Wildflowers from Winter (5 page)

“Give me a break. You came back because of
you
.”

His accusation hit too close for comfort. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough.”

She jutted her chin.

Dan came to the edge of his recliner, trailing bits of chaw onto the carpet.

Evan clamped his hands over his knees. “Look. Robin doesn’t need to deal with you or your little high school reunion right now. Not on top of everything else.”

“She won’t have to
deal
with me. I came to offer my condolences. She was my best friend—”

“So where have you been for the past ten years?”

His question stole all her air.

“I’m sure my brother’s collapse and Dan’s heart attack put a real crimp in your plans—”

Dan stood and held out his hands. “Now, just stop right there. The both of you.” He stepped forward. “Evan, I know you’re exhausted and upset about your brother. But I won’t have you two fighting like this in my living room.”

Evan melted into the couch, his shoulders slumped, and examined Bethany with tired eyes. “Can’t you take care of Dan for the week and leave it at that?”

His posture doused the fire raging in her chest, calming it to smoldering embers. Evan and Micah were brothers. How would she feel if the person in the hospital was David? She shuddered at the thought—at the very real possibility.

Still, she came back to Peaks to offer her sympathy. She wasn’t going to get this far just to turn around and send Robin the card she bought last week. Evan might not trust her motives, but that didn’t mean he had the
right to tell her what to do. “I have to visit her. If you don’t want me to come with you tonight, then I’ll find another time.”

He leaned his head against the cushions and stared at the ceiling. By the time he looked at her, his face was stretched and white. “I guess there’s nothing I can do, then.”

She met his stare. “I guess not.”

FOUR

E
van swung the ax, taking all his frustration out on the hunk of ice covering the water tank. With the heater busted, the cattle couldn’t drink. So he chopped away, hoping his aching muscles might distract him from his grief. He wound up and took another swing. The frozen block cracked and broke away. If only his pain would do the same.

He dragged his gloved hand across his forehead, wiping at the sweat beading above his brow. Searching for something else to swing at, he found a stack of logs next to the machinery shed and began splitting wood, trying hard to block out the image of his brother, a warm corpse surrounded by tubes and beeping monitors. And the image of Robin, knees tucked to her body as she sat watching Micah’s chest rise and fall with superficial life.

Gripping the handle, he raised the ax over his head and brought it down with all his might. The log splintered and popped apart. He was angry—the same kind of angry he felt in high school after a car accident stole the life of his friend. He could feel the familiar emotion expanding inside him now, poking around for an outlet. But this time he was fourteen years wiser.

And this wiser version of himself understood that death was like winter. Micah had better things waiting for him. An eternity of spring—new life. Evan knew all this in his head. His heart, however, was having a harder time with things. Life without one of his brothers didn’t make any sense. He
swung the ax into the chopping block. The sharpened blade stuck in the wood.

He needed to put a blanket over Storm, Dan’s old mare, and get cleaned up before he went to Robin’s. As he walked toward the paddock, his mind wandered to Dan’s granddaughter, who apparently would be accompanying him.

Yesterday, Bethany stood on the front porch like a piece of glass pretending to be steel, hiding behind a designer coat and an expensive car. At first glance it was impossible to dislike something so unknowingly fragile, but his amusement turned sour over the course of the evening.

She hadn’t asked about Robin or his brother. Not once.

He walked into the horse barn, frozen dirt and hay crunching beneath his boots, and stopped. Bethany stood inside, lost somewhere in Dan’s oversized parka, her chestnut hair pulled back from her face, her brown eyes wide, as if she’d been caught with a gun in her hand instead of a horse brush.

She brought the brush down to her side. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

Faint patches of red stained her cheeks. She tucked her bottom lip beneath her teeth but released it just as suddenly, like she’d made some sort of mistake. Like biting her lip was a completely inappropriate thing to do.

