Breakaway
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in this fic!
Chapter Twenty-Four
Honey shaded her eyes, staring out over the late afternoon sun shimmering off of the lake, and waited with an eager impatience for her guests to arrive. She almost found it hard to believe that her parents had suggested a picnic by the lake for a comfortable dinner. Everyone had agreed to come. Dan and Di had said yes immediately and Brian, who had answered the phone at Crabapple Farm, had hastened to assure her that all three Beldens were going to attend. Her exuberance faded a bit as she thought about Trixie, who was the one friend she wanted to see the most. Their phone call of the night before was heavy in her mind, as well as in her heart. Even though she had promised not to get involved, she had called Jim last night, only to discover that his cell phone went straight to voicemail. All other forms of communication weren't available since Jim had left his laptop at home and he and Brian had suspended their regular phone service at their apartment during the summer months. She had tried a few times throughout the day to reach him on his cell, only to be met with the same results. So far, he hadn't returned any of her messages.
Needing something to keep her occupied, Honey strolled over to the picnic table and opened the large picnic basket that her father had thoughtfully carried down for her. She took out the plastic red and white checked table cloth, unfolded it with a practiced snap and then placed it across the picnic table. A few rocks were placed at the corners to help keep it down. Next, she began to empty out the rest of the cooler's contents. The three large bowls of different salads, the rolls for hotdogs and hamburgers, as well as the condiments, were placed on the table. She left the meat inside, knowing that one of the young men in their group would insist on becoming their chef for the evening. Last, she laid out the paper plates, napkins, cups and plastic silverware, and then admired her work.
Something seemed to be missing. Honey glanced over the assorted items with a critical eye and then smacked her palm to her forehead. "Drinks!" she cried out, shaking her head. They had forgotten the beverages from the kitchen.
"Talking to yourself? Is that a side-effect from a concussion?" Mart joked from behind.
Honey whirled around and greeted the Beldens with a huge smile. Her eyes flitted first from Brian's handsome face to Mart's smiling one and landed last on the subdued girl bringing up the rear. Concern flashed briefly before she stepped back and welcomed them to their impromptu picnic. "Thanks so much for coming!" she gushed out, a trifle more excitedly than she needed to. The rambling started before she could control it. "I can't tell you how nice it is to have most of the Bob-Whites over for dinner tonight. It has been a long, lonely day and I'm delighted to have everyone here! We are going to have a wonderful time, I just know it."
Brian gave Mart a playful nudge with his elbow, hoping to lighten the moment even further, and unintentionally made his sister feel worse. "Don't mind him, Honey. He obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. It took a lot of prodding from us to get him to move his carcass and get ready for work. He barely made it in time."
Trixie took a small step back, well aware of the reason why her brother had been exceptionally tired that morning, and tried to squash the guilt that shot through her for her brother. She had crawled into her bed right before dawn had begun to break. No one had tried to wake her up. In fact, she had been allowed to sleep in as late as she had wanted to and had finally stumbled down the stairs around eleven o'clock in the morning, still as tired and exhausted as she had been when she had finally crawled under her covers. Her eyes gave her away, which was why she was wearing an old pair of sunglasses to keep the others from seeing in. Her day had been long and extremely boring. Somehow she had been left alone by the other members of her family. She had spent a good part of the day in her room, going through scrapbooks and photo albums. She had quickly skimmed over the pictures of Jim, unable to look at him without feeling hurt again. When she wasn't in her room, she was in the den, searching out more information on the internet. And, of course, she had done even more thinking and contemplating. She had yet to make an important phone call. Her cell phone was in her back pocket, waiting for her to make the decision to do it.
Mart sharply swallowed a snappy retort when he noticed how his sister become even quieter, if it was even possible. Not wanting to call any more attention to her than she was going to be receiving from the others anyway, he dropped the subject. Humming under his breath, he marched over to the table and stared at it with a masterful connoisseur's eye. Then he began pawing through the cooler. "Hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, macaroni salad, and an actual salad salad. Sounds like a wonderful meal, Honey!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "Your cook certainly knows how to feed us starving Bob-Whites."
"I realized I forgot an important item when you were coming up," Honey explained with a small laugh at her own expense. "That's what I was saying to myself. I think I am going to have to go back to the house and get the drinks. It may not be as hot as it was a few days ago but we still need them for the picnic. People are going to want them."
