Currant Creek Valley

chapter FIFTEEN



“RILEY’S WORKING a late shift tonight and the kids are with Jeff and Holly. Want to come over and rent a chick flick?”

Before answering, Alex finished the headpin she was looping to make a charm out of a particularly pretty turquoise bead. “I can’t tonight. Sorry. I’ve got a date.”

Claire raised an eyebrow, the glasses she wore when she beaded making her look smart and sweet at the same time. “Seriously? Again? Isn’t that like your third date this week? Who’s the guy?”

She gripped the small needle-nose pliers more firmly. She was here to bead, not talk about her love life, she wanted to snap. But when her best friend owned the shop, she supposed she had to expect an interrogation.

“A couple different guys. Three, actually,” she answered without looking at Claire.

“Three dates in a week? Impressive. Even for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She bristled.

“You don’t need to jump down my throat. I was just asking. It seems a little...frenetic, especially when you only opened the restaurant two weeks ago.”

Okay, she had to agree with that. She probably should have said no when the last guy asked her out, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it.

She supposed she had some vague idea that maybe if she threw herself back into a social whirl, returned to her status quo of serial dating, she could start to get her head on straight again. She did best with one or two weeks of dating, where all parties concerned just wanted fun and company, right? Maybe that way she would stop aching for a certain man who wanted more than she could ever give.

She had gone to lunch with one man to check out the competition in Telluride, a matinee of a summer blockbuster action movie with another, and she was meeting a third for drinks and conversation this evening, her one day off this week.

“When do you have time to meet all these men?” Claire asked.

“Oh, here and there. You know.”

“No. I have no idea. It’s still technically the off-season, so I’d like to know how you happen to find every available guy who happens to wander through town.”

“I struck up a conversation with someone while I was mountain biking. Another I helped find the potato chip aisle at the market, and a third was a guy I met several months ago at a trade show who happened to be in town for the weekend.”

“So do you like any of these guys?”

“I like all of them or I wouldn’t have agreed to see them, would I?” Her tone was a little more belligerent than she intended and Claire must have picked up on it.

“You tell me.”

She wanted to give some fast and flippant answer but she couldn’t. The truth was, she wasn’t really being fair, she supposed, especially when the guys wanted at least the possibility of another date and she couldn’t even give them that.

“I like to have fun,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”

Claire gave her a long, searching look, which Alex studiously tried to ignore while she attached a jump ring to the earring finding. “Nothing at all, if I thought you were really having fun.”

She couldn’t come up with an answer to that, simply because she didn’t have one. She wasn’t having fun. She was miserable. All the frenzied dating was only making her aware how much more she could have.

Damn Sam Delgado, anyway.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know I’ve decided to take a dating break after tonight.” Okay, she had only just reached that momentous resolve as of right this very moment, but she didn’t have to tell Claire that. “Who has the time or the energy?”

Again, those big, magnified eyes scrutinized her. After all these years of being best friends, nobody knew her like Claire, not even her mom or her sisters.

She still had a few secrets left but she had a very strong suspicion Claire had to guess some of the things she wasn’t about to say.

“I really thought you were hitting it off with Sam. He seems like a great guy.”

Yep. Claire knew her entirely too well. “He is. Terrific. Hey, is that a new line of crystal beads I haven’t seen yet?”

“Yes. And why are you trying to change the subject?”

She made a face that she was pretty sure didn’t fool anyone. “I want to finish these earrings today for Caroline before I have to go meet a supplier at the restaurant. I have very limited time with my best friend here. Why would I want to waste some of that precious time talking about my boring dating life?”

One of the things she loved best about Claire was that she respected Alex’s wish to keep some things to herself without being hurt that she sometimes needed space and privacy.

Claire had guessed something was seriously wrong when Alex came home from Europe. For long months, she had looked at her with concern but after several bouts of her gentle prodding, she had accepted that some things Alex needed to keep private, for her own reasons.

To her relief, Claire seemed to know this was one of those times.

“How is Caroline?” she asked after a pause, though that familiar concern was a shadow in her eyes. “I heard she’s not doing well.”

This wasn’t exactly a restful topic for Alex, either, but she didn’t avoid it. “She’s going to be fine,” she said firmly. “I stopped yesterday morning and visited with her. I think she’s just a little down, that’s all. I thought a few new pairs of earrings might help.”

“Help you or her?”

Claire really did know her too well. “Okay, both. It’s a helpless feeling, you know? Cancer sucks.”

Claire reached across the table and squeezed Alex’s hand around the pliers. “Yes, it does. You’re a good friend, Alexandra McKnight.”

Was she? She had to disagree. Claire put up with her moods and her silences but not many people would.

She managed not to show that part of herself to Caroline. Right now, she needed to be her best self for the elderly woman. Caroline didn’t have that many others in her life, only one son who lived on the other side of the world with his Japanese wife and rarely made it back.

