Posts
I hadn’t see Jeremy Dalton for over a year after my older sister jilted him, throwing him away, practically leaving him at the altar.
Then one summer day at the County Fair, I spied him sitting alone at a picnic table under the shade of an oak tree, and my heart jumped around in my chest. When he recognized me as I scuffed through the grass to the table, his smile beamed.
“You’re the one who disappeared.”
He half stood. “Sit!” he said. “Be my guest.”
Music from the rides on the midway floated across the grounds, and hickory smoke drifted in the air from vendors barbecuing chops, ribs, and sausages.
I sat across from him, but I felt awkward. I mean, I was thrilled to see him again but wondered what I should say. Tall, lean, blond, and sinfully handsome, he was a twenty-eight-year-old farmer whom my sister had ditched for a big-city ad executive she met at a newspaper convention in Chicago.
Somehow Jeremy looked older, as if his experience with my sister Cora had aged him. I decided to tell him how I truly felt about Cora’s breaking up with him. But first I said, “What are you doing here alone, sitting under this tree by the animal barns?”
“Cooling off in the breeze. I’m showing lambs at two o’clock, and it’s hot in those barns. You?”
“I’m exhibiting quilts in the 4-H building.”
The breeze blew my unruly hair about. His face broke into a wonderful smile. “I always liked that wild red hair of yours,” he said. “Pinned on the top of your head. But never quite under control like Cora’s. Yours is curlier, I guess.”
I blushed.
But after he mentioned Cora, his smile faded, and I said, “You getting along okay?”
He nodded. “Took awhile. After Cora dumped me, I felt like road kill. But at least she was honest and told me she’d met someone in Chicago.”
“All her life she’s wanted to be a big-city journalist, and you’re a guy who didn’t want to leave the farm. Didn’t you two talk about your differences?”
He tried to smile again, but the smile didn’t quite reach the corners of his mouth or eyes. Cora met him during an interview she wrote for our local newspaper when a tornado ripped through the area and crumbled one of the barns on his family farm but spared the farmhouse. A major miracle.
“Where is she now?” he said.
“Married. Working for the Chicago Tribune. She finally got what she really wanted. Look,” I added, “I think it’s terrible what she did to you—I told her so. We didn’t speak for weeks.”
Calliope music from the Ferris wheel drifted our way on the shifting breeze.
Has he given up on love?I wondered. Perhaps I should have called him. But what would he have thought? I’m chasing the man my sister threw away.
“You!” he said. “We haven’t talked about you.”
“One semester of veterinary school left,” I said, and laughed. “I’ll be a doctor.”
“Wonderful!” he said. “You’ll be running off to the big city, too, I suppose.”
“I’ll be working with Dr. White in town in his clinic. I love living here. I’m not going anywhere. His beautiful blue eyes searched my face a moment, as if he were trying to discover a secret inside me, and my heart jumped in my chest again. What makes this girl tick?Is she for real? Was he asking himself those questions? He glanced at his watch, stood abruptly, and said, “Got to water the animals.”
Should I ask him if he needed help? But why would he accept the help of a McPherson girl? He was still hurting from his encounter with the first one he met. I stood, too, and we shook hands in the cool shade of the oak tree, his fingers wrapping firmly and warmly around mine. “Nice seeing you again,” I said.
“You, too. Take care.”
He turned and strode toward the animal barns. I wanted to run after him. But I stood motionless under the tree. Finally, I called, “You need help?”
Thirty yards away, he stopped and swiveled my way. He crept ten paces closer and cupped his hands over his eyes so he could see me better in the blinding sun. “Would you like to?” he said. “I could use a good helper.”
Ambling toward him, my blood racing, I said, “I’d love to help.”
“Hard work,” he said.
“Hard work’s never bothered me.”
We turned and strolled toward the barns, our bare arms bumped, and heat rushed though my body. I know he felt the same heat because the man my sister threw away smiled down at me with that beautiful blue-eyed smile and said, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Me either,” I said, smiling back. “But it is.”
The End
