Season of Joy

by Virginia Carmichael

  “Not so much. Can we have pizza?” He yanked open the black truck’s door. The rusty old thing squeaked and groaned as he scrambled behind the steering wheel and across the ripped bench seat. “It could be the on-sale kind. Want me to see if we got a coupon?”

  “That would be a big help.”

  She eyed the truck warily. It had been a long time since she’d driven a pickup. Totally different from her compact car and she had to adjust the seat, the mirrors and dig for the seat belt—it was buried in the crumbs, hayseed and grain bits that had accumulated in the crack of the seat over what had to be decades.

  “I’m on it.” Simon slipped his hand into the outside pocket of her handbag, extracted an envelope and began sorting through her coupon collection. His forehead furrowed in concentration. His cowlick stood up straight from the crown of his head in a lazy swirl.

  Just like his father’s.

  Stop thinking about that man. She had enough to contend with without borrowing heartache. She refused to wonder what had happened to the man. The love she had for him was long dead and buried. Did he still live around here or had he moved? It wasn’t as if she’d kept in touch with anyone in the valley, so she’d never heard a scrap of the news since her father had thrown her out of the house when she was nineteen.

  “Found it!” Simon’s triumph was drowned out by the roar of the badly timed engine. He waved the coupon while she dug out his seat belt, too. “I hope they have the pepperoni kind at the store.”

  “Me, too.” She couldn’t help trying to smooth down the ruffle of hair, but his cowlick stayed up stubbornly.

  “Mom?”

  “What?” She wrestled the truck into Drive, which shouldn’t be so hard with an automatic, and nosed the pickup down the driveway.

  “How long do we gotta stay here?” He tucked the coupon in the front of the fat envelope.

  “I don’t know. I wish I did, believe me.” Gravel crunched beneath the tires as she fought the pickup around a curve. “I want to go home just as much as you do.”

  “I miss my friends.”

  “Me, too.”

  They smiled together as the pickup bumped down the last stretch of driveway. Cows grazed behind sagging fences. Across the county road, moss glinted on the barn’s roof, which happened to be missing more than a few shingles. As she cranked the steering wheel to the right hard, manhandling the rattling truck onto the pavement, she wondered just how long Dad had been letting things slide and why no one had looked her up to tell her. She may have moved out of state, but she wasn’t that hard to find.

  Amber fields whipped by, grass bronzing in the hot summer sun.

  “How come Grandpa doesn’t share his TV?”

  “That’s just the way he is.” Her mother had a small set in the kitchen, but it was not there now. She had no idea where it went or what had gone on around here in the last ten years. One thing was for certain, a lot of things had changed. The farm was no longer top-notch, money was apparently wanting and her father? The robust man he’d once been had withered away.

  “I know we’ve got to get by and you’re not working or anything.” Simon took a deep breath. “But how am I gonna watch my shows?”

  “That’s a good question. I’ll try and figure something out, okay?”

  “Okay.” He stared off down the road. “Maybe we won’t be here long.”

  “Maybe.” Simon didn’t know that they would be leaving only after her father died. Sorrow burned behind her eyes, which was unexpected considering how she’d once loathed her dad with every fiber of her being. She checked her rearview mirror for traffic out of habit—of course, there was none, not on this rural road—and flicked her gaze to the pavement ahead. Farmland spread around her like a patchwork quilt in irrigated greens, dried ambers and barn roofs glinting in the sun.

  One more corner and they zipped past the little row of rental houses, bright with new paint, where her one-and-only love had lived. Was he still there or had he moved on to bigger and better things? Maybe he’d left town entirely—that’s what she dearly hoped. The last thing she wanted was to run into him, face-to-face. Pain seared her heart, tender after all these years.

  Why did it still hurt to remember Hunter McKaslin? She didn’t know—it was a mystery she might never solve.

  “Did you go to school there?” Simon asked, pointing toward a squat gray block building hugging the outskirts of town. The windows were dark. Students wouldn’t fill those classrooms for another month.

  “Yes, I did. I jumped rope in that courtyard. And see that last door right there? That’s the library where I spent every rainy recess.”

  “It looks awful small, Mom.”

  “Welcome to life in Prospect, Montana,” she quipped. “Where everything is small.”

  “This is the main street?” Simon scratched his head, looking around with a wrinkled nose and a slight look of dismay. He’d been asleep on the drive from the Bozeman airport. Milton had met their plane, a tiny prop that lurched and swayed with every gust of wind. She dreaded getting back up in the air for her return trip.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s the quality and not the quantity that counts,” she said of the town.

  “What does that mean? More is better, Mom. You know it is.”

  “I was talking about the people. That’s what makes the difference anywhere.” She swung into a lot, yanking hard on the wheel. Boy, did she miss power steering. It was all she could do to grapple the big truck into a parking space. At least she hoped she’d managed to fit between the lines. Who knew? She was afraid to pop open her door and take a look. Good thing there was plenty of room in the nearly empty lot. The engine shuttered to a stop, she tossed the keys into her purse and unbuckled.

  A hot, dry wind puffed over her as she led the way into the store. The grocery hadn’t changed much. It was still family owned, sporting fading posters in the front wall of windows, and the automatic doors gave a long pause before they wheezed arthritically open.

  Just get in and get out, she thought as Simon tromped alongside her. If she hurried, then maybe no one would have time to recognize her and see what had become of her.

  “I’ll grab a cart!” Simon leaped forward to pick apart the wire carts and took charge of one, steering it by its red handlebar. He stopped dead in his tracks when he looked around. “This is it?”

