Homestead

by Radclyffe

  “I heard you were coming to town,” Tess said and felt the frost in her tone.

  “Did you?” Clay said. “I didn’t know myself until this morning.”

  “Well, I guess I should say your company’s reputation precedes you,” Tess said. “NorthAm Fuels, right?”

  Clay nodded, her gaze appraising.

  “I didn’t know it would be you.”

  “Hoped it wouldn’t be?” Clay said.

  “Your words, not mine.”

  “Tess.” Clay glanced away, drove her hand through her hair. “I don’t know what to say—”

  “There’s nothing to say.” Tess turned away, carefully placed the envelopes into the mailbox. She’d forgotten how Clay always made her name sound as if it were a sigh, as if just saying the word was as satisfying as a kiss. And for a second just now, Clay had looked genuinely disturbed. As if the past haunted her too. “No.”

  “What?”

  Clay’s whisper came to her on the wind the way her image used to come to Tess as she lay awake watching the clouds blow in over the lake, listening to the distant sound of thunder and imagining a motorcycle engine growing louder. Never again. Tess wanted to scream at her to get out of her driveway, out of her mind, out of the places deep inside that still remembered. Taking a breath, stepping out of the past with determination, Tess quietly closed the lid on the mailbox and flipped up the red flag to signal the postman to stop for a pickup in the morning. She pivoted toward the house, glancing at Clay over one shoulder as she walked away. “The time to say something would’ve been years ago. When it mattered.”

  Clay gritted her teeth. The anger in Tess’s voice, the disdain in her face, cut deep. She couldn’t give Tess the answers she wanted now, any more than she could have the day she’d left. Too many people’s secrets would be revealed, and for what? She’d brought about the situation herself, and she couldn’t undo the hurt she’d caused. Feeling helpless, she reacted instinctively and totally out of character, calling after her, “Did you ever leave the farm?”

  Tess stopped, turned. “No. I never thought of it, not after I gave up the idea of running away with you.”

  “Jesus, Tess.” Clay jammed the kickstand down with her heel, vaulted off the bike, and strode to Tess, kicking up small puffs of dirt and stones beneath her boots. “We were practically kids. Dreaming.”

  “Oh, I know,” Tess said softly, her eyes like winter. “I know that now. Believe me.”

  “So, can we—”

  “No,” Tess said. The last thing she wanted was the old memories resurfacing. She knew they’d been young, knew she’d been foolish, and she was as angry at herself as she was with Clay. She’d believed without question, trusted with foolish innocence, and culpability in her pain was what she’d carried forward over the years. She would never go blindly into a relationship again, and though the lesson had been excruciating, it’d been an important one. Maybe she had more to thank Clay for than she’d ever realized. “We’re not friends, Clay.”

  “I don’t expect that,” Clay said, surprised at how much she wanted Tess to feel differently. She was used to facing distrust and even dislike when she showed up in a new place to push through NorthAm’s agenda, but she’d always believed Tess had seen the real her. Wanted, needed to believe that. She’d obviously been wrong. “I just thought we could talk.”

  Tess shook her head. “Why? We’re strangers, and if what I’m hearing is true, we don’t have anything in common anymore.”

  Clay frowned. “What are you talking about? What are you hearing?”

  “You’re here to start drilling on the Hansen property, aren’t you?”

  Clay rifled through her mental file folder of topographical survey maps, calling up the coordinates of the planned drill sites in eastern New York, superimposing the broken lines denoting property parcels. “Seventy-five acres a quarter mile off 74, mostly fallow fields, second-growth trees on the elevations, a tongue of the Marcellus Shale twenty-five hundred feet down. Is that the one?”

  “You make it sound like it’s on the moon.”

  “What?”

  “Impersonal.”

  Clay frowned. “I’m not following.”

  Tess waved an impatient hand. “You know, Clay, this land is more than lines on a map and geological surveys. There are people on this land, families who’ve been here for hundreds of years. People, Clay, who are as much a part of the land as what runs through it.”

