by Burke, Dez
I don’t bother telling him that there’s no way he can carry a fifty-pound sack of feed. If that’s even what he’s doing, and I’m sure it’s not.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get you home. Cole might be searching for you. My car is parked right there.” I point to my car in front of the coffee shop. “I’ll drive you. I bet Cole needs your help back at the farm.”
I’m amazed he’s made it this far. He must have walked three or four miles on foot from the farmhouse into town.
He tries to step away out of my reach and seems reluctant to go with me. “No, I need to go into town and pick up things for the farm.”
“All right, Edward. What else do you need? I’ll go with you.”
“Levi needs a pack of guitar strings. He’s been going on all day about those damned strings. I need to get some. My boy plays the guitar.”
I don’t tell him that Levi’s been in Nashville for years.
“I’ll pick some up later and drop them by when I visit tonight. How’s that? I know exactly the kind of strings he needs. Levi is a friend of mine. Do you remember when I used to visit the farm?”
Edward makes a few grumbling noises then thankfully nods and walks along with me and gets into my car without too much fuss.
I put it into drive and head straight to the farmhouse. While we drive, Edward gazes out the window in confusion while his fingers fidget restlessly in his lap, folding and creasing the corner of his shirt tail. As we draw nearer to the farmhouse, he seems to perk up a little.
“Are you Annie? Levi’s girl?” he suddenly asks.
I turn to smile at him, pleased that he remembers. “That’s right,” I say. “I’m Annie.”
“It’s been a long time since you visited the farm,” he says.
Longer than he knows.
Seven long years.
“I’m sorry about that,” I say. “I’ve been busy going to college and working at the pharmacy. I’ve missed visiting the farm.”
“You should stay for dinner,” he says. “Like old times. Evelyn keeps hoping you and Levi will get married one day.”
My hearts tightens painfully at the mention of his wife, Evelyn. Levi’s mom passed away two years ago from cancer. I always loved and respected her. From the time I was little, she always treated me as one of her family members.
I pull up outside the farmhouse. Cole is standing on the far side of the front porch, his hand shielding his eyes from the summer sun. He’s peering out over the fields, his face worried and desperate.
I honk my horn to get his attention and immediately see his expression flood with relief.
He runs down to my car and opens the passenger door when he spots his dad. He gently helps him out of the car. Edward is unsteady on his feet, exhausted from his long walk. Cole slips an arm around his waist to steady him when he sags and almost falls.
“Annie!” Cole exclaims. “Thank God! Where did you find him?”
“He was walking on the sidewalk through town just past the coffee shop.”
“In town? Jesus Christ! I was out in the back field. I wasn’t gone more than twenty minutes. How did he make it that far so quickly? Anything could’ve happened to him. He could’ve fallen into a ditch or been hit by a passing car. Or wandered into the woods.”
“It’s all right,” I say, trying to calm him down. “He’s fine. He’s walked quite a way, though. He’ll be ready for a cold drink and a nap.”
“Thank you for bringing him home. I’ve been absolutely panicking. I was just about to call the police and put out an alert for him.”
“No need. He’s home safe and sound.”
“Come on in. The least I can do is offer you something to eat. You should stay for dinner.”
“I already invited her for dinner,” Edward pipes up to say. “Levi will be here any time now. He’s late. Evelyn is making a special dessert.”
Cole and I exchange worried glances over his head.
“I’ll walk you inside, but I can’t stay for dinner,” I say.
Cole walks Edward slowly inside and settles him in the living room, then gestures for me to join him in the kitchen. He hits a button on the coffeemaker to make a pot of coffee and leans wearily against the kitchen sink.
“I’m sorry about this. Dad’s living in another time period. He seems to understand that I’m thirty-two and have a daughter now, but in his head, Levi’s still nineteen. He’s barely seen him since Levi was that age. It’s no wonder that he can’t imagine him any other way. To him, Levi is still a teenager.”
“The memories erase going backwards,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this is to cope with.”
“In the last six months, he’s become someone completely different. It’s heartbreaking to watch him become someone I don’t know or recognize.”
I nod in sad understanding. The coffeemaker beeps and after taking two mugs out of the cupboard, he pours each of us a cup.
“Did you talk to Levi about this?” I ask.
“Yes, I did. Once I was able to get through to him, he said he’s coming home.”
My heart soars. I can clearly see Levi’s face in my mind. Not the photos printed in magazines of Levi Hamby at twenty-five with his model good looks and designer clothes.
No, I see my Levi.
The guy I knew and loved all my life.
Every thought of him brings back memories of the long summers we spent together, swimming in the lake, riding horses through the fields, and nights spent lying on a blanket in the bed of his pick-up truck gazing up at the stars.
The same as with Edward, in my memory, Levi hasn’t changed either and I don’t want him to.
He’s still nineteen.
Young, handsome, devilishly sexy and a dreamer.
“That’s great news,” I say, trying not to show my excitement. “I’m glad he’s coming home to see Edward.”
