What the Heart Wants (What the Heart Wants, #1)(6)
Now, Laurel, you’re not being fair.
The truth was that Bosque Bend had given her an incredibly idyllic childhood. As the daughter of the most respected man in town and the heiress to the Kinkaid fortune, she’d been everyone’s darling. Teachers had praised her scholarship and character, the city council passed a resolution every year wishing her a happy birthday, she was elected president of every school organization she belonged to, she had an escort to any function she chose to attend, and all the kids wanted to be her friend.
But now she was the town pariah.
The yard lights across the street switched on, stunning the cicadas into silence and illuminating the Bridgeses’ front lawn with the sharp brightness and harsh shadows of a nighttime carnival. Laurel tensed and clutched at a porch post as a tall woman, her hair catching fire under the artificial light, walked out the front door with a preteen boy. She had a ball in one hand and a leather mitt in the other.
This must be the week that Sarah visited her mother. If it were three years ago, she’d have crossed the street the second that red Mercedes SUV pulled into the driveway. But not now.
Dear God, she missed Sarah. Sarah Bridges. Well, Sarah Bridges Edelman now—her best friend since they were seven years old.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the flicker of a light being turned on in the fourth-floor turret of the stucco Spanish-style castle next door to the Bridges. Everyone in town knew what that meant—Pendleton Swaim was hard at work on the second installment of his thinly veiled fictionalized account of the history of Bosque Bend, or, as he called it, Garner’s Crossing. The first book had all the old-timers threatening to shoot him because of what he’d written about their great-grand-daddies—especially Coy Menefee, who told everyone he met that he was carrying concealed, which pretty much eliminated the element of surprise.
Sarah’s son let out a yell as he caught a high ball.
Laurel smiled. Good boy! That was her godson, Eric. He had a real arm on him, and with a coach like Sarah, he’d be an all-star.
She inhaled sharply and tried to duck behind a porch post as the Pflugers’ beautifully restored Bentley Flying Spur turned into their driveway next door, their headlights momentarily sweeping across her.
But what did it matter if Sarah spotted her? After three years of ignoring her, there was no way her old friend was going to acknowledge her now. Laurel edged forward to get a better view as mother and son threw the ball back and forth with smacking force.
Sarah, tall and long-limbed, had been a natural athlete from elementary on. She was a cheerleader in middle school and high school, played on the softball team, and ran cross-country. Laurel did the cheerleader thing in middle school too, but decided to concentrate on academics in high school. Academics and, of course, music. For Mama and Daddy, it began one Sunday after church when, just four years old, she’d gone to the piano and sounded out “Amazing Grace.” But for her, the music had begun much earlier, maybe when she was born, maybe at the first moment her DNA was strung together.
The front door opened as Mrs. Bridges and Sarah’s middle son, Luke, came out and sat on the front step to watch Sarah and Eric practice. Mrs. Bridges’s aging Great Dane lay at her mistress’s feet.
Laurel moved to the edge of the porch to get a better look at the toddler Mrs. Bridges was carrying in her arms.
Sarah’s youngest was a firetop, just like his mother.
Luke and his grandmother yelled and hooted as Eric missed an easy lob. Nothing daunted, he ran into the darkness of the Overtons’ house next door to find the ball in the deep grass, Sarah fast behind him.
Balancing her grandson on her hip, Mrs. Bridges stood up from the porch step to watch. Her short hair, more auburn now than the bright red it had been years ago, looked almost black under the night lights, but it was, as usual, perfectly styled. In fact, Laurel had never seen Sarah’s mother when she hadn’t been perfectly turned out. Tonight she had on jeans, mocs, and a loose peasant blouse. On anyone else, the outfit would look casual. On her, it looked haute couture. Maybe it was the bangle bracelets and hoop earrings. Maybe it was Marilyn Bridges.
Laurel had regarded Mrs. Bridges as her second mother, and she knew Sarah’s house as well as she knew her own. Of course, it had been more fun across the street. Mama and Gramma, who were always hanging around when Sarah visited, preferred that she and Sarah play indoors, usually with dolls or at quiet board games, but Marilyn Bridges encouraged them to go outside and bounce on the trampoline, splash in the big backyard pool, or wave green-and-gold pompoms and shriek out Baylor football cheers.
Mrs. Bridges readjusted her grip on her grandson and raised a hand to her mouth like a megaphone. “You’ll never see it in the dark! Get another one or wait till tomorrow!”
Eric reached down and lifted up the missing ball. “Found it!”
Luke cheered and Mrs. Bridges applauded from the porch steps.
After high school, Sarah went off to the University of Texas to play softball for the Longhorns while Laurel traveled just down the road to Baylor to major in music and pick up a teaching degree, but they’d stayed in touch. Sarah, who’d apparently slept with every straight guy at UT, discovered her birth control had failed her the semester before she graduated, and asked Laurel to be maid of honor at her hurry-up wedding. Four years later, Sarah, pregnant with her second son, was the honor attendant when Laurel, the world’s oldest virgin, married Dave Carson.