  “I know that.” Clay tried to rein in her frustration. She was playing catch-up on this project, still had paperwork to review—something else that was atypical for her. She always made it a point to be on top of any situation before negotiations began, and she’d planned to spend the night going over all the data regarding local ordinances, community preparedness, and rights agreements. None of that would matter to Tess. “I can’t say for sure exactly where we’ll start, but that might be right. The Hansen place.”

  “Well, that happens to be right over that ridge.” Tess pointed to a hill, backlit by the setting sun, behind her house. A dozen deer were silhouetted on the ridge. “And I can’t say that’s something I want to happen.”

  “Look, Tess,” Clay said, “this isn’t the way we usually do business. Once I get a look at the site, I’ll be visiting the neighboring farms, explaining what we’ll be doing and why it won’t be a problem.”

  Tess smiled thinly. Clay was so adamant, so direct, her gaze never wavering. She would be so easy to believe. The thought was terrifying. Tess wouldn’t be trapped again by the intensity in Clay’s eyes. Couldn’t afford to be, on so many levels. “You mean you’ll be selling the company line?”

  “No, I’ll be giving the facts. Something you might want to hear before you form an opinion.”

  Tess jammed her hands on her hips. “The facts? Is that anything like the truth, Clay?”

  “You don’t know me, Tess—if you’d—”

  “You’re right, Clay. Finally we agree. I don’t know you. I never did.” A flush colored Tess’s cheeks and she spun away, striding off down the drive.

  “Damn it, Tess!” Clay stalked after her, her longer strides overtaking Tess’s quickly. She grabbed Tess’s arm and Tess whirled around, one hand raised. Clay stared, expecting the blow, feeling as if she’d been expecting it for a long time and not really minding. Maybe she’d feel better if Tess did strike her. She deserved some penance, after all.

  Tess backed up a step, an expression of horror draining the color from her face. “I’m sorry.” She looked down at Clay’s hand grasping her wrist. “Please let me go.”

  Clay dropped her hand. “Is there any way we can start again?”

  “None at all.” Tess’s gaze was shuttered, her voice curiously flat. “If there’s something you need to discuss, please call me first. Don’t drop by.”

  Clay looked out over the farm. So much she wanted to ask. To know. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes,” Tess said softly. “So am I. About so many things.”

  “I’ll call,” Clay said, knowing it had always been too late.

  “Good-bye, Clay.”

  Clay didn’t move, willing Tess to turn back, willing her to see beyond the shadows to the bright sunlit summer they’d shared. But Tess kept walking, rounded a bend, and disappeared behind a trio of tall pines.

  “Idiot,” Clay muttered, heading back to her bike. What had she expected, showing up out of nowhere after all these years—a kiss and, and… She stopped beside the bike, seeing nothing—nothing other than Tess’s face, the heat in her eyes. Once that heat had been desire—Tess had always been so glad to see her, so open, so welcoming. Pulling her in for a kiss, a caress of fingers through her hair. She, not Tess, was supposed to have been the experienced one—she hadn’t been a virgin after all. Not really, not technically. That day in the solarium while everyone celebrated on the patio, Vicky had taken her hand, guided it under her dress, beneath the silk panties, placed it just so. Clay had been drunk on the feel of he
r, high on the soft gasps of pleasure, too caught up to hear footsteps on the marble tiles as Vicky bit her neck and climaxed in her hand. Nothing about Vicky compared to Tess—to the unself-conscious, unfettered joy Tess had taken in their mutual pleasure. There had been no one like her since. Maybe after the first time, there never could be again. “Idiot.”

  Clay jammed on her helmet, threw a leg over the Harley, and stomped on the starter. The engine growled, roared to life, and Clay tore away, throttling too fast, her back wheel skidding on the tight curve in front of Tess’s cow barn. She nearly dropped the bike right there and, heart racing, throttled back and fought the shuddering, bucking machine back into line. Killing herself or someone else was not going to change the way Tess felt about her. She deserved every bit of Tess’s recriminations and should have expected worse. She’d done nothing to change what had happened, hadn’t known how to stand up for herself or for Tess and maybe, somewhere deep in her heart, she hadn’t wanted to. Maybe she’d known all along that those few idyllic months at the lake were pure fantasy, and she’d selfishly allowed them to go on. All because Tess had looked at her as if she could do anything, and when she was with Tess, she’d believed that she could. Tess had had such faith in her, she’d let herself dream—about freedom, happiness, love. Tess had set her free, and she had not cared who might pay the price for that freedom.

