Love Finds You in Sunflower, Kansas

by Pamela Tracy

  Annie didn’t have time to even consider whether this story ended pretty or not. Marlee, two coffees in hand—a fresh one for Annie and one for herself plus some milk for her daughter—joined them and said, “My grandmother and her sister actually burned down a shed.”

  “I don’t remember that story,” Joe said.

  “I do,” the man across the aisle said. “It was while they were kids.”

  “So, Wendy is your grandmother?” Annie scooted over so Katie could sit next to her.

  “Yes, and Alice is my great-aunt. I wish I’d known them when they were young. They knew how to have fun.”

  Missy came with more coffee. “It was easier to have fun back then, not so much pressure.”

  “Ah, sis, we have plenty of fun.”

  Missy didn’t look like she agreed, but Marlee didn’t lose her smile as she turned to look at Annie. “My grandma and her sister liked going to the shows, especially westerns. I think Grandma liked Audie Murphy the best. At least she used to talk about him the most. Alice preferred John Wayne. I think she met him once. But never mind that. Apparently, in one of the movies, they watched the Indians shoot flame arrows.”

  “Oh no,” Annie breathed. “How did Alice and Wendy get flame arrows?”

  “They didn’t, not exactly—they had to make them. They took rubber bands and sticks for bows, and then they took Q-tips, dipped the cotton end in rubbing alcohol, lit them on fire, and shot them at each other.” Marlee gave Katie a stern look. “You don’t get to try this.”

  Then she continued, “Apparently, Alice caught Wendy’s shirt on fire. Wendy took it off and threw it on some newspapers. When they ran out of the shed, the only thing they thought to save was the rest of the bows and arrows. Needless to say, soon there was no more shed. Wendy wasn’t even wearing her shirt—”

  Annie held up her hand. “Stop. I see what the sheriff was talking about.” Leaning in again, she said, “But really, I only met them the one time, and aside from their really big wigs and addiction to rhinestones, nothing seemed too unusual about them.”

  “My grandma’s a lot calmer since they moved to Arizona,” Marlee said, standing and heading back to the counter. “But it’s not near as exciting around here.”

  “I don’t want this much excitement,” Annie admitted. “Just taking a leave of absence from my business and coming here to get my mother is excitement enough.”

  “I don’t want more excitement, either,” Joe agreed as Missy set a piece of apple pie in front of him. Missy raised an eyebrow, Annie nodded, and soon another piece of pie was dropped off. Over dessert, she filled Joe in on what had happened from the time Burt called until they’d found the Bonner Springs Chieftain in her mom’s dresser drawer.

  When she finished, he said, “It’s going to take longer than apple pie to tell you about the problem between my family and the Hickses.”

  “That’s the truth,” Missy said, picking up their plates and clearing the table. She dropped off the check a moment later. Joe grabbed it before Annie could.

  “Let’s finish up and I’ll tell you what you want to know back at Dad’s house. We won’t have quite the audience there.”

  “Our audience will be your father and my mother. And I can pay my half of the bill.”

  “It’s Tuesday night. Dad’s at the elder/deacon meeting at church. It never gets over before ten. I’m not sure about your mom. She’s been watching lots of television over at Aunt Margaret’s, and Aunt Margaret won’t think to move from her seat until Jay Leno starts. We’ll figure out who owes what then.”

  Annie still wasn’t convinced. “I thought your dad had retired.”

  “From preaching. Actually, I think being an elder is more work.”

  Annie opened her mouth to protest again but stopped. What was really bothering her?

  The thought of being alone with Joe?

  Chapter Eight

  He was right, Annie realized twenty minutes later as she settled in one of the rocking chairs on Joe’s dad’s porch. Max’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Next door, the living room light was on, but only Margaret was visible in the window. Annie could hear the drone of her overloud television. Jacko, deciding he liked her best at the moment, settled at her feet, unconcerned about the possibility of getting nailed while she rocked.

  Joe went inside to pop some popcorn. How he could even think about food after that apple pie was beyond Annie. She took the time to text a quick message to her sisters. She’d barely hit the SEND button before Joe handed her a bowl of popcorn and a bottled water. He settled down in the rocker next to her.

  Bonner Springs was beautiful in the evening. The trees were twice the size of the ones in Tucson, in both height and width. The sky was an amazing blue with streaks of gray clouds adding contour.

  “There was a time when practically the whole town could trace their ancestors back to either a Hicks or a Kelly,” Joe began.

  Arizona was a migratory place. Annie didn’t even know her cousins. Her father had wound up in Tucson because he was stationed at Davis-Monthan in the Air Force. He’d met Mom, who’d been going to school at U of A. Annie and her sisters only knew their paternal grandparents from five measly visits. Her mom’s parents lived in assisted living in Scottsdale, and her only sister was in New York.

  With a tinge of guilt, Annie remembered the words her mother had said earlier: “Days go by without phone calls from any of my daughters….”

  Without proximity, it was easy to neglect family.

  “Is the sheriff a Hicks or a Kelly?” Annie asked.

  “He’s neither, although there are a couple of Hicks girls who’ve let him know they’re available. He’s fairly new. I think he moved here about fifteen years ago.”

