Heartache Falls (13 page)

“Excuse me?”

“How far do you want to take this separation? Do
you want to date? Do you want to sleep with somebody else?”

Now she could read the emotion in his eyes. It was accusation. Ugly and mean, and it made her blood run cold.

“Maybe you have your eye on the sheriff?” Mac continued, his tone biting. “He certainly has his eye on you.”

“That’s enough.” Ali picked up her purse. “You’ve obviously reached your limit of civilized behavior. I’m leaving. Since you’ve rented this lovely room, I suggest you stay here tonight. I’m going home for the night. I need to pack more clothes. Don’t worry about the dog. I’ll see to him.”

“Ali …” Mac grimaced, closed his eyes, and ran his fingers through his hair. “Look. I’m sorry. It’s just … our sex life …”

“Sucks,” she finished, speaking past a lump the size of a baseball in her throat.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, looked down at the floor for a moment, then glanced up to meet her gaze. “You looked so beautiful tonight. But that dress, those shoes. It’s not you. This job isn’t you. I feel like I’m losing you. It scares me.”

As she reached for the doorknob, she said, “We may be separated, Mac, but we’re still married. As far as I’m concerned, our wedding vows are still in effect. For both of us.”

She opened the door and took one step into the hallway before pausing to look back at her husband. “Do you remember the last time you told me I was beautiful, Mac? I do. It was a year ago last Valentine’s Day.”

The hotel door shut behind her and Ali braced a hand against the wall as her knees went weak and watery. From inside the room, she heard a thwack and then the crash of breaking glass as Mac, Mr. Control, threw his glass at the door.

SEVEN

Ali spent a restless night in her and Mac’s bed, where his scent clung to the sheets and created a hollow sense of grief inside her. She’d lain awake fretting that he would come home after all, while at the same time worrying that he wouldn’t.

He didn’t. She couldn’t decide if that made her happy or even sadder.

As dawn broke, she abandoned her attempt to sleep, washed, dressed, and prepared to pack the items she wanted to take with her. That meant a trip to the guest room closet for a large suitcase. There her gaze snagged on the box that stored her wedding gown, and she sucked in a deep breath.

The quilting bee she’d joined in Eternity Springs made quilts out of donated wedding gowns. The finished products were simply stunning.
Should I …?

Ali tugged the gown box down from the shelf. She hadn’t looked at the dress since the dry cleaner packed it away after the wedding. Once upon a time she’d imagined that Caitlin would want to wear her gown when she married. By the time Cait turned twelve, Ali knew that wouldn’t happen. Even if she’d wanted to wear Ali’s timeless, sophisticated Scaasi gown when she married, the girl had her father’s
height and stood four inches taller than her mother. The gown would never suit.

“Yes, I should. No reason not to,” Ali murmured. Celeste wanted wedding gown quilts for all the bedrooms at Cavanaugh House, so the Patchwork Angels could certainly find a use for it.

An hour later, suitcases, boxes, and wedding gown in her car, Ali left her house, left her husband, for the second time.

Back in Eternity Springs, the days passed swiftly as she worked with Gabe Callahan fine-tuning the remodel design and discussed colors and appropriate art with Sage Rafferty. She shopped catalogues and the Internet and anguished over appliances purchases. Had it been her own money she was spending for a restaurant of her own, she’d have been much more comfortable with her choices. In her experience, stoves and ovens were such personal things to those who used them on a daily basis. This was like buying a mattress for a stranger.

On a Tuesday evening in late May, she put her wedding gown box in her car and drove to Nic Callahan’s house for a Patchwork Angels meeting. Ordinarily the group met in the attic workroom at Angel’s Rest, but Celeste had decided to refinish the floors, so they’d temporarily relocated to Nic’s. Ali looked forward to the weekly meetings of the quilting bee. She enjoyed the camaraderie and treasured the friends she’d made in Eternity Springs—Celeste, Nic, Sarah, Sage, and recently Sage’s sister Rose. And, of course, Celeste. Ali liked these women very much. They made her laugh—not an easy feat these days.

