by Jodi Thomas
Calvin shrugged. “That’s what we do, Mr. Wright.” Calvin might be ten years older than Tyler, but he’d called his boss Mr. since the day Tyler’s father died.
Tyler smiled. “We do. Don’t have the grave dug until we know what flight she’ll be coming in on. As soon as she’s back home, I’ll phone the minister. Maybe we can schedule the graveside at dawn tomorrow. It’ll be cold, but I think she might like that.”
“Which minister?”
“I asked the family that and you know what they said?”
Calvin shook his head.
“They said it didn’t matter,” Tyler answered. “I thought I’d call that young Methodist pastor out on North Road. He could use the money, and he’ll do a nice job even if it’ll only be you and me standing beside him.”
Calvin agreed with his choice. “I noticed a car parked at the back gate of the cemetery last night. You want me to call the sheriff and have her check it out?”
Tyler waved the idea aside. Drunks looking for a quiet place to sleep it off sometimes thought the cemetery would be a quiet spot. “I’ll check it when I lock up tonight. Don’t worry about it.”
Calvin turned and headed toward the back. Since they saw each other several times a day, he and Tyler had long ago given up bothering with hello or good-bye.
Tyler was suddenly in a hurry to be upstairs. He took the stairs this time, not wanting to be away from Kate a moment longer than necessary.
He felt something was wrong the moment he turned the corner in his hallway and noticed his bedroom light was on.
The pillows had been replaced. The throw tossed back in the chair by the window.
Kate had gone.
At first he didn’t see the business card lying on the bed, and then he had a hard time focusing enough to read.
Three words allowed him to breathe. Dinner at Inn?
He ran his thumb over the writing, wishing she’d signed it, or, better yet, addressed it to dear one. She’d called him that once . . . only once.
Chapter 5
TRUMAN FARM ON LONE OAK ROAD
THE APPLE ORCHARD ALWAYS FASCINATED REAGAN TRUMAN in the winter months. Her uncle Jeremiah told her once that his father had started it back before the first World War. Now, a hundred years later, half the apple jelly in town and most of the apple pies came from Truman apples. But it wasn’t the fruit or the trees that drew Reagan. The shadows pulled her near like long fingers. In the summer all grew green and beautiful, but when the weather turned cold the bare branches crossed over one another like a framed wonderland in blacks and grays, and she had to come close.
Some people might love the spring, some the summer or even the fall, but for Reagan her heart beat strongest in winter. She loved the raging storms and the silent snow. She loved her land as if she’d been born to it.
The orchard bordered Lone Oak Road on one side and the Matheson Ranch on the other. As shadows lengthened she walked and enjoyed her time alone. Somehow, Reagan felt she belonged here in this unfinished world with its beginnings and endings mixing together without forming a complete canopy. Her whole life seemed like that. Starts and stops forming like ribs around a body lean of meat.
Smiling, she remembered how her uncle always said she needed to grow roots. At sixteen she’d had nothing, been nothing but a runaway with no place to run to. Now, at twenty, Reagan felt like her very blood pumped through this land . . . her land. She’d poured her sweat into it along with her love. She’d even risked her life fighting a prairie fire to save this farm. It was as much a part of her as she was of it. She felt like her adopted uncle did—she’d never sell, never.
After a deep breath, she turned, knowing it was time to get back to the house. Uncle Jeremiah was probably already in the kitchen. He liked to watch her cook, though he’d grown so thin she wasn’t sure he ever ate more than a few bites. His mind was still sharp, but his body was failing him. Reagan did all she could, taking over the running of the farm and the maintenance of his established orchard and her new one. Hank Matheson, the rancher next door, often told her she was doing too much. But how much was too much to give an old man who’d taken her in as his own when no one else in the world wanted her?
She’d hired a couple who were both nurses and moved them in upstairs. Foster took care of Uncle Jeremiah, doing all the things her uncle wouldn’t allow her to help with, and Cindy, Foster’s wife, monitored the old man’s medicines. To Reagan’s surprise, her uncle didn’t seem to mind having them around. After a few days, he even stopped telling Foster that being a nurse wasn’t a good job for a man.
As she walked toward the little golf cart–sized truck she used on the trails between the fruit trees, Reagan was mentally planning dinner when her cell phone rang.
She slid behind the wheel and flipped the phone open.
“Hi, Rea,” came Noah’s familiar voice. “You asleep yet?”
She laughed. “It’s not even dark, Preacher, what time zone are you in and how much have you been drinking?”
“I’m in North Carolina, I think. I didn’t win any money the last ride.” She heard his long exhale of breath. “The rodeos aren’t much fun when you don’t make the eight seconds.”