“I wish I could do more. I’ve been taking her food as often as I can but right now she’s not eating much. I’m taking some of her favorites today and I thought the earrings would be appreciated, as well. You know how fussy she is about how she looks.”

“What can Riley and I do for her? I’ve got her on the cleanup list for the Giving Hope Day this coming Saturday, but please let me know if you think of anything else she might need.”

“I will. I’d like to be on her yard crew.”

This year she had already asked for some other assignment than food. While she was on the committee that organized the lunch provided to the volunteers and the dinner that was part of the gala, both events were being catered this year by one of Brodie’s other restaurants.

She didn’t mind. Between the restaurant and the other meals she cooked for her elderly friends, she needed a bit of a rest from the kitchen.

“I’ll put you down. I’ve still got you on Evie’s decorating committee for the ballroom, right?”

“Oh. Right. I forgot that part. What other projects are you doing this year?”

As she had hoped, Claire launched into a recitation of the various activities planned. The big one this year was the construction of a badly needed concession stand at the Little League ballpark.

Through carefully inserted questions, she was able to keep Claire talking about the Giving Hope Day—instead of Alex’s tangled love life—until she finished seven pairs of earrings for Caroline, one for each day of the week made of beads the same bright colors as the flowers in her tangled garden.

She didn’t mind. Even talking about Claire’s pregnancy and impending birth and the old pain that inevitably dredged up would have been preferable to talking about why she was dating all these other men who weren’t Sam.

* * *

“YOU NEED TO...stop bringing me so much food, my dear. I’ll never...be able to eat it all.”

She had to strain to both hear and understand Caroline’s words. Every day, her voice seemed to become more garbled and quavery. It broke her heart—and so did Caroline’s implication that the food would go to waste because she didn’t expect to be around long enough to finish it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you will. When you’re feeling better and ready to work in that garden again, you’re going to have a ferocious appetite. I want to make sure you’ve got plenty of good stuff in your freezer to help you keep up your energy.”

Caroline didn’t answer, only tangled her fingers in the fringe of the cashmere pashmina Katherine Thorne had recently brought her back from one of her frequent travels, this one to New Delhi.

“You just sit there and I’m going to heat you up some of this delicious soup. It’s mushroom and rice, your favorite.”

“You don’t have to...do that. It sounds good but...I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.”

“I’ll warm it up anyway and you can try a spoonful or two.”

Maybe once Caroline had a taste, she would rediscover her appetite and want more. At this rate, she was going to waste away before the cancer took her.

Alex made a mental note to talk to the hospice nurse who had been coming in for the past few weeks about some recipes she thought might tempt Caroline.

While the soup heated, she spent a moment cursing the vagaries of life out in Caroline’s beautiful garden, now wild and overgrown. One moment a person could be hale and hardy, out-gardening the rest of the town on her worst day, the next she became a shadow of herself while her life slipped away ounce by ounce.

She cut some flowers she thought might make Caroline smile—spiky lavender that smelled divine; a burst of elegant yellow irises; plump, showy pink peonies and some humble, early-blooming daisies.

She wasn’t much of a floral arranger but she found a pretty jar in one of Caroline’s cupboards and did a passable job, then dished the warm soup in her fanciest bowl and set it on a tray along with some gourmet crackers she had brought along in hopes of tempting that capricious appetite.

Caroline was dozing in her comfortable recliner by the front window but she blinked away when Alex came back.

“Oh, thank you, my dear. And...thank you for the earrings. They’re all so beautiful, I couldn’t decide. I ended up doing...eeny meeny miny moe.”

“Good choice.”

Caroline wore the pair she had made out of translucent pink heart-shaped crystals. They reminded Alex of the delicate, draping bleeding hearts that were among the first flowers to bloom in that splendid garden.

She sat with her and coaxed her to swallow a spoonful and then another. All told, Caroline probably ate about a half cup of soup and two of the crackers, which was more than Alex had hoped.

“Thank you. That was so delicious.”

“You’re welcome, darling. There is plenty more in the refrigerator. You can share some with Helen when she comes again,” she said, referring to the hospice nurse.

“I’ll do that.”

She left the flowers in the living room where Caroline could enjoy them but carried the tray back to the kitchen, where she loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and then spent a moment washing down the cabinets and countertops, dusty from nonuse.

“I guess that’s all,” Alex said. “Is there anything else I can get you before I go?”

“I wish...you didn’t have to go, my dear. I love...your company.”

She studied her friend for a moment, frail and ill and living alone here in the house, and thought of her date with a man she had met once and would likely never see again. She could barely remember his name. Brent something. Or was it Trent?

What was she doing, wasting precious moments of a life that would be gone entirely too soon?

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” she said, and walked back into the kitchen, reaching for her cell phone.

