Catch a Shooting Star jd edit 03 12 2012 html

by Brianna Lee McKenzie

  Jake, who had seen the fear and then relief on her face, followed her into the kitchen and watched Madeline pour coffee into a cup. Then his heart fell when she swiped away the letters that he had found on the porch and had left neatly stacked on the kitchen table. He had no idea that those letters meant only despair for her because they represented lifelong loneliness for the girl who he had sheltered for almost two years. He had only believed that those sacred letters, addressed to someone who might have been a prominent figure in the girl’s life, could be a promise of happiness for her.

  Savannah touched a toe to the folded map and sent it sailing across the floor before she melted into the kitchen chair and wept. What good do these papers do for her if her love is gone forever? What treasure would be discovered by the worthless map that stuttered along the threshold of the screened door before it faltered to a standstill on the floor? They were all nothing to her, nothing but pulp ground from some forsaken tree that had fallen in the name of love. Love for country. Love for principles. Love for that which would never be realized.

  The tears flowed unchecked as Savannah cried into her forearms on the kitchen table.

  “It’s alright,” Jake assured her, kneeling at her knees. “Benny’s home, safe and sound. Everything’s alright now.”

  Savannah covered her face with her hands as she cried into them, “No it’s not. Everything isn’t alright,” she said as she dropped her hands. A great, overwhelming sigh consumed her as she continued, “Travis and I had an argument last night. He’s going back to Galveston and he said that I should go back to Georgia, alone.”

  “Oh, Maddie, I’m so sorry,” Jake said as he encircled her with his arm.

  Savannah sniffed and looked him in the eye and finally told him the truth, “My name is really Savannah. I’m sorry that I lied to you and Margaret, but I had to keep my identity a secret so that my husband couldn’t find me before I got my son back.”

  Jake shook his head with a smile while he covered her hand with his and said, “I understand completely.”

  “I have made so many mistakes,” she mused, as if to herself as she stared at the letters strewn about the floor.

  “We all do,” he said, nodding in agreement.

  “But I handled our argument in such the wrong way,” she said, rising to her feet to pace the floor. She stopped in front of the cupboard where Jake had offered a peppermint stick to Benny. She stared through the glass door at the jar of red and white swirls, marveling at the capacity of a miniscule stick of sugar and herb to delight in such a remarkable way. For just an instant, she was tempted to reach in that jar of joy and chase away her troubles as her son had.

  Still keeping her eyes fixed on the treats, she sighed before she admitted, “I should have tried to talk him into letting me go with him and then we could go on to Georgia. Whatever this unfinished business that he has could only take a few months and then we can be on our way…”

  “I agree,” the voice was not Jake’s.

  Savannah whirled around to see Travis standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his handsome face smiling at her. She ran to open the screen door to let him in and then threw herself into his arms.

  “I’m so sorry, Travis,” she said in his chest as he held her in his arms.

  “Me too,” he said, placing a kiss upon the top of her head.

  Jake cleared his throat before he shuffled his foot and said, “I think I’ll go back and root around in the garden.”

  Neither of them heard his words nor saw his departure, for their kiss obscured all but their love. They spent the day sitting on the porch swing, playing with Benny, talking with Margaret and Jake while avoiding the conversation that they both knew should be addressed. After dinner, the others went inside, leaving Travis and Savannah alone to face the inevitable. The silence that enveloped them was not oppressive, but inviting as they sat cuddling on the swing, each summoning the words to say to the other.

  Finally, Travis pulled from her arms and looked deep into her violet eyes, his own eyes mirroring the thoughts that tore at his mind.

  When she tried to find her way back into his embrace, he held her at arms’ length while he told her that he had something to say that might make her hate him all over again.

  “As I told you last night, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he began, staring at his boots instead of looking her in the face. “Thinking things that I know were stupid, but they still weighed heavy on my mind.”

  “What things?” she interrupted but received a wave of his hand in response as he continued.

  “There’s something that you don’t know about me, something that I’d been keeping from you.” His voice wavered and his eyes misted with tears that he blinked away before he continued, “I don’t know why I never told you. I just figured you’d think I was a bad person or you’d hate me for what I’ve done.”

  Seeing the anguish on his handsome face, her heart melted and she placed a hand upon his cheek and promised, “I would never think of you as a bad person. And I will never hate you, no matter what you tell me that you have done.”

  He pulled away from her and ran his hands through his wavy brown hair as he fought with his heart and his mind to find the words to tell her about his past. Then, he turned back to her searching eyes and told her without waiting for her reaction, “The reason that my wife was killed was because I left her alone and defenseless. My work was more important to me. It was more important because of my parent’s relentless badgering me to keep making money for the company.” He pulled in a long, decisive breath before he continued solemnly, “So I went to make them that money and when I was gone, my wife was killed…”

  “By my husband,” she whispered knowingly.