He cocked his head. Bethany didn’t strike him as the type who’d venture out in the cold to brush a horse. Come to think of it, she didn’t strike him as the type who’d venture out in any weather to brush a horse. He came closer and patted Storm’s shoulder. “This gal likes the attention, I’m sure.”

Bethany stepped back just a little. “I used to ride her when I was a girl.”

Evan tried to picture it, but he had a hard time.

“You look like you don’t believe me,” she said.

“It’s not easy to imagine.”

“Why not?”

He glanced at her brand-name boots. “You don’t strike me as the farmgirl type.”

“I’m not.” She picked at the bristles, took another subtle step backward—the tiniest of shifts—and scanned the rafters, the strangest look passing across her face. Something soft and nostalgic. “At least not anymore.”

He wondered what she might be thinking, but before he could ask, the look disappeared. “What time are we going to Robin’s?” she asked.

“In an hour.”

“I can follow you over.”

“And get your car dirty?”

Her eyes flashed.

He scolded himself for his rudeness. Whatever Bethany’s history with Dan and Robin, he had no right to make her his scapegoat. She wasn’t the one he was angry with. Not really. He walked into the tack room, grabbed one of the heavy blankets off a shelf, and draped it over Storm’s back. “We’re both going to the same place. There’s no reason we can’t drive together.”

She studied the ground, as if an excuse hid somewhere in the straw by Storm’s feet. When it was obvious she couldn’t find it, she ran her manicured hand down the length of the horse’s neck and left the barn.

Evan squinted after her, his muscles no longer knotted with anger.

Bethany reached for the door of Evan’s Bronco, but he beat her to it. He swung it open and swept his hand toward the inside, as if she were not capable of pulling on a handle and letting herself into his car. She climbed onto the passenger seat, her shoe knocking a crushed Pepsi can. Cold vinyl rubbed against her palms, then the underside of her thighs, as she scooted into place and brought the seat belt across her chest.

Evan’s door slammed shut. As soon as he started the car, music blasted
from the speakers—an awful twang that scraped against her eardrums. She clenched her fingers and pressed her hands into her lap, frowning at the silver cross dangling from his rearview mirror.

“What? You don’t like Kenny Chesney?”

“Bleeding hearts and sexy tractors? No, thank you.”

Evan kept his left hand on the wheel and used the other to fish something from beneath his seat. His hand reappeared holding a bulky CD case. He plunked it on her lap. “You pick something, then.”

She blinked at the gift. Somehow she doubted she’d find anything that interested her.

“I promise they won’t bite.”

Scowling, she flipped open the case and rummaged through the CD jackets. By the time she reached the end, he was driving on a blacktopped road, the gravel no longer pinging against the car, her initial suspicions confirmed. “They’re all country.”

“So?”

“I don’t like country.”

He jabbed the Eject button and flipped his Kenny Chesney CD onto the case.

Silence filled the car. She pivoted in her seat and stared at the darkening landscape blurring past her window. Dirty gray snowdrifts covering muted brown fields. Why would anybody choose to live here? She fingered the case on her lap.

Robin had.

And now, after ten years, all that separated her from her former best friend was a short drive in Evan’s Bronco. She’d tagged along, determined to check this task off her to-do list, but now, bouncing in his passenger seat, about to face Robin, a cross dangling in front of her face … The irony was hard to miss.

She set the CD case on the floor while Evan pulled to a stop and turned
onto Peaks’s thoroughfare—a two-lane road that knew nothing of stoplights. After her long absence, she expected something to look different. Perhaps a new restaurant or updated storefronts. But no. Nothing had changed. The same multicolored Christmas lights wrapped around the same frostbitten trees growing up on both sides of the same boring street. Even the gaudy, light-up Santa waving from the lawn of Arton’s Jewelry Store was the same. The town wallowed in its sameness. Yet Bethany couldn’t be more different. Neither could her relationship with Robin.

She fiddled with the window button on her armrest, and the question she should have asked a long time ago tumbled from her lips. “How’s Robin doing?”