  And when it all came crashing down, she wasn’t a hero anymore. She’d fallen into line the way she always had, acquiescing to her father’s demands, accepting his rationalization—that her leaving was the only way to protect Tess, that a public scandal would ruin her as well as Clay.

  “We can weather anything,” her father said, “but this girl—can she? In a town like that, where the rumors, the speculation, will never end? If you care about her, Clayton…”

  If you care about her, he’d said. And Clay had lied, yet again. Under her father’s calculating gaze, she’d said, “It wasn’t anything serious. Whatever you heard is an exaggeration.”

  Her father nodded, as if hearing what he’d expected to hear. “Very well. The situation is being handled. Manny will take care of retrieving your belongings and the Defender. You won’t be needing the motorcycle at Stanford. Arrangements have been made for you to arrive early in California. You should see to packing.”

  Three weeks early. He wanted her out of the house, out of the state. She’d wanted to drive north again. To see Tess. To explain. As always, he’d read her mind and preempted her desires.

  “You understand,” her father said with cool finality, “you cannot see this girl again. For her own good.”

  You cannot see this girl again.

  Clay took the corner onto Route 74 at forty miles an hour, overshooting the lane and swerving over the centerline. The headlights of an oncoming vehicle momentarily blinded her, and she yanked the bike back by instinct as a cement truck blasted by, horn blaring.

  For her own good. Her father had given her the perfect excuse for walking away.

  Chapter Five

  Clay stared at the high painted-tin ceiling in her big room on the second floor of the B&B. She hadn’t slept much. She didn’t usually, often working late into the night, sleeping a few hours, then getting up to work again. She’d learned to sleep on the jet when she needed to, in trucks, in trailers on the job site, or most any other place. She was basically a nomad and had gotten used to being rootless.

  The night before, she hadn’t even gotten her few hours of routine sleep, too keyed up from her meeting with Tess. Too stirred up in ways she hadn’t been in so long she’d forgotten she even could be. She didn’t live a boring life—business challenged her, fieldwork satisfied her, and sex took her mind off what might be missing from her life in the few hours when she wasn’t working. Most of the time she was content, but seeing Tess had reminded her that once there had been something more. After losing something, it was easier to pretend you’d never had it and didn’t need it, and Tess had just made that a lot more difficult.

  Tired of the ceiling and her own dark thoughts, Clay abandoned bed at four thirty, showered, and dressed in field clothes—forest-green khaki work pants, brown cotton shirt, construction boots—and went out to look around the village. Cambridge was a quiet little town in the midst of rolling hills and farmland, too far from the big cities to be within easy commuting distance, and populated mostly by families who’d been there for centuries. For a span of four blocks in the village proper, the main street, aptly named Main Street as it was in almost every small New England town, was lined on both sides with small businesses—an IGA market for essential food shopping, a gas station/convenience store, two antique stores, a diner, a bar, a pizza shop, a Chinese-takeout storefront restaurant, the post office, and the ACE hardware store, the biggest building in town.

  Most of the places hadn’t changed since the last time she’d ridden through with Tess behind her on the motorcycle. They’d come down from the lake together a time or two, once when she’d told Tess she wanted to see where she lived, once when Tess had asked her for a ride back to the farm. She remembered meeting Tess’s stepfather when he’d been on his way out to the fields, recalling the hard glint in his eyes as he’d surveyed her, the way he’d asked her name and how she knew Tess. He hadn’t been belligerent, but her gut told her he was dangerous. In hindsight, she’d been right. Ray Phelps. Tess rarely spoke of him except to say she’d been eight when her mother had married him and fourteen when her mother had died in a car accident on an icy winter road. Phelps had died not that long ago—Clay’s father had sent her an e-mail with the news. She’d been surprised at the time, wondering why her father had kept tabs on the man. Whatever the reasons, he was out of the picture, and the farm was Tess’s now. Tess looked as if the life suited her.