“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to convince him to come home, but he surprised me. He said he’d book a flight right away. He’s promised me two weeks. Maybe he can stay for longer.”
“That’s amazing. I bet you can’t even remember living under the same roof as Levi.”
He chuckles at the memory. “Oh, I remember living with my brother,” he says. “It was like living with freaking Elvis. Every morning I woke up to him singing at the top of his lungs in his bedroom. At night, I couldn’t sleep because of the sound of his guitar playing the same tune over and over. Now he’s haunting me. Every time I turn on the radio, there he is, still crooning away in my ear.”
I laugh, knowing the feeling.
“Music was all he ever cared about,” he says. “Dad would ask us to help him out with planting the fields and after an hour, we’d turn around to discover Levi missing. Dad would send me out to hunt for him and I’d find him playing the harmonica in the barn without a care in the world. With Levi, everything went in one ear and right out the other.”
“Except when it came to music.”
“You’re right there,” he says. “Nothing could turn Levi away from his music.”
“Look at him now, though,” I say with a proud smile. “He stuck to his dream and now he’s a star. He was born to perform.”
“No, he was born to be a Hamby and to keep the family farm going,” Cole says in a bitter voice. “The same as me, our dad, and our grandfather before him. Levi made the choice to be a musician.”
I understand where Cole is coming from. The farm is too much for him to handle alone, even without the added pressures of caring for Lily and Edward all by himself.
“At least Levi’s coming home now to help,” I say.
Cole picks up the coffeepot and tops my mug off with coffee. “Or so he says. I’m going to be pissed if he cancels. I hate to ask you this, Annie, but would you be able to do us a favor? If you can’t do it, just say so and I’ll find someone else. It’s short notice.”
“Sure, if I can.”
“I’m supposed to be picking up Levi from th
e airstrip tomorrow. He doesn’t want the press to know he’s in town so he’s flying in on a private plane. Could you sit with Dad and Lily for a couple of hours while I run out to pick him up?”
“Of course. It’s a Saturday and I have the weekend off work for a change. Sure, I’ll come by and stay until you get back.”
“You’re a lifesaver. We owe you one. It seems I’m always scrambling around for help these days.”
“You owe me nothing. I’m happy to help.”
And desperate to see Levi again.
Cole is a friend, but Levi is an old flame.
The only one who can light me up from the inside like no one else before or since then. The thought of being here when he arrives from Tennessee makes my heart pound in my chest with anticipation.
“How long has it been since you last saw Levi?” Cole asks as if he can read my thoughts.
“I’m not sure,” I reply. “Quite a while. Not since that summer after high school. I left to go off to college and he headed straight for Nashville. He didn’t make it back to our five-year class reunion. I was hoping he might. I guess it would be a little much for a celebrity to return for a high school reunion. And awkward, considering most of his female classmates are now his biggest fans.”
“Did you know that his first song is about you?” Cole asks.
I blush and take a sip of my coffee to hide my red face.
“No, it could have been about anyone. Or no one person in particular. You don’t need a real romance to write a love song.”
“What you two had was more than a romance,” he says, smiling knowingly. “You were inseparable from the time you were ten years old. Always chasing each other through the cornfields or catching lizards in the creek. Mama couldn’t get Levi to come in for dinner at night because you two were always too busy doing something. She’d yell for him until she was hoarse, then she’d go outside and lay down on the car horn.”
I smile at the memory.
“Levi knew the car horn was his five-minute warning,” I say. “No matter how far away we were, we could always hear her car horn blowing. Three times was the signal. When we heard that, he’d take off running back to the house fast as he could go. He said she’d give him a whooping if he didn’t.” I laugh lightly. “We were so young and innocent back then. It was such a long time ago. Things were simple and easy. Living in the country without a care in the world. I doubt your brother even remembers my name.”
Cole raises his eyebrows at me. “Oh, I’m sure he remembers the name of the girl who inspired the song he sings pretty much every night of his life now.”
“Stop it,” I say, holding up my hand. “The song’s not about me. We were only kids. It’s hardly the world’s greatest love story.”
“Keep on telling yourself that,” he says, giving me a knowing look. “One of these days you might actually believe it.”
7
Levi
The small rural airport for private planes is tiny with a short landing strip no longer than my driveway back in Nashville. The wheels of the chartered plane bump the runaway once before touching down smoothly and rolling to a complete stop.
“I enjoyed the flight,” I say to the pilot sitting in the cockpit beside me. Harry had booked him at the last minute so I wouldn’t need to fly commercial. “Thanks for flying me home on such short notice.”
The grey-haired pilot removes his glasses and cleans them carefully. “Let me know when you’re ready to go back to Nashville and I’ll fly you back,” he replies, taking a business card out of his pocket and handing it to me. “It’s not every day I get to shuttle a country music star around the country. It’s good for business.”
“I’ll be sure to do that,” I tell him with a polite smile.
I exit down the short set of metal steps to the runway with my guitar and one small suitcase then head toward the tiny building to find Cole.
My brother is the reliable one in the family. If he said he’d be here, then I know he will be. He’s never late and always right on time.
