For years, she had been in bed with violence. From Beirut to Baghdad and beyond, she had traversed some of the world’s most dangerous places. In full combat gear and armed with a camera, she had photographed what no one wanted to see. Death, despair, and destruction.
She had entered war zones and witnessed what most people, including her family, Brett Harris, and everyone else in her hometown, would consider a nightmare. She had even experienced the nightmare firsthand.
She knew how a bullet stung when it burned through your flesh and how hot blood felt when it seeped from an open knife wound. She knew what it was to lie dying in a pile of rubble where residual smoke from a bomb hung thick in the air like a cloud of death.
“You have to find the light again,” her therapist had told her a few months ago. “You want to find it. That’s what kept you alive. You could have given up, but you didn’t.”
Perhaps wanting to photograph the maple trees was a glimmer of light. She glanced from the trees to the old house. How ironic was it that the trees just happened to be in front of the house where Brett grew up? I need to get out of here.
Her phone started to jingle, and she pulled it out of her pocket. Same number as before. Speak of the Devil. “Hello, Brett.”
“I know you have a grudge against me,” he started in. “I don’t blame you. I was a total dick in high school, and I was full of shit. If I could go back and change things, I would, but I can’t. I do regret the things I said to you.”
Actually, the things he had said about her were true. The last place she wanted to be was in a classroom, especially in science and math classes, which she skipped as much as possible. She had been a slacker, and her head had been in the clouds for reasons he would never understand.
She figured he didn’t have any true regrets, but he was willing to grovel. “I’m assuming that position at the hospital must be very important to you.”
“It’s the most important thing in the world to me,” he admitted.
She was reminded of her father, who had a Type A personality like Brett. He had once said the same thing to her one night when the election results were coming in. “It’s the most important thing in the world to Daddy.”
Brett spoke again. “Natalie, we need to get on the same page here. Okay?” He was in negotiation mode. “Start out with a clean slate. What do you want from me? What’s it going to take to get your support?”
“You should’ve gone into politics.”
“That’s not answering my question.”
“I don’t want anything.” She’d already had everything and lost it.
“Everybody wants something.”
That would be Mr. Succeed-or-Die’s logic. She walked toward her car. “Where is that place you want to meet?”
“The Thunderbird Bar and Grill. It’s in the old Charleston-McRay Ford dealership building. The inside has been completely renovated, but it still has the original art deco exterior and showroom. It’s a great place to hang out on the weekend.”
“I’ll be there at five.”
“Five? That’s a little early.”
“I have plans for later.”
After a beat, he said, “Okay. I’ll see you at five.”
She grinned as she pocketed her phone. It was probably killing him to have to cater to her. Payback’s a bitch, babe.
Crows scattered from a power line as she got into the Lexus. She glanced at the trees again. All her professional equipment was stored at McKinley Media in London. But she could get a good digital SLR camera, long lens, strobe light, and tripod in Nashville.
Ideas crowded her mind. She should take pictures of her hometown and the people who had once been part of her life. She was here to reconnect, and what better way than with photography. The Castle House had a ballroom, which would be a great place to set up for a family photo shoot over the holidays. A spark of excitement rippled through her heart.
Amazing, she thought. Here she was at an old, rundown house on the backside of nowhere and feeling keyed up for the first time in years. Like, maybe, the future did hold some promise. Who knows, she might even take a photograph in Lafayette Falls that would win the Pulitzer.
She retrieved her phone and called her grandmother.
“Hello, darling,” Anna said. “I was about to call you. Clara wants to know if you are going to be here for lunch.”
Natalie loved the way her grandmother talked. Anna Layton had been raised in south Georgia, and her accent was uncommon in Tennessee. She sounded like she belonged on the set of Gone with the Wind.
“Tell her she doesn’t have to cook for me.”
“Telling Clara not to cook is like telling Judy Garland not to sing.”
