John Riley's Girl

His directness toppled her poise. “I didn’t know the reunion had been moved until this afternoon—”

“But you still came.”

Again, the words fired at her like missiles with computer-targeted aim. She felt under assault. Countless times, she had imagined what it would be like to see him again. What she would say. How she would feel. None of her scenarios had ever depicted John angry. Indifferent, yes. But not angry. He had married someone else within six months of her leaving here. Why would a man who had forgotten her that quickly have an ounce of anger inside him?

“Just as long as you know this,” he said, before she could manage to respond. “Your being here makes no difference whatsoever to me. Let’s just make sure we let this be both hello and goodbye, okay?”

And with that, he left her standing there, cutting his way back through the hovering crowd of slack-jawed classmates who had sidled in close enough not to miss a word.

JOHN GRABBED a glass from the cabinet above the kitchen sink, flipped the tap on, then downed several swallows of cold water. He set the glass down on the counter, braced his hands on the sink’s edge, head down, yanking air into his lungs. Over the years, he’d done some serious speculating about what it would be like to see Liv again. None of his scenarios had ever even hinted at the reality of it, at the fact that standing there in front of her, close enough to touch her, close enough to see confusion in her eyes, was like having someone drive a semi straight through the wall of his chest.

He’d expected to be protected by his own indifference, had wrapped himself up in it. Liv hadn’t spoken five words before the edges unraveled, leaving him completely vulnerable, and it would be a long time before he thawed out again.

“What on earth are you doing in here when there’s a party going on outside?”

John looked over his shoulder. Sophia stood in the kitchen doorway, the frown on her face the same one she’d been giving him for suspicious behavior since he was ten years old. When John’s mother had died, Sophia, his father’s sister, had come to live with them. Since Laura’s death, she had also become so important to Flora that John couldn’t imagine either of them getting along without her. “Just biding time, Sophia,” he said.

“You planning to stand there all weekend?”

“Might.”

“Then you won’t be setting your sights on Most Sociable, I take it.”

“I had about all I could handle,” he said, ignoring her smile.

“So what are you going to do about the rest of the weekend?”

“The view from here looks pretty good.”

Sophia chuckled and pulled a clean apron from one of the cabinet drawers, gave it a shake and tied it around her waist. “So she did come then?” She reached for a dishtowel and began drying the few bowls that had been left to drain in the sink. The question came totally without fanfare, as if she had just asked him whether he’d remembered to pick up some milk when he’d run into town earlier that afternoon.

“Who?” John asked, neutralizing his expression.

“You know good and well who.”

As much as John loved Sophia, he did not, at that moment, appreciate her uncanny ability to cut to the heart of things. He avoided her gaze, glaring, instead, at the row of pink sponge curlers on the left side of her head. “I told her she wasn’t welcome here.”

Sophia uttered something that sounded like a snort and flapped her dishtowel. “John Crawford Riley! Where are your manners? You were not raised like that.”

“She showed up at this house uninvited,” he dug in.

“She was invited,” Sophia reasoned. “She’s a member of this class just like you were. And if you were indifferent to the girl, you wouldn’t care whether she was here or not.” For emphasis, she plunked a just-dried cup in the cabinet above her head.

John gave her sponge curlers another glare. It was hard to argue with Sophia on this subject. She was, after all, the one who had found him in his room, spilling tears all over Liv’s picture after she’d left Summerville. He wasn’t going to fool her. Nor was he going to give her the satisfaction of saying she was right.

“But I suppose you could make her believe you care if you had a mind to.” She put down the towel and turned to look at him.

John shot her another narrow-eyed glare. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you hide out in the house all weekend, it’s going to be pretty clear to everybody that you never got over her.”

Something exploded inside him. “If you think I’ve given her a second thought in all these years—”

“You were a good husband, John,” Sophia interrupted in a quiet, firm voice. “I’m not accusing you of anything. But I know what that girl once meant to you. And now here she is on this farm again. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about her. You’re human, aren’t you?”

“She wasn’t who I thought she was.”

Sophia untied her apron and put it away. She reached for a glass from the cabinet by the sink, filled it with water from the faucet. “This weekend could be a bridge in your life, John Riley, maybe even make you want to live again. You just think about that.” She left the kitchen.

John glared at her retreating shoulders. He had every right to mind the fact that Liv Ashford would just show up here after the way she had left and never called, never written. It had been years before he’d even heard where she was living. Someone had seen her on a local news channel in Johnson City, and the rumor had spread through Summerville until it had reached him one afternoon when he’d been in the hardware store with Laura buying a new light fixture for the back porch. Lenny Nelson had no way of knowing what the information would do to John, no way of guessing he might as well have stuck a knife inside him. John had paid for the light fixture, smiled and said, “Oh, really, well, that’s great!” while Laura listened with mild interest, and his heart was being torn right out of his chest.

It wasn’t the first or the last time he had questioned whether emotional infidelity was any less wrong than physical.

