Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dalene woke up rested. She lay still for a moment, taking stock of everything. The ceiling fan whirling happily above her. The morning light coming soft through the curtains. The absence of the gritty, compressed feeling behind her eyes that had become so familiar with the insomnia.
Fleetwood Mac was still playing. Dreams, low and unhurried from the kitchen speaker, the playlist having cycled through the night and come back around a few times. She'd fallen asleep to it. She couldn't remember the last time she'd fallen asleep to anything except her own thoughts.
She lay there and let herself remember last night.
Eliot had walked her home from the market.
They'd reached the garden gate and stopped, neither of them quite ready to call the evening done.
She'd said something about Fleetwood Mac — she couldn't remember exactly what, only that it had led to him pulling out his phone and playing The Chain in the late summer air, tinny through the small speaker.
She'd answered with Gold Dust Woman. They'd gone back and forth like that, song for song, standing at the gate until it was too late to keep standing there.
She'd gone inside. And then, through the wall, she'd heard it — his own music, low and muffled, meeting hers through the plaster. Not the same song. Just — present. Both of them on their own sides of the wall, in their own spaces, listening to each other listening.
She'd fallen asleep like that. She'd dreamed of lavender. Now she got up, turned off the playlist, and got ready to face the day.
The Eliot affect was immediate. As Dalene stepped out onto Main Street, the faces were different. Mrs. Kowalski, coming out of the post office, smiled at her and simply said "good morning." No head tilt. No careful eyes. Just good morning.
Gerald from the hardware store was unlocking his door. He looked up. "Hey, Dalene. That fella of yours called it right this morning. Forecast said clouds with a chance of a storm by afternoon. Looked at the sky this morning and sure enough." He nodded upward. "Something's building."
She looked up. Cumulonimbus. Tall, dark-based and building at the top into the anvil shape that meant business. Not yet, but by afternoon, the rain would fall.
Two more people mentioned the forecast before she reached the bakery. By the time Dalene had the door open Betty Ann was already coming around the counter.
"There she is." Betty Ann took both her hands. Squeezed them. Looked at her face. "You look rested."
Dalene opened her mouth, but closed it almost immediately. She knew it would be pointless to try to get a word in edge-wise.
"I knew it, you know. The moment he walked in and said those things about the scones.
Men like that don't insult things they're not paying attention to.
He was paying attention." Betty Ann set a lavender shortbread on the counter and then paused, reconsidered, and added a second one.
"You have so much in common. The science and the weather.
You don't have to pretend to like sports. "
"I do like sports."
Betty Ann tilted her head to the side at the obvious lie.
"I like cheering for my students."
Betty Ann nodded at that tidbit of truth. "You look happy. I haven't seen you look happy in a long time. He did that."
Had Eliot put the smile on her face? He definitely made her feel relaxed, at peace, comfortable in her own skin. Tristan had always made her feel a little uncertain. She'd always been trying to anticipate his needs, wait for his call, try to guess what he was feeling.
Eliot wasn't like that. He said what was on his mind. Told her what he was going to do. And then did it.
Lila was in the corner booth. She had a coffee and a croissant. She was looking at her best friend like a lioness lying in wait.
Dalene slid into the seat across from her. Outside, a cloud's shadow moved across the street. The light shifted. Somewhere above Valor the cumulonimbus was doing what cumulonimbus clouds did, which was build and build and build until something gave way.
"Spill," Lila demanded.
"I like him," Dalene said.
"That much is clear."
"It's not—" She stopped. Started again. "It's complicated."
"Willoughby or Colonel Brandon?"
Dalene looked up from her folded hands. "What?"
"Eliot." Lila wrapped both hands around her coffee. "Is he a Willoughby or a Colonel Brandon?"
The thing about Lila was that she had a literature degree and saw the world in novels and characters. Shades of gray and morally gray characters were of no interest to her. You were either good or bad, a hero or a villain, a Darcy or a Wickham, a Willoughby or a Colonel Brandon.
"You're going to make me do Sense and Sensibility right now."
"I'm a librarian. It's on brand." Lila settled back in the booth.