  “I’m afraid so.” They were used to a large chain store in Portland bursting with selection. This little place had ten aisles—short aisles—and hadn’t been remodeled since she’d left town. The fifties decorating scheme added charm, but it didn’t come close to impressing her son. She smiled and rubbed his shoulder encouragingly. “Maybe their pizza selection isn’t too bad. See the refrigerated cases along the back wall? Why don’t we go check ’em out?”

  “Okay.” Leading the way like an intrepid explorer who just discovered the terrain was much more perilous than expected, Simon shoved the cart ahead of him.

  “Millie? Millie Wilson? Is that you, dear?” An elderly voice quivered with excitement.

  Millie skidded to a stop. Up ahead of her, Simon did, too. He turned around with curiosity bright in his dark blue eyes. So much for getting in and out of here without running into someone she knew. “Mrs. Hoffsteader, how are you?”

  “Fine, just fine. I can’t believe my eyes. Little Millie, all grown up. I almost didn’t recognize you.” The white-haired lady tapped up with her loaded cart, her cane hanging on the handlebar. Her smile turned serious. “I suppose you’re back in town to help with your father.”

  “Yes.” She nodded at Simon, letting him know to go ahead without her. Not only was the pizza case in plain view, but she was a little afraid of Myra Hoffsteader’s sharp gaze. What if someone recognized Simon’s dimples and dark blue eyes a shade lighter than his father’s?

  �
�Whip has his faults and he’s the hardest man I’ve ever met, but I hate to think of anyone ill.” Compassion wreathed the woman’s lovely face. “It has to be hard for you, too.”

  “I’ll be fine. Wherever I am, I’m not alone.”

  “No, God is watching over us all, and that’s the truth.” Myra’s gaze narrowed, perhaps eager to bring up a certain subject. “He’s still in town, you know.”

  “H-Hunter?” She gulped for air, nearly choking over the name she hadn’t spoken aloud in so long that it felt foreign on her tongue. The one name she’d once loved most of all.

  “In fact, there he is, walking this way.” She nodded her silver head in the direction of the front windows where a tall, wide-shouldered man stalked across the parking lot, his Stetson brim tipped to hide the sun. All she could see of his face was the firm, unyielding line of his mouth and the square manly cut of his jaw.

  Hunter. Her heart rolled slowly in her chest, flipping upside down. Hunter, here, after all this time. And so close. She stumbled a few steps back. Her first instinct was to run. She cast her gaze down the aisle where Simon stood in front of the glass doors, fist to his chin in thought.

  There was no reason why Hunter would suspect, she told herself. But those words didn’t comfort her. “Mrs. Hoffsteader, it’s been good seeing you, but honestly, I don’t want to be standing here when Hunter walks through that door.”

  “I understand, dear. He broke your heart.” Sympathy softened her voice. “I suppose you’ve got a lot on your plate tending your father. That’s enough adversity for a girl to deal with. You go on now.”

  “It was good running into you.” Millie backed down the aisle, taking refuge between the tall shelves of cooking oils on one side and spices on the other. “I’ll see you Sunday?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll keep an eye out. We’re having a church picnic. Rumor has it that you are a Christian now. Be sure to come.”

  “I’ll try.” She glanced toward the door—it whooshed open, meaning Hunter was almost in sight, so she took off. No way would he recognize the back of her as she skedaddled down the aisle.

  “They had pepperoni.” Simon smiled, dimples flashing, holding up the box. “It’s the large size, but that’s okay. The coupon covers it.”

  “Good boy.” She glanced at the price tacked inside the case, but it was hard to concentrate with her heart drumming a thousand beats a second.

  “I found a coupon in there for cookie dough.” Simon’s gaze slid sideways to the rolls of premade tubes sitting in bright yellow packages. “It’s okay if we can’t afford it, but they just look good.”

  “Yes, they do.” Impulsively she yanked open the door and snagged a roll of chocolate chip, Simon’s favorite. She heard a man’s boots thud nearby, a gait she’d know anytime and anywhere, it was sewn into the fabric of her being.

  Hunter. His step hesitated directly behind her. Her blood pressure rocketed into the red zone. He tugged at her like a black hole’s gravitational field—a force she had to resist. Her palms went slick. She slowly set the dough tube in the cart. Maybe if she didn’t make any sudden movements, he wouldn’t look her way. Let him go on with his shopping without noticing her. That way she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye and feel her heart break all over again.

  “Mom?” Simon grasped the bar and gave the cart a shove. “What’s next?”

  “Uh—” She stared at Hunter’s reflection in the glass refrigerator case. He was tall enough to steal a woman’s breath, well-built in a country sort of way—those were solid muscles beneath his T-shirt. His dark hair, still thick, tumbled over his forehead. Her fingers remembered the silken feel of those locks. If he wasn’t wearing that Stetson, his hair would stick up just a hint at the crown, where a cowlick whirled.

  She swallowed hard, feeling a bump against her elbow. Simon. She saw her reflection, too. Not the youthful girl she’d been when Hunter had loved her, when the most handsome man in the county had chosen her as his girlfriend. Time and hardship had worn their way onto her face. Faint creases marked the corners of her eyes, the plane of her forehead and bracketed her mouth. No, she was so not the girl she’d been.

  That wasn’t the reason she didn’t answer her son right away. What if the sound of her voice drew Hunter’s attention? She pointed to the dairy case. Simon turned the cart with a rattle and headed toward the egg cartons lined up in the next case over.

  There was a thump behind her as something landed in Hunter’s cart. Wheels squeaked and boots knelled on the tile. Thank the heavens above, he walked away in the opposite direction. Thank You, Lord.

  Relief blasted through her. She risked a glance over her shoulder just as he turned down the next aisle, his attention on his shopping. Iron jaw, granite features, he’d become a man who looked harder than she’d remembered—the father of her son.

  ISBN: 9781459245365

  Copyright © 2012 by Virginia Munoz

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