DISTRACTED, LUCIA DROVE for at least an hour before she finally remembered the correct route to town. Her hunger refused to subside. What was one more detour before the farmer’s market? Lucia crossed the street without looking and headed for the bakery. Stress had often sent Lucia to some of the finest bakeries in New York City for French pastries and desserts. A fight with Jonah equaled a puff with rich, creamy filling, and a rejection from her agent for a dog food commercial or a lead in a B-rated play qualified her for two champagne glasses filled with chocolate mousse and homemade whipped cream, with a raspberry on top. She couldn’t buy a classic strawberry tart at the Quartz Hollow Bakery, but she could at least find a homemade cinnamon roll and a cup of black coffee.
No one recognized her, so she ordered a half dozen cinnamon rolls and the largest coffee they had on the menu. Most people were out rafting, hiking, working the shops, or farming at this time of day, so Lucia was one of the few customers. The entire place smelled like vanilla and coffee beans, and a few other people sat around the shop reading tablets or the Quartz Hollow Gazette newspaper.
With her white bag of cinnamon-scented stress relief in one hand and black coffee in the other, Lucia left through the glass door, a small brass chime dinging on her way out. She took a left down the sun-drenched sidewalk. The Blue Ridge Mountains, with their deep periwinkle hue; smooth, rolling curves; and perfect visibility loomed in the far distance of Main Street. She understood for a moment why people born here rarely left and why people traveled from all over the world to hike these majestic mountains. Lucia remembered running errands around town as a little girl and encountering filthy, sweaty, hairy women and men who had just stepped off the Virginia highlands section of the Appalachian Trail. They came to Quartz Hollow to shower and eat and pick up packages in town, and if they arrived at just the right time, they swooned over a scent they didn’t recognize from their journey. Hikers often asked locals to name it—a few had even asked Willow—but everyone answered with a shrug.
The local farmer’s market awaited her at the end of the road, and it was bound to have local sour cherries. She took an enormous bite out of a warm cinnamon roll. As she chewed she tried to convince herself that the cloud above Mya was a result of sleep deprivation and a severe lack of coffee. Lucia couldn’t see anything coming. Not a death, not the end of a career, not even the demise of her marriage. But the cloud had moved. Since it had appeared, Lucia couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling it produced. Why now? The family gifts presented in childhood, not when you were thirty-three years old. But what if this was real? What if she’d finally had a vision? For the first time in her entire life Lucia no longer felt like the deformed one in the family.
Inside the open-air market, Lucia scanned the stalls. One table had baskets filled with local blushing cherries. Lucia picked up the taut fruits and gently pushed her thumb into the pink flesh to check their ripeness, then she popped one in her mouth just to be sure. Perfectly sour and juicy. Since Mya hadn’t asked for a specific amount, Lucia filled the offered grocery bag to the maximum. How she would carry this bag plus her rolls and coffee, she didn’t quite know, but she wasn’t willing to sacrifice any of it. Just as she was about to double-bag the fruit, she heard a man’s voice say, “Lucia Lenore?”
Her stomach dropped like an elevator. The familiar voice made her afraid to turn around, but she did. With one arm cradling the cherries like a newborn, Lucia said, “Ben?”
She couldn’t quite believe that Ben White was standing there, back in Quartz Hollow, right in front of her after so many years. And Lucia hadn’t taken a shower this morning. She also held an unusually large bag of cherries and an unnecessarily large bag of cinnamon rolls.
“Look at you,” Ben said. He didn’t even try the stock phrases like “You look great” or “Wow, you haven’t changed a bit.” Just “Look at you,” like he might say “Look at that rhinoceros” at the zoo. If only she could say the same to him, but he did look great. His thin, lanky, and sinewy teenage body had filled out into a man’s physique. Bigger muscles, broader shoulders. But his face had remained just as youthful as ever, framed now by a handsome beard. He had genial brown eyes, sandy blond hair, and skin that tanned easily and was already on its way to that cinnamon color. He had a strong and pronounced jaw that she had kissed many times. It was incredibly awkward. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you,” Lucia said, and immediately felt like an idiot.
“Me either.” Ben took off his gloves and wiped the sweat from his brow. He pointed to a truck behind the market stalls and said, “I deliver here once a week, right around now. Good timing.”
“Imagine that.” Lucia took one step back. She hadn’t seen him in fifteen years and now he was two feet away from her, the smell of him so familiar it shocked her. A salty smell mixed with soil.
“I see your mom sometimes. She didn’t say anything about you coming to town,” Ben said, smiling like he was happily misinformed.
“I’m not.” Lucia swallowed. “I mean, I am obviously, but just for a short visit. Like a day or two.” Lucia knew her mother had a lot going on with business matters, but a casual comment about Ben White’s residence in Quartz Hollow would’ve been appreciated.
“You never did visit,” Ben said. “Everything okay?”
Lucia nodded, not wanting to list the many things not okay in her world. “So you live here now?”
“A sabbatical. I’ve got an organic farm near my mom’s.”
“Sounds nice.”
“You got married, right?” he asked timidly, perhaps taking notice of her bare ring finger displayed prominently on the grocery bag of cherries.
“I did,” Lucia said. “But that ended. Recently.”
“That’s too bad,” Ben said. “I’m sorry.”
The pain in her chest refused to dissipate. She couldn’t bring herself to use the word “divorce.” She might as well have stapled the word “failure” to her back. Lucia glanced around for the stall owner. Ben whistled at a short man in overalls standing at a nearby stall with an elderly woman who sold canned relishes and goat’s milk soaps. The man walked over and patted Ben on the back. Lucia placed a twenty on the table. He broke her change and thanked her.
