Another Dawn (6 page)

We avoided each other over the next few hours, and soon the weight of silence became too much for me.

“I think I’m going to run a few errands while your physical therapist is here. Is there anything you need me to get for you?” We were doing our usual thing after trading harsh words: pretending that it never happened. Not in a warm, all-is-forgiven way, just a terse, refusing-to-back-down kind of truce.

He was sitting back in his recliner. I could tell by his flushed face that the exertion of getting there had been painful, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “How about picking up a pack of those chocolate sandwich cookies we always used to get? I’ve been craving those things all day, and I’ll bet Dylan likes them, too, right?”

At the mention of cookies, Dylan lifted his head. “What cookies?”

I looked at my father. “You know we don’t eat those kinds of foods.”

“For the love of all things blue, what’s one little cookie going to hurt?”

“That’s the rule and it’s final. Next week when Dylan’s better, we’ll drive over to Lawrenceburg and get some organic ingredients so I can make healthy treats for us all.”

“I want a cookie. Just one, Mama, please, just one.”

The fact that he was actually willing to eat something made me almost reconsider my stance. Then I thought of how much sicker all that sugar and saturated fat would make him feel in the long run. “Sorry, buddy.”

“Grandpa said I could. This is his house. He makes the rules, right?” Dylan turned his gaze over toward my father, obviously hoping for backup.

My father nodded. “Sounds right to me. I tell you what, your mother ate plenty of those things when she was your age, and it don’t seem like it hurt her none, now, did it?” He was going to play this for all it was worth, his way of getting back at me for my earlier comment.

“Dad, you know—”

The doorbell rang, and likely saved me from saying something that would’ve plunged us in deeper. I opened the door and found a smiling young woman. Thirtyish, I suppose, with short blond hair, a perky smile, and the perfect posture of someone with complete confidence in her ability.

“Hello, I’m Shannon Volmar. I’m here to see Charles Graham.”

“Yes, you are.” I smiled at her as I opened the door, then whispered under my breath, “Good luck.”

She smiled in return. “That bad, huh?”

“Oh yeah.”

I pulled my car to the curb in the old city square. Until this week, I hadn’t been here in ten years, and it was amazing how many things had changed, and yet how many refused to change at all. The building that used to house my favorite clothing store now said Antiques on a faded sign out front. It was dark inside, and a sign on the door said Open By Appointment Only.

I walked past Moore’s Shoes—that place had been there forever. They still displayed Stride Rites in the window just as they had when I was a kid. Maybe I would bring Dylan back here later when he was feeling better and do a little shopping. He could use a new pair of athletic shoes.

Then I reached the weathered brown bricks of the old movie theater. Once again the sight of it brought back a wave of memories. It had been mostly shut down since about my eighth-grade year, but I’d seen plenty of movies here as a kid.

I looked up at the marquee, no longer aglow with hundreds of light bulbs. It said Theater Center Shops in dark blue script where the names of movies had once been posted in big red letters.

I entered what once had been the theater lobby and saw about a dozen round tables. The old snack bar remained in place but was now apparently a coffee counter. The place was almost full. I took the three steps that led to the old theater entrance. There were now two sets of doors. One said Daybreak Apothecary, the other Beuerlein Travel Agency.

There was the faintest hint of the smell of buttered popcorn, although I saw no sign of a popcorn machine at the coffee shop counter. Perhaps the smell was so well burrowed into the heart of this place that it could never go away. Or perhaps it was just nostalgia on my part.

I could still remember sitting up in the balcony with Melanie Ledbetter, large popcorn between us, when we noticed that Mrs. Lumpkins—the meanest first-grade teacher at our school—was right below us. We started dropping popcorn, one kernel at a time, then ducking beneath the half wall. We’d hit her at least a half dozen times when the theater manager nabbed us and made us go down and apologize, then sent us home. I suppose it was a good thing we’d been second-graders by then, or Mrs. Lumpkins would have made the rest of our school year miserable.

Even now, I was glad it was my mother who got that call instead of my dad. Her lecture had been stern enough, and I’d lost privileges for longer than I thought fair at the time, but I never doubted, even in the midst of it all, that she loved me. My father, on the other hand, well . . . Dad was never satisfied with my realizing I’d made a mistake. He always pushed and pushed until I came to understand that
I
was the mistake.

I shook my head to clear the thought and pulled open the door into the pharmacy. It was the most unusual store I’d ever seen. The old giant round wall lights had been incorporated right into the design of the place, with polished wood and a tidy appearance making it feel a bit like a cathedral, I thought.

They had a fairly decent-sized over-the-counter section, and I had been thrilled on my earlier visit to find that they had a large selection of herbal remedies. I stood perusing them when I heard a voice behind me say, “Can I help you find something?”

She looked to be a few years younger than I was, and had the most beautiful wavy red hair I’d ever seen. It was elegant and yet untamed all at the same time.

“My son has a virus. I need some more Tylenol for his fever, but I was looking to see what else might help him.”

“You’ve come to the right place, and you happen to be talking to the right person. I make a pretty mean herbal tea combo, if I do say so myself. How old is your son?”

“Four.”

“Hmm, that changes things. For most adults or bigger kids, I’d mix up some oolong tea, but it’s got too much caffeine for the youngsters. I could whip up some of my famous cold-and-flu-fighter recipe. It contains peppermint leaf—it’s got some antiviral properties and can help you sweat out toxins—some elder, both flowers and berries, which seem to help the body fight off flu viruses, and a bit of ginger for aches and nausea.”

“How does it taste, though? I wonder if I could get him to drink it.”

“I always suggest adding a little honey after you’re done steeping. A little sweetness goes a long way. Right?”

