Currant Creek Valley(73)

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.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CLAIRE WAS GOING TO PAY, and pay hard.

From her vantage point kneeling in the dirt around Caroline’s south garden, where she had been hard at work yanking out annoying elm seedlings that had blown from the surrounding trees and rooted, Alex glowered at the pickup truck that had just pulled up behind her own SUV.

She knew that truck.