Wildflowers from Winter (27 page)

“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.” Robin picked the fuzz off her slippers. “About Sunshine Daisies and our café.”

Bethany’s mind honed in on her choice of words.
Our
café. After the pseudo-agreement she’d made with Evan a few days ago, she tried to bring the café up with Robin several times. Talking with her proved as fruitful as communicating with a brick wall. So Bethany had tucked the idea away, floundering as she reposted her résumé to several websites and scheduled a meeting with yet another Realtor.

“I know I said I didn’t want to do it. And I’m still not completely convinced
it’s a good idea. But I was thinking …” Robin glanced up from her feet. “I’m tired of feeling like this.”

The tentacle-like fingers drew tighter around Bethany’s heart. She looked at her computer screen and saw three new messages in her inbox. Her finger twitched over the touchpad.

“I know this isn’t logical. But part of me is afraid letting go of the pain will mean losing Micah all over again.”

Bethany took a deep breath and pried her eyes away from the e-mails screaming her name.

“Now, after that ultrasound …” The trace of a smile returned. “That was something else, wasn’t it?”

Bethany closed the lid to her laptop and set it aside.

“Seeing that baby”—Robin’s smile solidified—“my baby. It was like God’s wake-up call.”

God’s wake-up call? More like the advancement of technology
.

“I started thinking about Micah and what he would want.” Robin tucked her legs beneath her. “He’d want me to open the café. He’d want me to do it.”

A slow smile crept across Bethany’s lips. “The place is great.”

“You already checked it out?”

Bethany nodded. After her conversation with Evan, she had called the owner and walked through the shop. It was old. It needed work. But it was perfect. She could close her eyes and imagine all of it. Which walls needed to be removed. Where new ones could be erected. The work they could do to the ceiling, the roof, the flooring.

“Did you like it?” Robin asked.

“The space has great potential. And the owner is selling it dirt cheap. She’s not using a Realtor.” Only in Peaks would a business owner not use a Realtor. “She’s ready to retire and none of her kids are interested in carrying on the business.”

Robin took a deep breath, studied the wall behind Bethany, and screwed up her face in determination. “Let’s do it, then. Let’s build us a café.”

Bethany couldn’t help herself. Robin’s smile was too contagious. Her e-mail would have to wait until later. Because right then, they had some planning to do.

TWENTY-SEVEN

T
he next morning, Bethany took Robin to Sunshine Daisies. Sharing her vision didn’t take long. A few well-chosen words, and the potential that had been so glaringly obvious to Bethany became just as obvious to Robin.

They were twelve-year-olds all over again. Standing side by side, the building before them bursting with possibilities. Only this wasn’t a dollhouse. This was Robin’s future.

That evening Robin spoke with her dad to get legal advice and conferred with her financial advisor. Both offered a few words of caution before giving their blessing. So the following day, Robin hired an accountant and made an offer. The owner accepted without a counteroffer, asked that Robin’s dad draw up the papers, and made one simple request. To love and appreciate the space as much as she had throughout the years. Since she didn’t mention anything about tearing the inside apart, they gave their word free of guilt.

The impetus from such a bold purchase hurled Bethany into a whirlwind of activity. Before they could start tearing out walls, improving the electrical, or adding a commercial kitchen, she had an architectural plan to solidify, a building permit to fill out, zoning laws to research, supplies to acquire, and a never-ending slew of decisions to make. Her pulse came back to life. She had a project again. Maybe not the next Sistine Chapel, but it was a project nonetheless.

By the time Bethany had navigated through the details, received the permit, and prepared for some actual renovation, Robin had written an entire business plan for the café and her belly had grown to twice its former size. Bethany had acquired fourteen unreturned voice messages from her mother—none of them about David—and the farm had swallowed Evan whole. Even with the help of Gavin, who took over tagging the calves, his availability varied between barely there and nonexistent.

Bethany stayed in sporadic contact with him, trying to figure out what they could renovate on their own and what they’d be better off contracting. After here-and-there conversation, she decided to contract the kitchen. Even in a small town, all the codes and regulations weren’t worth the headache of doing it herself.

Evan’s time started to free up around the same time she received three bids from three different construction companies specializing in commercial kitchens. On the second Sunday in May, instead of just dropping Robin off after church, he stopped in to discuss building plans. As soon as Robin left the room, he leaned in close.

“How’s she doing?” he asked.

“Fine.”

“Care to elaborate on that?”

Bethany resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Why didn’t he ask Robin himself? Did he think she would break under such a simple question? Sarcasm crept to the edge of her tongue, but his hazel eyes, much brighter from his tanned skin, stared at her with imploring seriousness.

“She’s trying,” she said.

“She doesn’t sing in church anymore.”

“Maybe she realizes there’s nothing to sing about.”

Evan cocked his head, his stare reminding her of Storm’s. He didn’t just look at her, he looked through her—inside her—and whatever he found seemed to make him sad.

She stiffened. “What?”

He stepped closer and stared so intently that for a second, she thought he might reach out and touch her cheek. “Someday, Bethany, I hope you find out that you’re wrong. There’s so much to sing about.”

The understanding look in his eyes and the tenderness in his voice thumped her in the chest. She could not find a comeback. He could have slapped her and it would have shocked her less.

“Let me know when you need me to start working on the café.”

Before she could respond, he exited the house and closed the door behind him, leaving Bethany alone with his words.

