Dreaming August (18 page)

“Holy sh—” He turned in her arms without stepping out of them. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” she said over the tractor engine and the cheering. His happiness was surprised, and sincere. Benny wanted to kiss him so badly.
Just be, Benny. Just be.
So she did.

Dan stiffened and relaxed almost in the same moment. Benny smiled against his lips. She did not care who saw them or what they thought, or repeated. Reclaiming this small, rebellious piece of herself she believed lost allowed her to melt into him when his hands came up to cradle her face. Only when he drew reluctantly away did Benny realize the cheering had shifted from the tractor already done with its pull to them. Dan blushed, grabbed the mic and called into it, “I got a little distracted there. Nancy, how far was the pull?”

More laughter, cheers and good-natured ribbing. Benny relaxed. No one thought ill of her, or of Dan, after all. Everyone in town had loved Henny, their resident bad-boy who was really a nice boy who sometimes did crazy things. But the long-time residents loved her too, and Dan Greene was as close to a local icon as anyone could get outside of Charlie McCallan. It had never been their approval she feared getting.

“I see you couldn’t wait for lunch.”

Benny startled, hand to her heart. For one, split moment, she believed it was Augie, but the voice had been female, and it belonged to Johanna Coco McCallan.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay.” Benny leaned closer so she wouldn’t have to shout over Dan and the growling engines. “I was daydreaming.”

“I’d be too after that kiss. I thought you two called it quits last winter.”

“It didn’t stick.”

“Good.” Johanna peeked over Benny’s shoulder, smiling in Dan’s direction. “Now I can tell you how heartbroken he was when you stopped talking to him. He moped like Caleb did when he and his girlfriend broke up.”

“Did he?”

Johanna nodded. Benny bit her lip to keep from smiling, and failed. “It’s been so long since I felt this way. It’s kind of scary.”

“Love usually is.”

Love. The word sent willies up Benny’s spine all over again, a good kind this time. Henny’s ghost, the one that wasn’t actually Henny at all, rose up. Benny closed her eyes and forced it back.

“So,” she changed the subject, “where’s your littlest angel?”

“Back at the house with her Aunt Emma,” Johanna answered. “We’re taking shifts. I’ll go home and get her later, once all the judging is done. This is all a bit too much for Valentine. And for me.” She leaned in. “We’re having another one.”

“What?” Benny climbed over the side of the booth and threw her arms around Johanna’s neck. “Another baby? When?”

“Shh!” Johanna hushed her playfully. “We haven’t really told anyone yet. Yes, another one, in November.”

“Me t—” Benny caught herself, tried to cover and only sputtered, “Meet you at…the…um…”

Johanna grabbed her arm and hauled her to a relatively quiet spot behind the sound system equipment. “Benny? A baby?”

“You can’t say anything.”

“I won’t.” She leaned closer. “Dan?”

“Of course.” Benny shushed her. “He doesn’t know yet.”

“Well, I figured. There’s no way he would have kept it a secret. So, did he knock you up on Valentine’s Day like Charlie did me?”

“Johanna!”

“Well? It was Dan’s fault, really. We were supposed to get that carriage ride, and instead he took you, and Charlie and I ended up in the woods behind the house, recreating the past.”

Benny bit her lip. “Yeah. Valentine’s Day.”

“Then you stopped seeing him shortly after.”

“I didn’t know about”—she gestured—“you know, until a couple months later. It was the one and only time, Jo. He told me he was falling in love with me. I freaked out a little. A lot.” Benny blinked back tears. If the tears started, they wouldn’t stop. She was tired of crying, tired of being sad, tired of feeling guilty for living, for wanting to live, for loving someone who wasn’t Henny.

Johanna pulled her gently into her arms. “I get it, hon,” she whispered into her ear. “I do. I can’t even begin to tell you.”

She pulled gently from Johanna’s embrace. “It has been so hard, but I am determined. There’s more reason than myself to let it all go.”

“Don’t let it go for your baby, Ben.” Johanna kissed her cheek. “Let Henny go for you.”

Her words echoed Peter’s, spoken days or weeks or years ago. Good advice, no matter how difficult. Advice Benny had every intention of heeding. Starting today.

