Homestead

by Radclyffe

  The wheels touched down with barely a whisper and the jet slowed to a stop. Clay unbuckled, rose, and stretched. The cockpit door opened and the first officer, Gloria, a tight-bodied short-haired redhead in a well-tailored navy-blue uniform, stepped through. Gloria smiled at Clay. “Enjoy the flight?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “Plans for dinner?”

  Across the aisle Ella closed her iPad, stood, and took her briefcase out of an overhead compartment. She murmured, “Seven a.m. site review.”

  “Uh-huh,” Clay said, contemplating inviting Gloria for dinner and perhaps some after-dinner recreation, when Ron exited the cockpit and pushed open the cabin door. A sultry breeze blew in, carrying a wave of nostalgia that catapulted Clay back in time. The pine scent of the forest mixed with the crystalline clarity of the wind off the lake flooded over her, filling her with a longing so intense she reached out to grip the seat beside her to steady herself.

  “Everything all right?” Gloria asked with a quizzical look.

  “Fine,” Clay said abruptly. The question in Gloria’s eyes changed to surprise and a little bit of hurt, and Clay added quickly, “Sorry. Long day—short night. I’m a little tired. Rain check?”

  “Of course.” Gloria’s expression softened. “We’ll be at the Airport Marriott overnight if you change your mind.”

  “Thanks.” Gloria and Ron disappeared back into the cockpit to complete their post-flight check, and Clay turned to Ella, who had her cell to her ear. “What’s the plan?”

  “The car is coming around now. We’ll get your luggage loaded and—”

  “You know what?” Clay said, suddenly unable to face one more hour scheduled by someone else. “You take my things to—where are we going?”

  Ella flipped open her iPad, although Clay doubted she actually needed to refer to it. “It looks like Millie has us in a B and B somewhere near the job—the Rice Mansion in…Cambridge? That’s about forty—”

  “I know where Cambridge is,” Clay said. What was Millie thinking? “I’ll be there later.”

  “Do you want me to arrange for another car—”

  “Yes. Wait, no.” Clay grabbed her briefcase and handed it to Ella. “Put this with my luggage, will you.” She took off her suit jacket and handed that over also. “Take this too.”

  “All right, but—”

  “Don’t worry,” Clay muttered. “I’ll make the meeting.”

  “Keep your phone on,” Ella called as Clay brushed by her and took the steps two at a time down the airstairs that had been pushed up against the body of the jet. Ignoring the black company SUV, she hurried the other way into the terminal and over to the information counter.

  A matronly woman in her sixties looked up with an open smile and twinkling blue eyes. “Welcome to Albany. Can I help you?”

  “You can,” Clay said, leaning on the counter. “Where’s the closest motorcycle dealer?”

  Chapter Three

  Tess listened to the phone ring, unsurprised when the answering machine clicked on. Finding someone home seemed to be a rare occasion these days. She listened to the message, on the verge of hanging up, when the beep to record came on and she suddenly felt like a coward—like history was repeating itself—something she swore she’d never let happen. She took a breath, willed her voice to be steady. “Leslie, I know this is going to seem like a strange request, and you probably don’t even remember me, but this is Tess Rogers and I—”

  “Tess!” Leslie sounded out of breath. “Sorry, I was down at the dock when I heard the phone ring. That hill seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time.” She laughed, sounding the way she had when she was seventeen—full of energy and joy.

  Tess’s chest tightened, remembering the last time she’d seen Leslie Harris.

  “Hey, Les!” Tess set down the square blue plastic cleaning caddy filled with solutions and paraphernalia and waited while Leslie climbed the narrow dirt path up the hill from the boathouse at the edge of the lake.