"Honey, you should stay here," Brian insisted immediately. "After all you've been through, you don't need to go back up to the Manor House." He nearly reached out to touch the small wound on her forehead before he caught himself, realizing that he didn't have the right for such an intimate gesture. He pressed his hand to his thigh, cleared his throat, and declared, "I'll be glad to run up to the Manor House and pick them up."
Trixie inserted herself into the conversation for the first time, grateful that she was being offered some alone time to collect her thoughts and feelings. It didn't seem to matter that she had had an entire day of complete and utter alone time. It hadn't been enough. She could use more, a whole lot more. "I'll do it," she announced forcefully. If facing three of her best and closest friends in the entire world made her feel edgy and uncomfortable, she could only imagine how much worse it was going to be when Dan and Di showed up. Chances were they had already been briefed on her situation. If not, they would be once they got to the lake. "Stay here, Brian. You and Mart can get the grill started. I'll be back in no time." She had already taken five quick strides towards the path before anyone could object or volunteer to come with her.
Honey put a tentative hand on Brian's arm when he started to follow her. "Let her go," she said softly, her heart breaking for the sadness Trixie was trying desperately to mask behind a pair of cheap, shadowed sunglasses. "She wants to be busy."
"No," Mart interrupted, his hands thrust into his pockets and all thought of food momentarily gone from his mind, and watched her leave. He was seriously impressed with her pace. She was putting a lot of distance between them in a matter of seconds. Distance. The word flittered into his mind, tugged at…something. He frowned, unable to come up with a reason why he disliked the unbidden thought. "She doesn't want to be busy. She wants to be alone," he explained with a blinding insight that had the other two gaping at him.
There were times when Brian was amazed by how easily the two almost-twins could read each other's minds despite their sometimes rocky relationship. He agreed whole-heartedly with a curt nod. He didn't realize he had automatically placed a hand at the small of Honey's back to comfort her. "Trixie didn't object to the picnic when I told her about it but it was very easy to tell that she wasn't excited about coming. She would have preferred staying home. As Mart said, she would rather be by herself right now."
"Moms said that she alternated going between her room and the den today," Mart supplied, drawing the two pairs of eyes towards him. "Moms told me that she let her have her space today. As much as she wanted to, she didn't force Trixie to talk anything out with her. She also didn't give her any chores, either. Trixie cleaned the entire downstairs yesterday," he added. At any other time it would have been humorous to think of Trixie voluntarily cleaning their house. Instead, it made him distressed.
Brian thought of the description his mother had shared with him when he had quietly and unobtrusively asked her and shared it with the other two. "She mentioned that Trixie floated between the top and bottom floors of the house today, more like a ghost than anything else. She's rather worried about Trixie." As they all were. They all knew how to handle a temperamental or furious Trixie. This overly quiet, rather restrained, and more introspective sister was new and unsettling.
Honey's eyes deepened with her own sadness as she pursed her lips together. Part of her regretted sharing her recent decision not to study criminal justice with Trixie so soon after her most recent argument with Jim. And yet, there hadn't been any other option for her. She couldn't have led Trixie on, lied or pretended anything else, especially when she had been asked to give an honest answer. The truth had to be told. "Of course your mother would be worried about Trixie. We all are. But we need to make certain that we don't let her spend too much time alone. She needs us, Brian." She faced him, her lovely hazel eyes reflecting an uncharacteristic amount of sorrow. "We're also going to have clue Dan and Di in, too. I didn't have a chance to talk to either of them for a significant length of time today so they don't know anything. Hopefully they will make it here before Trixie gets back and we'll have a chance to talk openly with them."
"They need to be aware, too." Brian went over to the grill while Mart went in search of the supplies to get it up and running.
Mart brought out the bag of charcoal and lighter fluid that was stored in the boathouse. He poured a generous amount of charcoal into the grill. "Trixie is very adamant that nothing that happens between her and Jim should hurt the rest of the Bob-Whites," he explained after setting the bag at his feet with a small grunt. "She doesn't want any of us to take sides."
"I'll do my best with that one," Honey murmured under her breath. When both Brian and Mart looked at her in surprise, she shrugged her shoulders. "It's going to be hard not to take sides. At least, not until I get a chance to talk to Jim about this tangled mess they've made."
"I want to be fair to Jim, too," Brian mentioned with a sigh. "But it's difficult to attempt that when I see how hurt and sad Trixie is."
