Dress Me in Wildflowers (3 page)

After ending the call, she punched the office number as she turned on the shower. When Justine answered, Farrin said, “I’m on my way. Stop calling.” She hung up and dived into the stream of hot water.

****

The month between Faye’s call and the reunion sped by so quickly Farrin would have sworn fate was spinning the Earth faster. She’d finally settled on a design for Cara Hutton’s headpiece, a little pill cap with seed pearls and a slim, classic veil descending from the back, but the gown was continuing to give her fits. Even Justine, who never got her feathers ruffled, huffed and stalked away every time Farrin nixed another design.

Now, the miles of I-81 ticked by, each one forcing Farrin to remind herself to breathe deeply and stop worrying about what would greet her in Oak Valley. The Tennessee blacktop beneath the tires of her rental car made what she was doing even more real than the flights from New York to Knoxville. Surely something, no matter how small and inconsequential, would be different from the day fourteen years before when her mother had been buried in the Tandy Creek Baptist Church cemetery.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and a familiar sense of guilt tugged at her. She’d not been back since her mother’s death. She sent a check to the church every year to pay for the upkeep of her mother’s grave. She tried to lessen her guilt by telling herself her mother wasn’t there anymore. What good did it do to talk to a slab of marble with names and dates engraved into it? If she wanted to “talk” to her mother, she could do it anywhere — even driving up the highway toward her past.

When she reached the Blountville exit, she pulled off at a gas station to do what travelers do — refuel, go to the restroom, buy a bottled water and stretch out the kinks in her legs and back.

Avoid the inevitable a while longer.

She leaned against the top of the rental car and stared east. Beyond the haze caused by the exhaust from the interstate and idling eighteen-wheelers at the adjacent truck stop, she made out patches of color. The Appalachians had always been prettiest to her in the fall when the leaves turned the rolling green carpet of the mountains into a patchwork of gold, crimson and, her favorite, bright, bright orange. Even with the miles still separating her from those distant ridges, she could almost smell the woodsy scent of the forest floor covered with fallen leaves, hear the rustle and crunch as she walked through them sending puffs of dust into the air.

If she had to come back, she was glad it was during her favorite time of the year.

With a deep breath that unfortunately smelled more like gas fumes and window cleaner than an autumn forest, she slipped into the car and pulled to the edge of the parking lot. She stopped and stared at the two-lane highway leading toward Oak Valley. It was only a road. Why was it harder to travel than the miles she’d already covered that morning?

To the right lay the entrance ramp to the interstate that would take her back to the Knoxville airport, and it looked tempting despite all the hours she’d wasted getting to this point. To the left, the road stretched in a straight line toward the mountains. It gave those who didn’t know better a false sense that the drive ahead would be smooth and free of twists and turns. But Farrin knew that just beyond the first hill in the distance, the road changed character and began to follow a series of creeks and small rivers as it weaved its way through towns like Bitter Mountain, Hancock and Calvin Springs. It eventually ran beneath the two stoplights along Oak Valley’s Main Street and out the other side of town toward the North Carolina state line.

Farrin took a slow, deep breath and turned left.

She passed an odd combination of things she remembered and others she’d swear she’d never seen before. Pistol Pete’s Garage was still in business outside Bitter Mountain, though whoever Pete was had added a few more rows of junk cars to the rusty parking lot marring what would otherwise be a beautiful hillside. She wondered if the whites, blues and pinks of the native wildflowers still popped up next to all those old tires and rusted fenders each spring.

The bowling alley in Hancock had been converted to a flea market that appeared to be doing a brisk business. And she nearly drove off the road when she saw tiny Calvin Springs was now home to a full-fledged Dairy Queen. The combination of stunned disbelief that the town could support a restaurant of any sort, her desire to put off her arrival in Oak Valley a bit longer and her taste buds’ call for a chocolate dipped cone had her pulling into what looked like a new parking lot. The pavement was still a deep black and the parking stripes unmarred by tire tracks.

