Dandelion Wishes (3 page)

“Why don’t you know which production Rose put on?” Slade stretched his long legs across the porch, clasping his hands over the ends of his tie. As their financial guru, Slade believed in living the leader look 24/7. According to him, you never knew who might be willing to invest in their next big idea, so he had to look legit. “What happened?”

Will didn’t want to answer, not in front of Tracy, but it would be a bigger issue if he didn’t. “Rose’s granddaughter showed up.”

“Emma?” Tracy sat up so quickly the bench she was on nearly tipped over.

Will couldn’t tell if Tracy wanted to say more or not. She wrinkled her slim blond eyebrows when she struggled for a word, the same way she did when she was unhappy. They all waited for her to say more, but she went mute.

Slade smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in his slacks and then fiddled with his tie. Will had a theory about those ties. They were a gauge of Slade’s mood—a bold, bright color meant he was content and focused on results, an artistic pattern signaled something stormy or melancholy and on black-tie days Will made sure to avoid asking Slade for anything. Today’s tie was a bright orange diagonal strip. That boded well for the winery. “Was this a planned visit? Or does Emma know Tracy’s home?”

“She knows.” Will continued to study his sister. “She wants to visit Tracy.”

Tracy blew out a breath. “I don’t...don’t.”

“You don’t want to see her,” Will finished, greatly relieved.

“No.” Her brows furrowed. “I. Don’t. Want. You. To—”

“You don’t want me to let her visit.” Will tried again.

“No!” Tracy stood, growling in frustration.

“Let her get it out.” Flynn leaned forward.

She shook her head. “I don’t. Want you. To...to...” Tracy glanced up and to the left. The doctors had told them when she looked in that direction she was trying to access memory for the words she needed. Her hands circled like upside-down eggbeaters. “Stop. Emma.”

“Are you sure?” Will set his beer down and moved closer to capture Tracy’s hands. Her delicate hands. “She’s the reason you’re like this.” Broken. Fragile.

Tracy blinked back tears. “Let me. Decide.” She tore free of his grip and ran down the steps, across the verdant grass.

“She needs space.” Flynn held Will back when he started off after her. “It’s got to be frustrating.”

Will shrugged off his friend’s hand, grasping his beer by the neck to keep a hold on the resentment churning in his gut. If only Emma hadn’t come back. If only Emma hadn’t talked Tracy into going to Las Vegas six months ago. “Tracy doesn’t like me telling her what to do.” Wanting to follow his sister but knowing she needed space, Will anchored his beer on the porch railing.

“I’m going to make an unpopular suggestion,” Slade said. “You’re worried about Tracy, and Flynn’s worried about Edwin’s recovery from his heart attack. This project has gotten too complicated. In addition to the winery we’re opening a restaurant, a tasting room and a gift shop? Maybe we should—”

“We’re ten miles east of Cloverdale,” Will cut in, trying to hammer out his frustration. “No one will drive forty miles north of the heart of Sonoma wine country on a twisting, narrow road simply for a glass of our wine. It’s too much trouble. We need to make Harmony Valley a destination. Build something out here besides our winery. I’d love for someone in town to open a day spa or a bed-and-breakfast.”

“A gelato parlor or a bakery. Maybe even a coffee shop.” Flynn had a huge sweet tooth. “What I wouldn’t give for a latte every morning.”

“Why don’t we stick to what we know and design a new app?” Slade fiddled with his tie.

“Take off your tie,” Will snapped, his frustration finding a new target. “It represents everything we aren’t. We’re supposed to be a lean, independent, creative firm, able to turn our talents toward a new opportunity on a dime. Not a suited-up, slow-moving corporation.”

Slade leaned forward. The old wicker chair groaned in protest. “It sounds like you’re saying you don’t want to be responsible for employees and buildings and a harvest. I agree. Let’s move on.”

“I can’t move on.” Will passed his beer bottle from one hand to the other. He hadn’t told either of them that he wanted Tracy to run the winery. Slade would argue that a junior advertising executive wasn’t qualified to manage their business. Flynn would argue Tracy didn’t drink wine. It didn’t matter. He needed to tell them. But when Will opened his mouth, he said, “You’re the one who said we needed a tax shelter.”

“And you’re the one who said it would be simple to start a business here.” Slade got to his feet. He might not have been as tall as Will, but he was broader. “All we’ve found are roadblocks and complications.”