Lucia said, “Thanks,” to Ben.
“No problem. I better go,” Ben said, and nodded at his truck. Why, of all days, would she see Ben White, and did he have to be so damn attractive?
“It was nice seeing you, good luck with your farm.” Lucia picked up her coffee and forced a smile before she turned and walked back up Main Street. She hustled down the sidewalk until she heard a truck slowing down beside her.
Ben rolled down the window on his red Ford pickup and said, “You dropped some fruit.”
Lucia stopped right before Blue Ridge Books and looked behind her at the trail of cherries. She lifted the bag above her head to find the hole in the bottom, and then the entire bag ripped open, raining cherries on the pavement. Ben parked his truck and hopped out with a potato sack. She bent down to scoop up the bruised fruit with him, and now their faces were only inches apart. Ben looked at her, his big eyes so happy to see her, and she felt sixteen again, just for a moment. He wiped his palms on his ripped jeans and they stood up together. He handed her the sack.
“Thanks,” she said.
Ben’s hand didn’t let go of the bag; her face flushed like one of those cherries.
Ben said, “I want to hear all about New York, before you go back.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Then I want to hear about that.”
He wasn’t giving her a choice in the matter. “I guess you could come by the cabin.”
“Will Mya be there?” He sounded like he was hoping she’d say no.
Lucia refused to look him in the eye as she nodded. “You should come anyway. It’s been a long time. I’ll make dinner and maybe we can go for a hike.” Already she was saying the wrong things to him. Lucia didn’t know how to cook, and she couldn’t remember the last time she went on a hike.
“Tomorrow’s good for me.”
“Five thirty?”
“Is six okay? Gives me time to shower.”
“Sure.” Lucia hoped he wasn’t making a polite suggestion about her lack of hygiene today. She held the sack of cherries to her chest and watched him trot back to his truck. An azure dragonfly landed between his shoulder blades like the hand of a dear friend and traveled with him to the road. Ben had no idea. He turned once and waved good-bye to her. She worried he’d squish the bug against his seat, but then a second dragonfly swooped down and grazed Ben’s shoulder, and the duo circled each other like they were dancing and flew across the road together before Ben had the chance to close his door. Lucia stood there and stared at this figment of her past, the boy he once was still present in the man he had become. She stared until Ben pulled out into the slow traffic of Main Street.
Lucia replayed her entire trip to town, almost minute by minute, on her drive home. She chastised herself for buying so many of those cinnamon rolls, for dropping the fruit, for not having showered, and for saying things like “That ended” instead of “I’m divorced.” Why did she hide from him? He’d been her best friend at one point in her life, and more than a decade had passed between then and now, plenty of time to relieve the hurts. He’d forgiven her for breaking his heart—that seemed obvious to Lucia—and she had no reason to skirt the truth about her life. Yet she knew if the same situation recurred, she would hedge just the same.
Memories of young love materialize from the slightest provocations, and this alone had created tension between Lucia and Ben. Standing with him in the market had forced her to remember that he’d been the only boy she loved. He could name the world, every flower, every tree, every insect in their forests, and he obsessed over it. Lucia was attracted to his focus and spontaneity, and how he chronicled their hikes and camping trips in letters and dropped them in her purse from time to time. He was the kind of boy who stopped if he walked past two dandelion weeds in the field and picked them, entwined them, and presented them as a symbol of Lucia and Ben. Flowers were his specialty, and he loved to give her bouquets of wild roses after her high school theater performances, for which he never missed a rehearsal.
He first asked her on a date after the closing night of Our Town. She’d always known about Ben White, had watched him play soccer and heard what an ace he was at science, but she’d never spoken to him. Lucia could still picture him sitting in the first row of the empty auditorium after the final performance. She’d wondered if he was lost or waiting for one of her friends to come out from the dressing room. She was pretty certain she’d asked him both of those questions, but instead of answering, he stood up, presented her with a bouquet, and asked her to go on a hike with him the next afternoon. Apparently, he’d wanted to ask her out for an entire year but hadn’t mustered the courage. He’d attended every performance of Our Town because he’d been struck by the beauty of her hair beneath the stage lights. She agreed to go on a hike with him, and he introduced her to the Cascades, the famed waterfalls in Quartz Hollow, which quickly became their favorite make-out spot. A beautiful place to visit, and Lucia promised herself she’d stop there for a hike before she returned to the city, if she could remember the directions.
Lucia pulled into the long, winding driveway canopied with treetops that led to the cabin. After being married for so many long years, she had completely forgotten what going on a first date felt like, or even a platonic dinner. Maybe it felt like being a child on the upswing of a seesaw or a final yellow maple leaf on an autumn branch. Her history with Ben had long since passed, and she was glad he wanted to catch up as old friends.
She walked through the front door of the cabin and found it silent. “Hello?” Lucia said, but no one answered. Her mother’s assistant, Brenda, had placed the mail on the center island, and on the very top was an envelope addressed to Mya from Zoe Bennett. Lucia placed the bag of cherries on the table and removed her sunglasses. Lucia placed her pinkie finger in the small gap on the seal, too tempted to put it down. The sound of the screen door opening in the back of the cabin made Lucia drop the letter, and then her mother walked into the kitchen with a bouquet of wildflowers. Lucia held the letter up for her mother. “What’s that?” Willow said.
Lucia didn’t want to tell her. Willow looked more relaxed than she had since Lucia arrived.
Willow exchanged the flowers for the mail, and Lucia found a vase in the cabinet above the stove and filled it with tap water.
“Where’s Mya?” her mother said.
“I’m not sure,” Lucia said.
Willow secured Zoe’s correspondence between her hands and left the kitchen without another word.