Inglath Cooper - John Riley's Girl

In truth, it had never even occurred to him that Olivia Ashford might come this weekend. Had he thought it the remotest of possibilities, he would never have agreed to have the reunion here, much less be anywhere within the vicinity himself.

But there’d been no reason even to entertain the notion. She had left Summerville without so much as a backward glance just a few weeks after graduation, and in all the years since, he tried not to think about her. Ever.

There were just some things in life better left alone. For him, this was one.

“Daddy!” Flora hung halfway out the screen door at the back of the house, waving at him. “Aunt Sophia says the cookies are getting cold!”

The impatient summons from his seven-year-old daughter reminded John that he was standing in the middle of his front yard, dwelling on a past that had nothing to do with the present—a past that no longer mattered. He waved at Flora. “Be right there!” he said, and headed across the yard. Olivia Ashford wasn’t even real to him, anymore. She was just a memory.

Nothing more than a memory.

Starting Points

CLEEVE HARPER DROPPED his cell phone into the front zipper pocket of his overalls, leaving the antennae sticking out one side. The reception here on the farm was hit or miss at best, and he’d taken to driving around in the air-conditioned interior of his tractor with his phone pointed toward the heavens like the new-millennium farmer he was, as if to miss one call would send his crops into a tailspin.

Summerville’s very own GQ farmer. That was what John called him. He’d even taken a picture of Cleeve one afternoon planting corn and sent it in to the County Times. Cleeve still owed him for that one, matter of fact.

He and John had always been that way with one another, ever in search of the next one-up. They were like brothers, looking out for each other as brothers would. It was this, and only this, behind John’s thinly disguised disapproval of Cleeve’s two-year marriage to Macy. Not a doubt in Cleeve’s mind as to the truth of that, and still, it stung in the way of something a man knows to be true but just isn’t ready to face up to yet.

Of course, John had his own off-limit subjects. And Olivia Ashford was one of them. What had possessed Cleeve to needle him about her this afternoon, he didn’t know. Maybe it was just seeing her on TV and thinking it was a shame they had gone their separate ways all those years ago. If any two people had ever belonged together, he’d have said it was the two of them.

But then with his track record, he wasn’t likely to be asked to talk to Oprah’s audience on the subject of relationships.

Cleeve trudged up the brick walkway that wound through the backyard to his house, kicking red mud from his boots as he went. A short hallway led to the kitchen where Macy sat at the kitchen table, checkbook and calculator in front of her, a weekend-size suitcase on the floor beside her.

Not this again.

She looked up, the neutral expression she’d been wearing changing in an instant to one of displeasure. “Cleeve. How many times do I have to tell you to take your boots off before you come in this house? You’re getting that awful red clay all over everything. And you know how impossible it is to get out.”

Cleeve looked down at his boots, the sides refusing to let go of a clump or two of dirt. For the first year of their marriage, he’d done what she asked, taking the dang things on and off so many times during the course of a day that he’d practically gotten dizzy from it. Macy liked a clean house. Not exactly something he could fault her for, but what he had initially taken as a wife’s admirable desire to keep an orderly home, he now realized was more about controlling his every move than anything else.

“Where you headed, Macy?”

“To visit Eileen.”

“But I asked you to go to my class reunion with me.”

“Cleeve.” Her drawn out use of his name implied that he’d just managed to make the world’s dumbest assumption. “I haven’t seen my sister in weeks. And besides, those are all people you went to school with. What in the world would I have in common with them?”

“You married me?”

She sent him a look from under her lashes that underlined her previous implication. “Would you want to spend an entire weekend at one of my reunions?”

“If you wanted me to be there, yes.” Cleeve folded his arms across his chest and studied her. Sometimes he wondered if he had any idea who she was. This was his third marriage, ashamed as he was of that fact, and he’d been hell-bent and determined this one was going to work. He’d met Macy at church at one of those group-counseling sessions for divorced people trying to figure out how not to get themselves in the same predicament again. They’d only dated a few months, but he’d been sure she was the one. Macy was completely different from any other woman he’d ever been involved with. Serious. Responsible. Only recently had he begun to wonder if he’d been mistaken. Pious and domineering might be better descriptions.

He sighed, pulled a glass from the cupboard by the sink and filled it with water from the tap, taking a few substantial swigs as if he could somehow douse the anger simmering inside him.

“Can’t you use one of those paper cups I leave on the counter for you?” Macy asked, her voice heavy with the burden of his sin. “I just finished doing up all the dishes, and now there’s another glass to wash before I go.”

Cleeve swung around, his gaze clashing with the disapproving one of his wife. He was going to his high-school reunion tonight. A milestone of sorts. Fifteen years ago, he would never have believed he’d end up here. If someone had given him a crystal ball and let him take a look at what lay ahead he’d have denied the possibility of this being his life. I’d never be that stupid, he would have said.

He would have been wrong.

“Have a good weekend, Macy,” he said, plopping the glass on the counter, then stomping down the hall and out the back door, glad of the trail of red dirt he’d left behind.

RACINE DELANEY was looking for a special dress. A wow-’em dress. A dress that said, “Bet you didn’t know I could look like this.”

She just hoped there was one in Joanne’s Fine Things—Summerville’s only specialty boutique—that she could afford.

She pulled a sleeveless periwinkle-blue filmy thing from the rack and held it up for a better look, a hand at shoulder and hem. Not bad. Not stunning, either. But then with a chest as flat as hers, and a face that was no longer wrinkle-free, who was ever going to call her stunning, anyway?

It was exactly the kind of dress she’d hoped to find, not too sexy, but alluring in a simple way.

What the heck did she know about such things? A girl who’d lived most of her adult life in a mobile home with her very own conditioned response to tremble as soon as her husband’s car pulled into the driveway. No more, though. That was over. The end. And she was determined to find some happiness for herself. Maybe she’d meet someone this weekend. Someone nice. Someone interested in living life like it was a picnic instead of a war zone.

A diesel truck rumbled down the street outside the shop. She glanced out the window and recognized Cleeve Harper’s silver Ford pickup, the twang of some top-forty country tune loud enough to damage ear drums. She wondered what he was trying to drown out.

“Hello, Racine. Could I help you with something?”

Racine looked away from the window. Joanne Norman hovered nearby. Her voice dripped honey, which seemed appropriate since her short, round frame resembled that of a bumblebee in the black-and-yellow-striped skirt and sweater she wore. Racine had never felt comfortable in this store, aware that Joanne’s eyes always seemed to question whether or not she could really pay for whatever it was she’d picked out.