She was glad she had backed out of the date, she thought a few moments later as she hung up. If a guy could get so pissy about a little disappointment, he wasn’t worth even a minute of her time.

“There,” she said to Caroline when she returned to the living room. “Looks like my evening just freed up.”

“What about your date?”

“I would much rather spend my night with you,” she said honestly. “You know, Claire was looking for something to do tonight, too. Why don’t I call her and we can have a girls’ night, just the three of us? I can have her pick up a movie and pop some of my gourmet popcorn.”

“Not...a chick flick,” Caroline insisted. “Action-adventure. Something that has...hot guys...with muscles.”

Alex laughed and kissed Caroline on the top of her gray hair. “You got it. Hot guys with muscles coming up,” she said, feeling better about life than she had in a week.

* * *

THE EVENING WAS A BLAST, even if Caroline fell asleep during the second half of the movie, just when the action was ramping up to full throttle.

She and Claire enjoyed it anyway and then helped Caroline with her medications and into bed. Claire was endlessly patient, a much better person than Alex could ever be.

She didn’t complain when Caroline sent her out to the kitchen on the third errand, this one to find the reading glasses she had left out there.

After she went out, Caroline reached a hand out and grasped Alex’s, her bones as thin and fragile as pâté feuilletée. “I’m sorry...you canceled your date to spend time with...boring me.”

“Are you kidding? This was the most fun I’ve had in weeks. Anyway, the guy turned out to be a jerk. And he was nowhere near as hot as Matt Damon.”

Caroline smiled a little, her fingers trembling ever so slightly. “Have I ever told you...about my Thomas?”

“Not really,” she said carefully. Like her, Caroline had some secrets she held close to her heart. “My mom told me once he died in the Korean War.”

“Yes.” Caroline had a faraway look in her eyes. “We were married only a year and I was pregnant with our Ross when he was drafted. He was killed six months later. He never saw his son.”

Her chest felt tight and achy as she pictured a young war widow, alone and grieving. “Oh. Oh, darling. I’m so sorry.”

“I had a chance for...love...again a few years later. His best friend came back...from the war and stayed around town for a few months, working in the...silver mine, before they played out. Joseph Baxter. Joe. He looked...just like that Damon fellow. Maybe that’s why I like his...movies so much.”

Alex smiled through the tears she was trying not to shed. Out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Claire had returned but waited in the doorway, one hand on her round stomach and the other pressed to her heart.

“He loved Ross and...wanted to marry me but...I was too afraid. I had already lost someone dear to me, you see, and I didn’t want to go through that again. The pain...when Tommy died, was...unbearable. And so I pushed away Joe. Again and again. Until he gave up and left Hope’s Crossing. Last I heard, he moved to Nevada to work in the mines and...married a girl he met there.”

Caroline was quiet for a long moment, her face averted on the pillow. Alex would have thought perhaps she had fallen asleep again if those frail fingers didn’t continue to tremble in hers.

Finally she turned back and her gaze met Alex’s with more clarity and purpose than she had seen there in weeks. “I’ve been alone...all these years...sleeping by myself in this cold bed. Who can say what I missed out on, because I was too...afraid?”

Even in her illness, Caroline didn’t do anything by accident. She was telling this story, tonight, out of some motivation Alex didn’t understand.

“He worked in a mine,” she murmured, compelled to defend that long-ago version of her friend. “What if a tunnel collapsed on him or something? You would have had to go through the pain of losing someone all over again.”

Claire made a low sound in her throat but Alex didn’t turn around and Caroline apparently didn’t hear her.

“I...should have...risked it.” She grasped Alex’s hand in both of hers as if she were cupping life-giving water. “Life isn’t...meant to be spent...hiding in the corner with your arms huddled over your head, protecting...yourself from anything that might hurt you. Life should be...embraced.”

“You’ve done that. Everyone in town loves you.”

Caroline dismissed that with a shrug of her slight shoulders. “When a woman is ready to turn another...chapter in her life, she begins to see things with...unforgiving clarity.” Despite the struggle to speak, she gave them both a mischievous smile. “I’ve spent fifty years...without a man in my bed. Think...of all the orgasms I missed.”

Claire sputtered a laugh. Even with her emotions in turmoil, Alex managed to laugh, as well.

“There is that,” Alex murmured.

“Don’t make...my mistakes. If you have the chance to find happiness with someone special, grab hold...and don’t let go. If you don’t, you could end up like me...a shriveled, tired old woman...dying alone.”

“You’re not dying,” Alex said automatically. “And you’re not alone. We’re here, right? We just got done watching a great movie and eating fabulous popcorn and laughing.”

“Yes, and...I’m tired now. I need to sleep. Thank you, my dears. I shall...dream of...Matt Damon tonight.”

As she settled Caroline into bed and turned off the light, Alex wondered if this would be her in fifty years, alone with her regrets.