Deadly Notions - By Elizabeth Lynn Casey Page 0,53
planned. We simply enjoyed each other’s company no matter where we were and no matter what we did. Was that way from the moment we met in school.”
He leaned back on his park bench, a wistful smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Only I got foolish and decided to see if the grass was greener somewhere else. Didn’t take me long to realize the mistake I made. Guess you could say I was the luckiest man in the world when she agreed to give me a second chance.”
A second chance . . .
“I only hope they have more time together than my Evelyn and I did.” He released a sigh from somewhere deep in his soul. “Sure makes me wish I could redo those foolish moments.”
His words played in her head, tugged at her heart. “Did she take you back right away?”
“She played hard to get for a few days but I won her heart back in the end.”
“How?” she asked as she looked, again, at Milo and Beth.
“By callin’ on all the things we enjoyed together—bike rides, long walks, holdin’ hands, picnics on the Green . . .”
Picnics on the Green.
She swallowed. Was that what was happening with Milo and Beth? Was she winning him back?
“Thinkin’ ’bout your own young man?”
Mr. Downing’s words broke through her woolgathering. “I’m sorry?”
He lifted his left knee and crossed it atop his right. “I asked if watchin’ that young couple is makin’ you think of your Milo.”
For a moment she considered the notion of using Mr. Downing’s less than stellar eyesight to her advantage, but she couldn’t. Instead, she divulged the facts as they were and braced herself for the inevitable.
“If it was any other couple, I’d say yes, Mr. Downing. But since one half of that twosome is Milo, I’d have to say no.” There. It was out.
She watched as the man dipped his head forward and adjusted his glasses. “Why, Victoria, it looks as if you’re right.” Slowly, he pulled his attention from the blanket and fixed it squarely on her face. “It’s a foolish period is all. You mark my words.”
“Problem is, the foolish period was hers, when she broke up with him in college.”
He waited as she continued, her words clarifying things as much for herself as for him. “He was crazy about her in school. They were joined at the hip for nearly a year until she broke it off, crushing his heart in the process. Then, about a year later, he met Celia. Two years after that, he and Celia got married, only to have her taken by cancer six months later. Ten years went by—ten years with no real relationship of any kind until I moved to Sweet Briar.” She inhaled the courage she needed to reach the point in the story that was now. “Slowly we’ve built something special, something lasting. The kind of relationship I truly believed was confined to the fairy tale section in the children’s room.”
“And that’s changed?”
Tori shrugged. “I don’t know. I certainly hope not. But Beth—the girl he was crazy about in college? She showed up in Sweet Briar a few days ago and seems determined—like you were with Evelyn—to fix a mistake she made fourteen years ago.” She raised her index finger into the air and pointed toward the laughing woman with hair the color of golden silk. “Alas, operation picnic is in full swing.”
He looked toward the blanket once again, his narrowed eyes beckoning hers to follow. “Seems to me he’s not bitin’.”
“What do you mean?”
Lifting his own finger into the air, he, too, pointed. “I s’pose I was just taken in by the laughin’ and the squealin’. But now that I’m noticin’, really noticin’, it’s fairly obvious she’s the only one makin’ any noise.”
Determined to see the situation for what it was rather than what she feared, she forced herself to see the facts—
Beth on one side of the blanket, Milo on the other.
Beth laughing and gesturing and squealing, Milo simply nodding.
Beth using her hands and her body to emphasize whatever she was saying, Milo checking his watch.
“You know something?” she whispered. “I think you’re right.”
“Fourteen years, you say?”
She nodded. “Fourteen years.”
“That ain’t foolish, Victoria. That’s a sign of something that wasn’t right the first time.”
She inhaled Mr. Downing’s words into her heart, savoring them for what they were. The truth was right there in front of her face, in the one-sided interactions between Beth and Milo. And it was right there in the—