Her father’s beat-up F-150 sat under a tall tree at the side of the house, along with a newer model that had Levi written all over it—from the flat-black paint job to the chromed bumpers and roll bar. Mama Hazel’s familiar station wagon was gone, probably traded in for the navy sedan that sat under the carport. Savannah couldn’t remember the last time Mama Hazel drove herself anywhere, but she liked to have a car handy “just in case.”
Huh. All the cars were accounted for, so who’d left the light on?
She took a deep breath as she pulled the old Honda in behind Bennett’s truck.
Savannah climbed the steps of the familiar farmhouse with her overnight bag slung over her shoulder. Her hand shook as she reached for the white-enamel doorknob and she willed it to still. This was her home. The place she was safe.
How many times had she been told that as a child? Never, not a single time, had she wanted those words to be true more than she did now. There was a storm coming, one that could shatter her, and she had a feeling she would need the strength of these old walls if she were to withstand it. Maybe, just maybe, if she hid here long enough the storm would never come.
Her agent had said as much. If she left quietly, if she stayed away, maybe nothing would come of her indiscretion.
Savannah swallowed hard and twisted the knob. The door swung in, opening to the small entryway with its familiar hardwood floors and the same brass hat rack in the corner that she remembered from her childhood. Stairs, with that familiar navy blue carpet runner, rose a few feet in front of her, dividing the living area from the dining room and kitchen. A lamp remained on near Mama Hazel’s rocking chair, the book she was reading lying pages-down on the seat, and in the low light she could see the pictures of Levi and her lining the wall. Levi’s trophies were on the mantel. She crossed the room, ran her fingers over a new frame and caught her breath.
They’d framed the write-up in the Slippery Rock Gazette of her third-place finish in the talent show. She hadn’t even called them after, had just said yes to the trip to Nashville and taken off. Under the frame was a copy of a music magazine with her smiling face on the cover. It ran the week her first single hit the top twenty before beginning its slow descent back down the charts.
“Van.” The softly spoken word startled her, and she turned. Levi stood in the gloominess, coffee cup in hand. He wore his usual jeans and T-shirt, his dark-skinned arms looking like the trunks of a couple of the trees she’d passed on the highway. He still kept his hair cropped close to his head, and even in the darkness, she thought his deep brown eyes had just a hint of amber.
It was the same amber her eyes had. When they were kids, she liked to make up stories about how she’d been adopted by her birth family, and the people who’d had her before had been her kidnappers.
Of course, that had only been wishful thinking. The Walters family was wonderful, but they weren’t hers. Her family had left her on the steps of a police station in Springfield with a note pinned to her chest.
Name: Savannah
Birthday in May
Seven years old
Eight freaking words on a note she couldn’t erase from her memory.
“What are you doing here?”
Did he know? Levi always seemed to know when she was in trouble. She willed her thundering heart to slow. There was no way he could know what had happened this time. She’d been listening to the radio all day, and if the story had broken, she knew the DJs would be talking about it nonstop. So far, it seemed Genevieve was sticking to her word and keeping the whole sordid thing a secret. He couldn’t know, she told herself.
“I, uh, needed a break from the tour,” she said, deciding that was the safest answer. No one knew she’d been offered an extended touring gig with Genevieve’s crew. An offer that had been summarily revoked later that night when Genevieve had ended the set early and found Savannah exiting her tour bus. “And I haven’t been back here since the finale eighteen months ago.”
Levi nodded. “You look good,” he said. “Mama and Dad would have waited up if they’d known you were coming.”
“I’ll just surprise them at breakfast,” she said. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you have a house of your own by now?”
“I do. Used the foundation of the cabin,” he said, motioning to the general area where the first Walters cabin had stood more than one hundred years before. Her father had torn down the walls when she was eleven, after she’d nearly been struck by a falling rafter inside. “They’re finishing up the plumbing and then the floors, and I’ll move in.”
“You always loved that old place.” She reached for something more to say but wasn’t sure where to start. She never talked to Levi about why he’d walked away from his professional football contract. Everyone knew about the injury, but from what she’d seen on those Sunday-morning sports talk shows, he could have made a comeback. She didn’t ask then, and it seemed almost too late to ask now. Besides, he’d never asked why she was so hell-bent on a reality talent show when, before leaving Slippery Rock, she’d been petrified of singing in the Christmas pageant at church.
Levi watched her and she wondered what he saw. Wondered how she could make sure he and the rest of her family never saw how truly bad she could be. She would figure out how to live with the shame of sleeping with a married man, but she didn’t want any of that shame to fall on them.
“The porch light’s still on.” She grabbed at the only conversation starter she could think of. “You expecting someone?”
Levi glanced over his shoulder and a small smile played over his wide mouth. “That light’s not for me. It’s been on since you left for the talent show. I turned it off once and the next morning Mama just about stripped me bare with her words. I didn’t know she even knew that kind of language.” He sipped from the mug in his hands.
Savannah blinked. The light was on...for her? After all this time? Emotion clogged her throat. To keep her threatening tears from falling, she focused on breathing.
“You want coffee? Something to eat?”
She shook her head, unable to talk as she stared at the thick, mahogany door and the glimmer of porch light she could see through the side windows. The light was still on, more than two years after she’d left, for her? She drew in an unsteady breath.
“Well, I was headed up for the night. We’re planting alfalfa in the western field before dawn, and I still have some computer work to do before I turn in. You remember the way upstairs?”
If anyone else had said the words, the emotions she was feeling would have dried up in an angry burst. But this was Levi, and those were the same five words he’d been saying to her since that night twenty years before when Hazel and Bennett had brought her home to Walters Ranch.
“I remember,” she said, but the words were barely a whisper.
Levi nodded and turned toward the staircase. He paused at the door. “Last one in, remember?” he asked, and Savannah could only nod.
In a moment, he’d disappeared up the stairs, and she was alone in the familiar living room with Mama Hazel’s rocker and the porch light shining through the windows.
Slowly, Savannah made her way to the front door. She looked out, seeing vague shapes in the darkness beyond the porch. It was barely nine o’clock at night, and if she were in Nashville, she would just be going out for the night. But this was small-town Missouri, where farmers hit the fields before dawn and went to bed soon after sundown. Her fingers rested lightly on the porch light switch.
The emotion she’d held back when Levi was still in the room tore through her like a planter tore the ground during spring seeding. Her fingers shook and she tried to blink back the tears.
They’d left the porch light on for more than two years. For her.
Savannah depressed the switch, and the light flicked off in an instant.
Maybe t
his time, she really was home.
Copyright © 2017 by Kristina Knight
ISBN-13: 9781488017025
His Last Rodeo
Copyright © 2017 by Claire Haiken
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