Beneath a Beating Heart

by Lauri Robinson

  “I don’t know.”

  His honesty, along with how it was laced with disappointment, tested the small amount of willpower she had left. She’d never been so despondent. Being around him didn’t help. It made her want things that could never be. Things for her that is. For him things could be different. She still believed that.

  “I think I need to leave,” she said. “I need time to think. To talk to Vivi Anne. To…I don’t know. Figure something out.” That seemed impossible, but she couldn’t deny there was a spark of hope inside her. That there was an answer, if only she had more time to figure it out. She didn’t. They didn’t. “The fire department will be here in the morning.”

  Still holding the mirror, she used one hand to put the record away and close the victrola. “I’m going to go to town. Talk to someone about putting a stop to the burning. The fire chief, or the mayor, or the sheriff. I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do on my end. In my time.”

  “I’ll be back.” Her fingers refused to release the mirror as much as her eyes refused to meet his reflection. “As soon as I know anything, I’ll be back.”

  “You’ll be careful?” It was half a command, half a question.

  “Yes, I’ll be careful. I’m always careful.”

  The wiggling of the mirror forced her to glance at the glass. His brows were lifted and his expression said he didn’t believe her, and as crazy as that was too, it made her smile.

  “Don’t worry. I will be careful. I won’t slash any tires or…” She grinned. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “What are tires?”

  “Rubber wheels.”

  He nodded but clearly wanted to say more. She best leave before he did.

  “I’ll be back.”

  He bit his lips together momentarily before saying, “Liz, I—”

  “I don’t mind when you call me Beth.” Who was she to deny him that small amount of pleasure?

  His eyes glistened as he grinned. “All right, then.”

  He took a step closer, and her heart—that damned organ that hadn’t given her any trouble up until she’d stepped foot in this house—sensed his closeness. It started beating faster, fluttering. Her lips tingled, too, remembering his pressed against them. If only that could truly have happened. If her fantasies could be real.

  “Beth,” he said softly.

  The blood pounded through her veins with such force she gripped the side of the victrola again. “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  Her heart melted, along with the rest of her insides, leaving her legs so weak they wobbled. Those were words she’d never imagined hearing. Never thought she needed to hear. Whether it was possible or not, she couldn’t deny it any longer. Blinking at the tears forming, she couldn’t deny something else either. This was why she forced herself not to care about anyone, ever, because it hurt. Loving him didn’t hurt, but losing him had, and would again. With her last bit of courage, she whispered, “I love you, Rance. I truly do.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Liz flicked on her blinker to pull into her motel, but a honk had her shutting off the turn signal in order to switch lanes and pull into the big chain hotel across the road. She’d sat in her car at the gate for a good half hour or more, wondering about what had happened, or hadn’t, and what she could do about any of it. And crying. Crying because she wanted to be Beth, but wasn’t and wouldn’t ever be. Her only hope was Vivi Anne, and she hadn’t wasted anytime on her drive to town. The fact no flashing lights had appeared in her review mirror had to be a sign of good things to come.

  After maneuvering around the parking lot full of cars, she slammed her car into park before it had rolled to a stop. Jumping out she flung the door shut with one hand while pulling open the passenger door of Vivi Anne’s truck with the other.

  A ballad about coming home to a place they’d never been before, and being born again, filled the cab. She reached in and turned off the music. Vivi Anne played John Denver music nonstop. It had never bothered Liz before, but it did right now. “You really need a new CD.”

  “That is new. I just bought it at the gas station,” Vivi Anne said. “A person can learn a lot from Johnny’s songs, if they’d actually listen. Let him do the singing.”

  Dropping that subject, Liz nodded toward the iPad propped against the steering wheel. “What are you doing?”

  “Stealing Wi-Fi,” Vivi Anne answered. “That fifteen minute dinosaur computer at our hotel made me want to pull my hair out. I’d look awful being bald.” She set the iPad on the seat beside her. “I rented my own room so you don’t have to share. Les said he’s thinking about ordering the internet for guests, but he’d have to raise his rates, and customers won’t like that.”

  “Yeah, I know. He told me all about it.”

  “What are you doing back here? I didn’t expect you until dark.” Vivi Anne raised a drawn-on brow. “Or later.”

  Catching the insinuation, she sighed and climbed in. “He’s a ghost.”

  “A handsome one.”

  Excitement made her stomach bubble. “You did see him. When you brought the trunk out there.”

  “Of course.” Vivi Anne used a hand to fan herself. “No wonder Beth fell in love with him.”

  “There’s more to Rance than a handsome face.” Her stomach clenched. He wasn’t only a ghost, he was married. She was in love with a married man. This wasn’t any better than being in love with a ghost. Or was it?

  “I know,” Vivi Anne said. “His broad shoulders, muscle bound arms. I bet those pecks can dance, and the way that stomach narrows onto those hips—”

  “Stop,” Liz said.

  “A man’s body, just like a woman’s, was meant to be admired.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that. I’m already twisted as tight as a Sunday paper rubber band.” Turning an air conditioner vent to blow directly on her, she shook her head. “And there’s more to Rance than his body. He’s kind and gentle, and smart and driven, and talented, so talented when it comes to his horses.” A sadness formed inside her. “He has so much to live for and he’s so devoted.”