  “Oh my God, it’s so hot! You want to go swimming?” Leslie pushed blond hair out of her eyes, her smooth, even complexion tanned from a summer spent on the water, or in it. She wore a navy-blue halter top that showed off her lean belly above denim shorts and long tanned legs. She wasn’t even conscious of how attractive she was, and Tess liked her for that. It seemed that all the girls, or most of them, who came to the lake for the summer were beautiful, or wealthy, or, most often, both. Sometimes, Tess felt like the ugly duckling surrounded by swans, even though she knew there was nothing wrong with her. It was just hard not to feel less when she was so different. Leslie never made her feel that way, even though Leslie was the boss’s daughter.

  “Sure,” Tess said. “Anything I can do to help you get ready for the party?”

  “I think just about everything is all set.” Leslie looked around, probably checking for her parents, and said in a stage whisper, “Except the beer. Mike is taking care of that.”

  Leslie reached for one of the mop buckets Tess was about to carry up to the shed in back of the main lodge, and Tess protested. “You don’t have to—”

  “I’ve got it.” Leslie grinned at her. “Come on. You’re done for the day, right? I have to get in the water.”

  “Just a sec.” Tess took her work list out of the back pocket of her khaki shorts and double-checked her room assignments. She’d done all the single rooms in the lodge first thing in the morning, and the lakeside cabins in the afternoon. Once she’d changed the sheets and towels, washed whatever dishes had been left in the sink, vacuumed, dusted, and cleaned the bathrooms, she’d checked off each room as having been completed. After two months, she was fast and efficient and hardly thought of her job as work.

  Being a chambermaid was a piece of cake compared to farm chores. She shared a little apartment in the basement of the main lodge with another girl, got cheap board and minimum wage. Best of all, she got to live at the lake, away from home, away from the farm and the farm kids, and she got to meet exciting girls like Clay. She blushed and put her head down. She knew all the other girls talked together all the time about their boyfriends—who was the best kisser, who tried to go too far, and who was worth going too far with—but she never joined in. She didn’t mind being on the outside for once because her secret was so special. Just like Clay.

  “Earth to Tess…”

  “Tess?”

  Tess blinked, and the sun-kissed memory disappeared behind familiar clouds.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tess said. “For a second there, just hearing you, I was back at the lake.”

  “Well, I am back at the lake.” Leslie laughed, the sound so much a part of her past Tess’s heart ached. “Would you believe it?” Leslie paused. “Where are you?”

  “At the farm—where I’ve always been.”

  The line went silent for a moment, and Tess realized that more than just a span of years separated them. Remembered how she’d left, and what she’d left unsaid. “I’m sorry I disappeared—I wanted to call, wanted to tell you, but I—”

  “Tess,” Leslie said softly. “Don’t apologize. You left a note. You said you had to go. Family emergency, you said. I missed you, but I understood.”

  “It’s a long story,” Tess said. “An old story now. But how are you? I’m sorry…I should have asked already. It’s just so…good to talk to you.”

  “I’m wonderful. Like I said, I’m living back at the lake with Dev.”

  Tess mentally sorted through the boys who had always flocked around Leslie, trying to come up with a face to fit the name, and then she did. Dev. Devon Weber. The girl on the motorcycle, the one who sometimes showed up at the lodge with Clay. The girl. “Oh my God. Dev Weber.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I remember her.” She hadn’t really known Dev all that well—she remembered a dark-haired, silent girl, a little tough in her dusty black boots, black jeans, and white T-shirts, a little wild and dangerous like Clay. They’d looked a bit alike, but Clay had been d
ifferent—Dev had been withdrawn and brooding, Clay had been a charmer. She told funny stories and flirted and made Tess feel special. Leslie and Dev—how had that happened? “I didn’t know you—”

  “No one knew,” Leslie said, and her regret echoed through the line. “God, I didn’t even know…wouldn’t let myself really know…for the longest time. But I know now, and I’m making up for it.”

  “Congratulations, then.” Tess thought about the irony of the situation. Leslie had been in love with a girl too and hadn’t told anyone, just like her. They’d been friends and never shared their secrets. For the briefest moment she allowed herself to wonder what might’ve happened if they had, but she pushed the thought away. She wasn’t Leslie, she never had been. And her story couldn’t have ended any differently than it had, no matter what she had done or said. Clay had walked away.

