Five

“Wow.”

Shimmery, honey-colored hair fell softly. . .little black earrings dangled from her ears. And polka dots. . .they seemed to make a statement. Seth held out the flowers, knowing he was supposed to say something more than just “wow” but having trouble getting beyond that single syllable. This shouldn’t be that hard. He talked for a living. “You look beautiful.”

She appeared to be in shock. He couldn’t decipher if it was good shock or bad shock. He held out the box of garbage bags. “I owe you an apology.”

The color washed from her face. Her lips parted. “What are you doing here?”

He smiled, trying charm, though he wasn’t sure he possessed enough to thaw April Douglas. “I’m your escort for the evening.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t. Not with you. It just. . .” Tears welled in her eyes. “No.” The door closed.

Seth stared at the door, confusion tangling his thoughts. What had he done to deserve that? He’d picked up the garbage, and he’d apologized. What was wrong with the woman? Still clutching the flowers, he went down the stairs and out into the parking lot.

He was loosening his tie and debating whether he should throw the flowers under his back tire, when hurried footsteps made him turn around.

“Wait!” A short, forty-something woman dressed in pink toddled toward him. A gasplike sound escaped, and she stopped abruptly. “Oh.”

He returned her wide-eyed gaze.

“Oh. . . ,” she repeated. A sigh of apparent disappointment followed. “You’re April’s date.”

“I was supposed to be. And you are. . . ?”

“Her aunt. Did she. . .” Her round face crunched into a grimace. “Was she really upset?”

Seth tilted his head to the side. “Yes, as a matter of fact, she was.”

“Under the circumstances, Mr. Bachelor, I can’t imagine you expected anything different.”

“What ‘circumstances’? Is she mad because I taped her idiotic climb up the water tower or because the brakes on my ATV failed? Neither are really criminal offenses. Does your niece have a habit of holding ridiculous grudges?”

The little woman’s fingers flew to her mouth. “Oh,” she said for the third time. “You don’t know.”

“Know what?”

The woman’s top teeth pressed into her bottom lip. “Wait here.”

Before Seth had a chance to wonder if he even wanted to, she walked away, disappearing into the building.

❧

“No.”

April pulled the backs off her earrings and threw them at the coffee table.

“April Jean, the poor man doesn’t have a clue what happened. You owe him an explanation for the way you acted and—”

“Owe him? I don’t owe him anything. I owe Yvonne a kick in the shin with her own stinkin’ shoes! I bet she’s not even sick!” She dropped into her bentwood rocker. Midge knelt on the floor in front of her.

“This might be a step in the healing process.” Her voice was low and soft, the voice that had whispered over April on so many sleepless nights.

“Maybe I’ll talk to him sometime. Not tonight.”

A gentle smile curved Aunt Midge’s mouth. “You don’t want to miss Riverdance. And it wouldn’t be any fun to go alone.”

“You’ll go with me.”

“I can’t, honey. I have to clean the bank tonight. Yvonne would feel terrible for letting you down if you didn’t go.” When April didn’t answer, her aunt picked up both of her hands. “Do it for Caitlyn, honey.”

April pulled a hand free and wiped her face. “You do guilt as well as Mom. Only nicer.”

“So you’ll talk to him?”

Covering her face with her hands, April moaned. “Okay. I’ll talk to him. But I’m going to Riverdance alone.”

“I’ll send him up.” Midge got up from her knees, walked to the door, and exited, leaving the apartment door wide open. April listened to the downstairs door close and waited for the creak of footsteps ascending the stairs. A car horn blared from Main Street, a security alarm that wouldn’t stop. The noise jangled April’s frayed nerves. Her heart rate began to double-time. She didn’t want to do this. Nothing she said would change a thing. April didn’t subscribe to the idea that wounds needed to be reopened to heal.

The alarm stopped. In the silence, she heard the steps groan. In seconds, Seth stood in the doorway.

“May I come in?”

April nodded.

He set the flowers and the trash bags on the coffee table and sat on the couch. He rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers. Waiting.

Clasping her trembling hands, April took a deep breath. Staring into his eyes, the anger seemed to seep out of her, taking with it her strength. Weak and tired, she wanted only to crawl beneath the blanket on the couch. “Do you remember—last year—you took two high school students out to. . .chase a storm?”

He looked puzzled. “A buddy and I do talks to science classes on a regular basis, and several times a year, we take a couple of kids out with us. We’re really just tracking, watching cloud formations, measuring barometric changes, not chasing. I’d never put kids in danger.”

The anger returned, like starch to limp fabric. Every muscle in April’s body tightened. “You put my sister in danger.”

“What?” He leaned forward.

“Last year, in October, you took three kids out with you. One was my sister.” Her eyes narrowed. “The one with the bald head.”

Seth’s hands separated, turning palms up. “I remember her.”

“Do you remember getting caught in a hailstorm?”

A slight smile showed a dimple she hadn’t noticed before. “Of course. But there really wasn’t any danger. We were standing in an open field, no trees, no power lines. The storm hit us sooner than I’d expected, so we got wet, but there wasn’t any lightning. The hail was small, and we made it to an overpass before it really started coming down. The kids loved it. We were all laughing hysterically.” His hands lifted several inches off his knees. “There was never any danger.”