* * * *

The tractor pull ended. Johanna left her to find her husband and the kids. They all met up at the finish line of the annual bike race to cheer Charlie’s eldest son, Will, over the finish line. He came in a respectable third place.

“I should have taken second place,” Will grumbled amid their congratulations. “Brian bumped me, back on the last curve.”

“Dude! It was an accident.”

The grin on Brian’s face, familiar and wicked but not mean-spirited, dispelled any concern of an altercation. Though most of the immediate Fredricks family had moved out of town after Henny died, Brian was a cousin somewhere down the line. She remembered thinking, a long time ago, how history repeated itself. Will the good guy, Brian the bad boy, they were Charlie and Henny all over again. She gave the young man a gentle shove. His smile turned mischievously bashful, just like Henny whenever he was caught out, and Benny just wanted to hug him.

On the way to the concessions for lunch, they passed through the tents where the food contests were judged. She spotted the blue ribbon on her mother’s berry pie and a yellow on her braided bread. The meatball contest wouldn’t be judged until later in the day, but there was Clarice Irene Grady, hovering over her fare like a mother hen over her eggs. She waved and winked, gave a not-very-subtle thumbs up in Dan’s direction before shooing Benny along.

Finding a place to sit and eat wasn’t hard. Charlie and Johanna were unacknowledged king and queen of the picnic. Space emptied the moment they were spotted, joking shouts for Mayor McCallan making Charlie blush and Johanna nudge him in a see-I-told-you manner. Benny hugged herself about the waist, absorbing the general mayhem and good feeling too long absent, too long ignored. Happiness filled her so full nothing else could get in, not even when Dan went to get her the promised cotton candy and Charlie hugged her hard and tight.

“She told you,” Benny accused.

“Of course she did. Now you have no choice but to tell him, because I’m not going to be able to keep this secret long.”

Benny kissed his cheek. “You squeal and I’ll bite you good.”

“Promise?”

“Charlie!”

He lifted her off her feet and twirled her once. “Welcome back,” he said close to her ear, and set her on the ground again just as Dan returned with the cotton candy and an unconvincing glare.

While the two men mock-battled over her, Benny drifted out of herself. All the months of avoiding him, avoiding telling him, whirred like dust in a summer wind. In this soundless joy, Dan left off battling Charlie to gather her to him, his arms around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder. In this fragile moment between then and now, Benny stopped herself from moving his hands to her abdomen and letting the hardness of it tell him for her. She wanted it to be something they’d both remember all their lives, after all. But she didn’t.

When their car stopped on the top of the Ferris Wheel, Dan put his arm around her and pulled her in close. He rested his head to hers and everything welling inside of him washed into her, became the same sensation passing back and forth, back and forth. He tilted her face up, his pale eyes gobbling down every word in her head. A tender kiss lit Benny’s insides, burned through her so that it was not enough. They kissed on the top of the Ferris Wheel, as it went round and round. At last the ride stopped and they broke apart reluctantly, only slightly self-consciously, and all thought of doing anything but getting back to his lips went the way of the summer breeze.

Hand-in-hand, Benny and Dan strolled to the judging tents and waited for the results of the meatball contest. Her mother came in second. Though she held up her red ribbon and smiled triumphantly, Benny knew her disappointment cut deep. Instead of insisting they help eat the meatballs still left in the pot, Clarice said she was going home to wash up before the fireworks started, and refused Benny’s help.

“You have fun and leave your mother to her pouting,” Peadar Grady told his daughter. “She’ll be just fine.”

After another mayhem-meal with most of Bitterly at the concessions, Benny thought she would tell Dan about the baby on the ride to the cemetery, but it was probably best not to give him the news while he was driving. During the fireworks, she decided, and was content. As he pulled through the gates, Benny realized she hadn’t been to the cemetery in a few days, and hadn’t even thought about it or Augie in passing. Too happy to feel guilty, she nonetheless closed her eyes and listened hard.

“What?”

Benny opened her eyes. “What, what?”

“You just sighed.”

“I’m happy.”

Dan took her hand and squeezed. “Me too.”

“You mind if I make a visit before we go sit with your mother?”

“Not at all.”

Dan slowed at the same tree she always parked beneath. Benny wouldn’t go to Henny’s grave this night of all nights. Even the thought was enough to wiggle loose the chinking of her present happiness.