“I’m not going to be home for lunch. I’m going to drive over to Nashville and buy a camera and some equipment,” Natalie said. “I want to take some portraits of the family during the holidays. I can set up for a shoot in the ballroom. What do you think?”
“I think that is a splendid idea,” Anna gushed. “I’m so happy you’re home, dear.”
Natalie grinned. “So, how are you feeling, Nana? Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I don’t know what Lorraine and Harry have told you, but I can assure you I am not about to drop dead like they think. Goodness, they’re enough to drive anyone to drink. I may have to make myself a margarita,” Anna huffed.
Natalie smiled. Anna and Clara liked their margaritas.
“Natalie, darling, I thought the weekend after Thanksgiving, perhaps that Saturday evening, we can have a small party in your honor. I would like a few of my friends to meet you. Would that be all right?”
“Of course,” Natalie said. “But it doesn’t have to be in my honor.”
“I wouldn’t think of doing otherwise. It’s your debut.”
“My what?”
“It will be a lovely party. I assure you that,” Anna said. “I’m so excited about it. I know you’ll have the most wonderful time.”
“Sweet.”
“Natalie. I wish you wouldn’t use slang expressions. Especially when they are nonsensical at best. Good grammar is the hallmark of intelligence.”
Natalie rephrased her response. “I’m delighted about the party, Nana.”
And I can’t wait for Brett to meet you. It’s gonna be epic!
Chapter 3
In 1898, Southern entrepreneur Marcus Layton decided he wanted an opulent residence. It was the Gilded Age, and men of wealth built massive estates as a testament to their success in banking, railroads, and manufacturing. Marcus owned a hundred acres of land north of downtown Lafayette Falls that he developed into an affluent neighborhood. He had a road carved through the property, and his wife, Naomi, aptly named it Rosewood Drive.
At the end of Rosewood Drive, Marcus and Naomi built an imposing three-story house, which amazed the residents of the area because it was not made of brick, nor did it feature the traditional white columns. The Laytons had gone with the newest trend among the elite and built a Victorian mansion that resembled a castle.
Made of stone, the sixteen-room house featured two crenate-topped turrets along with balconies and arched windows. From the moment the last stone was laid until the present, the house was known by the name the Castle House. The Laytons just called it the castle.
In the study, which had been used by generations of Layton men, Anna sat at a whitewashed French cottage desk. Years ago, she had gotten rid of all the dark, masculine furnishings and burgundy drapes. Lace panels let in the light, and African violets thrived on the windowsill. A bright apricot carpet covered the hardwood floor.
She considered herself the epitome of an intelligent woman, and during her lifetime, she’d had many successes. She and the late Eva Richardson had established several local charity programs in the sixties. Plus, Anna had a degree in botany, and she had served as a consultant on the design of botanical gardens in the state as well as having numerous papers published in botanical journals and articles publ
ished in national magazines. She loved plants.
She also loved her family. She was fortunate enough to have been married to a sincere, serious man, Samuel Layton Jr., for forty-six years before he passed away. Their marriage produced two sons, Ted and Harry. She and Sam strove to be good parents and raise dutiful children. They had succeeded to an extent. After all, there was only so much a parent could do.
Anna looked at the walls of her study, where her diplomas, awards for community services, plaques representing her professional and social achievements, and family portraits greeted her every day. Eighty-three years of life hung on those walls.
“I should be able to close my eyes and leave this world without any regret,” she spoke to the stout cat that lay across her lap. Pharaoh was a husky male cat Anna had found in her greenhouse after a storm about three years ago.
She had first thought he was a skunk because his fur was black and he had white markings along his spine. He was feral and arrogant, with sharp gold eyes. Anna had taken to him immediately. She, too, was sometimes considered feral and arrogant by her family. That was simply because she said exactly what she thought, and she was opinionated and hard to please. So was Pharaoh.
After she and the cat had bonded, she had named him Pharaoh because she was certain a clever cat like him would have been worshiped by the Egyptians. She and Pharaoh were the best of friends now. He was her constant companion and confidant.
