After a moment’s hesitation he did, his expression sullen. Hands fisted in his coat pockets he stared out the window, keeping his face turned away from Alana. Content to ride in silence, Alana drove through the deepening twilight, bypassing the turnoff for Brookhaven on County Road 12 and continuing another mile east.
“You know where you’re going,” Cody said.
“I’ve driven the bookmobile when Mrs. Battle has a doctor’s appointment, so I learned some of the country roads,” she explained. Suddenly Mrs. Battle’s willingness to give up bookmobile duty made more sense.
He snorted, and turned to look at her. “You drive the bookmobile,” he said.
The bookmobile was in a renovated school bus. “I do,” she replied. Technically, she should have a commercial driver’s license to drive such a large vehicle, something she hoped would escape Cody’s attention, but if she didn’t make the weekly rounds to the four other tiny communities in the county, the residents went without books. Not to mention the hassle of extending loans due to expire. “As long as I don’t have to back up, I’m fine.”
A single light in the distance grew larger, then resolved into two windows in a double-wide trailer. Cody didn’t say a word as she turned into the rutted tracks forming the driveway. Weathered skirting sagged from rusted bolts, and the television blasted from the interior, loud enough for Alana to hear it through the screen door and inside the heavily soundproofed Audi. A plastic turtle sat off to one side, sand and a scratched plastic shovel spilling onto the grass.
Cody fumbled along the arm of the passenger door until he found the correct button to unlock the door. Three little kids piled out of the trailer’s door, tumbling down the rickety steps and swarming around her car. He shoved open the door and swung out those long legs, the light from the open door cutting his cheekbones into unnatural angles.
It was a long, long walk from this house to the library.
The five-day forecast flashed in her brain. She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I can come pick you up tomorrow morning,” she started. “The low tonight is—”
He shook her off and got out of the car. “Not necessary,” he said.
“Cody—”
“Just go.”
She expected the door to slam with enough force to rock the car on its axles. Instead, it closed gently, almost respectfully. He picked up two of the kids under one arm and hoisted the oldest into the other. Each of the kids got a kiss.
She shifted into reverse and backed down the ruts, the car jouncing as she did. Cody stood in the darkness beside the rectangular light cast on the dirt in front of the door, watching her go. Only when she was back on the road did he climb the steps and open the screen door.
She backtracked to Brookhaven. The house loomed black and angular against the twilight sky, a swath of stars spread over the prairie as she drove up the wide, arcing driveway to park in front of the grand double doors. She paused for a moment. This was the kind of house she was supposed to live in, grand enough to make a statement about the position she was supposed to have in the world, big enough for the role she was supposed to have as the highly educated, capable-in-her-own-right political hostess for David. It was beautiful and stately and perfect for a Wentworth, exactly the kind of house she’d go home to when she went back to Chicago. If she felt more at home in the tiny house she rented from Lucas than she did in Brookhaven, much less Chicago or the Hamptons or Nantucket, she could fix that. She could learn to make Chicago and the Wentworth Foundation her home. After all, no one would really trade the life of a Wentworth for the life of a small-town librarian.
Like Lucas’s grandmother’s roses, carefully tended and nurtured in harsh conditions, she would bloom where she was planted: in Chicago, in a hundred years of family service, not in Walkers Ford, South Dakota.
Brookhaven’s new owner, Chloe Nichols, had moved right in and opened the retreat center, where residents could come and stay for any length of time from overnight to several months. At the moment, only the upstairs bedrooms were available, but Chloe had plans to build small cabins in the meadow that sprawled from the backyard to the creek running through the property. She had slowly but surely made her mark on the big house. Carefully piled stones lined the driveway, and the sailing ship figurehead was gone from the third-story balcony, replaced with a string of Buddhist prayer flags. Wind chimes sounded above the entryway. Alana rang the doorbell, not sure who would answer. Chloe had three retreatants at the moment, but Chloe herself pulled open the door. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and she wore yoga pants, thick socks, and a green fleece pullover zipped to her chin.
“Come in, come in,” she exclaimed, leaning in for the cheek kiss Alana automatically returned. “How are you? Would you like some tea?”