by Sharon Sala
“Are you sure, girl?” Rafe asked, as he helped Glory on with her coat.
She nodded, her head bobbing wearily upon her shoulders. “I’m sure, Daddy.”
“You don’t want to wait and talk to the doctor?”
She smiled. “There’s no need.”
As suddenly as they’d arrived, they were gone.
Within the hour, Amos Steading came out of surgery, tossing surgical gloves and blood-splattered clothing in their respective hampers. Later, when he went to look for the unexpected blood donor, to his surprise, she was nowhere to be found. And while he thought it strange that she’d not stayed to hear the results of the surgery, he was too tired and too elated to worry about her odd exodus. Tonight he’d fought the Grim Reaper and won. And while he knew his skill as a surgeon was nothing at which to scoff, his patient still lived because of a girl who’d come out of the storm.
Steading dropped into a chair at his desk and began working up Hatfield’s chart, adding notes of the surgery to what had been done in E.R. A nurse entered, then gave him a cup of hot coffee and an understanding smile. As the heat from the cup warmed his hand, he sighed in satisfaction.
“Did you locate his next of kin?” Steading asked.
The nurse nodded. “Yes, sir, a sister. Her name is Antonette Monday. She said that she and her husband will come as soon as weather permits.”
Steading nodded, and sipped the steaming brew. “It’s good to have family.”
High up on the mountain above Larner’s Mill, Glory Dixon would have agreed with him. When they finally pulled into the yard of their home, it was only a few hours before daybreak, and yet she knew a sense of satisfaction for a job well done. It wasn’t always that good came of what she saw, but tonight, she’d been able to make a difference.
She reached over and patted her father’s knee. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said quietly.
“For what?” he asked.
“For believing me.”
He slid a long arm across her shoulder, giving her a hug. There was nothing more that needed to be said.
“Looks like the snow’s about stopped,” he said, gauging the sparse spit of snowflakes dancing before the headlights of their truck.
“Who’s hungry?” Glory asked.
J.C. grinned. “Wanna guess?”
She laughed. It was a perfect ending to a very bad beginning.
Back in recovery, Wyatt Hatfield wasn’t laughing, but if he’d been conscious, he would have been counting his blessings. He had a cut on his cheek that would probably scar, and had survived a lung that had collapsed, a concussion that should have put him into a coma and hadn’t, five broken ribs and two cracked ones, more stitches in his left leg than he would be able to count and, had he been able to feel them, bruises in every joint.
He could thank a seat belt, a trucker who hadn’t kept going after causing the wreck, a rescue crew that went above and beyond the call of duty to get him off of the mountain and an EMT who didn’t know the meaning of the word quit. And it was extremely good luck on Wyatt’s part that, after all that, he wound up in the skilled hands of Amos Steading.
Yet it was fate that had delivered him to Glory Dixon. And had she not given of the blood from her body, the cold and simple fact was that he would have died. But Wyatt didn’t know his good fortune. It would be days before he would know his own name.
All day long, the sun kept trying to shine. Wyatt paced the floor of his hospital room, ignoring the muscle twinges in his injured leg, and the pull of sore muscles across his belly.
He didn’t give a damn about pain. Today he was going home, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. While he didn’t have a home of his own, he still had roots in the land on which he’d been raised. If he had refused to accompany his sister, Toni, back to Tennessee, he suspected that her husband, Lane Monday, would have slung him over his shoulder and taken him anyway. Few but Toni dared argue with Lane Monday. At six feet, seven inches, he was a powerful, imposing man. As a United States marshal, he was formidable. In Wyatt’s eyes, he’d come through for Toni like a real man should. There was little else to be said.
Outside his door, he could hear his sister’s voice at the nurses’ station while she signed the papers that would check him out. He leaned his forehead against the window, surprised that in spite of the sun’s rays it felt cold, and then remembered that winter sun, at its best, was rarely warm.
“Are you ready, Wyatt?”
Wyatt turned. Lane filled the doorway with his size and his presence.
