Sugar Creek

by Toni Blake

  As for Rachel Farris, she was at the opposite end of the spectrum. She clearly had no respect for the law, and people like her made it harder for him to keep people safe.

  And he’d been ready to forget all about her, including his bizarre reaction to her—since he was usually much more in command of his own lust, especially on the job—until, damn it, she’d had to block that fire hydrant today.

  And before he’d quite known what was happening, she’d been brushing past him, leaving behind that seductive scent again—something light, fruity maybe—and putting all his senses on alert. After which she’d accidentally touched his arm—with her breast. Damn—soft. Nice. And since when did fruit smell seductive?

  He’d unwittingly started noticing other things about her, too. Like that even today, in town, she hadn’t dressed like most women in Destiny, who were fond of floral skirts and soft colors. She’d seemed more…sexy, again in dark jeans, with strappy high-heeled shoes and a stylish top that had hugged her long, lean curves. And he’d gotten a closer look at some of those curves when she’d bent down into his window.

  Up to then, he really had shoved her out of his mind—mostly. But now…hell, what was the deal?

  After all, she was the exact opposite of everything he liked in a person: self-righteous, entitled, argumentative, and reckless to boot. Plus it was clear she considered Destiny below her—she didn’t even have to say it, he could see it in her eyes. So…maybe it just pissed him off to be having such a primitive reaction to her. Me Tarzan, you Jane. That wasn’t him. Usually.

  Not that he planned to respond to his urges. Even if, in an off moment, he’d almost flirted with her. Nope, he’d keep his Tarzan-like impulses to himself.

  She just had too much going against her. Besides everything else, it bugged the hell out of him when she called him Officer Romeo. And sexy as hell or not, the girl was a Farris on top of it all.

  Mike didn’t make a habit of judging people by their families—but a lifetime of observation had shown him that most Farrises were cut from the same cloth: often in some kind of scrape, either financial or legal, and generally out for themselves. He considered it good riddance that most of them had moved away.

  And he wasn’t sure what had originally started the feud between the two families, but he did know the Farris Family Apple Orchard had once belonged to his grandfather, who’d emigrated from Italy, and that his family had always felt it should be rightfully theirs. Of course, Edna had always refused to sell, which had angered Mike as a boy—but as time had passed he’d tried to let that go, coming to know and like Edna, despite her quirks.

  Just then, he realized—maybe he did remember Rachel Farris at seventeen. Judging from the birth date on her license, he’d been doing his police training in Chillicothe around that time, but he’d never been away from Destiny for long—and hadn’t there been some cute, rambunctious little Farris girl flitting about town in those days? A cheerleader, if he remembered. And he had the vague sense that she’d driven fast even then—back before he’d had the ability to do anything about it. He suspected she was the same then as now—probably the only difference being that she’d grown from a cute, reckless, over-confident girl in a cheerleading skirt into an attractive, reckless, over-confident woman in jeans that hugged her ass real nice.

  But Rachel Farris’s jeans and Rachel Farris’s genes were two different things—and he could admire one without admiring the other. He could think she was attractive without acting on it. And besides, if he wanted a woman, he was capable of getting one whose last name wasn’t Farris.

  He knew he wasn’t exactly charming, but despite that, all he usually had to do was buy a girl a drink and she was his for the night. Logan had started calling him the Italian Stallion, claiming it was all in his genes. And maybe it was. Everyone always claimed that his late grandfather, Giovanni Romo, had had a way with the ladies, too.

  It was just then that Mike caught sight of a vehicle rounding the bend in the distance so fast the car was a blur—an electric shade of purple, but that was all he could tell as he lifted the radar gun and aimed it out the open window. The speeding car blew past in a streak of color—at ninety-two miles per hour! Shit. Now that he could haul somebody’s ass to jail for.

  The only problem might be catching the son of a bitch.

  But Mike tore out of his spot just off the road, throwing up mud and grass as he pressed the gas pedal to the floor, committed to trying. He fishtailed but straightened it out, then switched on his lights and siren.

