Therese Fowler - Souvenir

THERESE FOWLER

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

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A Paperback Original 2007

Copyright © Therese Fowler 2007

‘What You Won’t Do for Love’ Words and Music by Alfons Kettne and Bobby Caldwell © 1978, EMI Longitude Music, USA. Reproduced b permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0QY

‘Anthem’ Lyrics by Leonard Cohen © Sony/ATV Music Publishing All Rights Reserved

Therese Fowler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560094

Ebook edition © August 2008 ISBN: 9780007278978

Version: 2018-06-05

Do, for love, what you would not do .

Title Page Copyright Dedication Prologue Part I Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Part II Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Part III Chapter Thirty-Nine chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two Chapter Fifty-Three Chapter Fifty-Four Chapter Fifty-Five Chapter Fifty-Six Chapter Fifty-Seven Chapter Fifty-Eight Part IV Chapter Fifty-Nine chapter Sixty Chapter Sixty-One Chapter Sixty-Two Part V Chapter Sixty-Three Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

August 1989

What she was doing was wrong. But then, everything was wrong, wasn’t it?

She was sneaking out to see Carson, even though in thirteen hours she’d be another man’s wife. Brian’s wife. Brian’s wife . No matter how she phrased the words, they hardly made sense to her, even now. They belonged to someone else’s reality. It was as if she, Meg Powell, would cease to exist at the end of the wedding ceremony, becoming some unfamiliar woman called Mrs Brian Hamilton. But maybe it was better that way.

She left her house in the dark and traced the familiar path through the pastures, toward the lake and the groves and Carson’s house. The sun would rise before much longer, and her sisters would wake, excited – Meg’s wedding day! Her parents would find her note saying she’d gone for a walk and wouldn’t be concerned. They’d know she’d be back in plenty of time; she was nothing if not reliable and responsible. A model daughter. Their deliverance.

And she was glad to be those things. If only she could shut down the Meg who still longed for the future she’d sacrificed. This visit to Carson was meant to do that, to shut it down. This part of her mission was appropriate, at least; this was the part she would explain to him. If she knew Carson – and after sixteen years of best-friendship, she knew only herself better – he would accept the partial truth without suspecting there was anything more to it.

She wanted so much to tell him the truth about the rest, to explain why she was marrying Brian. But besides jeopardizing everything, it would make him want to try to fix things. If that had been possible, there would not now be a breathtaking four-thousand-dollar wedding gown waiting in her bedroom like a fairy tale in progress. The thought of it hanging from her closet door, specter-like, made her shudder; she’d read enough fairy tales to know they didn’t always end happily.

Carson lived in a converted shed on his parent’s Florida citrus farm. The McKay farm adjoined her family’s horse farm, sharing an east–west line of wood posts and barbed wire. The fence kept the horses out of the groves but had never been a serious obstacle for Meg or her three younger sisters or Carson. When she was seven or eight years old, they’d found a wooden ladder and sawed it in half, then propped the halves on opposite sides of a post to make their passage easy. Meg wasn’t surprised, now, to see the ladder gone. Climbing the barbed wire, she took care not to get a cut she’d be hard pressed to explain tonight.

Fifteen minutes later she emerged from the shadows of the orange grove and stopped. In the light of the setting moon she could see the shed, its white clap-board siding and dark windows, a hundred yards to the left of the main house. She and Carson had spent most of his senior year working with his father to renovate it, creating two downstairs rooms and an upstairs bedroom loft. They’d called the shed their love nest, not only because they first made love there but also because they meant for it to become their home. Not for always, just for starters. The plan had been to eventually build a new house on the far side of his farm. On the wooded hillside where, as children, they’d hung a tire swing for themselves and her sisters. Where, years later, they had spread an old horse blanket and gone as far as they dared without protection.

This morning, she was purposely – some might say selfishly – no better prepared.

Though the day would grow hot later, the moist air and light breeze chilled her by the time she reached his door. Her feet were wet inside white canvas sneakers, her thighs hardly covered by cut-off denim shorts. She was braless beneath Carson’s John Deere T-shirt, could feel her nipples pulled in tight and small. Her gold chain, his gift to her on her nineteenth birthday two years earlier, lay cool against her damp skin.

She hesitated before putting her hand on his doorknob, imagining what Brian would do if he knew she had come here, imagining her parents’ disappointment and distress if she spoiled the plan, imagining that she might hate herself even more, later – and then she turned the knob.

The door was unlocked, as she’d known it would be. No need to lock your doors out here; everything of value was kept outside the house – for Carson or for almost anyone who made a living off the land. In the implement shed was a new pair of mortgaged tractors that had cost upward of $80,000 apiece. In the barn was a treasured thoroughbred bay – Carolyn McKay’s ‘hobby’ that helped make up for being unable to have more children after Carson. Meg knew the details of the McKays’ lives intimately. But when she left here later this morning, she would do everything possible to forget them.