"Same here. But I guess we'll get a different view when Jim comes back from his camp. So I'll do my best to withhold any judgment until then. For Trixie's sake, since she asked," Mart added quickly. Then he picked up the lighter fluid and squirted an extremely generous dollop of it on the charcoal without thinking about what he was doing. "We'd better step back a bit from the grill when you light it," he suggested to the others.
Brian accepted the box of matches that Honey pulled out of the cooler. He stared down at the unlit match, glanced at the amount of liquid on the charcoal, and corrected Mart, "A step or two may not help. We should probably back up to Ten Acres unless we want to singe our eyebrows off," he joked playfully and ushered the other two towards the picnic table. Then he muttered as he flicked the match and a red light flared at the end, "Here goes nothing!" Everyone was relieved when there was only a small blaze was ignited and was contained easily within the metal casing of the grill.
Suspecting, no, absolutely positive, that she was the subject of conversation down at the lake, Trixie moved swiftly up the path, away from her brothers and her very best friend in the entire world. She held her breath, hoping that she would be able to make it to the Manor House before either of the remaining Bob-Whites traveled down towards the lake. As much as she loved them, she didn't want to see them. She almost couldn't believe she hadn't run across a soul when she stood on the front door. Then her heart simply stopped. It had been only a little over twenty-four hours ago when she had stood at the exact same spot. Her fist fell back to her side. She squeezed her eyes tight to block out the memory. When she was relatively certain she had her mixed-up emotions under control, she rapped her fist smartly against the door and was ushered in by Miss Trask who informed her that the cooler with the drinks for the picnic was waiting in the kitchen.
Her luck didn't hold during the walk down the long hall to the spacious kitchen. Halfway to her destination, Honey's parents surprised her by coming out of the room she knew to be Mr. Wheeler's office. Although it pained her to do it, she pasted a smile on her face and thought ironically that she was getting very good at pretense. "Thanks for inviting us to the picnic," she remarked when they met each other in the hallway. She needed to say something but she was already poised to leave as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
Madeleine returned the smile with a graceful one of her own, blissfully unaware of the turmoil behind Trixie's feigned placid expression or the fact that they had been an unwitting catalyst to the destruction of one of her dreams. But she did wonder why Trixie didn't take off her sunglasses. "Hello, Trixie. It's wonderful that all of you were able to come to the picnic with Honey. She was practically going stir crazy today. I believe it is going to be a relief for her to go into work tomorrow for half a day. She would hate spending another full day at home, especially when she is finally feeling better."
Trixie felt another smidgeon of guilt pierce through her. She could very easily have spent a good portion of the day with Honey to help alleviate some of her friend's boredom. There had been absolute nothing on her schedule. There wouldn't be anything to add to it, either, not for tomorrow, not for the rest of the summer. Instead, she had actively chosen to stay away, had been more than willing to spend the day at home, where her mother and her youngest brother had completely left her to her own devices. "A picnic with all of the Bob-Whites will make Honey very happy," she responded belatedly after realizing that the Wheelers were waiting for a response from her.
"Most of the Bob-Whites," Matthew corrected pointedly with his booming laugh. He winked broadly at Trixie and enjoyed the bright red stain that quickly stole across her cheeks. "We are missing one very important Bob-White, aren't we?" he questioned leadingly while his eyes slid to the empty ring finger on her left hand. There hadn't been a need to ask Jim about the change in plans. Having a sister in the hospital had definitely put a dent in what his son had hoped to accomplish on their anniversary.
Trixie's sudden flush wasn't caused by embarrassment. It was even more difficult to keep the smile in place than it had been to pin it on but she managed to keep it without wavering. "You're right, Mr. Wheeler," she answered haltingly. Even thinking of Jim made her hurt more. It was a dull, deep, dark throb that wouldn't go away. Even worse, it would sneak up and attack her when she was least suspecting it. A song on the radio, a line on a television show, a smiling photograph or that damn blue dress she had never had a chance to wear could conjure him up with unerring accuracy. But no one had spoken his name to her all day. Having him brought up caused a shock to her system.
"Well, speaking of that one important Bob-White who is not here…" he paused playfully, unaware of the effect his words were having on Trixie.
Madeleine gave him a rather inelegant poke in the side of his arm. "Matthew! Don't tease her, dear," she chided him gently.
