Page 69 of Dreams of Falling
“Isn’t he the one who started all that ruckus your senior year?”
I took a deep breath. “That was a long time ago, Daddy. Stupid high school stuff, you know? We’re not kids anymore.”
He frowned. “Is Bennett going, too?”
I moved to the doorway. “I doubt he was invited.”
I could sense his disapproval. “One more thing,” he said. “While looking for the photographs, I found this in your dresser drawer. Not sure if you want it.”
He picked up a bottle from the top of my dresser and handed it to me. I recognized the bottle of Jackson’s cologne I’d bought in high school and felt myself coloring. “Thanks,” I said, throwing it into my purse as I avoided his gaze. “I’d forgotten all about this.”
When I turned around to leave, I noticed the painted trellis from the stairwell had crept around the corner from the hallway and into my bedroom, the small figure standing on a pale yellow wall, the trellis beneath her as yet unfinished. I stepped closer to get a better look, seeing that behind the girl were the columned ruins of Carrowmore, flames shooting out from the rooftop while four purple martins soared overhead, a ribbon clutched in each beak.
I looked closely at the painting, trying to pick out any details that would tell me what I was looking at. I felt my father come up behind me, and I said softly, “I wonder if this has anything to do with what Mama was wanting to talk to me about.”
“Could be,” my father agreed, his eyes sad again.
My fingers lightly brushed the painting, and it was as if I were a little girl holding my mother’s hand again. My phone vibrated with another text, and I headed into the hallway and down the stairs.
My father called after me. “I’ve got about a dozen casseroles from neighbors in the freezer on account of your mother being in the hospital. You should join me for supper sometime so they won’t go to waste.”
I smiled. “I will,” I said, surprised that I meant it.
twenty-four
Ceecee
2010
Ceecee stepped into the house from the back porch after working in her garden, the smells of moist earth and perspiration clinging to her. Whenever she was troubled, she found solace in weeding her flower beds and deadheading spent blooms. If only all of life’s problems could be eradicated as cleanly and swiftly.
She heard a thump from upstairs and quickly slid out of her Keds and pulled off her gardening gloves. “Bitty?” She said it while she was still on the landing, not wanting to get to the top and find her friend collapsed on the floor, her last cigarette still clenched between her lips.
“We’re in here,” Bitty called from Larkin’s bedroom.
Ceecee paused in the doorway, noticing how every single dresser drawer had been pulled out, an assortment of brightly colored clothing strewn on the bed and floor.
Larkin gave her a worried smile. “Don’t worry—I’ll clean this all up. I was just hoping to find an old bathing suit that might work to go out on Jackson’s boat. Everything at the stores was so... revealing.”
Bitty, sitting on the bed, held up a bright yellow one-piece that Ceecee remembered Larkin wearing when she was about fifteen. “Itold her I could use shoestrings to hold this one together in the back.” She didn’t laugh, which meant that she might actually be serious.
“But it’s at least four sizes too big for her now.” Ceecee glanced around the piles on the bed, then moved to the ones on the floor. “All of these are.”
“Exactly,” Bitty said, leaning back against the pillows.
Larkin rolled her eyes and turned to the suitcase on the floor. She still hadn’t unpacked, as if she continued to believe that her mother would wake up any day now and she could leave.
“Or,” she said, rummaging through a stack of clean and previously folded clothes Ceecee had placed on her dresser the day before, “I could wear this.” She held up a long black cotton dress as shapeless as a curtain panel. “It’s a maxi, so it goes down to my ankles, but it’s sleeveless, so I won’t get too hot.”
“Perfect,” Bitty said at the same time Ceecee said, “No.”
Larkin looked apologetic. “Sorry, Ceecee, but I think I’m going to go with Bitty on this one. It’s quick and easy, and I don’t have to go to another store.”
“It’s just so... plain. Maybe you can take off that ridiculous necklace and wear something bigger and more eye-catching.”
Bitty sat up, ready to argue, but Larkin held out her hands like a cop trying to stop traffic. “I’ll figure it out when I get dressed—it’s no big deal.” She glanced down at her watch. “I’ve got almost an hour, so since the two of you are together, I have some questions I was hoping you might be able to answer for me.”
Bitty stayed on the bed but didn’t lean back on the pillows. Ceecee sat carefully on the tufted ottoman she’d bought when Larkin was little because Larkin had seen one just like it in an old black-and-white Hollywood glamour film and wanted one.