Will’s temper flared and his words came out angrier than he’d intended. “Flynn and I, we need a break from the creative side of things. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t be one of those one-hit wonders, remember? We promised ourselves the freedom to focus on what we do best—out-of-the-box design. I don’t have any ideas to work on. Do you?” Will rounded on Flynn.

“Nope. My mind’s as blank as a new hard drive.” Flynn tipped his baseball hat toward Slade, seemingly unconcerned by his creative block. “I’m a wealthy man, not that anyone around here cares, and not that my grandfather will let me spend any money on him or this property.” The same as Will’s father wouldn’t allow him to pay for improvements on the family farm. “But I’d like to enjoy being a wealthy man before I burn through another five years of my life becoming wealthier.”

“Amen,” Will said grimly.

“Try to understand where we’re coming from,” Flynn said, ever the peacemaker. “Tracy needs Will right now, and our winery is the best thing that’s happened to my grandfather in a long time. He needed to feel useful after his heart attack. I won’t back away from this deal for that reason alone.”

“But if you need any further convincing,” Will said. “Think about this—it’s next to impossible for us to come up with any new ideas when we’re worried about our families.”

Slade’s long features turned as hard as the granite face of Parish Hill. He was an only child. His mother had always been fragile and had died of a heart virus when he was a teenager. His father had committed suicide soon after Slade graduated from college. Divorced, Slade had no family left.

“I’m sorry,” Will began, knowing the words wouldn’t be enough.

But Slade had already left, heading for his family’s empty house.

CHAPTER FOUR

E
MMA
WAS
BACK
in Harmony Valley.

Tracy closed her bedroom door and scowled at the princess bedroom set she’d picked out when she was eight.

On days when she was scared, Tracy wished she’d died in that car accident.

She had no memory of the crash itself, but she did remember what had happened afterward in flashes. Emma taking off her white bra and using its padding to staunch the bleeding on Tracy’s head, her voice high and thin as she told Tracy everything was going to be all right. Emma asking a passing motorist for a blanket to keep Tracy warm. Emma begging Mediflight to let her ride along, and after they refused, squeezing Tracy’s hand with one last bit of reassurance before she’d left on the high-flying roller coaster that had had her throwing up on herself.

Emma had lied. Everything wasn’t all right.

Tracy hadn’t woken up again until a week after the accident. The doctors had put her into a coma until the swelling in her brain decreased. And when she’d come out of it, Emma hadn’t been there. Tracy had been unable to ask about her friend, not with a tube down her throat and a morphine drip clouding reality. It wasn’t until a highway patrolman had shown up to ask her about the accident and they’d lowered her morphine dose that she’d found she could scribble out words. He’d told her Emma had survived. The bigger question:
Where was Emma?

Tracy sat on her full-size bed next to the window and stared out at the moonlit night, at the acres of chest-high corn her father took such pride in growing.

After she’d stabilized, they’d moved her to a rehabilitation hospital, where they had a no-cell-phone policy.

Still no Emma.

Her father and Will alternated their visits.

Still no Emma.

Tracy grew tired of bedpans and flash cards, well-meaning therapists who sang goofy kids’ songs and wanted her to sing along. Emma would have understood, would have busted Tracy out for a much-needed afternoon of playing hooky. They’d have hit the mall or found one of those small shops that made their own ice cream. They’d have gotten a scoop of something fattening and decadent, like coconut cream cheese or turtle truffle.

Still no Emma.

And nothing seemed right.

Oh, it was right in Tracy’s head. She had mental conversations with herself as quickly and smoothly as before the accident. She’d surprised her doctors by being able to silently read and write fluently. And her broken bones had healed. She could walk and run and, although she hadn’t tried, she suspected she could dance.

But resuming her job at an ad agency was out of the question. Tracy couldn’t sit with her peers and shout out ideas. She couldn’t contribute to a fast-paced conference call. And she could no longer smoothly present storyboards to advertising clients.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of Tracy’s situation was that everyone treated her like an invalid. Her father wanted her to rest more. Her brother finished her sentences. Doctors, nurses and specialists patted her knee and told her things would get better if she just obeyed every request they made and tried to speak. Again and again and again. Until Tracy hated the sound of her own faltering voice.

She pressed her forehead against the cool window and fingered the cell phone that had no network. Maybe that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was that the doctor had recommended shock therapy as a next step in her treatment, which in laboratory experiments had increased blood flow to the brain and helped reconnect synapses so that speech was smoother.

Attach electrodes to her brain and start zapping her?

No flippin’ way!

She’d stopped cooperating with her therapist. A few weeks later she’d been discharged, which annoyed the heck out of Will. He kept talking about her needing more therapy. Didn’t he realize what they wanted to do to her?

