little bit ago.”

“And?”

“She wasn’t very interested.”

Doubt crept into his eyes. She could see the response on his face—he was two seconds away from telling her to respect Robin’s wishes. But she couldn’t let him shut the door on this. Not yet.

“One of the very first renovation projects I did was outside Chicago, where an older couple wanted to turn a run-down bank into an art gallery. Their son was an artist. He died in a boating accident. They had all sorts of paintings stored away in their basement. They built the place to honor him.”

Bethany hadn’t thought about that couple in years. At the time, she’d resented such a low-budget assignment, but looking back, it had been one of her most satisfying accomplishments. In all the rest of her years at Parker Crane, she’d never received a thank-you as heartfelt as that couple’s.

“I remember the lady telling me how good it felt to be doing something. She said the project helped them heal.”

“And you think building this café will do the same for Robin?”

Bethany nodded.

Evan shifted on his heels. The two Border collies no longer sat alert at his side. One had wandered to the house to sniff around. The other lay in the grass, licking Evan’s boot. She watched them while she waited for his answer.