A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [20]
“You’re finally getting a chance to paint full-time, just like you always wanted,” he said. “You’re going to have gallery owners beating a path to your door.”
She smiled. “I don’t know about that. But there aren’t too many times in life you get a chance to go after a dream. This is mine.”
He nodded. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you, Shep.”
“I remember that weekend we spent in Charleston. You did some fabulous paintings there.”
Back in those days, he had been the principal at the school where she taught. She had been madly in love with him for almost a year before he noticed. It had taken another three years for him to finally convince her he would never make a commitment. A month after she had accepted a teaching position in another school, he announced he was engaged to be married—to someone else, of course.
She said, “Actually, I only took photos. I never travel with painting supplies.”
He looked surprised. “Are you sure? I distinctly remember you painting the bridge at Magnolia Gardens.”
“That’s a pretty popular scene to paint. But I never got around to it.”
“Not even a sketch?”
“Not even.”
“Funny how the mind can play tricks.”
“I guess.”
“Anyway, you’re going to be great. And I’m envious.”
She said, “I’m a lucky woman,” and meant it.
She sipped her wine. He said, after a time, “I love the Shenandoah Valley.”
“Me, too.”
“Maybe I’ll drive up some weekend, after you get settled.” Still the same bedroom eyes.
Damn him to hell.
“We’d love to have you,” she said. “How is Estelle, anyway?”
He flinched. “Still in rehab.”
“Oh.” She did not look away. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He gave her an apologetic smile. It was another one of his tricks, that little quirk of the lips, half begging, half flirting, that used to work every time. “It just seems so strange, knowing you won’t be here. That I’ll never bump into you on the street again, or see you at a soccer game or band recital. That . . . you just won’t be here.”
That almost got her. Suddenly she found herself thinking about all the things that simply wouldn’t be there anymore. The familiar desk in room 312, the giant hemlock in her backyard, the eighty-year-old clerk at the Shop-and-Go who always gave her the wrong change. The Cineplex, the creaky board in her bedroom closet, the teller at the bank who called her “Miss Wright” because three of her four children had been in Lindsay’s class, cranky old Mr. Daughtery who lived on the corner and refused to clip his overgrown hedges despite the fact that they were a traffic hazard . . . she had lived here for twenty-three years. What was she thinking?
Shep reached out, lightly touched her arm. “We were good together, Linds,” he said softly. “Whatever happened to us?”
She looked at his fingers on her bare arm for a long time, and slowly the panic that had begun to gather in her chest dissipated. She looked at his face. She smiled. “You got married,” she said, “and I got smart.”
She glanced over his shoulder, and saw Cici and Bridget standing across the room. They raised their glasses to her, and she returned the salute. “It was great talking to you, Shep. Now,” she said, turning her smile back to him, “if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the party.”
Delores and her secretary, Sheryl, were waiting for them in the media/game room downstairs, where the baize card table had been claimed as a temporary office. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she declared as they came in, “so I can get back to what I do best—drinking.”
Years of chain-smoking had given the attorney’s voice a gravelly tenor, and she had a habit of chewing on the tip of her pen when cigarettes were not an option. Her spiked silver hair and crocodile-tanned skin spoke of a woman who wasn’t afraid of living, and her shrewd black eyes didn’t miss a trick. She had handled Cici’s divorce, Jim’s estate, and Lindsay’s contract dispute when she left her former school system early due to the aforementioned incident with Shep. She was a woman who knew how to get things