He flashed a quick grin back at his wife. "As I was saying before I was interrupted, I recently tried calling him on his cell phone. I couldn't get through to him. It went straight to voicemail. Honey had the same problem this morning. Have you talked to Jim today?"
"Not today," Trixie murmured truthfully. And she had absolutely no intentions of instigating a call between the two of them. Her facial muscles were beginning to strain from the effort to keep the smile in place.
He took her answer to mean that she had been having the same problem. "Interesting," he mused. "He must have his cell phone turned off."
"That may be why. You never know. I know he was going to have a very busy day today," she replied before finally letting the smile drop from her face. "I'm heading to the kitchen to get the drinks for our picnic. It was nice talking to you," she lied. With a small wave, she turned on her heels and hurried into the kitchen where the small cooler full of drinks was waiting to be wheeled down to the lake. She grabbed the cooler and waited a few minutes before opening the kitchen door, having no desire to run across the Wheelers again. The extra timed served her well. The hallway was empty. Not knowing where they were, Trixie moved on soft feet and made it to the impressive front door without contact with anyone else. As soon as she was standing on the other side of the door, she flew down the steps and across the front lawn, wheeling the cooler behind her.
Her pace slowed as she neared the last bend before she reached the boathouse. The sounds of five familiar voices floated back on the gentle early evening wind. Each one was easily identifiable. Three deep and masculine; two lighter and decidedly feminine. Her name, Jim's name, and lowly expressed concerns about what had happened between them came to her. At first, she hung her head, frustrated with their collective worry over her and Jim, and nearly left the cooler where she stood to take off in the opposite direction. She let herself wallow in her immediate response for a few seconds; then, she shook her head, squared her shoulders, and made as much noise as her sneakered feet would let her on the worn path, clearly announcing her arrival so that they would have enough time to stop talking about her before she rejoined them. "I got the drinks," she said loudly when she passed the bend.
The conversation had come to a halt seconds before she had called out to them. Five pairs of guilty eyes stared back at her. Trixie let their sympathy, curiosity, and God help her, their pity wash over her, resolutely deciding that she would have to get used to it. As much as she would like to do otherwise, she couldn't hide from any of them. Their bond was too close, too tight. And it would only get worse once Jim returned home. For the first time she was grateful that he was gone for such an extended time. It would give her the time she needed to attempt to build a shield. Snapping open the cooler, she broke the sudden uncomfortable silence. "I've got water, Pepsi, and Sierra Mist. What do you want?"
Dan's gaze narrowed as he watched her competently fill the requests for drinks. He accepted a Pepsi from her, using the close distance to finally get a good read on her. He wanted to tear the sunglasses off of her face to get a good look at her eyes but didn't think she would appreciate the motion. However, she couldn't hide the forced smile or the paleness under her normally glowing tan. Coupled with the bits and pieces he had been given by Mart and Honey, it wasn't hard to come to the conclusion that she was not handling things well. He made a silent resolution then and there to somehow get her alone to ferret out even more, direct from the source. He wouldn't get anything vital out of her now, not with the amount of willing ears in the vicinity.
After handing out the last of the drinks, she grabbed a water for herself and sat down at the picnic table, about as far away from the others as she could get without being too obvious. Trixie joined in the conversation only when someone asked her a direct question. For the most part, she was content to stay in the background and watch. She didn't realize that she was unconsciously memorizing the many precious moments of her friends. She covertly studied Di, who must have volunteered to assist Mart with the grilling while she was away. She stood close to him, so close that he seemed to be having a great deal of difficulty keeping his attention on the food. If she wasn't feeling so glum, she would have laughed aloud at the thought of what their food was going to look like. Most likely either charred or burnt beyond recognition. Even through her own misery she could recognize how sweet it was.
Then she allowed her gaze to skim over the rest of the area. Honey and Brian. They had walked out together to the edge of the dock and were engaged in a quiet, thoughtful conversation. Trixie's lips curled into her first semblance of an actual true smile in nearly two days. They were probably talking about Honey's health or her travel plans into work for the next day but she couldn't miss the fact that her eldest brother was having a difficult time keeping his eyes off of her best friend. Or that Honey kept sliding glances his way when she thought that he wasn't looking. Definitely another couple in the making, she thought as the tiny smile completely faded from her face.