She didn’t miss that he hadn’t answered the second question. More and more when Noah called from the road, she had a feeling he wasn’t sober. Maybe he only got homesick when he drank. Maybe he needed the whiskey to give him enough courage to talk about going on. Somewhere the boy she’d met in high school had lost his big dreams, and in so doing he’d lost himself.
His easy laugh came over the phone. “What are you up to, Rea? No. Let me guess. Sitting in the yard with your uncle waiting for the sunset, or maybe walking in that forest you call an orchard. One of these days you’ll fall over a tree root and we won’t find your bones until spring.”
“You know me pretty well,” she said, figuring he knew her better than anyone else alive. “You planning on making it home before spring?”
“Sorry, Rea, I don’t think so, but I’ll call. I promise. No matter where I am, I’ll call. There’s always a rodeo somewhere, and as long as I’ve got the gas and the fee, I’ll be riding.”
He was the first real friend she’d ever had. He’d been the first boy to kiss her, her first date, her first heartbreak. “Take care of yourself, Preacher.”
He laughed without much humor. “No one on the circuit calls me that anymore.”
They’d called him Preacher because when he rode in high school rodeos, the announcers used to say he got religion when he climbed on a thousand pounds of mean muscle. Now, four years later, Reagan knew he’d lost his religion along with the joy he had for the sport. Now he rode like it was an addiction. Only even when he won, she had a feeling the money never made it to the bank.
“Why don’t you come home, Noah?” she asked, as she did almost every time he called.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, but his words didn’t ring true. “Got to go, it’s my time to drive. I’ll talk to you again soon. I promise. Good night, Rea.”
Reagan closed the phone. She hadn’t told him what was happening in Harmony or in her life. She had a feeling he didn’t care. Even if she’d said she needed him right now, he wouldn’t come, and if he promised tonight, he’d only break his word come morning.
They’d been best friends in high school, talked every night on the phone, drove all over the panhandle so he could ride in every rodeo they heard about. Then his father thought he was good enough to turn pro and Noah gave up his plans for college. The first year, he barely made enough in prize money to stay on the road. The second year he told her it looked like he might break a hundred thousand, enough to start his herd on his small ranch. But halfway through, Noah got hurt again. This time when the doctors patched him up, they seemed to have left out his love for the sport.
Noah McAllen was on a merry-go-round, not with painted wooden ponies but with huge angry bulls, and he couldn’t seem to find the way off the ride.
Reagan leaned her head on her arms atop the steering wheel and cried. She feared for Noah that the ride wouldn’t stop until one bull, one night, killed him.
NOAH FLIPPED HIS PHONE CLOSED AS HE WALKED AROUND his pickup, now so dirty he couldn’t even tell what color it was. He slipped into the driver’s seat as his buddy slid across and began building his nest for the night.
“Just head west,” Don grumbled, already sounding half asleep. “We’ll be lucky to make it to where we turn south by noon tomorrow. If you get sleepy, wake me.”
Noah knew the routine, but he let Don ramble. They both knew they probably wouldn’t be friends if it weren’t for the rodeo. Though they both rode bulls, they did it for different reasons. Noah saw it as a fast way to make money, and he had long ago become addicted to the thrill of adrenaline that jolted through his body every time he climbed on. Don, on the other hand, rode for the thrill that surrounded the game. The wild unpredictability, the giggles of the girls when bull riders entered a bar, the flash of camera lights when he won. He didn’t care for the sport; he liked the parade.
Noah let Don talk himself to sleep; for once he didn’t really want to talk about what they’d face tomorrow. He just wanted to drive and think of Reagan. He hadn’t seen her in months, and then their last words had been yelled at each other. He’d waited two weeks before he called. He’d forgotten what they’d been arguing about and she didn’t mention it.
He drove through the night, trying to remember exactly what she looked like. Her curly red hair that wrapped around his fingers. Her green eyes that could cut through all his bullshit with one look. Her voice had sounded older somehow tonight. Part of him still saw her as that frightened new kid at a school where everyone else knew one another.
She wasn’t his girlfriend then or now. Maybe she never would be. They’d grown apart, he told himself, like people do. He’d seen best friends in high school go away to different colleges and a year later struggle to keep a conversation going over coffee.
She was just a friend, he reminded himself. Only once in Oklahoma City after the rodeo, the girl he was with said he’d called her Rea when they made love.
Noah shook his head, figuring that could mean one of two things. Either he’d have to try to get along with Reagan and marry her, or he’d have to learn to keep his mouth shut when the lights went out.
