Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
This was why she did it. Every vendor email and volunteer spreadsheet and three AM logistics spiral and festival committee meeting that ran twenty minutes over — all of it dissolved the moment Dalene stood at the edge of the meadow and looked out at what it had become.
The checkered blankets covered the hill, red and white and blue and yellow, precise and warm in the afternoon light.
The fairy lights were already strung between the poles, waiting for the evening.
The vendor row hummed with the easy commerce of a town feeding itself well; apple cider and roasted corn and the lavender shortbread selling out for the third consecutive year.
Mrs. Patel stood beside her with her hands clasped and her face doing the thing it did at every festival — open and unguarded, all the post office efficiency set aside for the afternoon.
"Sixty-three years," Mrs. Patel said. "You've outdone yourself, Dalene. Your grandmother would be proud."
Felix was on her other side, arms folded, watching the vendor row with the professional interest of a man who appreciated good crowd flow. "The cider tent is pulling well. Smart placement this year."
Mrs. Chen had her notebook out. "Altocumulus clearing to the southwest. Good progression. Your weatherman was right in his forecast this morning."
Her weatherman. Dalene inhaled the words in, and exhaled a prayer that they might become true.
She'd listened to the broadcast after she'd slammed the door in Tristan's face.
Eliot had nailed the forecast. He looked so relaxed.
Such a change from his first day here when he'd been tense and frowny.
There had been an actual smile on his face and he looked like he was enjoying himself. But that's what Valor did to you.
Dalene looked back at the meadow. The children were everywhere.
A group of them had claimed the lower slope of the cloud-watching hill and were lying on their backs with their arms out, pointing at formations.
Near the activity tent, smaller children were making cloud shapes out of cotton wool and card stock at the craft table, pressing them onto blue paper with the total commitment of seven-year-olds making art.
One little girl had made something that was either a heart-shaped cloud or a rabbit, and was equally delighted with both interpretations.
Two boys were running between the blankets playing what appeared to be a game with no discernible rules but considerable enthusiasm.
Dalene loved all of it. She looked out across the meadow. That was when she saw them.
Tristan and Brooke were near the eastern edge, by the tree line. The body language between them had the tight, careful quality of two people having a conversation they'd been putting off. Brooke's arms were folded. Tristan's jaw was set. Neither of them was looking at the other's face.
Above them — directly above them, as though the sky had a sense of humor — a cloud moved through the afternoon light.
It was cumulus, soft-edged and mid-level, and as she watched, it drifted into a shape that was unmistakably cardiac.
Two rounded lobes, a clean taper at the base.
A heart, clear and slow and moving right over the spot where Tristan and Brooke stood not looking at each other.
Dalene stared at it. She thought about last year's festival.
A checkered blanket and Tristan's arm around her and a cloud just like that one moving over the valley while she'd thought: this is the sign.
She'd believed it so completely. She'd looked at that cloud and looked at that man and thought she knew exactly what she was being told.
Tristan said something. Brooke turned away from him. He reached for her arm. She walked toward the vendor row without looking back. Tristan stood at the edge of the meadow alone. The cloud drifted on. The heart dissolved into the afternoon sky.
Dalene looked toward the broadcast stage.
Her heart stopped. The way it had stopped this morning when she'd opened the door expecting Eliot and found Tristan.
The way it had stopped the first time Tristan had knocked on her door.
She felt it now, looking at Eliot across the meadow as he set up at the broadcast stage and she did not know what to believe.
Her heart had stopped for Tristan and it had been wrong. Her heart was stopping now, and she did not know what was on the other side of this one. Because Tristan was right. Eliot was going to leave one day.
Eliot looked up. Found her immediately, like she was a weather system he'd been tracking and her coordinates were simply known to him. He raised one hand.
She raised hers back. Her heart, for the record, did not stop again.
"Faking it, huh?"
Dalene turned to find Lila. She was standing two feet away with a cup of cider and the expression of a woman who had been watching for a while and had formed several conclusions.
"You're my best friend. I know what your fake smile looks like. I know what your real one looks like. That—" Lila gestured at the space between Dalene and the broadcast stage, "—does not look fake."
"It's complicated."
"Hmmm." Lila looked at her for a long moment.
The meadow moved around them — children running, blankets filling up, the afternoon light doing its golden late summer thing across the hill.
Somewhere behind them Betty Ann was audibly delighted about something.
Mrs. Chen was still writing in her notebook.
"I talked to him," Lila said.
Dalene didn't say who. She knew Lila well enough to know that the jig was up. "When?"
"This morning. After the broadcast." She wrapped both hands around her cider cup. "He told me about the arrangement."
"Lila—"
"I'm not going to tell anyone." She said it simply.
"That's not why I'm bringing it up." She looked at Dalene with the steady, unhurried affection of seven years of friendship.
"I'm bringing it up because I stood in a parking lot this morning and watched a man's face when he talked about you, and Dalene — It didn't look fake on his end either. "
Back at the weather stage, Eliot was talking to Miles, his back half-turned.
Dalene could see the set of his shoulders.
The way he tilted his head as though something interested him.
His sleeves were pushed to his elbow, showing off his strong forearms. Arms that had held her last night as she slept peacefully.
"He's leaving," Dalene said. "Eventually. He has a career. A life. He's going to get his slot back and…"
Lila took her hand. "I don't want to watch you get hurt again. You've done enough of that. So whatever this is — fake or real or something in between — just make sure you know what you're doing before the fair weather changes."