Last, she found Dan. But not because she had been actively searching out all of her friends. It was more because of the fact that she had been forced to look at him. She could almost feel his dark eyes boring straight through her. From somewhere within came the rather fanatical thought that he had an unobstructed view into her soul. He acknowledged her small gasp with another long look and walked over from the cooler where he had finished choosing another drink. He sat down on the table across from her and waited for her to speak. "Dan?" Trixie questioned worriedly.
He leaned across the table and spoke so that only she could hear him. "We talk. Later."
She suddenly felt like a hunted animal caught within the scope. She didn't have a chance, she thought with an inward groan. "What about, Dan?" she asked, just as softly as he, hoping to deter him with a feigned expression of innocence.
His grin was grim. He couldn't stand seeing the normally vibrant young woman acting so removed from the club she had been vital in instigating. He didn't like it, especially when he had been blindsided by the idea that it was almost like she was preparing herself to leave them, which made absolutely no sense to him at all. "None of that, Trixie. If you don't want to have the conversation in private, we could do it now, you know."
"No!" burst heatedly from her lips, the most amount of honest emotion she had allowed herself to show all evening. When Mart and Di glanced at her in surprise, a fresh flush tinged her cheeks and she pitched her voice lower. "Not here, Dan. And definitely not now."
"We're in agreement, then. Later. Like I said." He started to place a selection of the different salads onto a paper plate and handed it over to her. He almost laughed at the way she looked at the food. "I'll bet you haven't eaten enough to keep a bird alive in the past few days. You have to promise to at least try a few bites of it, Trixie." He put the plate in front of her when she didn't take it from him. "We'll make a deal. If you eat a little, I'll promise not to ask you any leading questions during the picnic."
She wanted to refuse but the intent glint to his dark eyes made her realize how futile it would be. He would do it, she could tell. He really would bring up what she desperately didn't want to talk about. "All right," she answered grudgingly. "If it will keep you quiet, I'll try to eat something." She picked up a fork filled with potato salad and stared down at it like it was an enemy.
Completely unoffended, he smirked and waited until she had taken a small nibble. "It will keep me quiet…for the moment. But we will talk, Trixie. You can count on that."
Trixie knew he meant it. Lucky for her, she also knew what he wanted to discuss. She forced back another bite and moved over as the rest of their group joined them. Plates were filled. Drinks were offered. Voices mingled, were lifted in laughter and in jests. But not hers. She didn't participate. She much preferred to listen and to take it all in. From somewhere deep within the recesses of her mind came the belief that she was really going to miss this. Her friends, her Bob-Whites, an extension of her own family. As soon as the thought formed, she almost choked on a small bite of hamburger.
"Trixie? Are you okay?" Di asked, her lovely violet eyes filled with concern, while conversation came to a standstill.
Trixie swallowed a groan. She despised being the center of attention, especially of concerned attention. "Just fine, Di." She didn't clarify, ducked her head from the other glances aimed her way, and focused on picking at the rest of her food under the knowing eyes of her friends.
The picnic ended soon after, with the friends working as an efficient team to clean up the area. After the clean-up was finished, the six met near the dock. "Well, we should be getting home," Honey announced, glancing at the orange sun riding low in the sky. It was on the tip of her tongue to bring up the fact that they all had work tomorrow when she suddenly remembered that Trixie did not. She tactfully did not mention it. "Or, at least, I should be getting home before my parents come after me. They didn't want me to stay out too late." She rolled her eyes, feeling nearly back to normal.
Brian picked up one of the coolers. He flicked a glance over at Dan, silently communicating that now would be a great time to corner his sister. Then he offered, "I'll take this back to the house for you, Honey."
Mart grabbed the handle of the next one. Never an idiot, he followed his big brother's example and slipped an arm around his girlfriend's waist. "How about it, Di? Do you want to go for a walk to the kitchen at the Manor House? Maybe we will even be able to beg for a dessert from the cook."
Di laughed delightedly. She cuddled into him and followed him on the path. "We'll see you later," she called back happily to Trixie and Dan.
Silently thanking the brothers for giving him his chance much sooner than he had expected it to come, Dan waited until the others had disappeared from sight before he grabbed ahold of Trixie's elbow and started off in the opposite direction. "Come on, Trix. Let's have that talk now. The clubhouse should be empty."