“Right. How much is it?”

She shook her head. “We just opened our tea dispensary last month. I always give the first sample free along with a tea ball. You take it home and try it. If your son will drink it, and if you think it’s helping, give me a call and I’ll make up a full batch.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Good. It’s settled, then. My name’s Dawn, by the way.”

“I’m Grace.”

“Pretty name. Well, come on back here and have a seat.” She directed me toward a little cubby in the back wall of the store, which had a couple of barstools and a counter with sugar, honey, stirrers, and a few other things. She unlocked a cabinet and removed several sealed containers. It wasn’t long before she was scooping and mixing our own special herbal tea.

“Mixing some of your famous tea, Dawn? Honestly, I don’t think we fill nearly as many prescriptions as we used to, now that you’re curing half the town with your herbal remedies.” A beautiful blonde who was obviously about six months pregnant approached, wearing the cutest blue sundress I thought I’d ever seen.

Dawn laughed but didn’t look up from her work. “Well, you’re the one who insisted I further my education. And I guess that it’s a good thing I did, since your worrywart husband thinks you’re standing on your feet too much.”

The blonde laughed. “He’s pretty adorable, isn’t he?” She nodded at me. “Enjoy your tea.” As cliché as it was to say, she really did look radiant.

I don’t think I ever looked that way when I was pregnant with Dylan. Of course, this woman had several things that made it easier, I supposed. An education, a stable career, and the adorable husband. I’d had none of those things. Within two days of finding out I was pregnant, Chase was out of the picture and I no longer had a boyfriend, much less an overprotective, adorable one. The real kicker, though, was having no mother.

There are few times in life that a girl needs a mother more than when she’s expecting her first child, especially when that girl is little more than a child herself. I’d been twenty years old, frightened half to death, and all alone. It still topped the list of reasons I couldn’t forgive my father for killing her.

“Here you go.” Dawn handed me a little bag full of tea leaves. “Now, steep this for ten minutes, add a little honey, and I bet it’ll have him feeling better in no time.”

“I hope so.”

“Come on over and I’ll ring up that Tylenol for you so you can be on your way.”

“Thanks so much.”

“You’re very welcome.”

I walked out the door, past The Christian Bookstore, which had been on the square for as long as I could remember and had been a favorite haunt during my teenage years. I thought of going in to buy a book for Dylan, since we hadn’t exactly been regulars at church lately, but decided to wait until he was feeling better and bring him down here so he could pick it out himself.

Next to it was the sign for the upstairs offices of a couple of lawyers and
The Shoal Creek Advocate
, the town newspaper. “Grace Graham, is that really you?”

I turned toward the voice and found myself looking into a face straight out of the past. A face that was perfect then and was perfect now. Patti Fox. I couldn’t even pretend not to recognize her, because she hadn’t changed one single bit since high school. Not one freckle, not one extra pound, and of course, not even the hint of a future wrinkle. “Hi, Patti. How are you?” I did not want to stand here and have this conversation, but I couldn’t think of a polite way to get out of it.

“I’m well.” She flipped her hand out and down. “Wow, you look absolutely terrific. I bet people tell you that you look like Sandra Bullock all the time, don’t they?”

“Hardly.” Okay, I’d maybe heard it once or twice, but to agree would end up requiring me to say something about her looking like Paris Hilton, and I wasn’t going to go there. Instead, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “What are you doing here?”

She pointed toward the doors I’d just been looking at. “I’m the proud new owner of
The Shoal Creek Advocate
.”

“Really?” I looked toward Patti, the golden highlights in her blond hair glistening in the sunlight. “I’ve been out of touch a bit. Dad never tells me anything, but I’m surprised Jana didn’t mention it. Good for you.”

“Yep, the timing was right. I was working for a PR firm up in Nashville, but you know me, I’ve never been one to take orders from people very well. I wanted to be my own boss. I came home to visit my mother one weekend and ran into old Mr. Baumgartner at Shoney’s. You remember him from journalism class, right?”

I nodded but said nothing. I didn’t want to think about journalism class, or Patti’s current success, or the way she and her friends used to snicker behind my back. From the moment she’d arrived at the end of our junior year, she’d made my life miserable in one way or the other.

“Yes, we just started talking about old times and kind of catching up with each other. He told me he was ready to sell
The Advocate
and retire, but he hadn’t found the right buyer—since it had been in his family for several decades, he didn’t want to turn it over to just anyone, you know.”

“And you were just the perfect one.” Of course she would be.

She shrugged. “I don’t know about perfect, but I’m sure glad it worked out the way it did. I cleaned out most of my savings account and started on this new venture. I’m out pounding the pavement trying to get advertisers, between writing articles and editing.”

“Sounds hectic.”

“I’ll say. We just went from being twice weekly to daily. This economy is not really the right time to do that, but, I don’t know, I just felt like it was something I was supposed to do—just as surely as I was supposed to buy the paper.”

“Really? Just felt like it, huh?” The freedom of changing careers just because she felt like it did not in any way serve to ease my dislike of her.

“Yeah. Most people think I’m crazy buying a newspaper in today’s world. Folks around here sure love their paper, though. I’m bringing some things online, too, trying to expand. I started a TalkBack blog for readers a couple of weeks ago. It’s been really interesting to see the feedback we get from our stories. I’ve taken to printing portions of it in the next day’s newspaper, since some of our customers haven’t quite figured out the Internet yet. It’s been so well received, I’m just amazed.”

“That’s great. Well, I’ve got to get back now.”

“Of course you do. I didn’t mean to talk your head off.”

“It was good seeing you.” It seemed like a polite way to end the conversation, in spite of the complete lack of truthfulness behind the words. I turned toward the parking area.