Читать книгу Dandelion Wishes - Melinda Curtis - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

EMMA WAS BACK in Harmony Valley.

Tracy closed her bedroom door and scowled at the princess bedroom set she’d picked out when she was eight.

On days when she was scared, Tracy wished she’d died in that car accident.

She had no memory of the crash itself, but she did remember what had happened afterward in flashes. Emma taking off her white bra and using its padding to staunch the bleeding on Tracy’s head, her voice high and thin as she told Tracy everything was going to be all right. Emma asking a passing motorist for a blanket to keep Tracy warm. Emma begging Mediflight to let her ride along, and after they refused, squeezing Tracy’s hand with one last bit of reassurance before she’d left on the high-flying roller coaster that had had her throwing up on herself.

Emma had lied. Everything wasn’t all right.

Tracy hadn’t woken up again until a week after the accident. The doctors had put her into a coma until the swelling in her brain decreased. And when she’d come out of it, Emma hadn’t been there. Tracy had been unable to ask about her friend, not with a tube down her throat and a morphine drip clouding reality. It wasn’t until a highway patrolman had shown up to ask her about the accident and they’d lowered her morphine dose that she’d found she could scribble out words. He’d told her Emma had survived. The bigger question: Where was Emma?

Tracy sat on her full-size bed next to the window and stared out at the moonlit night, at the acres of chest-high corn her father took such pride in growing.

After she’d stabilized, they’d moved her to a rehabilitation hospital, where they had a no-cell-phone policy.

Still no Emma.

Her father and Will alternated their visits.

Still no Emma.

Tracy grew tired of bedpans and flash cards, well-meaning therapists who sang goofy kids’ songs and wanted her to sing along. Emma would have understood, would have busted Tracy out for a much-needed afternoon of playing hooky. They’d have hit the mall or found one of those small shops that made their own ice cream. They’d have gotten a scoop of something fattening and decadent, like coconut cream cheese or turtle truffle.

Still no Emma.

And nothing seemed right.

Oh, it was right in Tracy’s head. She had mental conversations with herself as quickly and smoothly as before the accident. She’d surprised her doctors by being able to silently read and write fluently. And her broken bones had healed. She could walk and run and, although she hadn’t tried, she suspected she could dance.

But resuming her job at an ad agency was out of the question. Tracy couldn’t sit with her peers and shout out ideas. She couldn’t contribute to a fast-paced conference call. And she could no longer smoothly present storyboards to advertising clients.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of Tracy’s situation was that everyone treated her like an invalid. Her father wanted her to rest more. Her brother finished her sentences. Doctors, nurses and specialists patted her knee and told her things would get better if she just obeyed every request they made and tried to speak. Again and again and again. Until Tracy hated the sound of her own faltering voice.

She pressed her forehead against the cool window and fingered the cell phone that had no network. Maybe that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was that the doctor had recommended shock therapy as a next step in her treatment, which in laboratory experiments had increased blood flow to the brain and helped reconnect synapses so that speech was smoother.

Attach electrodes to her brain and start zapping her?

No flippin’ way!

She’d stopped cooperating with her therapist. A few weeks later she’d been discharged, which annoyed the heck out of Will. He kept talking about her needing more therapy. Didn’t he realize what they wanted to do to her?

And now Emma wanted to see her? Tracy was so upset she could scream. Only her scream would probably come out like a trebly Tarzan wail and upset her father.

Tracy both wanted and didn’t want to see Emma.

Truth was, she didn’t want to see anyone, not like this. Maybe she’d cloister herself away in her room, with its pink ruffled bedspread and pink flowered walls and only have conversations with herself. For the rest of her life.

* * *

“YOU THINK WILL took it upon himself to protect Tracy from you? I had hoped it was doctor’s orders. I never could get Ben to say exactly.” Granny Rose poured a cup of coffee and carried it over to the breakfast nook where Emma sat.

It was barely six in the morning and Granny was already dressed in olive slacks, a faded blue denim shirt and scuffed work boots. Her snowy hair was caught up in an intricate chignon. She paused before setting down Emma’s coffee, taking in her bike shorts, tank top and messy ponytail. “Going for a bike ride?”

“Up Parish Hill.” The main road through Harmony Valley wound along the river and then at the northern tip of town ribboned its way up the hill.

Her grandmother nodded approvingly, straightening the morning paper. “But why keep you away? It’s not like you’re the devil.” Granny sighed. “Well, piffle. We’ll just see about that today, won’t we?”

