Wildflowers from Winter (18 page)

When she entered the office, she sat down in front of Micah’s desk and swiveled the chair to face the credenza. An Ethernet cable attached the modem to the router, but the power light wasn’t on. She rolled the chair back and looked down at the surge protector. A plug was out of the socket. After plugging it back in, she pressed the power button and drummed her fingers against the desktop. While she waited, she noticed a large picture frame of Robin and Micah, the former swathed in white, the latter dressed in a fancy black tuxedo.

With Robin’s dark, silky hair pulled into an elegant twist, she looked more like the Robin from Bethany’s past and less like the haunted, washed-out figure who’d answered the door this morning. Bethany reached for the frame and brought it closer, studying the pair. She’d only seen Micah in a hospital room, surrounded by machines, his eyes closed and face blank. The Micah in this picture was smiling, flashing a mouthful of straight white teeth, a thick head of wavy hair, and premature laugh lines. His eyes sparkled through the frame, the color a familiar hazel. She hadn’t noticed in the hospital, but Evan and Micah looked very much alike.

She set the frame in its place and drew back, her elbow brushing a yellow legal notepad opened on the desk. Penciled sketches—almost like blueprints—covered the front page. Curious, she picked up the notepad, and photos spilled out. The glossy three-by-fives splattered across the floor in a scattered puzzle of black-and-white. Bethany bent down and examined them. The images were taken at artistic angles and featured a variety of cafés—or, rather, parts of cafés. Robin graced a few of the photos, eyes dancing as the camera captured her laughing against an unfocused backdrop.

Bethany gathered the pictures into a pile and examined the sketches. She flipped the page and found more drawings—chairs, tables, light fixtures. Even one of a piano, bathed in the glow of pendant lighting. A variety of paint colors and wall art collections were listed beneath the sketches, written in Robin’s bubbly handwriting.

The lights from the router blinked and held steady. She flipped to the first page and looked again at the drawing on the front. Even in feathery pencil lines, it looked good. Classy, cozy, intimate. She could imagine the inside. She could see herself sitting at a booth, working on one of her projects while she sipped a mocha and munched on a lemon scone.

A toilet flushed, tearing Bethany from the pleasant vision she’d created for herself. She swiveled to the doorway and walked out into the hall, sketches in hand, wanting to ask about them. Robin emerged from the bedroom. Her hair stuck up in a few different directions, and a red crease ran from her ear to her jaw line—a far cry from the beauty Bethany had examined in the picture frame.

“Are you feeling okay?”
What a stupid question
. “Physically, I mean.”

“Nauseous.” Robin pulled her oversized sleeves over her hands. The sweatshirt hung from her body, much too big to be her own. “Were you looking for something?”

“I was just plugging in the router. The Internet wasn’t working.”

Robin pinched her lips together, as if she had a vendetta against the World Wide Web.

“I hope that’s okay.”

“Oh yeah. Of course.” Robin looked toward the office, back at Bethany, then motioned toward the notepad in her hand. “What’s that?”

“I found some drawings on the desk. Did you make them?”

Robin eyed the sketches.

“They look like a café or a coffee shop.” Bethany held them up. “They’re really good.”

Robin hugged her middle, her face turning an alarming shade of pale.

Was she about to be sick? Bethany came forward, prepared to catch her friend in case she fainted. “Robin?”

But Robin didn’t faint. She grabbed the notepad from Bethany’s hand, tore out the sheets, and ripped them to pieces. When the last scrap of paper
fell to the ground, Robin clapped her hand over her mouth as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just done, then she fled to her bedroom while Bethany stared at the jagged paper fragments littering the floor.

What in the world had just happened?

Bethany eyed Robin’s closed door. She should have left the drawings alone. But they’d been sitting there so out in the open, almost begging for attention. Generally she had no idea what to talk to Robin about. This had felt like such neutral territory. Obviously not.

She crept to Robin’s bedroom and lifted her fist to knock on the door. Hesitated. Brought it down. Lifted it again. What was she going to say? Sorry? For what? She didn’t know what she did wrong, except unintentionally dredge up something painful.