  Clay walked to the end of the tiny business district where the residential houses began, crossed the street, and headed back to the diner. Ford, Dodge, and Chevy pickup trucks crowded both sides of the street in front of the diner. Inside, the few tables and most of the stools at the long counter were filled with men and women in work clothes like hers, sitting silently with newspapers in front of them or talking quietly over coffee. She threaded her way down the long, narrow aisle to a stool at the far end of the counter, aware of everyone watching her, some with blatant curiosity, others with casual interest.

  A young woman, maybe twenty, with light-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a sky-blue scoop-neck T-shirt that said Susie’s Café in white letters, headed her way with a coffeepot in her hand. She filled the white porcelain mug in front of Clay and said, “Need a menu?”

  “No, I’m good,” Clay said, nodding at the coffee. “How did you know?”

  The girl smiled. “Nobody comes in here before five who doesn’t want coffee.”

  “True enough.” Clay poured some milk into the coffee, sipped it, and raised her eyebrows. “This isn’t Maxwell House.”

  “Sure isn’t. Green Mountain French Roast, ground fresh for every pot.”

  “Things are getting gentrified around here.”

  The girl snorted. “Not hardly, but there’s no reason we can’t have good coffee. So what will you have?”

  Clay scanned the whiteboard on the wall across from her where daily specials were written in black script. “I’ll have that farmer’s omelet. Whole-wheat toast. Thanks.”

  “Sure enough.”

  Clay drank the very good coffee and ate the equally good cheese, ham, mushroom, spinach, sausage, and potato omelet while organizing her day in her mind. Around her, the low murmur of voices gave her a comforting sense of community, something she never really noticed in big-city restaurants, where no matter how many people were congregated, everyone seemed to occupy separate islands in a vast ocean. Disconnected, alone. Another thing she’d gotten used to.

  Meal done, she was reaching for the bill when a strain of conversation rose above all the others, catching her attention.

  “Heard they’re going to start drilling pre
tty soon,” a husky male voice said from somewhere down the counter.

  Clay let the bill lie where it was and motioned for another cup of coffee. As she worked on her refill, she listened.

  “I hear Pete Townsend’s trying to put a stop to all that,” a second man said. “Doesn’t want them contaminating his land.”

  “Pete doesn’t want anything to change, that’s his deal. Me,” yet another person chimed in, “I think it’s a good idea. These gas people—they bring money, lots of it. Not just for the ones who sell them the rights, either, but for everybody. They got to truck it all out, don’t they? They gotta build roads for them big trucks, they gotta have houses for the people who’re working there. They gotta eat, right? I’ve read about these things. Everybody ends up making money.”

  “Yeah,” a woman piped up, “unless you happen to be one of the ones whose water gets contaminated by all the stuff they flush up along with the gas. The Whiteside Creek runs right through where they’re supposed to be drilling, and most of our land gets water from there. If that water gets tainted, our crops and our livestock are going to get sick. Maybe us too.”

  Clay shot a glance down the counter at the woman. Fortysomething, blond hair held back with a simple gold clip, elegant features, and diamond-hard blue eyes. Pretty and pissed.

  “I’m with Pete,” the woman went on, “and so are a lot of us. We don’t need these people coming up from wherever they’re coming from to take what they want and then leave us with the mess. This land is farmland, that’s what it’s meant for, and that’s what we ought to be paying attention to.”

  The hubbub of voices grew louder as people tossed out opinions, talking over each other, dissecting the issues. Clay had heard it all before and often came up against prejudices fostered by the lack of facts. People only knew what they’d read or heard, usually not from the fracking companies. The media always liked a good story, and good stories were often one-sided. In most situations, an advance team from NorthAm came into an area to deal with community relations well before site work began, but this time she’d been tossed into the fire and she’d have to deal with resistance on her own. But not in the diner at five in the morning—she wanted to do it face-to-face, family by family, for starters.