“It’s been so long. Tracy probably thinks I’ve abandoned her.” She hadn’t. She hadn’t been able to get past Will. But Harmony Valley didn’t have security guards. “I’m going over there later in the morning and hopefully Will won’t have her locked up in the attic.”

“Now I wish I’d never let that computer nerd into my house on Sundays, although he did like show tunes. I caught him singing along once.” Granny Rose slid into a chair across from Emma, so clear and normal that last night’s long-john dance and fatigue seemed like nothing to worry about. “No matter. Tracy’s here and Harmony Valley is a small town. You’re bound to bump into her sometime and then you can have a nice long talk.” Granny Rose reached across the table and touched Emma’s hand. “Speaking of talking, let’s talk about your fears regarding your art. No one ever got through an artistic block by ignoring it.”

The beginnings of a dull rumble filled Emma’s ears. She clutched her warm coffee mug. “I’m not—”

“You’re not blocked? Or you’re not ignoring being blocked?” Granny Rose’s faded blue gaze was gentle. “It takes more than talent to fill a canvas or a sketchbook. You need drive and passion.”

“And courage,” Emma added over the intensifying noise of the car accident replaying in her head. She willed herself to shut it out and her hands to stay steady on the mug. “It’s impossible to be creative without courage.”

Granny Rose’s white eyebrows arched. “Since when did you lack courage or passion? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to force you to stop painting or sketching to eat. Sometimes you get so lost in a project you lose all sense of place and time.”

Fear shuddered through Emma’s veins, threatening to sweep her away. Being lost in a project was precisely what had made her crash and nearly kill Tracy. Her mind had been more focused on an idea for a painting than on the road.

Emma planted her coffee mug on the table with only slightly trembling hands and peered more closely at her grandmother’s to-do list. “This is for today?”

“No, dear. It’s my morning to-do list. Don’t change the subject.”

Emma did anyway. “Mow lawn, weed vegetable garden, make cupcakes, visit Cloverdale Elementary, bring easel down from attic.” Forget that most people younger than her grandmother wouldn’t accomplish that much in one day, let alone one morning. Granny Rose was going to bring down the easel. She expected Emma to paint while she was here.

The dull roar in Emma’s head increased, reverberating down her arms into her fingertips until she had to sit on her hands to stop their shaking. It was nothing—nothing—compared to what Tracy had to go through every day. Emma forced her lips into what she hoped was a smile. “Just looking at your list tires me out. When was the last time you relaxed and had a cup of coffee with your friends?” The last thing she needed was Granny Rose tired and slightly out of it two days in a row.

“Pish. My friends drink wine at the end of the day. We’re too busy living life to dawdle over coffee every morning.” There was nothing out of the ordinary about Granny Rose today. She had all her usual bounce and energy, more at eighty than Emma had at twenty-six.

“How about if I do the yard work after I go for a bike ride?” Exhaustion was just what Emma needed to clear her head, which had begun to throb.

“That would be lovely. I’ll start on the cupcakes. I’m staging a production of The Music Man with the fourth graders in Cloverdale. My cast needs to keep their strength up.” With no mention of the easel, Granny Rose stood and bent to kiss the top of Emma’s head. “Don’t forget in all your rushing to stop and see the world.”

“I might say the same to you.” Emma smiled, more easily this time as the pounding at her temples receded slightly. She finished her coffee and went in search of her old ten-speed bicycle in the garage. A few swipes of a rag took care of the bike’s cobwebs and Emma was on her way.

The sun hadn’t risen high enough to chase away the morning fog. It clung to the grapevines and blanketed the river. The bicycle tires glided over the pavement with only a whisper of sound. She crossed the bridge into town slowly, taking in the way the first bright rays of light snuck through the trees, admiring the varying shades of silver green on the eucalyptus bark. An image flashed in her mind’s eye of a canvas filled with the scene before her, but it was quickly followed by a ripple of panic-driven, leg-pumping adrenaline.

“Be aware of your surroundings,” Emma mumbled. “Stay in the moment.”

The road took her behind the few businesses on Main Street. Soon she was at the beginning of the loop that wended its way up Parish Hill and down on the other side of town. The first switchbacks were soft grades. Emma managed them easily. Then the hillside steepened, and fog and eucalyptus trees gave way to the occasional oak and sunshine. Poppies and dandelions thrust optimistically upward from the gravelly soil.