  He ignored her statement as he continued with his story, “She was dying alone, bleeding to death at the bottom of the stairs in our house, the house that I built with my own two hands,” he paused to search his large palms as if they held the answer to his torment, then he continued, “the house that she decorated and made into a home for us. When I came back and was told that the doctor had no hope for her, I vowed to make that man pay for what he took from me. I barely saw her buried because of my obsession with finding El Diablo and killing him with no mercy.”

  A pregnant pause eradicated all sound within the room before he said in a disgusted voice, “But, then when I heard that he had ruined the lives of all those other families, I knew that they would want the pleasure of watching him hang.”

  Again, Savannah began to open her mouth to apologize for killing her husband and denying him the pleasure of watching that murderer hang, but he waved her remark away as he continued, “I told you it doesn’t matter. I suppose you deserved to be the one to rid the world of a man who tortured you. At least you had the courage to do it. I don’t think that Melody had that in her. She was such a delicate woman.”

  He pulled in a ragged breath before he spoke. “Anyway, as I was saying, I left our home and all that I had hoped for our future, Melody’s and mine, so that I could make that obsession my life.”

  Again, he hesitated, as if unsure if his next statement would upset Savannah or not before he uttered, “She was pregnant, you see, when he attacked her,” he instinctively squeezed Savannah’s hand as she sucked in a breath of surprise and disgust at her dead husband’s actions. Then he continued, “The baby was born prematurely. I was certain that it would die soon and I just couldn’t watch that little helpless baby suffer and then die. I just couldn’t.”

  He drew in a long breath, his spirit broken as he recalled seeing the almost lifeless body of the tiny baby girl who labored for each fragile breath in the crib that engulfed her. Then he found the joy to continue, for there was indeed a happy ending to the story that he felt was the reason for his leaving the woman that he now loved, “But, just a few years ago, right after I saved you in that storm, I found out that my baby daughter had lived and that I had left her with strangers to raise while I went to avenge her mother�
��s murder.”

  He paused to see her reaction at the idea that he would abandon his daughter in his commitment to revenge. Her compassionate face gave him the courage to finish, “Of course, I stayed home to be with Hannah and I promised her that I would never leave her again. I had every intension of keeping that promise, to put aside my obsession with finding the man who had killed her mother. But then I got a letter from Tito telling me exactly where to find El Diablo and it began eating away at me again, so much so that I started to take it out on Hannah. That’s when I knew that I had to finish it, once and for all. I left my little girl again.”

  He fought tears as he sighed and let out the breath in a remorseful revelation while he rose to his feet and walked to the edge of the porch to stare at the black night beyond the porch, “That face watching me leave her was more than I could bear. It took all the strength I had in me to keep that pony heading away from her. But I did it and I hate myself for it and now I’m worried that she will hate me for it.”

  His eyes followed a shooting star that blazed across the dark sky but he really didn’t seem to see it. Its sparkle fizzled into nothingness before he continued, “Yesterday was her birthday. That’s why I have to go back to her, to find out if she still loves me, if she will forgive me.”

  Savannah stepped toward him, to place a hand upon his shoulder but he shrugged it away while he uttered, “When we started back from Mexico is when I began thinking about her sweet sad face and that’s ALL I could think about.”

  Slowly, Travis lowered his head as if his inner soul condemned him for his actions before he admitted, “Then as the days went by, I began to wonder if YOU would hate me for what I did, for leaving her again, for deserting my own daughter in order to fulfill a promise that I had made to her mother years ago and then for ignoring the promise that I had made to Hannah to make El Diablo pay.” He paused, sighed again and then said quietly, “And for missing my baby’s birthday…”

  Tears streamed down her face as Savannah turned him to face her before she threw herself into his arms and declared with all her heart, “I do not hate you, Travis Corbett. I admire you for having the fortitude to take that initiative, to demand an end to your nightmare once and for all. The fact that you left your daughter means that you had her in mind when you vowed to make Diego pay for killing her mother. And to want to go back home to be with her again tells me that you are a wonderful and caring father.”

  He looked her in the eyes, taking her shoulders into his palms and said, “I wish that I could have told you this last night. I just thought that you needed time to be with your son and your friends here at the hotel and I didn’t want to intrude on that. And I couldn’t ask you to put off going home to your mansion, to try and regain all that had been taken from you by your husband.”

  “If it means going home to your daughter with you and seeing the joy on her precious face at having her father back, I will put off going home until you are together again. As long as we are all together,” Savannah assured him with a squeeze of her hand on his forearm.

  “So, you don’t hate me?” He asked as if her words had sped right past him like that shooting star, heard by his ears but not acknowledged by his heart.

  “Do you hate me for missing my son’s birthdays?” Savannah asked, searching his eyes for the light of realization that she had done the same thing to her own offspring. Taking his face into her palms, she made him focus on her speech before she asked, “Do you hate me for not going back for my Benny that day in the desert and then for putting it off for nearly two years?” When he shrugged, finally comprehending that very idea, but dismissing it as unimportant, she asked with anticipation, “Do you hate me for not giving you a chance to explain yourself last night on the porch?”