"No!" She stopped, dug in her heels, her lips pulled down into an obstinate frown. There was no way she was going there. As much as she loved it, she doubted if she would ever be able to step foot near that place ever again. "Not the clubhouse, Dan. Not there. I'm not going there," she clarified.
Surprised mingled with puzzlement. He could only overcome the large amount of resistance he felt in her body if he were to either drag or carry her the entire way. Since that wasn't an option, he filed away the information for later use and agreed slowly, "No clubhouse. I got it. How about we take a walk into the woods, then? We can find a spot where we won't see your brothers when they come back from Honey's." He didn't wait for her to agree but started off in the opposite direction, leading her off the path and further into the forest where they would be able to find some privacy.
About five minutes later after a brisk, silent walk where his strides were long and comfortable and hers were stretched and defiant, they arrived at a small clearing. Dan stopped urging her forward and sank down onto a fallen tree. She didn't follow. Trixie crossed her arms over her chest and stared off into the thick trees that surrounded them, an irritable expression on her face. With a patience he wasn't even aware that he possessed, he waited and watched her, encouraging her to talk without speaking a single word, while he mentally ran through the sparse amount of facts as he knew them to be.
Trixie could only stand the serious silence for three minutes, as he very well knew. She threw her hands up in the air, grumbled incoherently under her breath and stalked to the edge of the clearing before she came back to stand in front of him, obstinate and annoyed. "All right, Dan. You wanted to talk to me. We've been here for ages already and you haven't said a thing. What is it that you wanted to talk to me about?"
The lone arched eyebrow said it all. He didn't say a word, only curled a lip and waited some more. He leaned back as far as he could without falling off of the log, crossed his ankles and prompted her again without answering her question.
Trixie's sigh was loud, exasperated, and cut through the clearing, causing the natural summer sounds to stop for a good ten seconds before picking up again. She ended up plopping down on the fallen tree, a good three feet of space between them, and refused to look at his face. "I really don't want to go through this again," she grouched under her breath. Each retelling only seemed to make it more permanent, more real, and even more horrifying than it had been to participate in the first time around.
He didn't know how to make it any easier for her. If he could have, he would. She mattered too much to him, as did the rest of the Bob-Whites. "Who have you already talked to?" he questioned, going with the easiest one first.
"Honey and Mart," she muttered lowly, staring at her clenched hands. "But Brian has to know something and so do my parents. They didn't say anything to me today but they all know. I know they do."
"Di?" he continued with the same ease.
She thought back to the many violet-eyed looks that had come her way during the picnic. "She knows something, too. You do, also, otherwise we wouldn't be here having this delightful discussion." Her laugh sounded ragged to her own ears. She waited until it faded away before asking, "What do you know?"
Dan had to chuckle at her tenacity. Putting him in the line of fire was a good move on her part. But he wasn't about to be deflected. "How about you tell me first? Then we'll compare notes and see if what I know is the correct version. That's the way we should do it, don't you think?"
Her chuckle wasn't loud or full of mirth. "I guess that sounds okay," she agreed reluctantly.
Nodding his head, he figured that they were finally getting somewhere. "So, tell me, Trix. I've got the entire evening free with absolutely nothing pressing to do. Let's hear what's been going on in your neck of the woods."
"I was offered my job back," Trixie began, going with the simplest and the least invasive to start. She had a hope that would be enough to pacify him but his response curtailed that.
Dan laughed, deep and long, and silently applauded her efforts. "Mr. Lytell must have gotten wind of the depth of the boycott I had planned," he decreed after his amusement died down. He was pathetically grateful to see her lips curve upwards, too. Leaning over, he lightly tapped her arm. "It's not going to make much of a difference for me. I'm never going back in that store again. But I digress here. You obviously didn't accept his offer, did you?"
"Of course not." She studied him out of the corner of her eyes, saw that he wasn't going to move until she shared the actual cause. "I suppose you probably want to know why I don't want to go to the clubhouse."
"I have to admit that I am very curious about your sudden dislike for our meeting place," he agreed softly. His hand curled into a fist. "What happened there?"
She snapped off a small, dead branch from the tree and began to break it into tiny pieces. When she was finished, she held her hand out and watched them fall to the forest floor, where they mixed with the browning leaves and twigs. "Jim and I had a fight there the other night. Sunday night," she added hurriedly after correctly anticipating his next question.