And now Emma wanted to see her? Tracy was so upset she could scream. Only her scream would probably come out like a trebly Tarzan wail and upset her father.

Tracy both wanted and didn’t want to see Emma.

Truth was, she didn’t want to see anyone, not like this. Maybe she’d cloister herself away in her room, with its pink ruffled bedspread and pink flowered walls and only have conversations with herself. For the rest of her life.

* * *

“Y
OU
THINK
W
ILL
took it upon himself to protect Tracy from you? I had hoped it was doctor’s orders. I never could get Ben to say exactly.” Granny Rose poured a cup of coffee and carried it over to the breakfast nook where Emma sat.

It was barely six in the morning and Granny was already dressed in olive slacks, a faded blue denim shirt and scuffed work boots. Her snowy hair was caught up in an intricate chignon. She paused before setting down Emma’s coffee, taking in her bike shorts, tank top and messy ponytail. “Going for a bike ride?”

“Up Parish Hill.” The main road through Harmony Valley wound along the river and then at the northern tip of town ribboned its way up the hill.

Her grandmother nodded approvingly, straightening the morning paper. “But why keep you away? It’s not like you’re the devil.” Granny sighed. “Well, piffle. We’ll just see about that today, won’t we?”

“It’s been so long. Tracy probably thinks I’ve abandoned her.” She hadn’t. She hadn’t been able to get past Will. But Harmony Valley didn’t have security guards. “I’m going over there later in the morning and hopefully Will won’t have her locked up in the attic.”

“Now I wish I’d never let that computer nerd into my house on Sundays, although he did like show tunes. I caught him singing along once.” Granny Rose slid into a chair across from Emma, so clear and normal that last night’s long-john dance and fatigue seemed like nothing to worry about. “No matter. Tracy’s here and Harmony Valley is a small town. You’re bound to bump into her sometime and then you can have a nice long talk.” Granny Rose reached across the table and touched Emma’s hand. “Speaking of talking, let’s talk about your fears regarding your art. No one ever got through an artistic block by ignoring it.”

The beginnings of a dull rumble filled Emma’s ears. She clutched her warm coffee mug. “I’m not—”

“You’re not blocked? Or you’re not ignoring being blocked?” Granny Rose’s faded blue gaze was gentle. “It takes more than talent to fill a canvas or a sketchbook. You need drive and passion.”

“And courage,” Emma added over the intensifying noise of the car accident replaying in her head. She willed herself to shut it out and her hands to stay steady on the mug. “It’s impossible to be creative without courage.”

Granny Rose’s white eyebrows arched. “Since when did you lack courage or passion? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to force you to stop painting or sketching to eat. Sometimes you get so lost in a project you lose all sense of place and time.”

Fear shuddered through Emma’s veins, threatening to sweep her away. Being lost in a project was precisely what had made her crash and nearly kill Tracy. Her mind had been more focused on an idea for a painting than on the road.

Emma planted her coffee mug on the table with only slightly trembling hands and peered more closely at her grandmother’s to-do list. “This is for today?”

“No, dear. It’s my morning to-do list. Don’t change the subject.”

Emma did anyway. “Mow lawn, weed vegetable garden, make cupcakes, visit Cloverdale Elementary, bring easel down from attic.” Forget that most people younger than her grandmother wouldn’t accomplish that much in one day, let alone one morning. Granny Rose was going to bring down the easel. She expected Emma to paint while she was here.

The dull roar in Emma’s head increased, reverberating down her arms into her fingertips until she had to sit on her hands to stop their shaking. It was nothing—nothing—compared to what Tracy had to go through every day. Emma forced her lips into what she hoped was a smile. “Just looking at your list tires me out. When was the last time you relaxed and had a cup of coffee with your friends?” The last thing she needed was Granny Rose tired and slightly out of it two days in a row.

“Pish. My friends drink wine at the end of the day. We’re too busy living life to dawdle over coffee every morning.” There was nothing out of the ordinary about Granny Rose today. She had all her usual bounce and energy, more at eighty than Emma had at twenty-six.

“How about if I do the yard work after I go for a bike ride?” Exhaustion was just what Emma needed to clear her head, which had begun to throb.

“That would be lovely. I’ll start on the cupcakes. I’m staging a production of
The Music Man
with the fourth graders in Cloverdale. My cast needs to keep their strength up.” With no mention of the easel, Granny Rose stood and bent to kiss the top of Emma’s head. “Don’t forget in all your rushing to stop and see the world.”