April gripped the curved sides of the rocking chair. Her fingers bit into the wood. “Caitlyn wasn’t strong enough.” A picture of her sister’s thin frame and pale face flashed in her mind. “Wasn’t it obvious that she wasn’t healthy?”

His lips parted then closed. He stared at her for several long seconds. “I thought she might have been anorexic, and she was wearing a hat, so other than how thin she was, we didn’t know there was anything wrong with her when we first met her. Besides, that wasn’t our call to make. We won’t take a kid without a parental permission slip.”

“What?” That wasn’t the way April had heard it. She started to say that her mother would never have given Caitlyn permission to go but stopped. What Caitlyn wanted, Caitlyn got. It had always been that way.

“What happened? She was fine when we dropped the kids off at the school.” Seth’s quiet voice interrupted her thoughts.

“She got pneumonia. She died five weeks later.”

Seth’s eyes closed for several seconds. He shook his head slowly. “I’m so sorry, April.”

Once again, the simmering anger that had been a constant white noise in the back of her mind for so many months drained away. “It wasn’t. . .like you said, it wasn’t your responsibility.” He didn’t try to fill the silence. April was grateful for that. She stared at her fish, nose to nose in their separate bowls. “I’ve been a real jerk to you.”

Seth smiled. “Hey, you haven’t exactly seen the best side of me.” His voice was soft and soothing, a voice more suited for late-night radio than a weather show. “We could make it up to each other by going to see Riverdance.”

A jumble of conflicting emotions littered April’s mind. Her mother had given permission for Caitlyn to go on the storm watch. Yet couldn’t Seth and his friend have seen, just from looking at her, that she wasn’t up to it? She thought of the way Seth had described it—Caitlyn running from the rain, laughing, breathless, thoroughly enjoying the moment. All this time, she’d silently accused those two men of taking Caitlyn’s life. Caitlyn hadn’t seen it that way, hadn’t once placed any blame on them, nor had she ever expressed any regret for going along. Was it possible that they’d really given her something—a taste of real life, momentary freedom from the constraints of a disease that would probably have won eventually?

April stared at Seth, her answer to his suggestion changing with every tick of the clock. You haven’t exactly seen the best of me, he’d said. She was seeing the best of him now, as he waited, nothing but concern in his eyes. But the other side, the one that had snapped sarcastic answers to her interview questions—how long would it be until she saw that face again? Thanks to her father, she’d experienced more anger in her twenty-six years than some people deal with in a lifetime. Her fear of it was justified.

Do not fear, for I am with you. . . . The Bible verse whispered over the tumbling thoughts. She’d climbed the water tower. She’d made a vow not to let fear run her life. If for no other reason, she could do this for Caitlyn. Looking up into dark eyes that seemed to say he’d give her all the time she needed, she ran her fingertips across her bottom lashes. She didn’t want to miss Riverdance. And it was only one night out of her life. “I guess we could.”

❧

Seth stood up, needing something to do while he waited for April to fix her makeup. He panned the small apartment, taking in details that gave clues about the woman who’d done the decorating.

Two round fishbowls occupied a small white table. In each, a single fish, purplish blue with deep red fins waving gracefully, floated near the top of the water, facing the other.

Over the worn blue couch hung a large framed photograph. He recognized it immediately. “Itasca,” he said out loud. The headwaters of the Mississippi River. The picture showed a narrow stream dotted with rocks. In that spot, you could wade across the Mississippi.

April walked out of the bathroom, her mascara no longer smudging her eyes. Again, the word “wow” surfaced. He turned back to the picture. “I haven’t been there since I was a kid.”

“I love that place.” There was reverence in her voice. “When I was about twelve, I wrote in the lodge guest book that I’d be back on my honeymoon.”

“Douglas Lodge. . .any relation to you?”

“It was named for Attorney General Wallace B. Douglas, who was a great, great, great something of mine.”

“So they should let you stay there free on your honeymoon.”

April made eye contact for a split second. “By the time I was sixteen, my goals had changed. I wrote in the lodge book that I was going to become a park ranger and live at Itasca State Park. I actually took some classes in natural resource management before I switched to broadcasting.”

Seth angled toward her. “What made you change your mind?”

“The money.”

He laughed. “You forget; I’m an insider.”

She smiled, but there was still something rigid about her expression. “Speaking of which, who’s doing the weather tonight?”

“A friend of mine. . .” My storm-chasing friend who was also with your sister in the hailstorm. The thought brought the storm scene into focus again. He may have witnessed Caitlyn Douglas’s last experience of enjoying life. “. . . a friend from college. He’s filled in for me before.”

April nodded, her eyes fixed on the picture. He studied her, only too aware of his lack of wisdom where women were concerned. His last relationship had ended much like the two Siamese fighting fish glaring at each other in their separate bowls. Opening both hands, he postured what he hoped was a peacemaking gesture. “I know we got off to a really bad start. . . .”

That wasn’t what he’d wanted to say. Now he was giving the impression that he wanted to “start” something. “I’m really sorry about the whole water tower thing. . . . From now on, I’ll leave the drama to you reporters.” Her smile seemed real yet somehow guarded. He gestured toward the flowers and the box of garbage bags. “And I’m sorry about the garbage pile. The brakes really did fake out on me.”

“I believe you.”

“Could we maybe start from scratch? A whole new beginning?”

“I. . .guess so.”

Seth extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Seth Bachelor.”

She took his hand. “April Douglas. Thank you. . .for the flowers.”