So far her answers were jiving with what he knew, although he hadn't known about the significance behind her sudden aversion for the clubhouse. It seemed like a thoroughly rotten place for their co-presidents to have a fight. Almost poetically awful. "And…" he remarked leadingly.
"Can't. No, I won't," she corrected herself with a decided shake of her head. The curls moved with the motion but didn't have their normal bounce to them. "That's private, Dan. It needs to stay between me and Jim. He'd feel that way, too. I really don't want it to touch anyone else. It's for no one else but us. All you need to know is that we had one hell of a fight."
He figured he would reserve judgment until he had it all. Or, more correctly, how much he could get out of her. "There has to be more. Please continue, Trix."
"Obviously, we had a fight on Sunday. Then, yesterday, I went up to his house to visit Honey in the afternoon. I hadn't made it up there the night before. I didn't feel like talking to anyone after…well, after," she hedged, not fully finishing the sentence. "Anyway, I ran into Mr. Wheeler and met Honey in the living room. We had a nice talk. Then I looked out the window. I saw Jim outside, packing up his Jeep. It turns out he had to report early for his orientation," she explained as her breath hitched.
"I heard about that," Dan remarked easily, choosing to overlook the wealth of conflicting emotion within her. While he wanted to drop an arm over her shoulder to give her some comfort, he knew she would only reject it so he continued on, almost hating himself for making her talk about it, "He called me yesterday and told me about it on my lunch break. He wasn't very excited about the change in plans. In fact, he told me that if he hadn't already committed to the internship, he would have liked to back out of it."
She lifted her head, stared at him, slightly stunned. She had never considered how Jim would have reacted to the change in his itinerary. But the point was now moot, anyway. He was gone. "He told you, huh?" She picked at the bark, pulled off a large piece and sent it humming it away. "He neglected to tell me. Oh, wait," she interrupted herself resentfully. "I have to give him credit. He was going to tell me. He seemed to think it was a smart idea to wait until the last possible minute."
"Not a good move on his part, I take it," Dan remarked when Trixie lapsed into another bout of silence.
"As I said, I won't go into details. We kind of talked about it…" Then she interrupted herself with an embittered chuckle. She could be brutally honest when the situation warranted it. "To tell you the truth, I was a little belligerent about the whole thing."
"Just a little," Dan inserted, able to read her correctly, and felt the scene come to vibrant life in his mind. A pissed-off Trixie, a defensive Jim, both struggling with the emotionally remains of their previous argument. It wasn't a shock to him that they had managed to rekindle the fight, without solving it. As far as he was concerned, now it was just a matter of how much they had messed it up. Judging from the down-hearted looked on her face, he guessed they had messed it up good.
"Tiny bit," she admitted, showing him with her thumb and her index finger. "Anyway, it didn't get much better from there. I guess you could say that I set the tone and not in a very productive way." She breathed in, thought about it, and strained to look at the situation even more objectively. "Looking back, I would say I didn't do a horrible job of keeping my emotions in but I still let them rule my thoughts and my words. Since I'm trying hard to be honest with you, I have to admit that I did an exceptionally great job of ticking Jim off."
It didn't take a lot of effort for the rest to come together. Dan ran a hand through his dark, slightly long hair. Words of sympathy and hope were on his lips but he didn't voice them. She wouldn't appreciate it. If anything, it would probably make her shut down. Quietly, he noted, "You feel responsible."
"I do, for some of it. I'm not always that even-tempered, you know." Her smile was a little wistful, a little sad, and a lot defeated. "Be that as it may, Jim brought out the big guns, decided that the two weeks would be a good time to take a break, think things through…" She stopped talking, unable to say the next part of it. If she even thought the phrase 'settle things' one more time, she thought she would go insane.
And come back and talk them out, Dan thought to himself but Jim hadn't shared that most important piece of information with Trixie. Or, if he had, he hadn't put it that way. Stupid, stupid Frayne, he thought with an inward sigh. "And?"
"He wants time. He wants distance." She spit the words out, showing him how much she thought of those two things.
Dan paused. He couldn't miss the sudden tenseness that took over her body. There was much more going on within her than simple sadness, he realized with a start. He didn't think it was a good mix, whatever it was. Using a calm voice he had witnessed Brian employ more than once on a person in physical pain, he questioned, "And what do you want?"
Trixie's eyes took on a militant light that he couldn't see behind her shades. "To give him what he wants, of course. He can have all the time and distance he wants. But I'm not going to wait around to be an issue that's settled." She tossed her head back defiantly.
