‘And fell madly in love.’ Cooper didn’t try very hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but Dawn didn’t even seem to notice.
‘Yeah. I did.’ She smiled down at her hands shyly, as if embarrassed by it. ‘The funny thing is, everything happened so fast it was almost scary. And Justin... His world wasn’t mine, and sometimes I felt so out of my depth. But then I realised it couldn’t be half as terrifying as what my mum had been through for love. So I just let myself go with it. Of course, with hindsight...’ Her smile turned rueful.
‘Would you do things the same?’ Cooper asked. ‘If you’d known how things would turn out?’
Dawn bit down on her lip before answering, obviously giving the question far more thought than Cooper thought it deserved.
‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I think I would.’
* * *
Would she have done things the same? Would she have risked getting stood up by Justin on her wedding day all over again, and then taken off cross-country with his brother on a crazy road trip?
Who in their right mind would bring all that on themselves twice?
Well, she would, it seemed. Because, try as she might, Dawn couldn’t imagine living her life in a way that didn’t take that sort of chance to find a ‘for ever’ love. Couldn’t imagine not jumping at the chance for happiness.
Was that how her mother had felt all those years ago? Suddenly, Cooper’s question made her feel closer to her mum than she had in years.
‘It’s funny,’ she said, smiling. ‘All these years, I’ve thought I was nothing like the rest of my family—especially my mum and my sisters. But maybe I have more in common with them than I think.’
‘You all fall in love too fast?’ Cooper asked, and she knew he was being sarcastic, but he was also right, so she nodded.
‘We all take a chance on love,’ she amended. ‘Some of us more often than others.’
‘Ah, so you’ve done this a lot, then?’ Cooper’s tone wasn’t surprised—more as if she was confirming something about herself that he’d long suspected. Although why he’d been thinking about her past romantic entanglements Dawn couldn’t imagine.
‘Not lots, exactly.’ Dawn winced as she wondered what the exact definition of ‘lots’ was, anyway. ‘Let’s just say I haven’t always been particularly lucky in love.’
‘I noticed,’ Cooper said drily.
Shifting in her seat, Dawn looked past him out of the windscreen rather than continue the conversation. Then she frowned.
‘What is that?’
Cooper didn’t even look before he answered. Apparently he’d known this was coming.
‘It’s the giant head of Abraham Lincoln.’ There, on the side of the road, a huge statue stood over them, judging them.
‘That’s...kind of what I was afraid you were going to say.’ Dawn stared out at the looming figure high over the interstate, staring down at the traffic. ‘Um, why is it there?’
Cooper shrugged. ‘Hard to say. I think it used to loom over the Lincoln Highway, which at least made some sense. Then it got moved, well, here.’
‘Because that is a totally normal thing to do,’ Dawn said, staring out of the window as Cooper drove past the giant bronze head.
Huh. America.
Maybe her mum had been right to get out while she had the chance.
‘This is the country of extremes,’ Cooper pointed out. ‘Extreme wealth, extreme poverty, extreme temperatures...’
‘And extreme statues,’ Dawn finished for him. ‘I get it.’
‘Just wait until you see what’s coming up next.’ Cooper smirked at her, then turned his gaze back to the road.
Dawn didn’t have to wait long. About fifteen minutes by Claudia’s clock—although she had no idea how accurate that was.
‘Okay, that’s less bizarre than the giant head,’ she admitted. ‘But what is it?’
‘It’s a tree. Don’t you have those in Britain?’
‘Not growing out of solid rock in the middle of the road we don’t.’ At least, not that she’d ever seen.
They were in the middle of Wyoming, with bright blue skies and scorched brown earth all around them, the interstate a river of grey in the landscape. And there, right in the centre of I-80, stood a tree. Lopsided and windswept, and maybe a little stunted, but a living tree. Growing right out of a piece of what looked like granite.
‘That takes some perseverance,’ Dawn said as they sailed past the plucky little tree. ‘I mean, the road even goes around it.’
‘Story goes that when they were building the first railroad along this route the railroad men were so impressed with that stubborn little limber pine, they actually moved the railroad so as not to disturb it.’ Even Cooper sounded vaguely impressed by the tree’s pluckiness. ‘Then, by the time the railroad moved and they wanted to put the interstate in, the tree was too famous to shift, so they made the road go around it.’
‘Huh.’ The tree in the road zoomed out of sight, and Dawn turned back in her seat, settling down again, thinking hard.
‘Huh?’ Cooper repeated. ‘It’s just a tree, Dawn.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ She hadn’t even got a decent look at the thing, but she already knew it was more than that. It was a parable. A promise. ‘It’s hope.’
‘Hope?’ Cooper’s tone was even more derisory than normal, which Dawn hadn’t been entirely sure was possible.
‘Yeah. Hope.’ The more she said it, the more sure she was. ‘Think how many other seeds must have tried to grow into trees in that place and failed. All the saplings that didn’t survive their first winter. Or seeds that landed on stone and just rotted. But not that one.’
‘I guess.’
‘That seed flourished, even though it shouldn’t,’ Dawn went on, warming to her theme. ‘That tree grew in the most unlikely place, defying all the odds. And it was that defiance that kept it alive when the railways or the roads should have destroyed it. It was the hope it gave people—the promise of survival against impossible odds. It?
?s basically American history in horticulture.’
Cooper laughed. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘Of course I’m right.’ And, if a tree could do it, why couldn’t she? That little pine hadn’t given up, so why should Dawn? ‘Haven’t you ever succeeded at something against all the odds, against all the people who told you that you couldn’t?’
It was the wrong question, clearly. Cooper’s face closed down instantly. ‘Mostly I like to stack the odds in my favour first, to assure success. It’s just good business.’
‘Yeah, but there must have been something you stuck at, or went ahead with, even when it seemed hopeless?’ She could tell there had been. If there hadn’t been, Cooper wouldn’t have reacted that way.
‘Nothing that ended well,’ he said darkly, and Dawn winced.
‘Well, I’m going to be more like that tree,’ she said firmly. Then she risked a cheeky smile in his direction. ‘You can be more like the giant bronze head of Abraham Lincoln, if you like.’
He didn’t dignify that with a response, and Dawn only just held in her laughter.
* * *
Cooper wasn’t sure why he insisted on driving so far that day when they were both already so tired, but he suspected it had something to do with Dawn’s musings on succeeding against the odds and perseverance.
The only time he’d ever done anything that smacked of defying conventional wisdom was when he’d fallen in love with Rachel. Hell, it hadn’t been even just conventional wisdom he’d defied—it had been his own. He’d known better, and he’d fallen anyway.
He hadn’t been in love with Melanie, back when he’d been twenty-one and his mother had asked him to show her around the company and teach her the ropes—but he knew he could have fallen, if she’d let him. She’d been a student on a summer placement, and he’d been showing off because she was beautiful and he wanted to impress her. She’d flirted, smiled and let him think that he mattered, that he was important. He’d been so full of himself he’d let all sorts of company secrets slip—and she’d turned around and given them to her boyfriend, who’d just happened to work for their biggest competitor.