mother looked less than optimistic. “Like you did at Delia’s wedding?”
Rebecca threw the core of the lettuce in the trash compactor. “Is that what this is all about? You blame me for what happened at Delia’s wedding? I’ve told you, it wasn’t my fault.”
“Then whose fault was it?” her mother wanted to know. “You can’t blame Josh, not when you were the one who tripped him.”
“He only thought I was going to trip him. He overreacted.” She’d said so before, but no one seemed to care.
“Regardless, he fell into the cake and took the whole food table down with him.” Her mother winced at the painful memory.
“I told you, it was his mistake.”
“Maybe. But you’re the one who darted away from him at the last second and ran smack into the punch fountain, dousing your poor sister. She was so sticky, she had to miss the end of her own reception to change and shower. By the time she and Brad left on their honeymoon, her eyes were swollen, her nose was red from crying, and her hair and dress were ruined.”
“Okay, the punch part might’ve been my fault,” Rebecca conceded. “Josh grabbed at me when he fell and I was trying to get away so he couldn’t pull me down with him.”
“Better you fall in an undignified heap than the bride gets sprayed with punch. It wasn’t a pleasant thing for Delia to—”
The door banged open as her father strode in from the garage, briefcase in hand, and whatever her mother was about to say was immediately lost in the human power surge. Loud, authoritative and supremely confident, her father commanded respect simply by being. The fact that he’d been the mayor of Dundee since Rebecca was in high school, was well over six feet and resembled Billy Graham certainly didn’t hurt. “Did you tell her?” he demanded the moment he spotted Rebecca.
Her mother gave him one of her famous warning looks and cleared her throat. “Actually, Doyle, we were just getting around to—”
“Tell me what?” Rebecca interrupted, meeting her father’s direct gaze. He might not approve of her, but she wasn’t going to flinch in his presence like everyone else. And she sure as heck wasn’t going to use her mother as a go-between.
“That you’re not invited to the anniversary celebration unless you can behave yourself,” he said point-blank. “I’ve had it with this thing between you and Josh Hill. I won’t have you embarrassing me again.” With that, he stalked from the kitchen, presumably to change out of his suit.
Rebecca put down the knife she’d been rinsing and let her wet hands dangle in the sink. “Not everyone sees Josh Hill through the same rose-colored glasses you do, Dad,” she called after him.
“That would only be you,” he hollered back. “Everyone else in this town knows Josh for what he is—an ambitious young man with a shrewd business mind. That boy’s going to make something of himself someday. You wait and see.”
“And I’m not? Is that what you’re implying?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Though Rebecca loved her profession, she knew that in her parents’ opinion, a hairstylist—even an accomplished hairstylist—could never compare to a successful horse breeder like Josh. Josh Hill had somehow been able to win the love and approval she’d always craved, especially from her father. But what bothered her most was that he’d done it so effortlessly and so long ago. How could she compete with someone so well entrenched in her father’s affections?
She hadn’t been able to compete with Josh at seven. She couldn’t compete with him now. She wasn’t even sure why she kept trying.
After finishing the salad, she set it on the table and retrieved her keys.
“Where are you going?” her mother asked, alarmed. “Aren’t you staying for dinner?”
Rebecca pictured the moment her sister and the kids arrived; she pictured sitting across the table from her father. “No, Dad already took care of what you both wanted to say. Consider me warned,” she said and headed for the entry.
“Rebecca?”
She paused.
“He doesn’t mean to sound so harsh, honey,” her mother said softly.
“Oh, he meant it all right,” she said. Rebecca wasn’t sure about a lot of things—why Buddy kept putting off their wedding, why she’d gone home with Josh a year ago last summer (and how she’d even started dancing with him in the first place), why she didn’t really fit into her own family. But she knew her father had meant every word.
REBECCA SAT on her back step as darkness fell, and lit up a cigarette. She’d managed to get through yesterday without smoking, despite Buddy’s call, but one visit to her parents’ house and—POOF—there went her resolve. What difference did it make, anyway? She couldn’t change her stripes. Even if she decided to become a nun, the good folks of Dundee would find something to criticize, her father chief among them.
At least she’d come by her reputation honestly. She’d raised eyebrows in Dundee more times than she could count and had certainly given Josh a run for his money in their younger days. She still remembered filling his locker with pincher bugs, spray-painting “Josh Sucks” on the sidewalk in front of his house and telling everyone that his penis was a mere three inches long (without adding that she was going by information gleaned ten years earlier in a classic “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”).
Contrary to popular belief, however, he was hardly blameless. He’d retaliated by jamming her locker so she couldn’t open it, which made her fail an English test because she couldn’t turn in the essay she’d written the night before. He and Randy stole a pair of panties from her gym locker and ran them up the flagpole. And Josh had offered to give her a more current measurement of his penis. She’d refused, of course. But plenty of other girls had come forward to vouch for something far more impressive than three inches. Taken with his football prowess, even her accusation of a small penis wasn’t enough to dent Josh’s overwhelming popularity.
Rebecca was the only one, it seemed, who didn’t worship Josh Hill. And that hadn’t changed over the years. No matter what happened, her father remained one of his staunchest supporters.
A staunch supporter of the enemy. She grimaced and took another drag on her cigarette. About Josh, her father always said, “He’s made his parents proud, hasn’t he?” About Rebecca her father always said, “God tries us all.”
Oh well, nothing in Dundee was going to matter when she moved to Nebraska, she told herself. But that line of reasoning didn’t pack the same power it used to because she was no longer sure she’d be moving to Nebraska. Buddy had left several messages on her answering machine today, but she didn’t feel like returning them. She felt like sitting on the steps, smoking one cigarette after another, watching the moths hover about her porch light. Autumn was here. The leaves were turning, the days growing shorter. Rebecca had always loved the crisp mountain air, and she wondered if Nebraska was very different. She’d only visited there once, the past spring….
If she did move, she’d miss autumn in Idaho. And she’d miss Delaney.
Picking up the cordless phone she’d carried outside with her, she dialed her best friend at the ranch where Delaney now