He shrugged. “I guess.” He turned back to the window as Lane crossed the room.
For a while, both men were silent, and then Lane gave Wyatt a quick pat on the back before he spoke. “I think maybe I know how you feel,” Lane said.
Wyatt shrugged. “Then I wish to hell you’d tell me, because I don’t understand. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be alive.” He tried to grin. “Hell, and if truth be told, a little surprised. When I went over the mountain, in the space of time it took to hit the first stand of trees, I more or less made my peace with God. I never expected to wake up.”
Lane listened without commenting, knowing that something was bothering Wyatt that he needed to get said.
“As for my family, I consider myself lucky to have people who are willing to take me in, but I feel so…so…”
“Rootless?”
For a moment Wyatt was silent, and then he nodded.
“Exactly. I feel rootless. And…I feel like leaving here will be taking a step backward in what I was searching for. I know it’s weird, but I keep thinking that I was this close to the end of a journey, and now—”
Toni broke the moment of confiding as she came into the room.
“You’re all checked out!” When Wyatt started toward the door, she held up her hand. “Don’t get in too big a hurry. They’re bringing a wheelchair. Lane, honey, why don’t you pull the car up to the curb? Wyatt, are you all packed?”
Both men looked at each other and then grinned. “She was your sister before she was my wife,” Lane warned him. “So you can’t be surprised by all this.”
Toni ignored them. It was her nature to organize. She’d spent too long on her own, running a farm and caring for aging parents, to wait for someone else to make a decision.
“Why don’t I go get the car?” Lane said, and stole a kiss from his Toni as he passed.
“I’m packed,” Wyatt said.
“I brought one of Justin’s coats for you to wear. The clothes you had on were ruined,” Toni said, her eyes tearing as she remembered his condition upon their arrival right after the accident. She held out the coat for him to put on. Wyatt slipped one arm in his brother’s coat, and then the other, then turned and hugged her, letting himself absorb the care…and the love.
“Now all I need is my ride,” Wyatt teased, and pulled at a loose curl hanging across Toni’s forehead.
On cue, a nurse came in pushing a wheelchair, and within minutes, Wyatt was on his way.
The air outside was a welcome respite from the recirculated air inside his room. And the cold, fresh scent of snow was infinitely better than the aroma of antiseptic. Wyatt gripped the arms of the wheelchair in anticipation of going home.
Just outside the doors, Toni turned away to speak to the nurse, and Lane had yet to arrive. For a brief moment, Wyatt was left to his own devices. He braced himself, angling his sore leg until he was able to stand, and then lifted his face and inhaled, letting the brisk draft of air circling the corner of the hospital have its way with the cobwebs in his mind. He’d been inside far too long.
A pharmacy across the street was doing a booming business, and Wyatt watched absently as customers came and went. As a van loaded with senior citizens backed up and drove away, a dark blue pickup truck pulled into the recently vacated parking space. He tried not to stare at the three people who got out, but they were such a range of sizes, he couldn’t quit looking.
The older man was tall and broad beneat
h the heavy winter coat he wore. A red sock cap covered a thatch of thick graying hair, and a brush of mustache across his upper lip was several shades darker than the gray. The younger man was just as tall, and in spite of his own heavy clothing, obviously fit. His face was creased with laugh lines, and he moved with the grace and assurance of youth and good health.
It was the girl between them who caught Wyatt’s eye. At first he thought she was little more than a child, and then the wind caught the front of her unbuttoned coat, and he got a glimpse of womanly breast and shapely hips before she pulled it together.
Her hair was the color of spun honey. Almost gold. Not quite white. Her lips were full and tilted in a grin at something one of the men just said, and Wyatt had a sudden wish that he’d been the one to make her smile.
No sooner had he thought it than she paused at the door, then stopped completely. He held his breath as she began to turn. When she caught his gaze, he imagined he felt her gasp, although he knew it was a foolish thing to consider. His mind wandered as he let himself feast upon her face.
So beautiful, Wyatt thought.