  “So, what’s going on?” Leslie said. “It’s great to hear from you, but—”

  “This sounds awful but I don’t know any other way to say it—I need legal advice about something personal. When I thought of who I could trust, I remembered reading about you graduating from law school. Your parents put it in the local papers—”

  “Oh God, they put everything in the paper. So embarrassing.”

  Tess laughed. “They’re just proud of you. But anyhow, your name just came into my head and I took a chance. Your mom gave me your number. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Of course it is. I have to tell you, though, my work is kind of specialized—I do a lot of industrial legal consultation and—”

  “Then I guess I got lucky,” Tess said, “because I think that’s exactly the kind of advice I might need.”

  “Well, tell me what’s going on, and if I can’t help, I can probably refer you to someone who can.”

  “If it’s all right with you,” Tess said, “I’ll make an appointment and come and see you. I want to do this properly—I want to pay—”

  “Let’s find out what you need first,” Leslie said. “When I moved back to the lake permanently, I opened an office in Albany. Let me check my calendar.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m so glad you called. Hold on…”

  Tess walked to the window and looked out over the back pasture while she waited. The herd of deer that lived in the woods separating her property from neighboring farms were grazing in the hay field behind her house. She counted thirteen tonight. Her horses ambled indolently in the summer pasture across from the big barn, nibbling on grass. One of the cats chased a toad on the rough stone patio outside the kitchen. She’d loved the lake, waking in the morning with the windows open and the crisp, fresh breeze blowing in from the water, and the pine needles crunching under her sneaks as she walked to the farthest cabin to begin her day, and the clean woodsy scent that filled the air. The farm had its own beauty, its own earthy scents, its incredible mystical silences. She loved both places, but the lake held only sadness for her now.

  “I was supposed to be in court tomorrow afternoon,” Leslie said, “but there’s been a continuance, so I’m open. Why don’t you meet me at noon and we’ll have a working lunch?”

  “That would be great—if you’re sure?”

  “I can’t wait to see you. Here’s my office address.”

  “Got it,” Tess said, jotting it down. “I’ll be there.”

  “Good. See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Bye, Les.” Tess hung up and wandered around the kitchen, uncharacteristically restless. Usually by this time of night she was ready to read for an hour or two and go to sleep. Tonight, her memories plagued her. Finally, she sat down in the corner of the big kitchen at her mother’s old pine desk, her desk now, to pay a few bills. On the rare occasions when loneliness or memories haunted her, she worked. And as she’d learned that summer on the lake, nothing lasts forever.

  *

  Straddling her Harley, dressed in the bike gear she’d bought along with the motorcycle and her business clothes folded into a saddlebag, Clay headed north from Albany to Route 67 and followed it east across the Hudson River into Washington County. At seven thirty, traffic was sparse. As soon as she cleared a few small towns just past the outskirts of the city, she was in farm country and roaring over twisting single-lane roads bordered on both sides by fields of corn, hay, and pastures where cows, horses, and the occasional alpaca grazed. The Hudson wended through the hills to her right, coming into view for a few seconds as she tore over a rise. Hugging the turns, she caught glimpses of the setting sun glinting off the water and was pierced by remembrance. She’d ridden these roads before, yesterday it seemed, faster than she should have, feeling free and invincible and in command of her destiny.

  The same roads, the same feeling of freedom, and she was headed to the same place. She knew she shouldn’t but couldn’t seem to take a different path—then or now. The job site—that’s where she was going. She’d left Albany telling herself she might as well see the base camp now as first thing in the morning, get a sense of the place before she had to hit the ground running and start making decisions that couldn’t be unmade. Once the drill bit into the earth, they were committed. Men and machinery were in until NorthAm got what it wanted, for as long as it took—months, years maybe, to reach the buried reservoirs of gas, to sink the drill casings, to inject the millions of gallons of water and sand and chemicals that would force the fuel to the surface. Tonight, before she made the call to break ground, she wanted to see the land untouched.