It was only to Pharaoh that she would say, “I can’t leave this world with a heart full of guilt and remorse.
“I failed Natalie. Ted failed her. We all did. And we failed her mother, too.” Anna looked at a portrait of a young woman dressed in a soft pink dress. The sun peaked through the trees, sending shafts of light across her golden hair. A little girl wearing an identical pink dress sat in her lap. Susan and Natalie. Mother and daughter. So much alike in so many ways.
Susan had been a sweet girl. Good-natured and gentle. So unlike Ted, who was always reaching for the next star. He was a force of nature. A man driven by his own agenda and self-interests, inattentive to his family. Yet Susan stuck by him, supportive to the end.
“She was a good mother,” Anna told Pharaoh. “I wonder how different things would have been if Susan had lived.”
But Susan had not lived. After several years of battling Hodgkin’s disease, Susan died the summer Natalie turned fourteen. Ted was out of town, as always, and Natalie had been home alone with her mother. The hospice nurse had come in and found Natalie sitting by Susan’s bedside, holding her dead mother’s hand.
Anna stroked Pharaoh’s back. “Natalie needed us then, and we weren’t there for her. Sam was battling cancer. We were practically living at the treatment center. I told Ted to take care of Natalie, but his way of taking care of her was financial. Plenty of money and a live-in housekeeper to watch over her.
“I used to think that later I’d have time to make things right for Natalie. You know how things in life are always put off till later. But, by the time Sam passed away, Natalie was eighteen, and I realized it was too late when she left for England. I only hope it’s not too late now. After all these years, she’s finally come back to us.”
Anna knew it had been a long, hard road for Natalie. The girl had seen more than her share of sorrow. She had lost her mother. She had lost her husband. She had almost lost her own life. “She belongs here with us. Not overseas taking pictures in some godforsaken place.”
It still horrified her to think of Natalie in combat gear, riding along with soldiers and running from terrorists with her life hanging in the balance.
“This time, I won’t fail her. She’s my only grandchild.” She wanted Natalie to be safe and to have a long life. “All Natalie needs is to find love again.”
Anna spoke with confidence, “Now there is nothing that can make a young lady more content than the perfect young man.” Anna lifted Pharaoh so he could see the open laptop on her desk.
“Handsome, isn’t he?” She referred to the sandy-haired man pictured on the computer screen. “That’s Mildred’s grandson, Lucas Reynolds. Professor and archaeologist. Natalie’s very own Indiana Jones. When she was a girl, she loved those movies. Doctor Reynolds even looks a little bit like Harrison Ford, I think.”
Pharaoh hopped on top of the desk and took a close look at the archaeologist. He didn’t hiss or yowl as he normally did when he didn’t like something, so Anna took that as a promising sign.
“Anna?” Clara called from across the hall.
“Yes,” Anna answered her younger sister. Clara Lawrence was six years younger than Anna, and she had moved into the castle after her husband died. A retired chef, Clara practically lived in the kitchen.
At any given time, they had enough food to feed an army. Cakes, casseroles, bread. Clara gave food to the neighbors and to a local charity kitchen. She left brownies for the postman and fed the man from the lawn service. On potluck Wednesday at church, they practically needed a catering truck to haul all the dishes Clara concocted.
Unlike Anna, who was tall and elegant like their father, Clara looked a great deal like their mother. She was short and round, with broad hips, and always smelled like cookie dough. She loved wearing “scenic” tops, the kind with images of farms or ice cream parlors or birdhouses printed on them. Anna thought they were ghastly, but then she wasn’t Clara.
“Is Natalie going to be home for lunch?” Clara appeared in the study doorway, wearing a new pink top. The front was embellished with a picture of two swans floating in a pond. “I thought I might whip up a batch of fresh chicken salad. She told me she loves chicken salad.”
“She won’t be home. She’s going to Nashville to buy a camera. I want to show you something, but you have to promise me you won’t say a word.”