  “No,” he said, his eyes showing the sudden appreciation of the similarities of their lives. “I never thought about you leaving Benny and if I had, I would still love you. And as far as your temper, my love, I knew that you needed some time to cool off before I could come to you and ask for your forgiveness.”

  Again, that word filled her heart with joy, with love for the man who had uttered it. She raised her head to make sure that he saw the truth in her heart as she told him, “There is nothing to forgive and I still love you.”

  Travis leaned down to warm her yearning lips with his before he whispered in a trembling, heartfelt voice, “I’ll always love you.”

  Epilogue

  Deep in the dark caverns that zigzagged under the grounds of Robin’s Glen, Savannah and Travis began the search for the treasures that awaited discovery after so many years. It had been several months since they had found their way from Texas to Georgia. They had retrieved a gleeful Hannah Claire from the home of Abigail’s daughter before stopping by the Texas Ranch that had been named Heart MT by its former inhabitants and had been closed up in anticipation that their daughter would someday claim it and start a family of her own.

  After they had settled into the mansion, they realized that their neighbors would expect their possessions to be returned to them, so they agreed that it was time that they begin the undertaking of finding the valuables and giving them back to their rightful owners.

  Since they had read the letters on the train to Galveston, they knew exactly what they were looking for and where to find it. One of the letters, which had been addressed to Savannah by her father, explained that he had sold the portion of treasure that he had offered in order to pay for rebuilding the mansion while the coins were relinquished to the “damned tax collectors”. So, the family’s fortune was indeed depleted.

  And locating treasure that belonged to someone else was not a priority to either of them. What mattered most was finding love, lost love, enduring love, lasting love in a family that somehow existed in the four beings that inhabited Robin’s Glenn. Reuniting father to daughter, mother to son, lover to lover and home to all was wholly what mattered when the blended family rolled up to the towering columns in the rented surrey one Autumn afternoon.

  They spent the winter reacquainting themselves with one another and learning to love the newest members of their family. After their small wedding, at which Travis’ parents were in attendance, bringing a large Chrystal punch bowl with matching ladle and glasses as a gift, the family stood around the Christmas tree singing carols. Travis forgave his parents, at the advice of Savannah, and all was merry, as the Season dictated.

  Bessie, who had stayed on at the mansion, was all too happy to take the children into her ample bosom and become their guardian. This gave Savannah and Travis plenty of time to get to know each other and to fall more deeply in love. By the time Spring arrived, their hearts were bound forever.

  Now, watching her as she sat on the ground, suddenly assailed again by the trauma of losing her mother when she was a child, and unable to continue down that dank and daunting maze, Travis felt a surge of regret for almost leaving her to face this devastating task alone.

  He took her into his arms and held her as she cried into his shoulders, clinging to him like she had clung to Bessie that terrible day while her parents were assailed by Sherman’s heartless men. When she explained her sudden attack of terror, he tightened his arms around her and whispered into her hair, “We don’t have to do this today. These things have been here for over twenty years, they can stay here a little while longer.”

  Her thankful smile told him that he had given her the strength to rise to her feet and allow him to lead her back out of the caves. Her mood brightened as if a great stone had been lifted from her shoulders when they found their way to the sunshine outside.

  He knew that she was not yet ready to face the site that had caused her such trauma when she was just a small child. Remembering his daughter’s frightened face when he had left her, he believed that Savannah needed him to help her through the torment that still echoed in her heart after all these years. And when he looked into her heartrending violet eyes, he suddenly realized that she must have suppressed that fearful ex
perience since that awful day and that her actions as an adult were most likely influenced by that one traumatic event, molding her personality and making her the woman that clasped her hands in reverent insecurity to him. And like his precious Hannah, who seemed to be more timid than before he’d left her, Savannah must have changed as she had huddled in that gloomy frightening expanse at the bottom of the well. She must have emerged from the well with a new attitude, a new outlook, a new driving force that could only have been kindled by Sherman’s burning rampage.

  He vowed right then and there to make sure that only pure joy would cause her to cry and that his efforts toward that end would always be his best, for this woman had suffered enough at the hands of fate.

  For now, the treasure that lay beyond the catacomb at the bottom of the well was irrelevant to the lifelong happiness of the two who sat at its threshold, finding the utmost fortune in the love that burst between them at that very moment. Nothing, it seemed to them, was more important than the admiration and adoration that passed between them at that instant. And nothing—not even death—could tear them apart or could keep them from fulfilling the purpose that Fate had, since the day that they had met in that terrible storm, brought them together to face whatever was in store for them. And with that knowledge, with that tenacity, they stepped out of the well and walked back toward their children, their future.

  Someday, they would return all the things that had been donated in the interest of the South’s cause. But, today, they would focus on the family that awaited them in the home that now stood looming above them in the middle of the plantation that had been named Robin’s Glen. Today, they would start a new life as if no other life had existed beyond the Civil War, beyond the invasion of the Union, beyond the intrusion of El Diablo, beyond the existence of life apart and a life that did not include little Benito and sweet Hannah Claire. Today, life would begin again with the treasures that life had already bestowed upon them.