As soon as I step outside the front door of the airstrip, I see Cole waiting for me in his old black pick-up truck, one elbow hanging out the open window, dark sunglasses over his eyes.
He lowers them when I appear, as if to check it’s really me, then a grin appears on his deeply-tanned face and he steps out of the truck.
“If it isn’t my little brother,” he says, opening his tanned, tattooed arms wide to grab me in a big bear hug.
I hug him back tightly then release him.
“I said I’d be here and here I am. I caught the first plane I could get. It was a tiny puddle-jumper. I probably could’ve driven here faster in my car. When we were flying over the highway, I swear the cars were moving quicker than we were.”
“I can’t believe you’re really here.” He reaches out his hand toward my suitcase. “Hand me your bag and I’ll throw it in the back of the truck.”
I grip the suitcase tighter. “Don’t worry. I’m still able to lift my own bags.”
“Is that so?” he says. “I’m surprised you’re still able to pick out your own clothes. Don’t you have a guy to do all that stuff these days?”
I throw him a sideways glance. The small smile playing on his lips tells me he’s joking. His expression breaks into a wide grin. I load my case into the bed of the truck and place my guitar carefully behind my seat. Cole returns to the driver seat and we set off down the two-lane road to the farm.
The southern Georgia landscape slowly rolls by. Mile after mile of farmland. Not a skyscraper or neon light in sight.
“It’s good to be home,” I say. “I always forget how small this place is. No fast food restaurants or big box retail stores junking things up on the side of the road.”
“Things haven’t changed much since you were here,” he says. “The fast food franchises haven’t quite made it to Monroe yet. You’ll have to survive on the food at the Tastee Burger diner if you get hungry.”
“Is that place still open?”
The down and dirty hamburger joint was one of our favorite haunts as teens. Our parents used to send us off with ten dollars in our pockets, and we’d spend all afternoon eating burgers and drinking chocolate milkshakes.
“Stronger than ever. Tanya’s running the joint now.”
“You’re kidding?” I say. “Damn! It has been a long time. Times sure do change. She was one of my classmates in high school. I’m not sure I want to eat there if she’s doing the cooking. I’d be afraid of food poisoning. One time I signed up for Home Economics class as an elective. She was in there too and couldn’t cook worth a damn. The teacher made us partner up on a cake-making demonstration. Tanya mixed up the measurements and the cake turned out as flat as a pancake and salty as ocean water. The teacher gave us both a ‘C’ for that. Pulled my whole grade down in the class.”
“Well, her cooking now is better than mine, which isn’t saying much.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I say.
It’s a blazing hot June day and I can feel the sweltering sun beating down on the fields. I reach my hand toward the truck’s vents and only feel hot air coming out.
“Is the truck’s air conditioner broken?” I ask, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. “It’s hot as hell in here.”
“What air conditioner?” he says, laughing at my misery. “You’d better get used to the heat. It’s supposed to be ninety-eight degrees this week.”
“Sweet Jesus,” I say. “I don’t miss the Georgia heat and humidity. It gets hot in Nashville, but not like this shit.”
“Before I forget, I need to remind you to watch your language around Lily,” Cole says. “She’s four now with big ears. If you’re not careful, she’ll repeat everything you say. And I do mean everything. Last week I almost ran a red light and had to slam on my brakes. Lily was in the backseat and I heard a little ‘dammit!’ under her breath when I almost threw her into the floorboard.”
I can’t h
elp chuckling at the thought of my adorable little niece cussing already. “I’ll try my best. I don’t want to be blamed for corrupting our girl. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?” Cole asks, shooting me a look across the seat.
“Raise a kid alone. Not just a kid, a little girl. How do you know what to do or not do?”
“I take it one day at a time,” he says. “When a baby’s screaming, you’ll figure out damn fast how to fix a bottle in the middle of the night or change a diaper to make them stop. After the first few months, everything seemed to get easier. Lily’s a great kid. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter. She’s no trouble.”
“I can’t wait to see her and Dad,” I say.
There’s a bright glare on the windshield, and I tilt my cowboy hat down to shield my eyes since my sunglasses are packed in my bag.
“I bought you that hat,” Cole says.
“It was a going away present, if I remember. When I left for Nashville with fifty dollars in my pocket and my guitar.”
“Was it?” he asks. “I always thought of it as a peace offering.”
“You mean for chewing me out about going to Nashville in the first place?”
“That’s right, and other things.”
I run my fingers along the brim of the hat and lean my head back against the seat. “I love this hat. I wear it all the time.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t upgraded,” he says. “Maybe to a fancy hat made from the leather of a rare, endangered cow or something.”
“A rare cow?” I ask with a chuckle. “What the hell is that? If you can find me one, then maybe I’ll consider it.”
“How about Mary Lou Miller? Does she count as a rare cow?”
We both break out into laughter, knowing we’re being awful. Mary Lou Miller was an older woman who lived in town when we were kids. She used to shoo us away from whatever street corner we were hanging around on and accuse us of loitering.