"Is Eliot Brookes like Willoughby who shows up charming and attentive and says everything right.
Makes you feel chosen. Makes you feel seen.
And then he leaves for another woman? Or is he Colonel who always shows up, standing in the rain when nobody asked him to be, and carries you out of the storm even if you're in love with another man? "
Dalene took a deep breath and let it out slow. When her life choices were put that way, it did make it all clear. Tristan was clearly a Willoughby. But was Eliot a Brandon? He certainly came into Dalene's life as a Darcy.
She thought about a man who had said clearly, explicitly, with no ambiguity whatsoever: end of the festival, clean stop.
"He's here temporarily," Dalene admitted, breaking her promise to Eliot. Because he was only going to be around for a little while. Lila would be here forever. "Eliot has a career to get back to. We're just being casual."
There, she didn't tell their secret entirely. But she had managed to couch it in a reality of truth. Because if she was honest with herself, she wished Eliot would put roots down here in Valor and they could try for something real.
Dalene broke off a piece of Lila's shortbread and did not eat it. Eliot had gotten one thing wrong, the lavender in this shortbread was the perfect amount. But would he want to kiss her with the taste of it on her tongue?
Didn't matter. They likely would not be kissing. Not with Gemma Lark's article coming out soon and Eliot getting his image rehabilitated. She wouldn't be surprised if the network was already booking his flight back.
Outside, a different cloud shadow moved across the street. The light went from gold to grey and back. The cumulonimbus was still building.
Lila drained the last of her coffee and reached for her bag. "I have to get to the library. Last week of summer camp. Back to school week is coming and I have seventeen children who have been promised a reading fair and one librarian who has to make that happen."
She came around the table, leaned down, and kissed Dalene on the cheek.
"Betty Ann is right, you look happy," she said quietly. "You deserve a Jane Austen ending, Dalene. The whole thing. The hero who matches you."
Dalene smiled up at her. "Go organize your reading fair."
Lila squeezed her shoulder and walked out into the morning.
Dalene sat with the remains of the shortbread and the warm, quiet hum of Betty Ann's bakery and watched the street through the window. Miraculously, Betty Ann left her alone. So did her neighbors who came in and out.
A little earlier than predicted, the sky opened up.
It came the way Eliot had said it would, all at once, the cumulonimbus delivering on everything it had been building toward all morning.
Rain hit the window in a solid sheet. The street emptied in thirty seconds.
People ran for doorways and awnings and wherever cover was nearest.
Tristan appeared outside the window, rain coming down on his shoulders, jacket darkening at the collar. No umbrella in sight. He came into the bakery shaking rain from his sleeves, running a hand through his wet hair.
"We need to talk," he said.
"We don't, actually." Dalene kept her voice warm. Even. The voice she used for parent-teacher conferences involving difficult news. "And you probably shouldn't be sitting alone with your ex-girlfriend without your fiancée knowing about it."
Tristan's jaw tightened. "Brooke and I are—" He stopped. "We're going through something right now."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
He leaned forward, getting into her personal space as though he still had rights to it. "I think I've made a mistake."
Dalene leaned back in her chair. Crossed her arms over her chest. "Which mistake? The mistake of leaving your first love the first time? Or the mistake of leaving me to go back to her?"
"Don't be like that. This is hard. I'm going through a very confusing time and I just — I need a friend. Someone to talk to. You were always the person I could talk to."
Dalene thought about all the times she had been that person.
All the evenings she had listened and advised and made tea and stayed up late because Tristan needed to talk and she had been there, reliably, warmly, entirely, because that was what she did.
She gave people what they needed. Most of the time people gave back in return.
But had Tristan ever given her what she needed?
Dalene opened her mouth, but it wasn't her words that came out.
"I'm going to have to stop you there, Tracey."
The voice came from the doorway. Eliot came in from the rain without a drop on him. He was carrying an umbrella; a large one with the wingspan of a small aircraft. He folded it and rested it by the door. The rain drops ran in a singular stream and settled in the crack that lead out the door.
"If you're having problems," Eliot said, looking at Tristan with the calm, direct attention of a man delivering a forecast, "you need to talk to a friend. Not my girlfriend."