She lowered her hand and let out a long breath before kneeling to gather the shreds into a pile. As she crumpled them into her palm, the door behind her creaked. She swiveled around on her knees. Robin stood in the doorway—a shadow, a wisp. Hardly there at all. Bethany’s heart twisted. She tried to untwist it, but it wouldn’t budge. Why, after ten years of separation, did she feel so protective, so invested, so much like a mother hen? She hadn’t felt like this a week ago. What had changed?

Robin bent over and helped collect the mess, curling trembling fingers around a few scraps. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to react like that.”

Bethany didn’t say anything. Really, what was there to say? They collected the rest of the mess in silence. When the carpet was paper free, Bethany reached out to take the crumpled shreds from Robin’s hand. “I’m going to throw these away,” she said. She didn’t know what else to do, what else to say. So she walked to the stairs.

“Micah wanted me to open a café.”

The disembodied words floated into Bethany’s ears. A hollow sound with no inflection. She stopped and turned. Robin was still on her knees.

“When we went to Europe for our honeymoon, we must have visited at
least twenty cafés. He watched me fall in love twenty different times.” Robin picked at a loose thread of carpet. “It took Micah seven years, but he finally convinced me to go for it. I made those sketches the day before he collapsed.” Her soft voice caught on something in her throat. “He would’ve done anything for me.”

Bethany took a tentative step toward Robin, an idea percolating in her mind. She couldn’t sit around, pat Robin’s back, and talk her through this. That just wasn’t her. It never had been. She needed a purpose, a goal, something to keep her moving and sane. She stepped closer, toying with the idea in her head. She had no idea how Robin would take it, but it was the only way she knew to help.

“Do you still want to build it?”

Robin sat back on her heels, her eyes unfocused. “Without Micah?”

The idea continued to roil, taking shape, filling with appeal and promise. Robin needed something to distract her from her loss, something to give her a sense of purpose again. Right now, she was floundering, flailing in a sea of pain without a life jacket. Maybe Bethany could get her going again. Reel her to safety. And not only would the project be good for Robin, it would give Bethany something to do while she waited for job offers to roll in. A fun project to build her résumé.

“The sketches were really good, Robin.” She held up the crumpled ball in her hand. “I could help you. We could draw up blueprints.”

Robin tugged on her sleeves.

“Even if we don’t actually go through with it, it would give us something to do. I have a program on my computer.” She nodded her head toward the guest bedroom. “We could enter in the dimensions. Play around with some ideas.”

Robin’s hands were completely hidden now. The ends of her sweatshirt sleeves twisted and stretched.

“It would give us something fun to do while I’m here.”

Her eyes dimmed. She probably couldn’t imagine anything being fun at the moment.

What could Bethany say that might penetrate Robin’s grief? She stepped closer. “The truth is, I don’t know how else to help you.”

Bethany looked into Robin’s eyes, pleading, knowing this would be good for her. Money wasn’t an issue. Robin’s mother had been independently wealthy, and her father was a lawyer. The only thing holding her back was grief. “So, what do you think?”

One of Robin’s fingers ventured out and fiddled with a hole in the knee of her jeans. “Maybe you could show me the program you’re talking about.”

Bethany smiled. Grief might have a hold of Robin’s ankle, tugging her into dark, murky water, but Bethany had just grabbed her wrist. She wasn’t going to let Robin drown if she could help it.

NINETEEN

T
wo years ago, Dominic took me to Vail for Christmas. He was charming and sophisticated and terribly flirtatious. I’d catch women staring at him and then at me. No doubt wondering what he saw in such an ordinary-looking woman. I spent a considerable amount of time that week reminding myself I wasn’t Bethany from Peaks anymore.

The fact that I was a Chicago architect skiing in the Rockies with my handsome lawyer boyfriend and drinking fine wine at fancy restaurants was proof of how far I’d come. How far removed I was from the girl who had been forced to endure Christmas in our hunk-of-junk home.

I loathed those Christmases.

Mom, either in her attempt to hide the ugliness of our house or in a sincere effort to spread Christmas cheer, would string lights around every inch of our trailer and cover the entire inside with tacky cutouts of Baby Jesus and the three wise men. On Christmas Eve we’d go to the service at First Light, and afterward we’d come back to drink eggnog with Pastor Fenton, who came to visit.

