“Kyle? Kyle, wake up.”
He opened his eyes with a gasp. He lay on his back in the guest bedroom at the Walker ranch, one arm outstretched. Molly leaned over him, her cool hand on his bare shoulder. Just as the moonlight filtering in through the thin curtains revealed her worried expression, he was afraid it let her see the moisture he felt on his cheeks.
Embarrassed, he turned his face away from her. “What is it?”
“I thought I heard voices in here. I knocked on your door, but you didn’t hear me, so I looked in. I think you were having a bad dream.”
“It wasn’t a bad dream,” he muttered, and he was telling the truth. The hard part had been waking up to the realization that Tommy had never really been there at all. That he was dead—a sentence Kyle completed all too easily this time.
“You were dreaming about your friend, weren’t you? I heard you calling his name.”
“Yeah. I guess I was.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He let out a long, weary sigh. “No.”
Accepting his answer, Molly straightened. The empty feeling the dream had left in him seemed to intensify when she took her hand away from his shoulder. “I’ll let you get back to sleep, then.”
“Yeah. Get some rest. I’m fine, Molly.”
“Of course you are.” She turned and moved toward the doorway, where she paused before stepping out. “Kyle? About those things I said to you earlier—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to you that way. I had no right.”
He started to tell her she wasn’t the only one who’d given him a similar lecture lately. But because it would be too hard to explain, he said simply, “Don’t worry about it. Hell, you might even have been right about most of it.”
The night-light in the hallway behind her made the white nightgown she wore look sheer and ethereal. With her fiery hair tumbling around her shoulders, her face a pale oval in the dim light, she looked as unreal and as untouchable as the talking memory in his dream. “I don’t have to go right now, you know. If you want me to stay.”
He knew exactly what she was so sweetly offering— and every nerve ending in his body screamed out for him to take her up on it. His voice was hoarse when he managed to say, instead, “I don’t think that would be a very good idea right now. Good night, Molly.”
He watched her chin rise in a proud little gesture that made his chest ache. “Good night, Kyle.”
She closed his door with a snap that spoke of injured pride. And Kyle would have almost sworn he heard a man groan in sheer frustration from a far corner of the room.
Maybe it was simply an echo of his own voice, he decided, giving up any pretense at sleep as he lay there waiting for dawn.
Friday was a warm and sunny day, perfect for all the outdoor final preparations for the party. Molly, Shane, Kelly, Memo, Graciela and Kyle worked all day in the yard, setting up rented picnic tables and folding chairs, stringing paper lanterns, filling big pots with dirt and plants and arranging them around the new outdoor kitchen.
It was an early-out day for the local school district, so there was plenty of help after Memo brought the boys home. Even Lucy and Annie got into the act, trying to help, but generally getting underfoot.
The phone rang all day—various aunts, uncles and cousins confirming details, other guests announcing their arrivals at local motels and asking last-minute questions about the plans for the next day. Molly and Kelly took turns fielding calls, politely refusing offers to come help for fear that too many people would be counterproductive.
They took a break late that afternoon for a treat of ice-cream bars and sodas. Molly, Kelly, Annie, Lucy and Graciela sat at one of the two tile-topped café tables set up in the outdoor kitchen, while the guys sprawled around one of the rented picnic tables.
Molly glanced at Kyle, who sat some distance away from her, involved in a conversation with Jacob. Kyle had been helping Shane all day, staying busy enough that there was no opportunity to talk privately with her.
She suspected that he was embarrassed that she had seen him at his most vulnerable the night before, still shaken from his dream, a sheen of moisture in his eyes. She had wanted so badly to offer comfort, but he’d made it clear that he wanted to be left alone.
She wondered wistfully if he would ever reach out to anyone to help him through the hard times, or if he would spend the rest of his life alone. Maybe he would meet someone who could get through to him someday—obviously she wasn’t the right one. As much as it hurt to picture him with another woman, she hoped he would find someone to love. She couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone with his unhappy memories.
“Something wrong, Molly?” Graciela asked in concern. “Is your leg hurting? I’ve been worried that you were overdoing it.”
Molly quickly smoothed her expression and smiled at the plump, kind-eyed woman whose patient smiles and prosaic manner had gentled several angry young men. “I’m fine, thanks. Just…thinking about something else.”
Feeling Kelly’s gaze focused on her, she cleared her throat and nodded toward the big planters arranged so artfully around the tile floor. “Kelly, I love the plants you picked out. They look perfect out here.”
Still looking thoughtful, Kelly went along with the conversational switch. “I like the easy-care factor of cacti and succulents, and the
nursery owner assured me these are all hardy for this area. There should be blooms by next summer.”