Going Back by Judith Arnold Page A

his school friends could be living in houses
with such astronomical price tags.
    Daphne was kneeling in the grass
beside the flower bed underneath the picture window, yanking weeds
out of the dark, loamy soil. She had on an oversize shirt, blue
jeans and sneakers; her hair was held back in a bandanna and her
hands were protected by work gloves. Next to her on the grass was a
small straw basket and a hand spade. She used a garden claw to
loosen the weeds from the soil.
    Brad coasted to a halt at the curb.
Engrossed in her labor, Daphne didn’t look up. He permitted himself
a moment to admire the bright yellow daffodils and red tulips she’d
grown before focusing fully on her.
    The shirt she was wearing wasn’t
just large. It was a man’s dress shirt, with tails that fell to her
knees and shoulder seams that drooped down her arms. She had rolled
the sleeves up to her elbows and left the collar and the second
button undone. The shirt made her look thinner than she was, a
tiny, fragile creature lost within the voluminous
garment.
    He didn’t want to think of Daphne
as tiny and fragile. He wanted to think of her as strong,
indomitable, the sort of woman likely to leave dozens of men with
sentimental smiles spread across their faces as they reminisced
about how dynamite she was in bed.
    But he knew that wasn’t the case.
And, while he hated the idea, he suspected that his asshole
behavior eight years ago were at least partly to blame.
    He shoved open the car door, and
the squeak of the hinge caught Daphne’s attention. She glanced over
her shoulder and saw Brad. Scowling, she tossed the garden claw
onto the grass and stood, dusting the dirt from the knees of her
jeans.
    Praying for courage, he took a deep
breath and started toward the front walk. “Hello, Daphne,” he said
quietly.
    She continued to stare at him. The
color in her cheeks was as high as it had been last night at the
party. Brad wanted to believe that was a result of working in her
garden in the warm spring sunshine, but he couldn’t shake the
comprehension that his presence was what was causing her to
blush.
    The sun glared on the lenses of her
eyeglasses, making her eyes invisible to him. He wished she would
move her head so he’d be able to see her eyes again, and perhaps
find in them a hint of how she felt about his unexpected visit. If
he was to be denied a view of her eyes, then he wished she would
speak, giving him an opening so he’d know how to
proceed.
    But she did neither. She remained
motionless, her hands encased in those huge work gloves, her lips
pursed, her hair frizzing beneath the bandanna in the afternoon
heat.
    “We need to talk,” he announced. He
realized that he’d stated his request too bluntly, but her silence
wasn’t making this easy for him.
    “Now?”
    “Yes.”
    She turned and bent to study her
flowers. Then she exhaled, tugged off her gloves, and dropped them
into the basket. After gathering her tools and lifting the basket,
she straightened up and shrugged.
    The gentle rise and fall of her
shoulders beneath the baggy cotton of her shirt forced Brad to
acknowledge again how slight she looked. The one thing he didn’t
want to think of her as was delicate, and he clung to the image of
her wielding her spade and claw, conquering the weeds in her
garden. He wanted to believe that any woman who could kill weeds
and grow beautiful flowers could also forgive and forget—and allow
the forgiven party to forget, too.
    Without a word, she headed around
the side of the house. Brad followed. The back yard was spacious,
blessed with several adult fruit trees and rimmed by dense
evergreen hedges. An enclosed porch extended from the rear of the
house. Brad trailed Daphne up the concrete steps to the porch and
through the screen door.
    While she placed her gardening
equipment on a shelf in one corner, he stood idle, his patience
beginning to unravel as he waited for her to say something. When
Daphne moved toward the door leading into