  Fifteen years practically meant original owner in the area of Casa Grande Annie lived in.

  “So,” she said, after opening her water bottle and taking a drink, “now that you know Alice and Wendy are involved, and that my mom is not a crook, can we work together? I took a two-week vacation, but I’d rather go back sooner. My partner’s great with computer software and accounting but not so much at managing people. Plus, I have a show I’d like to work this weekend.”

  “We’ve torn the house apart a dozen times. The coins are gone.”

  “Why does your dad suddenly want to look again?”

  “One, he’s thinking of selling the place, and I wish that were the only reason.”

  “What’s the other reason?”

  “Lydia and Robert Hicks, and their son Kyle. It was their land you ran out of gas on.”

  “I remember. This morning your dad told me you’d shown his coins to someone. I guess that would be Kyle.”

  “Yeah, that would be Kyle. His parents call me whenever they need a veterinarian. I’m pretty sure it’s their way of insinuating that nothing’s wrong. Truly, though, I am the closest, and for them, I’m definitely the cheapest. I can’t bring myself to charge them full price. I keep thinking I’m repaying a debt I don’t owe.”

  “There’s a song like that,” Annie said.

  “Yes, and my dad definitely feels like finding those coins is something he needs to do to take some sins away.”

  * * * * *

  His opinion of her went up a notch when she didn’t ask about those sins. Those sins that weren’t really his father’s. Instead, she rocked for a moment, and the chair made a creaking noise. It was a comforting sound, reminding him of the many evenings his parents sat on the front porch watching him and Kyle and some of their other friends play in the front yard. Annie sat in the one his mother preferred.

  Mom had been sitting in that chair the first time Joe brought home a wounded bird. She’d nestled it in her lap, not minding how the feathers fell onto her clothes.

  He shook away the memory. “Kyle Hicks and I are pretty much the same age. We went through school together. Best friends from cradle roll through almost the end of our senior year.”

  “A long time,” she said softly.
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  “We had a youth gathering here, a celebration in honor of the graduates. Our little church had five kids in the senior class that year. Dad said it was some kind of record. Usually we only had one or two, sometimes none. Most years, our whole youth group was made up of five kids from ninth through senior. But when I was in high school, there were quite a few of us, especially in my grade. There was me, Kyle, and Billy Whittaker. His dad was one of the chaperones. Then, too, there were the twins.”

  “Would that be Marlee and Missy?”

  He remembered them like it was yesterday. They’d both had blond hair and blue eyes. He missed that look. Dalmatian wasn’t the best choice for Marlee. Tired and sad wasn’t the best look for Missy. “Yes, they were really a year older than the rest of us, because their mom heard that school valedictorians were always in the oldest twenty-five percent of a class. She decided to make her girls the oldest in the class, so she started them in kindergarten when they were six.”

  “Two girls, one valedictorian slot. That must have caused some problems.”

  “Not as much as the fact that neither girl wanted to be valedictorian.”

  “Missy’s a waitress. What does Marlee do?”

  “She and her husband own the diner. She manages the front, he the back.”

  Annie nodded. Joe got the idea that she was filing that information away somewhere. It reminded him that although Alice and Wendy were involved, which gave him some peace of mind, he really didn’t know much about Annie, not really. Or her mother. Or what their home life had been like. He started to worry again, about what brought her here, how much he should share.

  “You a believer?”

  She started. “In God? Of course.”

  “You go to church?”

  She squirmed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just curious.”

  For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she sighed. “I was raised in the church. Every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night, we were there. We did church camp in the summer, Leadership Training for Christ during the school year. You name it, we were there. After I got out of high school, I went off and on for about a year, but quite honestly, if you’re not in the youth group and you’re not in the college-age group, you kind of feel misplaced. When I moved to Casa Grande, it was too easy to stop attending.”

  He’d heard this before but never understood it. Maybe it was the preacher kid in him. He felt at home with just about any age.

  “Where do you go when you need help?”

  She looked surprised at the question. “I go to my sisters.”

  From the time Joe was old enough to understand, he realized that mealtime at the Kellys’ house was a bit different from most people’s. They’d sit down. His dad would say the prayer, and almost without fail, the minute Dad took a bite of his meal, the phone would ring.

  Joe and his mother would finish dinner while Dad guided someone from the congregation. Then, when Dad hung up, Mom would warm up his meal.

  Joe had heard many a one-sided conversation and knew just how important God was. Without God, eternity was blacker than the Kansas sky without stars.

  He thought it best not to point this out to Annie.

  She started rocking faster. “When I moved to Casa Grande with my best friend, I meant to find a home congregation, but none of them felt right, and pretty soon I got in the habit of not going.”

  “Your best friend a Christian?”

  “She is. And she found a congregation. But we’re off topic and it’s getting late. Tell me about the coins and Kyle Hicks.”

  She’d traveled three states, slept alone in a cornfield, talked him into meeting her for supper, and held her own with the sheriff, but talk about the state of her soul and she suddenly acted both uncomfortable and vulnerable. He wanted to probe deeper, but that wasn’t why she was here.