  As the car had whooshed past, he’d identified it as a late model Mustang—which meant catching the bastard would be difficult at best. He didn’t know the car, had never seen it around—but this guy made Rachel Farris look like a Sunday driver.

  Mike drove as fast as possible under the conditions, thinking the guy might be slowed down by curves or—God forbid—other vehicles. And he tried to keep an eye toward the roadside—it wouldn’t take much at that speed for the asshole to make a wrong move and go skidding off the pavement into a tree or a ravine—but going ninety, it was hard to concentrate on more much than the road itself.

  He drove that way for nearly ten minutes down the country highway, never catching even a glimpse of the Mustang—before he accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to. Damn it.

  Slowing his cruiser, he banged his palm on the steering wheel and cursed. What the hell was that idiot thinking, driving that fast on a twisting two-lane highway?

  Finally, he located a spot to pull off and turn back—he’d gone well beyond the Destiny city limits, past his own house and out into farm country. It was rural here, but there were plenty of roads crisscrossing each other every few miles—so the Mustang could be headed anywhere now.

  Once back in town, he drove toward the police station, every muscle in his body still tensed. It was the first time anyone had ever even tried to outrun him, and though he knew it wasn’t his fault the guy had gotten away, the Mustang had put him in a rotten mood. Pulling up in front of the station, he slammed his door shut with too much force.

  “Whoa, dude, who pissed you off?”

  He glanced up to see Logan Whitaker, the person who knew him best in the world. And the truth was, he didn’t particularly like anyone knowing all the things about him that Logan did, but it couldn’t be helped—it was the price you paid for lifelong friendship. A fireman, Logan sat outside the firehouse next door in a DFD tee and blue jeans—apparently just soaking up the sunny day and looking far too chipper for Mike at the moment. “Some son-of-a-bitch Mustang just blew by me on the Meadowview going ninety-fucking-two,” he growled.

  Logan drew back slightly in his folding chair. “Damn. You catch him?”

  Mike raised his eyebrows. “Do I look like I caught him?”

  “Oh.” Logan left it at that, since he knew how Mike felt about speeders, and reckless people in general.

  Pushing through the door into the station, Mike was glad to see things mostly quiet, empty—only Chief Tolliver sat at his desk doing paperwork, and he lifted his hand in absent greeting, raising his eyes only briefly. “Mike,” he murmured.

  “Walter,” Mike returned—then planted himself at his own desk, where he signed on to his computer to contact the Ohio State Highway Patrol with what little information he had about the car. Who knew what they’d find in the master Bureau of Motor Vehicles database without even a partial on the plate, but on the other hand, how many purple Mustangs could there be in the area?

  Half an hour later, it turned out the answer was none. No purple Mustangs anywhere nearby. But there were a considerable number of hits statewide, and when he ran an inquiry through the Law Enforcement Automated Data System, he found out a purple Mustang had been stolen from a Cleveland suburb a couple of weeks ago. Hmm. He’d lay odds he’d just chased that same car up the Meadowview.

  Maybe he was assuming too much, but his cop’s gut instincts had told him almost instantly there was something more at work here than just a wild jo
yride. Something…worrisome. Shit.

  Taking a deep breath, Mike e-mailed the jurisdiction where the stolen Mustang was registered, to let them know of the possible sighting. And upon closing the database, he leaned back in his chair with a sigh, glad the chief was too immersed in work across the room to notice his mood.

  Then he caught a glimpse of the picture of Anna he still kept on his desk. It had been taken one Easter—she stood in the yard wearing a lacy white dress.

  Somehow, at a moment like this, the very sight of her, looking so happy and carefree, so innocent, stole his breath. She’d had no idea, no idea at all what was coming. None of them had.

  And he thought, as he did at some point every single day, of all the bad things happening in the world that he was powerless to stop. He kept trying—he tried with everything in him—but he just couldn’t ever fix it all.

  Where are you, Anna? Where the hell are you?

  Despite himself, even after all this time, he never quit wondering.