Why, thank you.
Wyatt was so locked into her gaze that he felt no surprise at the thoughts that suddenly drifted through his mind, or that he was answering them back in an unusual fashion.
You are welcome.
So, Wyatt Hatfield, you’re going home?
Yes.
God be with you, soldier.
I’m no longer a soldier.
You will always fight for those you love.
“Here comes Lane!”
At the sound of Toni’s voice, Wyatt blinked, then turned and stepped back as Lane pulled up to the curb. When he remembered to look up, the trio had disappeared into the store. He felt an odd sense of loss, as if he’d been disconnected from something he needed to know.
Bowing to the demands of his family’s concerns, he let himself be plied with pillows and blankets. By the time they had him comfortable in the roomy backseat of their car, he was more than ready for the long journey home to begin.
They were past the boundary of Larner’s Mill, heading out of Kentucky and toward Tennessee, when Wyatt’s thoughts wandered back to the girl he’d seen on the street. And as suddenly as he remembered her, he froze. His heart began to hammer inside his chest as he slowly sat up and stared out the back window at the small mountain town that was swiftly disappearing from sight.
“Dear God,” he whispered, and wiped a shaky hand across his face.
“Wyatt, darling, are you all right?”
His sister’s tone of voice was worried, the touch of her hand upon his shoulder gentle and concerned. Lane began to ease off the accelerator, thinking that Wyatt might be getting sick.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” he muttered, and dropped back onto the bed they’d made for him in the backseat.
There was no way he could tell them what he’d suddenly realized. There wasn’t even any way he could explain it to himself. But he knew, as well as he knew his own name, that the conversation he’d had with that girl had been real. And yet understanding how it had happened was another thing altogether. He’d heard of silent communication, but this…this…thing that just happened…it was impossible.
“Then how did she know my name?” he murmured.
“What did you say?” Toni asked.
Wyatt turned his head into the pillow and closed his eyes.
“Nothing, Sis. Nothing at all.”
Chapter 2
Clouds moved in wild, scattered patterns above the Hatfield homestead, giving way to the swift air current blasting through the upper atmosphere. The clouds looked as unsettled as Wyatt felt. In his mind, it had taken forever to get back his health, and then even longer to gain strength. But now, except for a scar on his cheek and a leg that would probably ache for the rest of his life every time it rained, he was fine.
Problem was, he’d been here too long. He leaned forward, bracing his hands upon the windowsill and gazing out at the yard that spilled toward the banks of Chaney Creek, while his blood stirred to be on the move.
“The grass is beginning to green.”
The longing in Wyatt’s voice was obvious, but for what, Toni didn’t know. Was he missing the companionship of his ex-wife, or was there something missing from his own inner self that he didn’t know how to find?
“I know,” Toni said, and shifted Joy to her other hip, trying not to mind that Wyatt was restless. He was her brother, and this was his home, but he was no longer the boy who’d chased her through the woods. He’d been a man alone for a long, long time.
She could hear the longing in his voice, and sensed his need to be on the move, but she feared that once gone, he would fall back into the depression in which they’d brought him home. Her mind whirled as she tried to think of something to cheer him up. Her daughter fidgeted in her arms, reaching for anything she could lay her hands on. Toni smiled, and kissed Joy on her cheek, thinking what they’d been doing this time last year, and the telegram that Wyatt had sent.
“Remember last year…when you sent the telegram? It came on Easter. Did you know that?”
Wyatt nodded, then grinned, also remembering how mad Toni had been at him when he’d interfered in her personal life.
“In a few weeks, it will be Easter again. Last year, someone gave us a little jumpsuit for Joy, complete with long pink ears on the outside of the hood. It made her look like a baby rabbit. The kids carried her around all day, fussing over who was going to have their picture taken next with the Easter Bunny.”
Wyatt smiled, and when Joy leaned over, trying to stick her hand in the pot on the stove, he took the toddler from his sister’s arms, freeing her to finish the pudding she was stirring.