When she stepped inside the door, she paused. When was the last time she’d been inside a Dairy Queen? Ciao Bella Gelato, yes. Dairy Queen, no.

She ordered her treat and went to sit on one of the outdoor concrete picnic tables. The air was the perfect temperature, and it had that autumn smell tinged with the barest hint of the coming winter. October was the month when photographers working for tourist bureaus throughout the Tennessee mountains were shooting vivid color shots for the following year’s brochures, photos that showed the region at the peak of its beauty.

She enjoyed the first crunch of the hardened chocolate and then the frosty sweetness of the ice cream, and tried not to think how she might develop an ice cream cone-shaped fat roll on her stomach because of it. Every once in a while, though, it felt nice not to worry about every possibly fattening morsel she put in her mouth. But she also understood how those in the world’s spotlight might not want to buy their showpiece finery from someone who looked like the poster child for junk food.

A pickup truck raced into the parking lot, a dented sports car right behind it. The young people driving laughed and yelled profanities between the vehicles. A girl got out of the car and leaned into the truck to kiss the driver. Well, kiss wasn’t exactly the appropriate description. More like trying to swallow his tongue.

White trash, kids who probably did poorly in school, scoffed at authority and who more than likely would live here their entire lives and not make much of themselves. The ones who would someday grace the listings of offenders in the district court docket printed in the newspaper.

How easily that could have been me.

The scene spoiled her appetite. She tossed the remainder of the cone in the trash and headed for the car without looking over at the good old boys — and girls.

Her phone rang as she pulled from the parking lot. By the time she agreed to read a book on wedding planning to possibly give a cover quote, the road had narrowed and begun to wind even more. She’d forgotten how treacherous these back roads were with not an inch of shoulder at the edge of the pavement.

She answered another call as a farmer transporting a haybale on the back of his tractor finally pulled off the road and allowed her to drive a bit faster than fifteen miles per hour.

“Are you there yet?” Justine asked.

“No.”

“Where is this place, the back side of China?”

“The middle of nowhere, okay. I—” Farrin yelped and dropped the phone as the front right tire slipped off the edge of the road. She grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and slammed on the brakes, sending gravel flying.

A monstrous white SUV honked at her as the driver sped by, not even pausing to see if she was okay. And they said New Yorkers were rude. Shaking, Farrin pulled back onto the pavement and maneuvered around a few more curves. Justine’s voice screamed at her from the phone in the floor on the passenger side of the car.

“I’m okay! Hang on a minute!” Farrin felt like a fool yelling at the top of her lungs as she drove along by herself. When she reached a gravel access road into a pasture, she pulled off the road and retrieved the phone. “Stop yelling,” she said when she attempted to put it to her ear.

“What the hell just happened?”

“I almost went for a swim in Sycamore Creek.”

Though she was more careful and observant when she returned to the road, a sense of relief washed over her when the mountains finally interrupted the cell phone service.

Blessed silence.

More and more looked familiar, though in a distant, foggy memory sort of way. And intertwined with those memories were snippets of scenes from throughout her childhood. Trick-or-treating in the same costume year after year. The local churches bringing her mother food baskets at Christmas. The way she’d nearly died of embarrassment while paying for their groceries with food stamps when a classmate was behind her in line. Those experiences now seemed to belong to another person. At times, she felt as though she’d lived two different lives – one in Oak Valley and one during the years since she’d left.

Farrin took a deep breath when she passed the green sign that proclaimed she’d entered Hillman County. It was just an invisible line in the dirt, not the gates of hell yawning to accept her. She had to remind herself not to blow things out of proportion. This trip was a favor, perhaps even an opportunity to prove she’d worked herself into a frenzy of worry over nothing. It was a hit and run — get in, do the job, get out. Quick, simple, no big deal.