  “He has a lot to be admired.”

  “Yes, he does. And I have to help him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I need your help.” Trying to explain, she continued, “There’s something I’m missing. Something a bit elusive. It’s there, but I don’t know what it is. I know that sounds crazy, but this is all crazy. I can’t explain it, but I’ve never felt this way before. Felt this driven.”

  “Well, I just sent an email to the local newspaper reporter and posted a link to the board meeting minutes about the nuclear dump site on several social media sites.”

  “We need more than that,” Liz said. “We have to stop the firetrucks from going out to the ranch tomorrow. I need more time to figure out what I have to do.”

  “Figure out what you have to do?”

  “Yes. What we have to do. I need your help. I know that’s a part of it. You’re the reason I’m here in the first place.”

  Vivi Anne nodded while drumming her fingers against the steering wheel, and Liz gnawed on her bottom lip, waiting to hear what her friend was conjuring. It would be good, had to be, and would work.

  After glancing in the review mirror, Vivi Anne said, “Jump in your car and meet me across the road.”

  At that moment, she was more thankful that she’d met Vivi Anne than she was for air to breathe or the sun, or moon, or anything that she took for granted, without a conscious thought, every single day. Her instincts had been right. Vivi Anne was the answer, and time was of the essence. Excitement flared as she jumped out of the truck and into her car.

  Minutes later, as she opened the driver’s door of her car parked in front of her motel room, Vivi Anne stopped her truck behind the car. “Climb in.”

  Liz complied, and while clicking on her seat belt,
asked, “Where are we going?”

  “To eat.”

  That didn’t correspond with any of the ideas bouncing about in her head. Confronting Lou and Nate, or perhaps the fire department was more in line with what she’d been considering. Slashing a few tires still wasn’t far from her mind, except for the fact that was sure to give her an arrest record. Which she could live with if it meant Rance didn’t live in that old cabin for the rest of his life.

  “To eat,” Liz repeated, mentally attempting to dig deeper into the suggestion.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m hungry, and you are too. You haven’t eaten today, have you?”

  “No.” She stopped herself from adding it seemed like a waste of time. Several fast food restaurants lined the highway, and driving through one wouldn’t take much time. They could brainstorm while eating in the truck. Gesturing toward a drive thru near the intersection ahead, she said, “Mexican sounds good.”

  “Then Mexican it is,” Vivi Anne said while driving through the intersection.

  Liz stared at the fast food restaurant as they drove past.

  “I don’t want heartburn afterward. There’s a much better place downtown,” Vivi Anne said.

  Downtown meant a sit down and be waited on place, which meant at least an hour of valuable time. Every ounce of her being was noting each minute she wasn’t at Rance’s house, wasn’t with him, and that left her longing for things she’d only recently come to want. To need.

  “It won’t take that long.”

  Liz tried to pull up a smile but wasn’t in the mood to put too much effort into it. Rance needed help. She needed help, and that made her stomach scream for more than food. Patience, or lack of, had never been an issue for her in the past. Then again, plenty of other things had never been an issue either.

  All she could do was hold belief in Vivi Anne, and that was easy. She’d believed in the other woman since meeting her. Believed she’d seen her husband accident…Her thoughts waned and shifted to other ones. Internal ones. If she could believe that so easily, why couldn’t she believe in other things? Why couldn’t she allow herself to believe she and Beth shared the same spirit?

  Beth had saved her from downing. That she did believe that. So what about reincarnation? Could she be Beth reincarnated? The Beth of the twenty-first century? How else could she know all the things she did? All the antiques in the house she knew about. Where they had come from. Which ones Beth had brought with her from Billings and which ones had been Rance’s. Which ones he’d bought for Beth.

  And the trunk. How did she know Beth had been pregnant? Only Beth had known that. She had to have lived it in a past life. Had to have been Beth.

  “I opened the trunk,” she said as they followed the highway to downtown. Testing her theory.

  “What’s in it?”

  A solid pit formed in her already twisted stomach. “Baby clothes. Beth was pregnant when she died.” She glanced out the side window. “You already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “I looked in the trunk,” Vivi Anne answered.

  “Did you know Beth saved my life?”

  Vivi Anne glanced her way and then back out the windshield. “How?”

  She wasn’t certain if her friend knew or not. “In the river. After the car crashed.”

  “That was the same place Beth died.”

  “Yes. Her spirit had been there since then. Since the train bridge collapsed. Waiting for someone to come along.” Glancing out the window again, but reliving the images she’d only seen internally, Liz twisted the ring on her finger. “She stopped me from drowning and draped me over the trunk. That’s when she gave me this ring. Her wedding ring. I thought it had been my mother’s. That it was the only thing they’d been able to salvage from our car, from my parents.”

  “Why did you assume that?”

  “I don’t know. Probably because that’s what Gladys told me when she gave it to me.” She twisted the ring again. “I thought I’d lost it until it showed up in my suitcase the other night. It was in the outer pocket.”

  “You rarely use the suitcase.”