Emma rounded a bend and saw a jogger ahead.

Buff, blond and bossy. Will Jackson.

A photographer would have snapped the image. Everything about him was golden, from his hair to his tan skin to the way the early morning light illuminated him.

The sight of Will set her teeth on edge.

He’d kept her away from Tracy for six months.

Emma considered turning around, but he’d most likely see her retreat. That stubborn Willoughby pride, the one she could have sworn she didn’t have, egged her on. She shifted gears and pumped the pedals like she meant business, which meant she nearly fell over.

Emma righted the bike and shifted gears again. She wouldn’t let Will beat her to the top.

* * *

WILL’S IPHONE SHUFFLED to a Blink-182 song that had a fast beat his feet didn’t want to keep time to. He was sucking in air like a clogged air filter on a ’57 Chevy. But he kept pushing up this hill. Each time Will took on Parish Hill, he made it a little farther. There were ten switchbacks. He’d managed six the other day before slowing to a walk. Someday, he’d run all the way to the top.

The town council meeting was tonight and Will had a lot of people to see beforehand. It had been a month since their permit and rezoning requests had been put on hold. A month of pulling together facts, drawing up blueprints and kissing up to residents who might support them. Tonight, he hoped he and his friends weren’t going to stand alone.

A sound behind Will had him spinning on the defensive. It wasn’t unheard of—if you believed local myth—for a mountain lion to attack out here. He cocked his arm back, ready to launch his only weapon besides his signal-less iPhone—a water bottle.

But it wasn’t a mountain lion behind him. It was Emma, legs churning pedals as she rounded the turn below. She wore black bike shorts and a tight blue flowered tank top, exposing most of her lithe limbs. Emma might have pulled off the professional racer look, if not for the uneven back and forth, near-tumbling way she worked the bike. And the way that she was smiling beneath a pink helmet decorated with daffodils and ladybugs.

Laughter filled the air—warm, unbidden and unexpected.

His, Will realized with a start, watching Emma close the gap between them.

He frowned, put his hands on his hips and told himself Emma hadn’t heard him laugh. He waited for her and what would certainly be another argument about visiting Tracy.

Instead of stopping at his side, Emma kept going. “See you at the top.” And then she laughed. To be sure, it was a ragged, I’m-breathing-hard kind of laugh. But she delivered it with an I’m-gonna-kick-your-butt jab.

Will spun and put his body through the motions of a jog. But the hill was steep and he’d lost momentum. His overheated muscles and aching joints responded to his commands in agonizing slow motion. Emma started to pull away, even though she couldn’t have been going much faster than he was. The next switchback seemed miles off.

Will refused to give up even as the distance between him and Emma stretched. Adrenaline blazed through his muscles until they shook and threatened to collapse. His lungs burned, each breath a fiery agony. One switchback.

Two.

This was as far as he’d ever gone without reducing the pace to a walk.

Emma was moving slower. She’d changed gears a few times, but Will was betting money she didn’t have any options left.

Switchback number seven loomed above. Emma was about fifteen feet ahead. She glanced over her shoulder at Will, never losing that hitching, awkward rhythm.

Emma was going to win. He could stop. He should stop. But to do so meant to surrender. To Emma? Never.

And then she fiddled with her gearshift and her chain clicked in loud, stuttering protest. It clicked and clacked and then dropped to the pavement.

Emma’s feet did a quick once around the pedals before the bike tilted toward the ground. She hopped out of the way as it crashed.

Leaving the road clear for Will to reach the next switchback first.

The thrill of victory propelled him to the elbow in the road. There was no sense going any farther. They were both spent. Will walked in small circles, attempting to fill his lungs with much-needed oxygen, trying to keep his muscles from convulsing him into a permanent fetal position. He’d been clutching his bottle of water and now drained it. After a few moments, he rasped, “You suck.”

She’d righted the bike and was walking it up the hill, feet digging in to build enough energy to reach him. “I had you all the way.”

“Doesn’t matter. I won.”

“Nobody won. We didn’t make it to the top.” Emma popped out the kickstand and removed her helmet. Her hair was plastered to her head and sweat trickled down the sides of her splotchy red face.

And yet, there was something about her that wasn’t unattractive to look at. Her inviting curves. Her challenging grin. Her warrior attitude that dared any man to take her on.

A memory surfaced. Emma wearing a red backless prom dress that clung to every dangerous contour, her dark tresses woven in a bride-like style threaded with delicate white flowers. Also not unattractive.

