Love, Lannie
A shopping cart bumped into her heel as she clicked Send. She looked up to see it steered by a small boy. “Apologize to Miss Wentworth,” his mother said firmly. The boy ducked behind hair that hung in his eyes, but repeated the words before zigzagging the cart after his mother.
“I’ll get out of the way,” Alana said with a smile, then stepped to the side. What a metaphor for her life, getting in the way of elementary-school-age kids who steered a shopping cart with more purpose and passion than she lived.
Her game plan hadn’t changed. Get under Lucas Ridgeway. She hadn’t done it last night, but she’d do it tonight. She’d put off returning to Chicago for as long as possible, and she wasn’t going home the same person she was when she’d left. That would make this nothing more than wound-licking hibernation, not a tactical reinvention.
She would go home different. She would.
She plucked pasta from the shelf before heading for the produce department. There she sniffed and squeezed tomatoes, then added a cucumber, cherry tomatoes, a red onion, spicy sausage, and feta cheese to her basket. She had the spices she needed at home. The meal she intended to cook wasn’t very fancy. Pasta with homemade Bolognese sauce, a loaf of French bread slathered with butter and garlic, and a salad. She already had ice cream and fudge sauce for dessert. The next time she had him over for dinner she’d make a trip into Brookings and pick up something more interesting.
Think optimistically. There will be a next time. With that in mind, she added a box of dog biscuits to her basket.
The checkout clerk rang up the groceries while Alana bagged them into her reusable sacks for the walk home. Freddie’s reply arrived when she got home.
2. No wedding in the rose garden.
4. Tattoo is new. Mother will shit a brick, but see #2.
3 DAYS???!!!! Tomorrow? Pretty please?
She debated leaving her work clothes on, but the tweed and wool felt too warm for the warm spring air. She started the sauce simmering, e-mailed the contacts on Freddie’s list, then changed into a pair of dark jeans and a fitted long-sleeve V-neck T-shirt in a periwinkle her mother assured her matched her eyes. Back in the kitchen, she stirred the sausage, added it to the sauce, and turned down the heat to let it simmer while she went outside to examine the rose bed in the dwindling light.
Green stalks emerged from the dirt, straining toward the white trellis, but weren’t quite long enough yet to need the support. Something in the wild tangles of thorny stems and canes worried at her soul, so the previous fall she’d read up on winterizing roses, then carefully pruned the bushes, sprayed them with dormant oil spray, dug trenches in all the beds, tipped the canes into the trenches, then covered them with soil and pine needles. A few weeks ago, she had removed the blankets and bags of leaves and replanted the bushes, then fertilized and mulched the bushes. New growth emerged nearly every day, but she wouldn’t be around to see the first bloom.
Lucas pulled into the driveway. Alana felt her cheeks heat, but threw him a smile over her shoulder.
“Hey,” he said.
Duke hustled down the steps, his tail spinning like a propeller. Once again, Alana watched the reunion, the muted play of emotion on Lucas’s face, Duke’s adoringly upturned muzzle. Lucas looked tired, but not physically tired. Bone-weary, the kind of exhaustion that came from deep inside, not from whatever Walkers Ford was throwing at him. A shiver of sympathy resonated inside her. She knew that feeling. Knew it well.
Emboldened, she rose from her crouched position and stretched until her back popped. “I’ve got spaghetti sauce simmering,” she said. “We can eat in an hour or so.”
He straightened his shoulders. “Great. I’m looking forward to it.”
She continued to redistribute the mulch. The downspout emerging from the back of the roof needed to be reconnected; the spring rains pushed the mulch away from the foundation. Lucas emerged from his house, Duke on his black leash at his side. Somehow putting the leash on Duke changed his entire demeanor, as if the old dog remembered his former work, how important it was. He trotted with more purpose beside Lucas, who was now dressed in jeans and a navy blue T-shirt that made his brown eyes even more vivid.
“Do you know what these are?”
He strolled over to stand beside her, then unclipped Duke’s leash. “Country Dancers. Gram planted them on this side of the house because they don’t need as much sun as other hybrids. You didn’t have gardens growing up?”
“Of course we did. We also had gardeners.”