Joy instantly grabbed a fistful of his hair in each hand and began to pull. Wyatt winced, then laughed, as he started to unwind her tiny hands from the grip they had on his head.
“Hey, puddin’ face. Don’t pull all of Uncle Wyatt’s hair out. He’s going to need it for when he’s an old man.”
Joy chortled gleefully as it quickly became a game, and for a time, Wyatt’s restlessness was forgotten in his delight with the child.
It was long into the night when the old, uneasy feelings began to return. Wyatt paced the floor beside his bed until he was sick of the room, then slipped out of the house to stand on the porch. The moonless night was so thick and dark that it seemed airless. Absorbing the quiet, he let it surround him. As a kind of peace began to settle, he sat down on the steps, listening to the night life that abounded in their woods.
He kept telling himself that it was the memories of the wreck, and the lost days in between, that kept him out of bed. If he lay down, he would sleep. If he slept, he would dream. Nightmares of snow and blood, of pain and confusion. But that wasn’t exactly true. It was the memory of a woman’s voice that wouldn’t let go of his mind.
You will always fight for those you love.
Eliminating the obvious, which he took to mean his own family, exactly what did that mean? Even more important, how the hell had that…that thing…happened between them?
Toni had told him more than once that he’d survived the wreck for a reason, and that one day he’d know why. But Wyatt wanted answers to questions he didn’t even know how to ask. In effect, he felt as though he were living in a vacuum, waiting for someone to break the seal.
Yet Wyatt Hatfield wasn’t the only man that night at a breaking point. Back in Larner’s Mill, Kentucky, a man named Carter Foster was at the point of no return, trying to hold on to his sanity and his wife, and doing a poor job of both.
Carter paced the space in front of their bed, watching with growing dismay as Betty Jo began to put on another layer of makeup. As if the dress she was wearing wasn’t revealing enough, she was making herself look like a whore. Her actions of late seemed to dare him to complain.
“Now, sweetheart, I’m not trying to control you, but I think I have a right to know where you’re going.
How is it going to look to the townspeople if you keep going out at night without me?”
He hated the whine in his voice, but couldn’t find another way to approach his wife of eleven years about her latest affair. That she was having them was no secret. That the people of Larner’s Mill must never find out was of the utmost importance to him. In his profession, appearances were everything.
Betty Jo arched her perfectly painted eyebrows and then stabbed a hair pick into her hair, lifting the back-combed nest she’d made of her dark red tresses to add necessary inches to her height. Ignoring Carter’s complaint, she stepped back from the full-length mirror, running her hands lightly down her buxom figure in silent appreciation. That white knit dress she’d bought yesterday looked even better on than it had on the hanger.
“Betty Jo, you didn’t answer me,” Carter said, unaware that his voice had risen a couple of notes.
Silence prevailed as she ran her little finger across her upper, then lower lip, smoothing out the Dixie Red lipstick she’d applied with a flourish. When she rubbed her lips together to even out the color, Carter shuddered, hating himself for still wanting her. He couldn’t remember the last time she put those lips anywhere on him.
“Carter, honey, you know a woman like me needs her space. With you stuck in that stuffy old courtroom all day, and in your office here at home all night, what am I to do?”
The pout on her lips made him furious. At this stage of their marriage, that baby-faced attitude would get her nowhere.
“But you’re my wife,” Carter argued. “It just isn’t right that you…that men…” He took a deep breath and then puffed out his cheeks in frustration, unaware that it made him look like a bullfrog.
Betty Jo pivoted toward him, then stepped into her shoes, relishing the power that the added height of the three-inch heels gave her. She knew that if she had had college to do over again, she would have married the jock, not the brain. This poor excuse for a man was losing his hair and sporting a belly that disgusted her. When he walked, it swayed lightly from side to side like the big breasts of a woman who wore no support. She liked tight, firm bellies and hard muscles. There was nothing hard on Carter Foster. Not even periodically. To put it bluntly, Betty Jo Foster was an unsatisfied woman in the prime of her life.