How many times had Laura said “I love you,” and he’d tried to say it back with the same conviction? How did he explain the regret he felt now for not having given her the same kind of love she had given him, uncluttered by something that could have been, that never was? He still lay awake at night, cursing himself for not making their marriage what it should have been.

And yet, Laura had never made it an issue between them. She had been aware that there had been someone else not long before she’d come into his life, although she hadn’t found out about Liv until after they were married. She’d run across a shoebox of old letters one day while cleaning out the attic. They were letters from Liv, which he’d had no business keeping but hadn’t been able to throw away. Liv had written him notes in school, putting them in places where he would find them throughout the day, in his science book, his locker, the front seat of his truck. Some of them had been no more than a line long: Hey, just thinking about you! And some of them longer: So that’s what it’s like to be kissed by someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Highly recommended.

He could still remember so many of them line by line.

He remembered the look in Laura’s eyes when she’d admitted to reading them—understanding tinted with sadness and resignation, and awareness that what had come before her would always be between them.

It had been almost two years since Laura had died. If he could give her nothing else, he would make sure that everyone at this damned reunion knew he had loved her. That she had been his wife. The mother of his daughter. The one who counted.

He owed her that much.

And Sophia was right about one thing. He wasn’t going to prove any of that by standing up here acting like he cared whether Liv Ashford had waltzed herself back into town or not.

So he yanked open the back door with enough force to make the old hinges groan and headed outside.

OLIVIA MADE her way to the back of the house, keeping her head down to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes, grateful for the darkness that concealed her from view. A few minutes to get herself together, and she would be fine. Just fine.

What in the world had she been thinking?

Coming back here had been nothing but a mistake. How could she have believed anything else?

Once, she’d had a panic attack on a crowded elevator in an Atlanta bank. She’d been standing in the back, and it had hit her before she ever saw it coming, tightening her chest, refusing to let air in her lungs.

That’s how she felt now. As if breathing had become something she had to think out second by second.

Tall, old oak trees threw evening shadows across the backyard. Wrought-iron chairs were arranged in a circle on the brick patio. Olivia pulled one away from the halo of light dancing out from the lanterns hanging by the French doors. She sat down and dropped her head onto her hands.

How could something still hurt this much after so long? She had not seen John Riley in fifteen years, and in all that time her heart had not gained an ounce of immunity to him.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Olivia shot up from the chair and whirled around. A small face stared down at her from the second story of the house, the curious eyes disturbingly familiar.

“Oh. I was just…”

“You’re crying.”

“No. I…well, not really.”

The little girl disappeared from the window, popped back seconds later and said, “Here.”

Two tissues floated down. Olivia caught them. “Thank you.”

“They’re the soft kind. Are you sad?”

This was John’s child. If Olivia had not been able to tell from the eyes alone, her shoot-from-the-hip manner would have been a dead giveaway. “A little, I guess.”

“It’s okay to be sad. That’s what Aunt Sophia says. And she says sadness can’t get better until you ’knowledge it’s there.”

A name from the past. How many afternoons had she come with John to this house after school where they would do their homework at the kitchen table while Sophia fixed dinner? Olivia had helped her peel potatoes or shred lettuce for a salad. Sophia had taught her how to make homemade biscuits. They were John’s favorite, and he’d made her promise she would make them every morning for breakfast after they got married. After leaving Summerville, Olivia had never made biscuits again. “Sophia is a wise woman,” she said.

“She’s real smart.” The little girl nodded, rubbing an eye with the back of a small hand. “My mommy died. I’ve been sad a lot. I think my daddy has been, too. Only he won’t admit it.”

Olivia took a step back. Shock ricocheted through her like a stone skimming the surface of a pond. Laura Riley had died. That pretty girl who had answered the door on a winter afternoon so long ago was dead. John’s wife.

How many times had she imagined the kind of life John would have had with Laura? Imagined her being the kind of woman who sent him off each morning with a hot breakfast and greeted him at the door each night with the smell of bread wafting from the oven.

The wondering seemed trivial now, intrusive even.

She took a deep breath and finally managed, “I’m so sorry.”

“She was a good mommy.”

“I’m sure she was,” Olivia said, her throat so tight she was surprised the words had actually made their way out.

“Daddy says she’s in heaven, and that it’s a good place. He says she gets to have her real hair there, and she won’t even have to chew sugarless gum. She can have real bubble gum.”

Olivia’s heart contracted. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “But I wish she didn’t have to go. I miss her. Daddy says God sometimes takes the good people and leaves the rest here to give them a chance to figure out how to be that way. I’m not good sometimes ’cause I don’t want to leave Daddy. He needs me. Every once in a while I won’t eat all my dinner or forget to make up my bed.”

“I bet God understands.” Olivia swallowed hard at the little girl’s matter-of-fact assessment. “What’s your name?”

“Flora. What’s yours?”

“Olivia.”

“That’s pretty.”

“Thank you. So’s Flora.”

A black nose appeared in the window and nudged Flora’s arm aside. “We woke up Charlie.”

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