“Not good.”

The sudden desire to know everything, as if these morsels of information might arm her with the right words, welled up inside her. “You told Dan there’s no chance Micah would recover.”

“It’s been a week. Nothing’s changed.”

“And now you want Robin to take him off the ventilator?”

A muscle in Evan’s jaw pulsed. “He’d want to go home.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that. What do you mean, ‘go home’?”

“Heaven.”

She huffed.

“You don’t believe in heaven?”

“If I believed in heaven, then I’d have to believe in hell.” She crossed her arms to ward off the chill. “I’d rather pass.”

Oncoming headlights spilled inside the car, bringing Evan’s face out of shadow. He looked at her, his eyes probing in a way that made her squirm.

“Sorry if I offended you,” Bethany said.

“No offense taken.”

“No?”

“It’s a valid concern. You’re not the only one to struggle with it.”

She studied his profile, trying to catch him in the lie, but his expression held nothing but honesty. The whole exchange tied her thoughts in knots. Threw her off balance. She scrambled to regain her equilibrium while Evan pulled into a cul-de-sac lined with two-story brick houses surrounded by manicured lawns. He stopped in front of one that was no different than the others and turned off the ignition.

They were here? Already?

Bethany squeezed the tops of her knees and closed her eyes, refusing to let panic swallow her. She could do this. A hug. A pat on the back. An empty promise to be there if Robin needed her, then melt into the background while Evan and his family held Robin’s hand. By tomorrow morning this would all be behind her.

Despite her internal pep talk, a shiver started at the base of her spine and took hold of her jaw. Her teeth chattered, tapping an indiscernible SOS that wouldn’t stop.

“Are you all right?”

A layer of sweat broke out over Bethany’s palms. She was really here. Not more than thirty feet from Robin’s front stoop. She tried to swallow, but the muscles in her throat wouldn’t cooperate.

Evan was talking. The muffled sound of his voice found her ears, but she couldn’t make out any of his words. What if this was a horrible mistake? What if Robin slammed the door in her face? What if she couldn’t think of anything to say? She inhaled, grasping at the composure seeping out her pores, and searched for the professional Bethany. The one who made goals and accomplished them. Because that’s all this was. Something to accomplish so she could go back to Chicago with no more distractions. Sure, she felt terrible for Robin, but there wasn’t anything she could do. So she’d perform the social niceties. A hug. A pat. And then she’d get out of there.

In and out.

The muffled sound of Evan’s voice stopped. He reached for his door handle. The motion sent her paralyzed synapses into fast-forward. She unclasped her seat belt and hopped out before he had the chance to open the door for her again. With her chin tucked to her chest and hands shoved deep inside her coat pockets, she hurried to the front door, a cruel wind whipping strands of hair around her face. Evan climbed the stoop and knocked while Bethany’s heart bruised her chest.

The porch light flicked on. She blinked against the flood of brightness. A lock unlatched from the other side. The door opened. Evan wrapped Robin in a hug and stepped to the side, no longer a barricade between them.

Robin’s fingertips flew to her mouth. Her eyes widened.

And Bethany’s plan? Her goal to get in and get out? Vanished. Disappearing among the million unsaid words exchanged in the brief seconds of Robin’s confusion. And behind the confusion? Pain. A haunting sorrow that filled her eyes. Bethany’s heart twisted, then rent down the seam. Her friend—her soul mate for so many years—looked like nothing more than a heap of grief, her haunted eyes two hollowed-out pits of despair.

Robin closed her mouth. Her chin gave the smallest of quivers. Her shoulders twitched, then heaved. Evan held up his hand, as if to grab her elbow, but Bethany stepped past him, past her hesitancy, and reached Robin before he had the chance. And as Robin crumpled beneath the weight of her tears, Bethany gathered up the broken pieces of her friend’s worn-out soul and pressed them against her body.