  “I’ve never enjoyed traveling.”

  “Because of what happened to Beth in the past.”

  Liz let that settle for a moment before nodding. “Probably.” She stared out the window, but wasn’t really looking at anything. “Wilma Harris was right. She was a friend of Gladys’, and I remember her telling other people at church that her son had saved my life. That he’d given me CPR when they found me. Beth stayed with me until the rescuers arrived, and as soon as she left, I-I died. Today, when I opened the trunk and remembered all of this, I felt someone blowing air into my mouth. Into my lungs. I don’t remember the hospital or moving in with Norman and Gladys. Actually, I have very few memories until getting older. I guess it all had been too traumatic for a child.”

  “Probably.”

  “Why didn’t Beth ever come to me before? Why didn’t these memories appear, and why was I so afraid of the trunk?”

  Vivi Anne pulled into a parking lot and found a parking spot. “What do you think?”

  Liz sighed, but ultimately went with her gut. “Because it wasn’t time. I wasn’t ready to believe the possibilities.”

  Vivi Anne’s smile was rewarding enough for Liz to smile in return. Being Beth, or sharing a spirit with her, wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was sort of special.

  They both climbed out of the truck and made their way into the restaurant. Feeling less confused, more aware, the assault of delicious aromas made her stomach growl.

  “See how hungry you are?” Vivi Anne asked.

  “It does smell good,”

  Once seated at the table, she scanned the selections, made her decision, and set the menu aside. It was time to get down to work. “Rance and I need more time.”

  “For what?”

  “To figure out a way to save his ranch. We considered several options, like making sure Robert is never born, therefore neither are Lou and Nate, or for Rance to change his will, but those options could also eliminate the possibility of me finding him at his house.”

  Confusion or possibly disbelief crossed Vivi Anne’s face before she smiled at the waitress who appeared at the table. They both placed their orders, but before the waitress left the table, Vivi Anne grasped the woman’s hand.

  “That’s a lovely ring,” Vivi Anne said.

  The waitress, a young woman with her brown hair twisted into a messy bun, smiled. “Yes, it is,” she answered with a hint of sadness.

  “Have you been married long?” Vivi Anne asked.

  “Five years,” the waitress answered.

  An undercurrent that Vivi Anne was about to become more involved with the waitress than necessary rippled Liz’s nerves. The woman was already married; she didn’t need a match maker. More so, Liz wasn’t interested in sharing Vivi Anne’s attention, not while she needed her. A hint of shame had her bowing her head. She may not have been over caring in the past, or at least thought she hadn’t been, but she’d never been that callous. That self-centered. Nor did she want to be.

  “He’s overseas,” the waitress said. “In the military. Other than a few months here and there, we’ve been apart the entire five years.”

  “That’s hard,” Vivi Anne said.

  “Yes, it is,” the waitress said. “But as my mother says, I made my bed, now I have to lie in it.”

  “She didn’t want you to marry him?”

  The woman shook her head. “She loves Drew almost as much as I do, but my father was in the armed forces, too. Mom knew that makes for a lonely marriage and didn’t want me to have that.”

  “That’s understandable,” Vivi Anne replied.

  Empathy filled Liz. The woman’s mother should be more caring, more understanding and supportive.

  “Letters, phone calls, even video chats, don’t warm a person’s bed at night,” the waitress was saying. “Some days, seeing him and not being able to to
uch him, makes it worse.”

  Liz almost groaned aloud and bit her tongue to keep from saying she fully understood.

  “What can you do about that?” Vivi Anne asked.

  “Not much,” the waitress answered.

  Vivi Anne nodded. “I suspect he feels the same way you do.”

  “He does.”

  “Just like all other roads, love’s a two-way street,” Vivi Anne said.

  Liz had to let out the air she’d been holding as Vivi Anne’s words echoed in her head.

  “I’ll go put this order in,” the waitress said. “It won’t be long.”

  “Thank you,” Liz replied.

  “This salsa is excellent,” Vivi Anne said, dipping a chip. “Try some.”

  “What—” Liz started, wanting to know what Vivi Anne knew about the waitress.

  “Eat,” Vivi Anne insisted. “It’ll clear your mind.”

  She opened her mouth, but Vivi Anne shook her head and pointed toward the small dish.

  Liz tried the salsa and ate several chips, while Rance once again filled her thoughts. She hashed out ideas that only resulted in an occasional nod from Vivi Anne, especially once their meal was delivered.

  After eating a fair amount of chicken enchiladas, Liz set down her fork, and waited impatiently as Vivi Anne all but licked her plate clean. The waitress arrived and asked if they needed the check separated.

  “No.” Vivi Anne held up at hand as the waitress walked away. “My treat. After all, this is a business trip.”

  Liz had long ago forgotten the business aspect of the situation, but consented by saying, “Thank you. It was delicious.”

  As if she had wings rather than feet, the waitress appeared again. Laying the receipt on the table, she said, “I feel I owe you an apology. I usually don’t unload on guests. I’m sorry, and I hope I didn’t interrupt your enjoyment.”

  “Oh, not at all,” Vivi Anne said. “Not at all. It added to our enjoyment.”