“I might say the same to you.” Emma smiled, more easily this time as the pounding at her temples receded slightly. She finished her coffee and went in search of her old ten-speed bicycle in the garage. A few swipes of a rag took care of the bike’s cobwebs and Emma was on her way.

The sun hadn’t risen high enough to chase away the morning fog. It clung to the grapevines and blanketed the river. The bicycle tires glided over the pavement with only a whisper of sound. She crossed the bridge into town slowly, taking in the way the first bright rays of light snuck through the trees, admiring the varying shades of silver green on the eucalyptus bark. An image flashed in her mind’s eye of a canvas filled with the scene before her, but it was quickly followed by a ripple of panic-driven, leg-pumping adrenaline.

“Be aware of your surroundings,” Emma mumbled. “Stay in the moment.”

The road took her behind the few businesses on Main Street. Soon she was at the beginning of the loop that wended its way up Parish Hill and down on the other side of town. The first switchbacks were soft grades. Emma managed them easily. Then the hillside steepened, and fog and eucalyptus trees gave way to the occasional oak and sunshine. Poppies and dandelions thrust optimistically upward from the gravelly soil.

Emma rounded a bend and saw a jogger ahead.

Buff, blond and bossy. Will Jackson.

A photographer would have snapped the image. Everything about him was golden, from his hair to his tan skin to the way the early morning light illuminated him.

The sight of Will set her teeth on edge.

He’d kept her away from Tracy for six months.

Emma considered turning around, but he’d most likely see her retreat. That stubborn Willoughby pride, the one she could have sworn she didn’t have, egged her on. She shifted gears and pumped the pedals like she meant business, which meant she nearly fell over.

Emma righted the bike and shifted gears again. She wouldn’t let Will beat her to the top.

* * *

W
ILL
’
S
I
P
HONE
SHUFFLED
to a Blink-182 song that had a fast beat his feet didn’t want to keep time to. He was sucking in air like a clogged air filter on a ’57 Chevy. But he kept pushing up this hill. Each time Will took on Parish Hill, he made it a little farther. There were ten switchbacks. He’d managed six the other day before slowing to a walk. Someday, he’d run all the way to the top.

The town council meeting was tonight and Will had a lot of people to see beforehand. It had been a month since their permit and rezoning requests had been put on hold. A month of pulling together facts, drawing up blueprints and kissing up to residents who might support them. Tonight, he hoped he and his friends weren’t going to stand alone.

A sound behind Will had him spinning on the defensive. It wasn’t unheard of—if you believed local myth—for a mountain lion to attack out here. He cocked his arm back, ready to launch his only weapon besides his signal-less iPhone—a water bottle.

But it wasn’t a mountain lion behind him. It was Emma, legs churning pedals as she rounded the turn below. She wore black bike shorts and a tight blue flowered tank top, exposing most of her lithe limbs. Emma might have pulled off the professional racer look, if not for the uneven back and forth, near-tumbling way she worked the bike. And the way that she was smiling beneath a pink helmet decorated with daffodils and ladybugs.

Laughter filled the air—warm, unbidden and unexpected.

His, Will realized with a start, watching Emma close the gap between them.

He frowned, put his hands on his hips and told himself Emma hadn’t heard him laugh. He waited for her and what would certainly be another argument about visiting Tracy.

Instead of stopping at his side, Emma kept going. “See you at the top.” And then she laughed. To be sure, it was a ragged, I’m-breathing-hard kind of laugh. But she delivered it with an I’m-gonna-kick-your-butt jab.

Will spun and put his body through the motions of a jog. But the hill was steep and he’d lost momentum. His overheated muscles and aching joints responded to his commands in agonizing slow motion. Emma started to pull away, even though she couldn’t have been going much faster than he was. The next switchback seemed miles off.

Will refused to give up even as the distance between him and Emma stretched. Adrenaline blazed through his muscles until they shook and threatened to collapse. His lungs burned, each breath a fiery agony. One switchback.

Two.

This was as far as he’d ever gone without reducing the pace to a walk.

Emma was moving slower. She’d changed gears a few times, but Will was betting money she didn’t have any options left.

Switchback number seven loomed above. Emma was about fifteen feet ahead. She glanced over her shoulder at Will, never losing that hitching, awkward rhythm.

Emma was going to win. He could stop. He should stop. But to do so meant to surrender. To Emma?
Never.

And then she fiddled with her gearshift and her chain clicked in loud, stuttering protest. It clicked and clacked and then dropped to the pavement.