  Rachel turned left at the quaint wooden sign that read Farris Family Apple Orchard and drove across the little stone bridge crossing Sugar Creek. Sunbeams broke through the billowing trees to dapple the ground with light and remind Rachel of time spent here as a little girl. Edna’s house had been the gathering place for the Farris clan back then—Sunday dinners, holidays, it had all taken place at the orchard. A fleeting memory of hide-and-go-seek with her cousins made her envision crouching behind tree trunks, or slipping into the cheerful red barn that had just come into view. She stopped the car far short of the barn, though, parking alongside Edna’s little Toyota pickup and the circa 1940 fruit truck that she suspected hadn’t hauled anything anywhere in at least twenty years.

  Edna’s little white house with gingerbread trim was the kind everyone entered through the back screen door more than the front one—so that’s what she did now, letting it slam behind her as she called out, “Hey Edna, I’m home!”

  No answer. But no biggie. She might be napping. Or for all Rachel knew, Edna was out picking a few ripening apples on her not-really-so-bad knees—she’d promised to bake an apple pie, since Rachel loved Edna’s pies.

  Moving through the kitchen to what Edna still called the parlor, Rachel realized the house was filled with furniture from the first half of the last century: an antique sofa and chair, small end tables with spindle legs, a huge wooden radio from the thirties, an old upright piano adorned with old photos atop a white doily. Little had changed since Rachel had last been here almost fifteen years ago. Except that Edna had gotten older. Which made her a little sad when she looked at the framed pictures on the piano of Edna in younger days—and of all of them, all her family, in earlier times.

  For some reason, all those pictures together—Edna in her youth, then Rachel’s parents as teenagers, and then Rachel herself, with other cousins, as a small child—made her chest tighten. How swiftly fly the years. Maybe it was easier not to focus on that aspect of life in the city, where days were brisk, busy. Here, though, from Amy’s refurbished storefront to that old truck outside, from early twentieth century farmhouses to the pictures spread across Edna’s piano, it was hard not to be aware of the way time passed, of the way each person’s time was…limited. Life didn’t go on forever. For anyone.

  “Fleetin’, ain’t it?” Edna said.

  And Rachel flinched—then turned, scolding Edna with her eyes for sneaking up behind her. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Life. It flits by faster than you’d expect.”

  Edna was like that sometimes—she could read your mind just from the look on your face. Rachel had sort of forgotten that.

  “Look at you,” Edna went on. “All grown up and with your big city job. And it feels like just yesterday I bounced ya on my knee and wiped chocolate off your face and fed ya Coke over crushed ice when you were sick.”

  “I never really got that,” Rachel admitted thoughtfully. “The Coke-over-crushed-ice thing. What is that supposed to do for you?”

  “Settles your stomach. Everybody knows that. It’s been a family home remedy long as I can remember.”

  “Hmm,” Rachel mused. “Not to burst your bubble, Edna, but…even though Coke settles my stomach, I don’t think the crushed ice adds anything.”

  Edna shrugged. “Do you still eat a bowl of it when ya get sick?”

  With just a hint of hesitation, Rachel nodded. “Not because I think I’m getting anything extra from the crushed ice, but it’s…well, just what I do when I’m sick.”

  “There ya go. If ya do it, you must get somethin’ out of it.”

  “Comfort, I guess,” Rachel admitted. “Because you always said it would make me feel better.”

  “Comfort’s enough,” Edna said. “In fact, I can’t think of much better to leave a grandchild with. And when I’m dead and gone, you’ll still have that.”

  Rachel made a face. “Shut up—it’s not like you’re going anywhere anytime soon.” Then she turned back to the piano, focusing on a photo of Edna taken in the fifties, out by the creek. She wore a short-sleeved sweater with a white lace collar and a dark skirt. “You were really pretty,” Rachel said.

  “Took after my mother,” Edna replied immodestly, motioning to an even older picture, on the wall—from the thirties—of Rachel’s great-grandmother, who was, indeed, just as lovely, even in what Rachel saw as a long, shapeless dress and flat hair pulled tight behind her head. “And good thing, too, because looks and charm was about all a girl in Destiny could hope for back then. I’m glad times have changed.”