  “We had a party.”

  “You already said that.”

  “It was here. Dad arranged everything. Mom was still alive, but she was visiting a friend in Nebraska. Billy’s dad was helping, but Billy got sick and they had to leave.”

  “You remember a lot.”

  “I remember everything because after that day, everything changed, and not for the better. I lost my best friend and blame myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Dad told me not to ever mess with his coin collection, and I usually didn’t because there was no opportunity. He always had them in his bedroom closet, locked in the safe. But the day of the party, he had them out. He was actually planning on using them for Sunday’s sermon. He liked visuals, and I think he’d been thinking about the lost coin parable or something. Instead of in his closet, locked in his safe, they were in his office on top of his desk, which wasn’t exactly off limits, but not where the party was.”

  “Why did you go in there?”

  “I pulled Kyle into Dad’s office because I was going to ask Missy out.”

  “The sad waitress? Why would you need to ask Kyle?”

  “He’d been dating her off and on for the previous six months. They’d just broken up, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t still like her.”

  “So, how did the coins come into play? Your dad said you wanted to show them to Kyle.”

  Joe swept the last bit of popcorn off the plate, into his hand, and then into his mouth. “That’s what I told Dad all those years ago. I was too embarrassed to tell him that I had a crush on Missy. I should probably come clean now that a decade’s gone by.”

  “Wait.” Annie stopped rocking. “If Kyle is a Hicks and Wendy is Missy’s grandmother, aren’t they related?”

  “Only by marriage.”

  Sometimes Joe thought he needed a family tree for the whole town.

  “The coins were on Dad’s desk, by the computer. I was busy looking behind me to make sure Missy wouldn’t overhear. Plus, I was worrying that he still had feelings for her. I wasn’t paying attention and before I could stop him, he’d taken some of them out of the case.”

  “That seems a little cheeky on Kyle’s part. Why would he do that?”

  “Kyle was a collector himself. Granted, he didn’t know a rare coin from a minted-two-minutes-ago coin. But he’d started collecting the state quarters. He kept his in a special cardboard poster. He was fascinated by what my dad had.”

  “Did he take them all out?”

  “If you’d asked me five minutes after we left the room, I’d have said no. I know for sure he took two out, but then my dad called me. I told Kyle to put them back and then went to help in the kitchen. When I went back later, to make sure he had put them away properly, three were missing.”

  “Did your dad suspect Kyle from the beginning?”

  “No, he’s always thought they rolled off the desk, accidentally got in someone’s pant cuff or something.”

  “People would have really searched. Who called the police?”

  “I don’t remember. Everybody was so upset. Kyle just kept saying he was sorry and that he hadn’t taken them.”

  “And your dad absolutely believed him?”

  “Absolutely. Dad even went so far as to say someone probably slipped into our house. After all, the front door was unlocked.”

  “But they would have taken all the coins.”

  “I know that, but we were grasping at straws. And when all the straws hit the floor, they were in a straight line dividing the room. On one side were the people who believed Kyle took the coins. On the other side were the people who didn’t know what to believe.”

  “What all did Kyle say?”

  “He felt awful. He said he started to put them back, but something distracted him.”

  “And this ended your friendship with Kyle?”

  “Worse than that. After a month of hurt feelings and no one being able to forgive and forget, his whole family stopped coming to church.”

  “Your dad’s church or church altogether?”

  “Church altogether. T
hey’d already been going through a hard time. Kyle’s older brother had gotten his girlfriend pregnant a couple of years before. He’d been awarded a football scholarship and all the kids at church looked at him as a role model. So, although having a baby out of wedlock is nothing new, this one pitted family against family. He married Susan and moved to Kansas City. He didn’t attend college, and Susan’s parents—who used to attend our church—took it pretty hard. She’d been set on college, too. Her family didn’t treat the Hickses right. They acted as if the Hickses were beneath them and that everything was Kyle’s brother’s fault.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not, but Susan’s family was new to town and had lots of money, lots of material belongings. Kyle’s family isn’t into the newest car or biggest house.”

  “So they stopped attending because it was easier.”

  “They stopped attending because they felt they lost both their sons. They felt they’d done everything right. Gone to church, been there for their kids, taught them, but both boys made decisions that broke the family.”

  “Broke the family? Interesting term.”

  Joe nodded. “At a time when the Hickses needed God the most, they turned their back on Him.”

  Annie could only nod.

  “It’s something many Christians decide to do. You did when you moved to Casa Grande.”

  “Mine was a personal decision, probably a bad decision, that had to do more with time and desire.”

  “No different for them,” Joe said. “Although I doubt it’s what they desired. They were great parents—involved—and yet both boys made mistakes.”

  “But Kyle didn’t. You said your dad never believed he took the coins.”

  “Something happened. I’m not sure what. Kyle never acted the same after that party. I tried to keep things as they were. I mean, we’d been friends forever. How do you stop? But his family was so offended that he’d been accused. My dad wanted the whole thing to go away. He cared more about the Hickses than the coins, but once the police were called, there was no turning back. Two weeks later we graduated from high school. Kyle left. He’s been back once that I know of.”