Inglath Cooper - John Riley's Girl

“We’ll talk soon, okay?”

“Sure, Olivia. Take care.”

They said goodbye and hung up. Olivia’s hand lingered on the receiver, some part of her reluctant to break the connection. She was overcome by a sudden urge to call Lori back and tell her she would come. She missed their friendship with a keen sense of longing and loss.

Olivia let go after a few regretful moments, then reached across the desk and picked up the pile of mail. Sifting through the stack, she singled out an envelope, turned it over and looked at the return address on the back seal.

Summerville, Virginia.

Her heart dropped, even though over the years, she had received what amounted to boxes of mail with postmarks from her former hometown. But her reaction was always the same. Her hope, unwelcome though it was, always the same.

Daphne had already slit open the envelope. Olivia slipped out the heavy card inside.

Hard to believe, but yes, we are old enough to have a 15-year class reunion! (Yikes!!)

Are you brave enough to attend?

We hope so!

What: A weekend of reuniting!

Events taking place Thursday through Saturday.

Where: Lanford County Community Center

When: June 5-7

Why? Because that’s the only way you’ll get to see how we all turned out!

She dropped the card onto the desk, overcome with a wave of nostalgia for some precious things she had lost long ago. She swiveled her chair away from the desk and settled her gaze on the D.C. skyline outside her office window. So many buildings. So many people. In comparison, Summerville was another world altogether. Had it changed? Were the people there any different than they’d been fifteen years ago? Was the dilapidated old house she’d grown up in still standing? Was the farmer’s market still held downtown every Saturday morning rain or shine? Was John still there?

With the name a memory came floating up and emotion knotted in her throat. Lori working the summer of their junior year at the Just-a-Minute Drive-In. Olivia and John parked out front in his battered old Dodge pickup boasting four different layers of paint. He’d bought it himself with money he’d saved working summers on his dad’s farm, and he couldn’t have been more proud of it had it been bought right off the assembly line. Olivia sitting in the middle of the seat, her shoulder tucked under his arm. Lori ducking inside the rolled-down window and telling them not to order any fries because Cecil Callaway had just dropped a fly in the deep fryer.

She could still hear John’s laughter, the deep, full rumble that had never failed to warm her, fill her with something satisfying and secure. She had loved to hear him laugh, had taken delight in being the one to make him do so. And as strange as it would have sounded to anyone else, considering that nearly every cheerleader at Summerville High would have given up her spot on the squad for a date with John Riley, it was his laughter that had drawn her to him when he’d asked her out at the beginning of their junior year.

There had been so little laughter in her own house. Her father had long before convinced himself he had nothing to laugh about. And Olivia had learned early on to censor hers if she wanted to avoid the frown of disapproval that always followed.

To her, John’s laughter had held the power of a healing touch, made her feel that everything would be all right. She’d been wrong about that part. Laughter didn’t fix anything; it just made things a little more bearable.

She could have asked Lori about him. Wished now with an ache that she had. But then what good would it have done? John had made another life for himself, moved on to someone else.

Olivia picked up the card, read it again, then stuck it back in the envelope. She thought of the possibilities in her immediate future—a chance at the main anchor position for her network, a position someone starting out in broadcasting could only dream of.

This was a good change, the kind that should fill a person with satisfaction and a feeling of success.

She got up from her desk, went to the window that took up nearly one side of the corner office and looked down at the traffic below.

With all that, why then this feeling of rootless-ness, as if her entire existence were only surface-deep and the slightest unbalancing would topple her over into nothingness? Why was it that she lived her life like someone afraid that a snap of the fingers would make it all suddenly disappear?

There was something about hearing Lori’s disappointment that made her wonder: Why can’t I go back?

It would be so great to see you.

Why not?

For so long, she had avoided too much thought of the place where she’d grown up, the people she had known there. She’d ignored it, as if in doing so the memories would eventually disappear altogether.

But life didn’t really work that way, did it? Wasn’t it only in facing up to those things with the power to haunt that a person ever stood a chance of overcoming them?

And Olivia had never done that.

She’d just walked away, closed the door.

Fifteen years ago, she had needed to cut all ties to her home. To maintain even one would have been to remain piped into things too painful for her to hear. And so she had shoved her entire life there into a box that she’d sealed up and vowed never to open.

But Lori’s call had brought front and center recognition of exactly how much she had lost fifteen years ago. Not just John and the future they had planned together. But so many other things, as well. A friendship whose equal she had never again found. And the simple right to revisit the place where she had grown up. Rocky as that childhood had been, it was hers.

Standing here above a city where she had never felt as if she really fitted, Olivia wondered if maybe it was time to go home. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reclaim some of the past—own up to it and then put it away for good. This time with peace and acceptance.

Was she strong enough to do that and walk away again?

There was only one way to find out.

Should Have Said No

HE DESERVED a good swift kick in the pants.

Any man who let his home be turned into a three-ring circus for a weekend deserved nothing less.

From the door of the brood mare barn, John Riley watched the half-dozen workers in his front yard hammering tent stakes into the ground, transforming the state’s biggest cutting-horse farm into the stage for his fifteen-year class reunion.

When a water pipe had burst at the Community Center earlier that morning, flooding the place and rendering it unusable, Lori Peters had called John in a panic, vowing indebtedness to him for life if he would agree to have the weekend-long reunion at Rolling Hills. In the face of her desperation— Please, John, I’ll never ask you for another favor as long as I live. The park is already booked this weekend, and there’s nowhere else we can rent last-minute big enough for all these tents—there weren’t many excuses he could have made without sounding like a selfish jerk. So here he stood, cursing the decision that ensured there was no earthly way he could get out of going to the thing now.

On a normal day, Rolling Hills Farm was not an inactive place. In the summer heat, horses were worked early, starting at 6:00 a.m. There was usually a tractor or two running somewhere within earshot, a cow calling for its calf, a mare nickering for her foal. But the reunion being staged on his front lawn had turned it into nothing short of chaos.

Given the choice, he’d gladly snap his fingers and make it all disappear, the Great Party Setup’s cotton-candy-pink van and all.

Across the yard stood a man in overalls, a sleeveless T-shirt and a tattoo of a rooster on his left arm. He hammered a tent stake into the ground, straightened and, without missing a beat, sent a stream of tobacco juice arcing over his right shoulder. It landed on a cluster of snow-white azaleas encircling the base of an old oak tree.