Nic lived in a charming Victorian on the edge of
town. Her cozy library had been transformed into a sewing room. Tonight’s group was small, but conversation was lively. Very lively—Ali feared fisticuffs might break out at any moment. She hadn’t had this much fun in months.

“You are so wrong!” Nic said, waving her rotary cutter in Sarah Reese’s face. “It’s Princess Grace by a million miles.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “So says the woman whose idea of style is to wear jeans 360 days a year. Look, we’re talking about the dress itself. You’re giving it extra points for the whole prince-princess thing. When you take the dress and only the dress, Liz Taylor’s gown wins by a mile.”

“You have to be more specific, Sarah,” Sage pointed out. “Liz Taylor had a lot of wedding gowns.”

“Fine. I’m talking about the gown she wore to marry Conrad Hilton.”

Nic fired back, “You’re wrong. Princess Grace’s gown would have looked gorgeous on lots of women. Liz Taylor’s gown needed a body like Liz’s to pull it off. That narrows the field considerably. Face it, you’re just a Liz fan because of your eyes.”

Sarah batted thick, luscious lashes over her gorgeous violet eyes.

Grinning, Ali decided to join the fray. “You’re both wrong. Jackie Kennedy’s wedding gown was the most gorgeous celebrity gown ever.”

There was a moment of quiet while the group considered it. Then Nic said, “This is useless without pictures. I’m going to get my laptop.”

“I’ll get it, Nic,” Gabe said as he walked into the
room. “I want to look in on the girls. They’re too quiet.”

“They’re asleep. They’re supposed to be quiet.”

“I don’t trust it.”

As Nic rolled her eyes at her husband, a knock sounded on her front door and she rose to answer it. Celeste walked in with LaNelle Harrison, the master quilter who had taken the group of novices under her wing. “Hello, my dears,” Celeste said. “Sorry we’re late. I took LaNelle on a quick spin on my Gold Wing, and we had such a good time, we went farther than we’d intended.”

“I thought I’d be afraid, but it was so exhilarating,” LaNelle said. “I’ve driven the Alpine Trail many times, but it’s different on the back of a motorcycle. She took me by Heartache Falls. I haven’t been up there in years. It’s almost like you are in a corner of heaven. Nothing in nature is quite so beautiful as an alpine meadow in springtime.”

Celeste nodded. “Makes me want to put on a wimple and run across the fields singing.”

Sarah and her daughter, Lori, home following her first year off at college, shared a look and a laugh. Lori explained, “Mom and I used to do that all the time. I so fell in love with
The Sound of Music
. I’d wrap the napkin from our picnic basket around my head and twirl my arms around and sing. I wanted to be Maria in the worst way.”

“She can carry a tune,” Sarah explained. “Unlike me. I wasn’t much help with ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain,’ but I did love my character’s name: Mother Superior.”

Lori gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, and as
Gabe entered the room carrying a laptop, Ali sang, “ ‘How do you solve a problem like Miss Lori?’ ”

“Whoa there, Ali,” Gabe said as he handed the laptop to his wife and the women clapped and smiled. “You have a set of pipes.”

“Thank you.” She dipped her head to the applause. “They’re rusty pipes, I’m afraid.”

Celeste said, “Such a lovely, lovely voice. Are you professionally trained?”

“No.” Ali shook her head. “My dad wanted me to take voice lessons, but I had another artistic passion. I wanted to go to cooking school in Europe.”

“Me too!” Sarah said, her voice turning wistful as she added, “It was one of my biggest dreams. I planned it from the time I was in fifth grade. I had files stacked to the ceiling—financial aid, travel budgets, tuition, living expenses. It was …” Her voice trailed off, then she shrugged. “Not meant to be.”

“Because she got knocked up with me,” her daughter, Lori, drawled. “I’m a dream killer.”

“Not hardly. I found my dream when the doctor laid you in my arms, young lady.”

“Ah, that’s so sweet,” Sage said.