Evan didn’t know it, but he worried for nothing. Robin’s not singing in church had no bearing on the time she spent reading her Bible at home. She read that book with matchless ferocity, and each time Bethany caught her in the act, something hot would bubble inside Bethany’s chest. Once, during one of her more impulsive moments, the burning question building in her lungs
whoosh
ed past her self-control before she could squelch the words.

“Why do you bother with that?” she’d asked.

Robin looked up from the pages.

Bethany ducked behind the pantry door and pretended to search for something to eat, hoping her busyness might negate Robin’s desire to answer the question.

So what if she read the Bible? As long as she didn’t become the next Pastor Fenton, why should it matter to Bethany if Robin chose to spend her time worshiping
that
type of God? Bethany straightened the clip on a bag of chips, restacked cans of peas, and picked a cinnamon-raisin granola bar from its box before resurfacing from her hidey-hole.

Robin stared at a red spot on the table—last night’s marinara. Bethany thought she’d wiped off the counters yesterday.

“It’s the only thing that gets me through the day,” she said.

Bethany turned her attention away from the crusted spaghetti sauce
and studied her pregnant roommate. “Robin, you get
yourself
through the day.”

Robin shook her head.

Bethany wrapped her fingers around the granola bar, and the wrapper crinkled. “Why do you insist on giving God credit for something you’re doing on your own?”

Robin was a pregnant widow, for crying out loud, reading her Bible as if she owed God her thanks and devotion. But for what? For taking Micah? Despite Bethany’s attempt at calm, the heat bubbling in her chest gave way to a roiling boil. She had the sudden urge to rip Robin’s damaging faith away, to strip it bare, expose it for the louse it was, so Robin would step over to her side again. Bethany reined in the harshness of her tone and laced her expression with a composure she didn’t feel. “What has believing in God done for you?”

Robin’s simple answer, and the peaceful way she delivered it, invaded the hidden places in Bethany’s soul.

“Everything.”

Between Robin’s open exhibitions of faith and Pastor Fenton’s successful ministry with Project MAC saturating the local news, Bethany was more than eager to meet with the contractor they’d chosen, call in a building inspector, and make sure plans were up to code. Anything to distract her from the overdose of Christianity.

But there had been a delay. A temporary standstill while the contractor met a deadline for another project. They postponed their meeting—twice. She was two seconds away from contracting somebody else when the project manager called, apologized, and suggested they meet the following day. The meeting was productive. They didn’t need a large kitchen, not for a
simple café. The floral shop already had a walk-in refrigerator. The guy sounded confident they’d be finished in three weeks. Early June. Impressive timing.

Despite the misty drizzle, Bethany strolled from her car toward the house, arms swinging by her side, glad to finally have some news to share with Robin. She stepped inside the living room to the smell of fresh baked goods.

Inhaling the aroma of peanut butter, she slipped off her shoes, muddied from the afternoon rainfall, and entered the kitchen. Robin stood in front of the sink with a crescent wrench in her hand and stared at the dripping faucet. A dirtied mixing bowl and a cake pan sat on the counter.

“Who’s the cake for?” Bethany asked, pulling her arm out of her jacket.

“Evan. It’s his birthday tomorrow.”

Bethany stopped. “Really?”

Robin tapped her finger on the marbled countertop, her eyes following each drip that escaped the faucet. “I was thinking about fixing the sink.”

Fix the sink? The one she hadn’t let anybody touch over the past several months? Talk about progress. Bethany hung her coat on the back of a chair and pushed up her shirt sleeves. So what if she’d never fixed a sink before. It couldn’t be that hard. “Want some help?”

“You bet.”

Bethany spent the next two hours tinkering around with a wrench and the pipes, updating Robin on the café renovations. They took a break so Robin could prepare the chocolate frosting and slather it on the cake, then went back to work.

“I still can’t believe we’re really doing this,” Robin said, coming out from the opened cabinet and setting down the heavy tool. She stood up, brushed her hands against her pants, and turned on the faucet.

Bethany scrambled from the floor just as Robin turned the faucet off.
Bethany held her breath and counted to ten. Not a single drip. Her chest swelled. She turned to Robin and caught her wearing a matching grin. They slapped each other a high-five, and Bethany motioned toward the delicious-looking treat on the counter.

“Do you always bake a cake for Evan on his birthday?”

Robin covered the top with a plastic lid and licked her thumb. “I promised him and Gavin I would until they each found a wife to do it for them.”

Warmth fizzled up Bethany’s torso. An uncensored image of whisking cake batter while Evan baled hay in the field whispered through her mind. Where had that come from? She cleared her throat and grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair. “I need to run to the grocery store. I can pick up some dinner if you want.”

Robin held up the pan. “Could you run this over to Evan while you’re out?”

Bethany blinked. “But his birthday’s tomorrow.”

Robin peered out the window above the sink. Rain ran down the glass pane in winding trails. “He won’t be working tonight. Besides, you said you needed to talk to him about tearing out some walls.”

Bethany’s stomach tightened. She grappled for an excuse. The idea of being alone with Evan on a dark and rainy night did not sit well. “Why don’t you come?”

“I can’t. A friend from church is coming over to drop off a stroller, and I promised I’d be here when she came.” She held the pan higher. “And since you’re already going out …”

Bethany chided her squirming insides for acting silly. She did have a few questions for Evan about the café. And she hadn’t spoken with him face to face in a while. She eyed the container, brought her arm through her other sleeve, and took the gift. Bringing him a cake on a dark, stormy evening was nothing to worry about.