I’d sit in that dingy recliner Mom bought from Goodwill and yearn for the farm. Yearn for Grandpa Dan and Dad. Yearn for the Christmases before the accident, when we’d buy one of those cookie-dough logs—the kind with a picture stamped in the center of each cookie—and bake them for Santa while Dan read from Luke chapter 2 and Mom played Christmas
music on our old phonograph. She would hum along while David and I rattled the wrapped boxes beneath the tree.

Christmas Eve away from the farm was depressing. I hated watching my worn-out mother struggle to stay awake because of her third shifts at Alcoa. I hated that a real Christmas tree wouldn’t fit inside the door. I hated that I ached so badly for someone whose name had become taboo. And I hated that Pastor Fenton would come over and ruin Luke chapter 2.

I spent nine miserable Christmas Eves in such conditions. There’s only one of those I can look back on with any hint of fondness, and that’s thanks to David. My brother decided to steal, on Christmas Eve of all days, a pack of bubblegum from the gas station near the trailer park. He snuck the pack into church and nudged me just as everybody stood and opened their hymnals to sing “We Three Kings of Orient Are.”

My eyes darted downward to the miniature purple block he offered. Without saying anything, he slid it into my hand, and I watched in awe as he stuck a piece into his mouth and started chewing, peering at me from the corner of his eyes.

Gum in church.

We had become young rebels, fighting against the institution.

My cheeks stung from suppressing a grin. As discreetly as possible, I copied my brother. The tangy flavor tasted so wonderfully … purple. For forty-five glorious minutes, David and I moved our gum from cheek to cheek until the flavor ran dry and the juicy gob turned into something hard and cardboard-like. We were never caught. Not even by Uncle Phil, who was a dentist and could smell sugarcoated, cavity-causing goodies from a mile away.

Right before Pastor Fenton gave his benediction, I watched David fake a sneeze. His hand flew up to his mouth, and he spit the lavender wad into his palm. My eyes followed his fingers as they curled under the wooden pew and stuck the gum out of sight. I tried to think of a way to get rid of my
own, before Mom or Aunt Sharon asked me a question and I would be forced to open my mouth and reveal the aroma of our rebellion.

I imagined the scented evidence floating up the holly-decorated aisle and wafting up Pastor Fenton’s nose. I imagined him stopping midsentence in his sermon, surrounded by all those poinsettias, his nostrils flaring as he kicked me out of the sanctuary. I needed to think of something quick. But my mind came up blank. So instead, just as Fenton finished the benediction, I gulped. The hard lump squeezed down my throat. Years later, when Robin told me it was impossible to digest gum, I imagined that seven-year old grape gob sitting in my stomach, and smiled.

My fondest memory of church.

TWENTY

D
ad, I promise. You don’t need to fly in.” Robin took the phone in her other hand and sat on the edge of the bed. “You were just here.”

“But tomorrow’s Christmas. I could catch a flight in two or three hours and be there before bedtime.”

She searched for something to say, something that might appease his worry, but she came back empty. Losing Micah had rendered her mute. She had words. Lots of them. They swelled inside her—questions, mainly, for God. But her tongue refused to give them a voice. “Dad, you and Uncle Jay might not have many more Christmases with Grandma. You should stay in Ohio.”

“I could fly you out here.”

“Dad …”

“It would help you, Robin.”

She recoiled at his words. Spend Christmas with two widowers and her ninety-year-old grandmother? How could that possibly help? Just because her dad spoke from experience didn’t make him an expert on pain. She wedged the phone in the crook of her shoulder and picked at one of her cuticles.

“I think a change of scenery would be good for you.”

Her cuticle burned, then oozed red. “I promised Loraine and Jim I’d
go to the Christmas Eve service with them tonight. They’re going back to Tucson after the holiday, and they want to spend some time with me before they go.” She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked away the stinging.

He sighed into the receiver. “I hate to think of you alone in that house.”

“I’m not alone. Bethany’s here.”

“Bethany?”

“She’s been staying with me for the last week.”

“I didn’t realize the pair of you were still friends.”

She brought her hand over her abdomen.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to fly out?”