Then why did her stomach twist into knots when she rounded Crockett Curve and descended into the valley that gave her hometown its name?

Despite her nerves, Farrin pulled off to the side of the road to admire the beauty of the scene. The surrounding ridges ringed the valley and its smattering of round hay bales, barns and little white farmhouses with a blanket of fall color. The long line of oaks paralleling the roadway leading toward town displayed tinges of red like southern belles showing off their latest frocks.

It was a shame that rural communities were often a Catch-22 — beautiful and peaceful compared to large cities but narrow-minded and unforgiving if you weren’t born into the right section of the social hierarchy. It might look like Mayberry, but that’s as far as the resemblance went.

Farrin reached into her purse and retrieved two Pepto Bismol pills and then chided herself for having to take them. Why was she nervous? She was a big success. She had no popular cliques to avoid, no whispers to pretend she didn’t hear, no well of embarrassment to drown in. And yet those twistings of anxiety that she’d left behind when she’d driven her beat-up Escort away from Oak Valley bound for college reappeared as if they hung in a curtain around the community, ready to envelope her when she arrived.

She drove down Main Street, stopped at the first traffic light in front of the courthouse, glanced around at the sidewalks she’d walked after school to get to the library, the drugstore for the occasional ice cream cone, the countless trips to Tammie’s house three blocks off the square. When the light changed to green, she made the familiar turn onto Catawba Lane.

Farrin smiled when she reached 211 Catawba and pulled into the driveway. The white swing still swayed on the porch. The shutters were still the green of the first spring grass. And Faye still had the prettiest flowerbeds on the street, probably in town. Even now with fall in full swing, blooms in similar hues to the leaves on the surrounding trees filled the beds to bursting. The nerves that had plagued her as she’d headed into town dissolved. This was her safe place, a house filled with lots of good memories of laughter, delicious food and the types of giggling conversations best friends have over quizzes in
Seventeen
.

She’d probably worried for no reason. After all, she and her classmates were fifteen years removed from the things that had seemed so important back then. They were adults now with jobs, families, more genuine grown-up concerns than what had seemed life and death when Oak Valley had still been their cocoon, when the bigger world had still been “out there”.

Farrin got out of the car and retrieved her small overnight case and garment bag. She heard the front door open and looked up to see Faye’s thin frame hurrying out onto the porch. Farrin smiled the widest, most genuine smile she’d offered in a long time. Faye was older, grayer, perhaps the tiniest bit slower, but she was still Faye.

“Drop those bags and hug me, girl,” Faye said as she met Farrin halfway between the car and the front door.

Farrin did as ordered and wrapped her arms around the older woman. Maybe it was because she was no longer a teenager, but she didn’t remember Faye feeling so bony. Of course, Faye was closing in on sixty-five and would seem more frail as the years wore on. Farrin sometimes forgot that had her mother lived, Doris Taylor would be even older.

Faye leaned back and looked at her. “It’s so good to see you somewhere besides a magazine or TV.”

Farrin soaked up the sight of Faye’s familiar short perm and the thick green sweater she’d likely knitted herself. “I’m sorry.”

Faye waved her hand. “Don’t apologize. I don’t see how you have time to breathe, let alone trek all the way down here. And Oak Valley isn’t exactly on the way to anywhere else, is it?”

Farrin might look negatively on Oak Valley’s lack of progress, but there were some things she didn’t want to ever change — things like Faye’s sunny attitude. With one sentence, she put to rest any concern Farrin had about not visiting.

“You’re probably tired from all that sitting. Let’s put your bags inside, then I’ll show you what I’ve done to the back yard since you’ve been here.”

In the years that had passed, Faye could have grown a forest in her yard.

She tossed her bags onto the bed in the room which had been used by Tammie’s grandma until her death when she and Tammie were sophomores in high school. Now, the room served as a sewing nook and guest bedroom. Farrin eyed the sewing machine in the corner. Another thing that hadn’t changed.