The thing about Clara was that sometimes she didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. She just didn’t have a clever bone in her body.
Anna turned the laptop toward Clara. “What do you think?”
Clara walked over to the desk and adjusted her glasses as she looked at the screen. “Well, don’t you think he’s a bit young?”
Anna frowned. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, not for me. He’s for Natalie.”
“Oh.” A smile put dimples in Clara’s round cheeks. “He’s nice-looking. Who is he?”
“He’s Mildred’s grandson, Lucas Reynolds. He’s single. He’s the right age, and to top it off, he’s an archaeologist. Remember how Natalie loved those Indiana Jones movies when she was a girl?”
“That’s brilliant, Anna.”
“Yes, I know. I thought I would plan a little party the weekend following Thanksgiving. A very small and cozy affair to get the young couple together. Just a handful of people, including Mildred and her grandson. She said he was planning on coming for a visit around Thanksgiving.”
“How is Mildred?”
Mildred Donaldson, who was eighty-eight, was having some issues with her health and her memory. “She sounded quite well on the phone,” Anna said. “She’s taking some ginseng now, and I recommended she add ginkgo biloba to help her memory. Now, if she’ll stay away from those quacks at the medical center, she’ll be fine.”
Clara looked at the laptop screen. “What if Natalie doesn’t like him?”
“What is there not to like? He’s handsome, he comes from a good family, and he has a PhD.” Anna looked at the screen and smiled, confident in her choice. “He might as well be holding a sign that says Perfect Husband Material.”
Chapter 4
At the Thunderbird, Brett leaned against the bar and nursed a bottle of cold beer. A large, glossy photograph of a sleek 1958 Ford Thunderbird hung over the bar. The poster was one of many in the Thunderbird that commemorated automobiles from the late fifties and sixties, when muscle cars had ruled the roads, gas was thirty cents a gallon, and Marilyn Monroe was the pinup girl of choice.
Vintage steering wheels and hubcaps decorated the walls, and the tables had black-and-white checked tops. The benc
h seats in the booths looked like red leather automobile seats, and a pair of antique gas pumps from the forties stood in front of a wall mural of an old gas station.
The Thunderbird was Brett’s favorite place to hang out. He knew all the regulars who were car enthusiasts like him. On Friday and Saturday nights, the south wing, which had once been the repair shop, became an open dance floor with a live band. Normally, on the weekends, Brett had a good time at the Thunderbird.
But that good time had packed up its bags and hauled ass today.
“Doc.” Ronald Wheeler slapped Brett on the shoulder. “Good to see you.”
Brett turned and looked at the sixty-five-year-old man, who was still built like a bulldozer. “Sheriff. It’s been a long time.” He extended his hand to the man, who was no longer the sheriff but had always been someone Brett admired. Brett owed a lot to the sheriff, who had scared him shitless when he was ten years old.
Besides his uncle Mark, who was a quiet man and kept to himself after he finished work in his garage, Brett had another uncle, Tommy, who had loved to raise hell. As a kid, Brett had liked Tommy because he was lively compared to Uncle Mark and he wasn’t scared of anything. He worked at the roadhouses. Muscle for hire.
Brett had slipped out his bedroom window and gone to the roadhouse where Tommy worked. Tommy had let him stay, and it had been something of an education. He had smoked his first cigarette, played his first game of pool, saw his first pair of tits, and watched his first bar fight. He had told Tommy the roadhouse was the most awesome place ever.
Sheriff Wheeler had ended awesome several months later when he hauled Brett to jail after a raid on the roadhouse. The sheriff had put him in a small holding cell by himself while Tommy and the others were taken to the city jail. Brett had never forgotten the night he spent in that cage.
The next morning, the sheriff had been blunt about what the future would hold for him. To make matters worse, the sheriff said he was sending a social worker to Uncle Mark’s house to evaluate the situation, and Brett might be put in foster care. Brett had cried, begged, and promised to stay out of trouble.
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