Emma wiped at her temples with her forearms, and directed her frustration at an inanimate target. “Stupid chain.”

Will took a second, more assessing look at her. His system was in cool-off mode. Rivulets of sweat dripped off the ends of his hair. Most of the rest of his body was just as soggy and droopy. Emma looked about as sexy as he felt.

Which was great. That moment of attraction must have been due to oxygen deprivation. The prom memory was a fluke. It wasn’t like he’d taken her to the event. He’d only made a preprom appearance to intimidate Tracy’s date. “Did you lose track of what gear you were in? You had me until that last gear change.”

“I did, didn’t I?” She grinned as if she’d won the Tour de France.

That smile somehow managed to trap the air in Will’s lungs. Something about Emma burrowed under his skin in a way he vehemently rejected, and had been rejecting since he was in high school. She never played it safe. She never obeyed the rules. She was like a predinner chocolate—temptation you couldn’t resist, even when you knew it was wrong.

He exhaled forcefully. “As soon as I catch my breath, I’ll fix your chain.”

Where had that offer come from?

Emma’s mouth puckered as if she was going to refuse him, but then she laughed and nodded.

They looked out over what they could see of the valley and the hills that bordered it, an uncomfortable silence settling between them as if they were both remembering they were at odds. Not that this was unfamiliar territory. Will’s most vivid memories were of Emma opposing him. Convincing Tracy to go tubing down the Harmony River when it was still raging from spring rains. Dragging Tracy to a New Year’s Eve celebration in Union Square when the girls were naive freshmen in college. Driving with Tracy to that bachelorette party in Tijuana despite the fact that a young woman had been abducted in that city a few weeks earlier.

Oh, Emma was good at flashing a “forgive me, I know I’ve been bad” smile and a good excuse: We knew what we were doing. It was all innocent. Everything turned out fine. Only that time, everything hadn’t turned out fine. Tracy had almost been killed.

Emma plucked a dandelion from her feet, studied it for a moment and then blew its white parachute seeds into the wind. She knelt to pick another one, closed the distance between them and held it up to Will. “How about a dandelion truce?”

Generations of farming blood had him warding her off with one arm. “It’s a weed.”

“It’s a dandelion.” Emma twirled the stem back and forth. “Kids make wishes on them all the time.”

“And blow the seeds of a weed out into the world.” If wishes could make Tracy whole, he’d blow an entire crop of dandelions into the wind. But chances were those dandelions wouldn’t result in wishes. They’d sprout up in his vineyard. “Farmers kill dandelions.”

“Suit yourself.” Emma studied the white puff, drew a deep breath and blew another handful of delicate white parachutes on to the breeze.

Will knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “What did you wish for?”

“If I told you,” she said in a solemn voice, as if she truly believed in dandelion wishes, “it wouldn’t come true.”

Will felt a chasm open between them, shored up by differences like belief in fairy tales, Santa Claus and happy ever afters. He stood with the realists. She danced with the dreamers. It had nearly cost his sister her life. He was right to bar her from seeing Tracy. Wishes couldn’t make his sister well.

Emma knelt by her bike and fiddled with the chain. Apparently she’d decided she didn’t need his help. “What’s a good time to come by and see Tracy?”

“Don’t. I talked to Tracy last night and she doesn’t want to see you.”

“You’re lying.” Her hands, splotched with grease, shook.

“I’m not,” Will lied. He’d do anything to protect Tracy. “Flynn and Slade were there. Ask them.” He was betting she’d never do it.

“You can bring a thousand friends to testify she doesn’t want to see me and I still won’t believe you.” Emma’s face was as closed off as the latest firewall software to a cyber attack.

“Don’t come by, Emma. You’ll be the one to get hurt this time.”

“I don’t care.” She pushed her chin in the air, but her lip trembled.

And he was twelve all over again, bending to her will. “At least wait until tomorrow. The trip home tired her out.”

She nodded stiffly. “All right. But I don’t need your permission. And I wouldn’t try to keep her locked up in that house forever. She’ll resent you for it.” The chain dropped onto the sprocket. Emma jammed her helmet on, hopped on the bike and left, her rear brake squealing at him as she returned the way they’d come.

“I don’t have to keep Tracy in the house forever,” Will muttered to himself, catching sight of a drifting dandelion seed floating on the breeze. “Just until you leave.”