  She knew where the camp was—she’d seen the geological surveys when she’d sat in on the plans to open a dozen new sites in the most likely areas for high-yield drilling. If she stayed on 67, she’d be there in ten minutes, but without a second thought, she cut left and followed the river farther north toward Route 40 and Cambridge and Tess’s farm.

  Not a thing had changed, other than everything. The same centuries-old farmhouses still commanded views of the river across acres of green, cows still clambered over slopes pockmarked with berry bushes and studded with apple trees, and the air still smelled like freedom. She flipped up the visor on her helmet and let the night air whip across her face, taking with it, for just a few precious moments, all her regrets.

  She slowed when she reached the small cluster of white frame houses that marked the road leading past Tess’s farm, her hand so tight on the throttle her fingers cramped. She forced herself to relax, telling herself she was just driving past on her way to somewhere else, but she slowed even more as she came over the rise and looked down at the sprawling yellow farmhouse nestled a quarter mile back from the road, a few lights on already, beacons of welcome that weren’t meant for her. She eased back on the throttle, taking in the fresh red paint on the big cow barn farther up the road that used to be yellow, the dry fields and the struggling corn, the fence lines so like Tess herself—neat, precise, careful. She glided around a curve and there was the packed-dirt driveway, the black metal mailbox exactly where she remembered it, and there was Tess, envelopes in one hand and the other shading her face, looking in Clay’s direction.

  She could have ridden past, pretended she hadn’t recognized her, hadn’t seen her, but that was a lie she couldn’t bring herself to tell. Tess’s gaze held steady on her as Clay braked and put a leg down, bringing her Harley to a stop on the road a few feet from Tess.

  Clay pulled off her helmet, struck by the red highlights in Tess’s blond hair and the way her features were even more beautiful than they had been when she was younger. “Hello, Tess.”

  “Clay,” Tess said quietly.

  “You look the same,” Clay murmured.

  “I’m not,” Tess said.

  Chapter Four

  Clay was the last person Tess expected to see, and for a heartbeat, her head spun and a jumble of thoughts, all of them absurd, raced through her mind. Clay sounded just the same, her voice as smooth and rich as the dark chocolate of her eyes. Her chestnut hair, curling over the collar of her rough-grained bla
ck leather jacket, was an inch longer than it had been and still windblown and wild. Of all the things Tess might have recalled, she thought of Clay’s hair and how she’d always liked the way it looked, as if Clay had just climbed off her motorcycle—ruffled and untamed. Just the way Clay had always seemed to her.

  Tess folded her arms across her chest. She hadn’t been taken in by appearances in a long time, so she let herself look. Clay stood, her legs sheathed in black leather, straddling the gleaming black bike, her dusty black boots planted firmly on the earth of Tess’s driveway. She still looked like she owned everything around her. Probably assumed she did. Or would. Maybe that’s why Tess had been so taken with her—her utter confidence was magnetic.

  Tess pushed aside the tug of appreciation along with something even deeper, something more visceral she couldn’t control but didn’t have to accept—not any longer. That summer she’d been barely seventeen, just off the farm, and she’d never met anyone like Clay before. Handsome and outgoing and so, so charming. She’d been too blinded by Clay’s image to see. If she’d known what a Land Rover was, she would have wondered how a girl had a seventy-thousand-dollar SUV. She’d never realized Clay’s hair hadn’t been cut in the front parlor of a homegrown hairdresser’s roadside rancher the way hers had been, but styled in some expensive salon. She’d never seen Clay’s house. Hadn’t questioned much of anything. When they’d talked—and it seemed they’d talked all the time when they were together—Clay asked about her, made her feel special, and she’d gloried in the attention. Clay’s rough and careless exterior had camouflaged her wealth and privilege to the naïve farm girl who hadn’t known any better. But she knew better now. She’d been taken in then, but she wasn’t innocent now.