A mischievous glint graced his eyes, and if Anne weren’t so busy feeling conspired against, and a bit like an outsider, she might have laughed along with everyone else.
“Har har. Hey, I may be a lousy cook, but I’d never let my mommy go hungry. I remember how to dial for takeout. Was just thinking about doing it, too.”
She opened a cupboard and got down some dishes. Beverly insisted on setting the utensils on the table with her one good hand, making several extra trips in the process, Bart dogging her every step. Jocelyn took drink orders and Jack, well, he stood there looking gorgeous with his late afternoon stubble and super-starched pale blue pin-striped shirt that hadn’t a hint of a wrinkle.
He must have felt her studying gaze when he used his thumb to scratch his upper lip and glanced at the floor.
How was she going to share a meal with him and act casual? If he subscribed to the popular fallacy that time healed all wounds, she had some news for him. She sighed, then took her place at the table, deciding to beat everyone to the fresh-from-the-oven garlic rolls.
“Why do you volunteer with the fire department?” Anne had acted more like a journalist than an old friend throughout dinner. In between her barrage of questions, all neatly superficial, Jack had noticed she only picked at her food.
“California’s broke. Whispering Oaks depends on volunteers to make up for the shortage of firemen, and I guess it’s my way of giving back.”
Anne didn’t need clarification on what he was giving back for. How many times had Brianna been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance? The fire department had been first on scene the day she had collapsed at school, and at their prom …
“Sort of like the same reason you became a nurse,” her mother said.
“Brianna,” Anne said.
Okay, so she’d go first at naming the elephant in the room.
“Brianna,” he repeated just before taking a large swallow of his iced tea.
Her gaze met and held his for the briefest of moments, just long enough to confuse him and make him wish he could read her mind.
Seeing Anne’s eyes dance away each time he’d tried to engage them, gave him a clue that it wouldn’t be easy to convince her to spend some time with him. Just the two of them. He definitely needed to deliver that apology.
As dinner wound down, Jack decided to go for it, to take the sneaky route and make his move in front of an audience. If he hadn’t already committed to meeting the latest in a long string of computer-arranged compatible-dates.com, and if he hadn’t cancelled on this particular lady before, he would ask Anne out for coffee tomorrow night. Now, he needed to come up with something else, and fast.
“Anne, you feel like going for a hike to Boulder Peak for old time’s sake this Saturday morning?” he said, knowing it had once been one of their favorite places to hang out.
She blinked a half dozen times and wiped her mouth before answering. “Oh, that sounds great, but I can’t. I’m taking Mom to get her hair and nails done. Right?” His spin ball got deflected with the precision of Venus Williams.
“We can do it another day,” Beverly said, a sheepish look in her eyes as she took a dainty bite of wing.
“But you want to look nice when Dad comes home. You told me yourself.”
“I can take her,” Jocelyn piped in.
The expression on Anne’s face could be described as mortified, but Jack decided not to focus on the negative. She could protest all she wanted, but apparently the team was on his side.
He smiled. “Then I’ll pick you up at eight.”
Friday evening, Anne propped up her mother’s arm, made sure everything she could want was within reach, and armed with her mother’s long grocery list, she set out to do some shopping. Bart sat in the family room attentively at Beverly’s side watching over her.
On the drive home odd tidbits from life elbowed their way into Anne’s mind. She drove down familiar streets, each with a memory attached, and having spent so much time with her mother and spoken to both her brother and sister yesterday, everything seemed to invite reflection.
She hadn’t minded getting knocked off the pedestal when Lucas had come along. She enjoyed having a brother … at first. Mom kept calling her the “big girl,” even though she wasn’t sure she liked the new title or what it meant. As Lucas got older, she discovered she could make him laugh, and Mom was happy about that, so she did it a lot. He was a good laugher back then. Now? Not so much.
Though they hadn’t seen each other in three years, they occasionally spoke on the phone and emailed back and forth on a regular basis. Lately, Lucas’s take on life seemed so cynical, and it worried her. She missed her brother and couldn’t wait to see him. Besides, the sooner he got home, the sooner she could go back to Portland and her new job.
She cruised past her old grammar school and its single-story 1950s blah architecture, the place where her mother still taught fourth grade. A thousand more memories crowded her head. How many times had she defended Lucas when he’d gotten into trouble there? Early on they’d teamed up and stayed united when it was apparent Lark could do no wrong. Maybe he could use someone in his corner these days too, and she shouldn’t rush off right after he got here.
Coming home put a bittersweet taste in her mouth with so many landmarks holding memories. She drove past the park where she used to play and thought how when Lark came along she’d been five and it felt as if Mom had sent her to school just so she could be alone with her little brother and baby sister.
When Lark was a baby, she had fluffy white hair, and she didn’t have to say one word to get Mom and Dad to smile, all she had to do was be there. Anne learned if she read her books out loud, Dad would clap his hands, so she read everything she could find aloud, and knew early on the importance of being a high achiever.
So why was Lark the one in med school?
She huffed a breath and glanced toward the sky. Let it go, Anne. You’re thirty and you’re an adult. If you want to go to medical school, you can apply. Truth was, she liked being a nurse, and back when she’d taken the MCATs and had scored well, her parents simply didn’t have the money or the desire to take out humongous loans. She couldn’t blame them. When Lark was ready to apply to college, they owned their home and Dad’s Great Aunt Tessa had left him a windfall in her will. If there was one thing Anne had learned, it was that life wasn’t fair and timing ruled the day and it was a futile task to try to figure out why anything worked the way it did.
What more proof did she need than her best friend dying shortly after her eighteenth birthday, just before graduating?
She drove past the Whispering Oaks Gymnastics Center, which used to be nothing more than a huge garage with mats, and remembered her mother waiting for her during class. It occurred to her that when her mother was her age, she had already had three kids. Not that Anne wanted three kids, but the possibility of a boyfriend at thirty would be nice. Her dating history had been anything but a success, with the last real relationship ending over a year ago. Somewhere along the line she’d figured her miserable excuse for a love life was likely because somewhere deep inside she still carried a torch for Jack.
Must all thoughts lead back to Jack?
The streets seemed more crowded than when she’d left, and there were strip malls on far too many corners. There seemed to be fewer trees, too. At least the surrounding hills hadn’t changed. She’d missed them. In the distance she could see Boulder Peak jutting its rocky nose above the hilltop, and immediately tried to divert her thoughts away from the invitation to hike there. With Jack. Jack. Again, thoughts about Jack.
What would it be like to spend time with him? She’d much prefer to dodge the whole thing, but everyone had plotted against her and she’d had no way out. Maybe she could sprain her ankle