  Which reminded Rachel of something that hadn’t changed, or apparently not much—the Farris/Romo feud. “By the way, I didn’t get a chance to tell you last night, but I got pulled over by Mike Romo on my way into town.”

  Rachel waited for Edna to fly into a fit over “those damn Romos” as she’d done on a regular basis in Rachel’s youth—so she couldn’t have been more stunned when Edna smiled and said, “Ah. Mike’s a decent fella. Caught ya speedin’, huh? He’s a stickler—you’ll really have to slow it down while you’re here.”

  Rachel just stared at her grandmother, her mouth hanging open. “What the hell is this? Since when do you have anything nice to say about a Romo?”

  She shrugged again, tilting her gray head. “Like I said, times have changed. Oh, I still don’t have much nice to say about most of ’em, but Mike’s a good egg. Not much of a talker, at least not to most folks, but he does a lotta good around here.”

  “Huh,” Rachel said blankly, still trying to get over it. “He told me you and he got along, but I didn’t believe him. And…well, he still has plenty bad to say about the Farrises, just so you know.”

  “Never claimed he was a saint.”

  “He said we’d never had any respect for the law—and that we were smart-asses.” She neglected to mention that she’d actually started the name-calling.

  Yet Edna just cracked a smile, clearly amused. “Sounds like he’s got us pegged.”

  And Rachel rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Where’s your family loyalty gone? This isn’t the Edna I know.”

  “Maybe the better question is—where’s my family gone? Once you’re by yourself…well, maybe it stops feelin’ like there’s much to be loyal to. Or maybe I just got old and tired of bein’ rambunctious. Easier to just get along with folks. That’s somethin’ I wish I’d figured out sooner in life.”

  Rachel just stared, planting her hands on her hips. “Who are you? And what have you done with my grandmother?”

  “I don’t see what the big to-do is. We are all smart-asses—except maybe for your cousin Elaine, but that’s just ’cause she’s not very bright. Takes some brains to be a good smart-ass. And your uncle Dave did have some shady real estate dealin’s years ago when he was runnin’ short on cash, and your great aunt Liddie was practically famous around here for writin’ bad checks back in the seventies—recession and all, you know. And your cousin Robby—”

  “Stop.” Rachel held u
p a hand. “I already know all this and don’t like being reminded.”

  Yet Edna just shook her head. “We are what we are, darlin’. Don’t mean all of us are that way, but nobody’s perfect, either.”

  And what was it the Farrises were? Bad with money. Most of them anyway. For Rachel, that was the resounding theme that ran through every branch of her family tree. Some relatives, like Dave and Liddie and Robby, let it show, way too much—while others, like her parents, appeared comfortable on the surface, yet mostly squandered everything they made. So, for her, it wasn’t about being perfect or not—it was about being responsible. About choosing smart, prudent paths in life.

  And that was one reason Rachel felt so pressured to hold on to her good job—this was what she hadn’t wanted to think about in Under the Covers today. From a personal standpoint, her career success defined her; it was a huge part of her identity and what made her feel good about herself and her life. But it was also vital from a practical standpoint, too. The fact was, she’d had to give her parents money on occasion, and her older brother, Noah, as well. Sometimes it was doctor bills, other times car payments. And sooner or later, she feared they’d require her help in bigger ways. Her parents, her brother, Edna—what if the time came when one or more of them ended up dangerously broke? Where would rescue come from if not her?

  Fortunately, Edna didn’t seem to notice Rachel’s lack of reply—instead, she headed into the kitchen and said, “Think I’ll whip up that pie, and maybe fry us some chicken for supper. How’s that sound?” she asked, her voice filled with cheer.

  “Great,” Rachel said, and it truly did. Another good thing about being back in Destiny: Edna’s cooking. There was nothing like it in Chicago. So she let it draw her mind from her lifelong worries. “But, uh…how are your knees today?”

  Edna gritted her teeth and took on a tortured look. “Painin’ me pretty bad, but I’ll hold up. Can ya hand me my cane?”