Dan frowned, uncertain if he liked her answer. He didn't care for the force behind it. "Oh, Trixie," he muttered, shaking his head. It sounded to him like she had her mind made up. About what, he didn't have a clue. But it worried him. "I don't think I would do anything before you've clearly thought it through."
She slipped off her sunglasses, dangled them between her fingers, and met his gaze for the first time all day, a steely, frosty blue to a concerned obsidian. "I am thinking it through, Dan. I'm not being impulsive, not on this. It's much too big. I haven't made a choice yet." Not completely. But the thought wouldn't go away, no matter how many times during the day she had tried to swat it aside. Neither would the relief she would feel. She couldn't argue with the safety net that came with thousands of miles of distance in-between them.
"What are you thinking?" Dan reached out, cupped her shoulder with one hand and tapped her forehead with the other. "Something is going around in there. I can tell, Trixie. What are you planning on doing?"
Trixie pulled out her cell phone from her back pocket and put it between them. The look she gave it carried both excitement and dread. "It's only a rather fascinating opportunity that I wouldn't have considered before…well, before all of this. I'm not done with my research yet, Dan. I have a few unanswered questions that need to be taken care of before I can make a definitive answer."
"That's a political correct answer. Polite, reserved, and completely obscure." He dropped his hands from her, studied her closely, and came to the only logical conclusion. "You're not going to tell me more, are you?"
"Later. Maybe. I don't know. It will all depend on my final decision. You'll know if I've decided in the affirmative. Everyone will." She shrugged a helpless shoulder and added, "There's more than just me and Jim. I also talked to Honey last night about her career plans. You remember our conversation, right? I overheard her parents in the hospital. It was one of the subjects we discussed when we went to get dinner for everyone." She refused to remember how Jim had reacted to another one of their subjects from that evening.
"And she's changed her mind," he inferred correctly, biting back another sigh.
"Yes. Of course." Trixie tipped her head back, stared at the blue of the wide open sky above them, and whispered with an air of resignation that didn't sit well upon her shoulders, "So, that's that. No detective agency with her."
"We talked about this earlier, Trix," he murmured softly, hoping to ease some of the hurt and disappointment within her. "You remember, right? When you told me about the conversation? If things change, then you have to adapt. This may sound a little cruel, and I'll apologize up front for it, but you don't really have much of a choice." He caught her chin and looked deep within her eyes.
"Adapt." She repeated the word, let it fall from her lips, and decided it wasn't as hard to say as she had thought it would be. "You're wrong. You don't need to apologize. It's not a cruel thing to say, Dan. It's the truth. You can't argue with it. I guess adapting is what I'm going to have to do." And, she considered, that was what some of the most important people in her life may have to learn how to do, also. Her fingers skimmed over the sleek front of her cell phone. The number she needed to call was programmed into it. As she took in the quiet of the trees, the slow, insistent noises of the summertime insects, she decided it would be the perfect place to make the call. Lonely, secluded, and private.
"You can do it, Trixie. You've always been one of the strongest people that I know. You can adapt," he repeated and stood up. He stretched out his long limbs and offered her a hand but she refused it. "Aren't you coming with me?"
"I think I'm going to stay here. It's very peaceful, Dan." Trixie looked up at him, curtailed what he was going to say next with a small curt shake of her head. "You don't have to worry about me. I'll be fine. I'm only going to stay here a little longer. I want a few more minutes of privacy."
"Your house can get awful crazy, can't it?" Dan said, hoping to get at least a semblance of an actual smile out of her.
It worked. A small one worked its way across her lips. While it didn't showcase her natural jubilance, it held a promise that she would actually be able to do it. Someday. "Yeah. That's one of the wonderful things about my house but today…" she left the rest unsaid.
He finished it for her. "You need some time to yourself." Dan reached down, tugged her up and gave her a quick, platonic hug. When he pulled back, he asserted, "If you need anything, Trixie, anything at all, give me a call. I'm there for you, just like the rest of the Bob-Whites."
She surprised Dan by hugging him again. "I may take you up on that, Dan." Then she patted him on the shoulder and took her spot back on the fallen tree. After his footsteps receded, she pulled out her cell phone and searched out the number she wanted to call. She mused to herself with a wry, dry chuckle that she never once thought she would be calling California.