“Not here,” she said. “Go past your mom’s grave, to the old section by the woods.”

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but he only nodded and continued through the cemetery. He stopped the truck in the exact right spot, turning off the engine.

“Give me a moment first, okay?”

“Sure, Ben.” He grinned big. “Go break up with your boyfriend.”

Benny cocked her head, her mouth dropping open as memory kicked in. “Oh, jeez. You knew?”

He nodded sheepishly. “I was here one day, helping Charlie with the sprinkler system. I saw you over here, and did some snooping.”

“You mean stalking.”

“Hey, I was worried. You were acting strange.” He tapped her nose with a big, square finger. “Even for you.”

“Ha-ha.” She stuck her tongue out at him. Leaning across the seat, she kissed Dan quickly. “Two minutes,” she said, and bolted out the door.

He wasn’t there. Not in any depth she could feel him, anyway. She stood silently still at his gravesite, reading the epitaph—

Katherine Weller Fiore

September 13, 1919 ~ January 28, 1976

*

August Fiore

July 4, 1908 ~ July 7, 1980

“Happy Birthday, Augie,” she whispered. “I hope you can hear me. I’m here with a friend. His mom rests”—She turned and pointed—“right up there. We’re going to watch the fireworks with her. He does it every year. So, see? I’m not the only one who hangs out with the dead.

“I’m sorry. I’ve said it a bajillion times, but I am. I miss you, Augie. And I miss hearing from Harriet through you. Did you make her up just to make me happy?” She sighed. “I’m going to New York with my mom on Monday. I’ll find Flora, or find out about her, and I’ll help you keep your promise. I swear it.”

From the truck parked at the side of the cemetery road, Dan waved to her.

She waved back, waved him over.

He got out of the truck and came her way.

“I want you to meet Dan,” she told the tombstone. “He lives in the house you built. Did Harriet tell you he still has the concrete with your kids’ handprints in it? I asked her to.”

Still nothing. She couldn’t even pretend.

Footfalls on the dry grass, then Dan’s arm slipped across her shoulders. “So this is my competition, huh?”

Benny nudged him. “I’ve been told he was very handsome.”

“He’s also very dead. I’m pretty confident I’m better looking at this point. I’m positive I smell better.”

Benny laughed. “He’s the man who built your house.”

“Ah, right. August Fiore built it for his Weller bride, yes. I didn’t know he was a friend of yours.” Dan glanced up at the sky. “Much as I like meeting your friends, it’s getting dark. The fireworks are going to start any minute.”

“Oh, sorry.” Benny touched Augie’s gravestone. “I’ll be back.”

She took Dan’s outstretched hand, and, glancing once behind, followed him back to the truck.

* * * *

“He is her lover. I can tell.”

“So?”

“Sew buttons. You know how I feel about her.”

“August Fiore, you are so dead she can’t even feel you standing right next to her. What right do you have to say anything about her taking a man as her own?”

“Plenty. If only I could…”

“Could what?”

“Harriet?”

“What now?”

“You don’t go any closer to the living, but you can, isn’t that so?”

“Don’t go getting any ideas, Augie.”

“But I have them. So many of them. Won’t you do this? Please?”

“No.”

“You are cruel.”

“Refusing this childishness isn’t cruel. It’s practical. You’re dead. And you’re bored. Just wait and see if she finds your daughter for you. If you can move beyond this place, you’ll forget all about your infatuation with dear Benedetta.”

“So you say.”

“So I know. Wait and see.”

“I will never forgive you for this.”

“Remind me to weep about that in a hundred years, if you’re still here.”

Sigh Legends Of The Moon

Benny’s hand in his was all that kept Dan on the ground. He’d never been much for whimsy. Today was an exception he hoped would become the norm. The sweet, slightly nutty, completely captivating woman beside him made all things possible, even making Daniel Greene the younger a man who could fly.

Weaving through the tombstones to the one marking his mother’s grave, Dan’s whimsy-balloon deflated just a little. Miranda Irene Greene once loved Tim, Charlie and Henny like sons. She’d have loved Benny by default, if for nothing else. He was certain she would have anyway. His mom loved everyone, and Benny was easy to love.

“I brought a cooler,” he said as they settled on the blanket he spread on the ground. “Beer? Water?”