Small Town Cinderella. Caron Todd

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СКАЧАТЬ avoid John. I’ll be glad to see him.”

      She thanked Mrs. Marsh for the mail and the bananas and went out into the hot sunlight, glad to get the door between her and the curiosity she felt coming from her neighbors. It wasn’t a lie. After all this time she would be glad to see John, if they happened to run into each other.

      Halfway down the road was the Legion Hall. Inside, five of Daniel’s friends sat at a table with a pitcher of Guinness in front of them and mugs at varying degrees of emptiness in hand. They waved her over, mentioned how good the food had been at the wedding and told her how pretty she’d looked in her bridesmaid’s dress. None of them had any idea where Daniel had gone.

      “He does what he wants, Emily. Things like weddings and gardens don’t stop him.”

      “Even if it’s Liz’s wedding?”

      “Even if it’s his own.”

      They all laughed at that. Five tolerant smiles came her way, along with a pat on the arm that felt more like a dismissive pat on an anxious child’s head.

      WHERE THE CREEK ROAD CURVED and narrowed, becoming Robbs’ Road, Emily slowed the car. Manitoba maples and purple clover filled the ditches and hidden by trees on her right, one of the three creeks flowed. The road wasn’t much of a barrier between woodland and water. Deer and rabbits went across to drink; sometimes at night she saw foxes and raccoons. She often lurched the last mile home, starting and stopping, weaving around toads and garter snakes.

      Yesterday had been tough on them, with all the cars crunching along from town for the reception. Most wedding dinners were held in the church basement or at the hotel in Pine Point, but Liz had wanted to celebrate at their grandmother’s place. It was the house their great-great-grandparents had built, where she and Jack had met, and where she had finally made peace with the ghosts of her first, short marriage.

      When they came back in the fall, Jack would move in with Liz and Eleanor. They had already started working on the house, replacing windows, reshingling the roof and repainting inside and out. With so much work taken off her hands and someone to talk to whenever she wanted company, Eleanor had begun to look healthier and more rested.

      It had been a hectic week, though, and today her fatigue was apparent. Emily found her at the kitchen table, shelling peas. The dogs, Bella and Dora, watched intently, as if every hard green kernel hitting the bowl was a slice of roast beef.

      “On your own today?” Emily took a handful of pods and began to snap them open. The rest of the family had gone to the lake, a half-hour’s drive away.

      “A cool kitchen sounded better to me than a hot beach.”

      “To Mom, too.”

      “And you?”

      “I don’t mind a chance to catch my breath.” Since the beginning of June she’d been going full tilt, helping with wedding plans at home, Field Day and Awards Day at school and doing inventory for the library. She’d closed it the previous week, around the time dress fittings and dainty making had mutated from cousinly togetherness to near panic.

      She reached for more pea pods and began to tell her grandmother about her concern for Daniel.

      “There couldn’t have been anyone missing,” Eleanor said at first. “The church was bursting.” She looked out the window as if trying to visualize the crowd of guests. “Come to think of it, I didn’t speak to Daniel at all yesterday. He must have been here. He left a gift.”

      Emily had seen the package on the gift table, too. Even without his signature on the card she would have recognized the sometimes ornate, always measured letters that reminded her of his age when nothing else did. “Maybe someone dropped it off for him.”

      “Wouldn’t that suggest he made plans to be away?”

      “I suppose it would. Am I fussing?”

      “You?”

      Emily laughed. “That’s the thing about worrying. It’s hard to know when it’s reasonable.”

      “I do understand. What woman wouldn’t? Learned or instinct, we tend to take care of people. School’s out, my dear. We’ve finally got Elizabeth and Jack married and on their way. Isn’t it time to relax and enjoy the summer?”

      “Mrs. Bowen mentioned a hammock.”

      “What a good idea. Get yourself a hammock and a pile of books and don’t budge for a month. Who knows, maybe your mother will notice the dust and take care of it herself!”

      Emily couldn’t help smiling at the thought of her mother minding dust that settled anywhere but on her books.

      “Don’t forget,” Eleanor went on, “tea tomorrow afternoon.” Because of the reception and a barbecue planned for later in the week the family wasn’t getting together for the usual Sunday dinner.

      “I’m looking forward to it.”

      “It’s only you and your mother, and Susannah and Edith and me. I’ve already told Julia that, but remind her, won’t you, Emily?”

      “I don’t think she’ll come, Grandma.”

      “No, I don’t suppose she will.”

      THE COOKBOOKS WERE put away. Julia sat at the kitchen table, this time bent over one of her book catalogs. Emily could see she wasn’t reading it. Her neck and shoulders looked tight and her arms were pressed to her sides, elbows digging in.

      “You said you wouldn’t be long.”

      “I’m sorry, Mom.” She put the bananas in the fruit basket, the hydro bill on the hutch and the new catalog on the table.

      Her mother ignored it. “If you don’t mean ‘not long’ you shouldn’t say ‘not long.’”

      “I meant it at the time. Did you worry?”

      “I didn’t know I’d have to make lunch. I waited.”

      Emily went to the fridge and took out jars of mayonnaise, mustard and pickles, a tomato and their share of the leftover wedding ham.

      “Then you still didn’t come. So I had a sandwich.”

      “You did?” She put everything but the ham back. “You’re ahead of the game. I haven’t eaten yet.”

      “I don’t know why you call it a game.”

      “Come on, Mom. You do so. It’s an expression.”

      “An odd one.”

      Emily cut a slice of ham, then leaned against the counter while she ate it. “Daniel wasn’t home.”

      “You see?”

      “I sure do. You said he didn’t fall.”

      “And he didn’t.”

      “Nobody knows where he is, though. Everybody says he likes to follow his inclinations, and if that means a missed wedding or a dried-up garden, СКАЧАТЬ