Lori rolled her eyes, but Ali could tell that the young woman was touched. As Sarah blinked away tears, Nic diverted everyone’s attention by asking, “How about you, Ali? Did you find your dream? Did you make it to Paris?”

“Rome. Our cook when I was growing up was Italian.” Ali picked up her sewing needle and smiled wistfully. “No. I’ve traveled to Europe, but I never made it to cooking school.”

“What happened?” Sage asked.

“Not what happened, but who. Mac Timberlake happened. I fell head over heels in love.”

Sarah nodded knowingly. “Gave up your dreams for a guy, huh?”

“I don’t know that I’d say that. My dreams changed. I was happy with Mac.” She paused a moment, then repeated softly. “We were happy.”

Starry-eyed, Lori Reese asked, “You met him in college?”

“I did.”

“Tell us about it.”

A tender smile played upon Ali’s lips. She hadn’t thought of that time in so long. “I was dating someone else at the time, but I noticed him around campus. He was hard not to notice. Mac played baseball—he was at Notre Dame on an athletic scholarship—and he had shoulders that took a girl’s breath away. We never had a conversation until I saw him and his dog at the park in my neighborhood one afternoon.

“I was dog-sitting for a friend for a couple of weeks, and I took her corgi to the park in the afternoons.” Ali shook her head and added, “I think I fell in love with him because of Dusty.”

The crispness of autumn hung in the air as Ali ambled through the park, allowing Crandall the corgi to sniff his way along a dirt path covered in fallen leaves. Someone in the neighborhood had steaks on a grill, and she teased herself by drawing a deep breath as her mind fluttered back to this morning’s economics exam. “I should have studied the graphs better, Crandall. Need to remember that next time.”

The corgi halted in his tracks and lifted his head. For a second Ali thought the dog had reacted to her comment, but then she saw the little dust mop of white fur trailing a bright red leash race toward her—on three legs
.

Crandall started barking and straining at his leash. The dust mop loped forward, amazingly graceful on only one foreleg. Ali was only vaguely aware of footsteps pounding up the path behind the little dog; she couldn’t take her eyes off the poor thing. It ran right up to Crandall, who quit barking, and the two said hello by sniffing each other’s butt
.

“Would you grab the leash for me, please?” a voice called out
.

Ali bent down, scooped up the leash, and rose to greet … that too-cute guy she’d noticed on the steps of the student union
.

“Thanks.” He flashed her a grin. “I was beginning to worry I’d never track her down. I don’t know how a three-legged dog can run so fast.”

He took the leash from her then held out his right hand. “I’m Mac Timberlake.”

“Ali Cavanaugh.”

“Nice to meet you, Ali. I’m lucky you and …” He gestured down at the corgi. “Who is this?”

“Crandall.”

“I’m lucky that you and Crandall were here to stop Dusty. Otherwise I think she might have run for days.”

“She’s amazing.” Ali knelt down to scratch the dog behind her ears, receiving puppy kisses on her wrist in return. “What happened to her leg?”

“I don’t know. She was that way when I adopted her.”

Ali looked up at him, amazed. “You adopted a disabled dog?”

His grin turned rueful. “As embarrassing as it is to call that little thing a dog, yeah. I went into the pound looking for a Lab. I’m still not sure how I walked out with a dust mop.”

Ali went all warm and gooey inside. He must have a tender heart
.

“These two are getting along good. Mind if we walk with you for a bit?”

“That would be nice,” Ali said. “I’m dog-sitting for a friend who has another dog in addition to Crandall. Someone else is watching that dog, so Crandall is lonely.”

“We don’t want that.”

Ali looked up the path, then down, and asked, “Which way do you want to go?”

He stared into her eyes and smiled. “Whichever way is longest.”

Ali Cavanaugh, coed, shivered
.

Ali Timberlake, estranged wife, sighed. “He took so much ribbing about that dog, but she was such a sweetie. When the kids came along, Dusty made the best pet. I really think it made them look at special-needs people differently than other children their ages did.”

“I thought you said your family dog needed a wheelchair,” Sarah observed. “Was that after Dusty got older?”