Chapter 6
THURSDAY
FEBRUARY 18
POST OFFICE
SNOW BEGAN TUMBLING DOWN IN HARMONY BEFORE dawn. Ronelle Logan made it to work, but Marty Winslow received no mail for her to deliver. On Friday the sun came back out, warming away the snow from the walks, but Marty Winslow still had no mail. She checked his box three times, hoping she’d overlooked something. The new coat had been hanging by the restroom door for two days.
Ronelle Logan felt like an inmate waiting on death row. Every morning she ate what she feared might be her last meal and waited.
She didn’t know whether to thank him for not telling the postmaster that she’d called him a cripple or to worry that he might somehow make her life more miserable than it already was. Both days she ate a candy bar for lunch and worked on her online course instead of going home or over to the diner.
About three, the few special deliveries came in. Ronelle waited in the back, standing so she could see Mr. Donavan through the door as he looked them over.
“Ronelle,” he yelled. “You’d better get that new coat on. You’ve got a letter that needs delivering.”
She pulled the blue wool coat on and wished she had armor and a few weapons to stuff beneath its folds. She had a feeling she was going into battle. She looped her father’s old satchel over her head so the leather crossed her chest.
Mr. Donavan handed her three envelopes when she walked to the front. “Might as well drop these two off at the fire station. It’s not much out of your way.”
As she stuffed the mail in the satchel, he added, “That your father’s old bag?”
She nodded and left without a word.
The fire station was half a block farther than Winslow’s place, but she went there first. She told herself she did it just in case he frightened her again and she had to run back to the post office.
No one was at the fire station except Bob McNabb. She’d seen him around town and knew he was married to Stella, who worked part time at the funeral home. Everyone in Harmony was interconnected like some kind of giant spiderweb.
Old Bob took the envelopes from her and said thanks without asking any questions, then went back to setting up chairs in one of the bays.
Ronelle walked away, thinking delivering the mail wasn’t as hard as she thought it might be. She was almost to the duplex where Winslow lived when she saw a man sitting on a huge motorcycle out front.
He was big, over six feet, overweight, and covered in black leather. When he glanced in her direction, she saw he wasn’t old, still in his teens. He looked hard, though. The kind of hard that opened fire in a public building . . . like a post office.
She looked away, focusing on the tattoos on his knuckles. Her mother told her once that men get knuckle tattoos in prison. This guy looked too young to be an ex-con, but he did have tattoos.
While she was trying to figure out if he was casing out the neighborhood to rob or just planning to start a random killing spree, he yelled, “Winslow, you got mail!”
“Thanks, Border, tell her to bring it on in.”
The guy raised an eyebrow at her and nodded toward the door.
Ronelle almost ran up the steps and into the house. This Border was more frightening than the man in the wheelchair. A dragon guarding the entrance to an ogre’s cave.
She walked into the room, empty except for the desk and of course the man behind it.
She laid down the mail.
“Thanks,” he said, without looking up.
She nodded and took a step backward.
Now he lifted his head and looked her straight in the eyes. “I’m not going to bite you, you know.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “At least until I know you better.”
She backed toward the door without breathing. Was he kidding? Turning, she bolted, far more afraid of the honesty in his eyes than anything her imagination could dream up. People never saw her, not really, and they never, never, teased her.
The guy on the motorcycle was gone. Ronelle hurried back to the post office, trying to shake the feeling that Marty Winslow was still watching her.
When she entered the back of the office, she took off her blue coat and worked an hour before slipping into her old black-gray coat.
Jerry poked his head into the back room where she stood pulling on her gloves. “Got a few wild plans this weekend, Ronelle. I think there’s a dance over at Buffalo’s tomorrow night . . . live music.” He laughed like he was the only one who caught the joke. “You could pick yourself up a fellow.”
“Leave her alone,” Mr. Donavan yelled.
“I’m not doing anything but talking. She hasn’t said ten words to me since she came here.” Jerry acted like he was counting on his fingers. “Let’s see, that comes out to about one word a year.”
“She doesn’t have to talk to you.” Donavan pulled on his coat. “Besides, it seems to me you talk enough for all of us around the place.”
Jerry shrugged. “Sorry, Ronelle, you do what you want to do.”
She passed him without a word and left. She had to act exactly the same, she decided, or her mother would notice and ask questions. No one could know that Marty Winslow had seen her, really seen her. Maybe it wouldn’t matter to anyone, not even him, but for her the world had shifted and might never be the same again.
Chapter 7
FRIDAY
FEBRUARY 19
LEARY LAW OFFICE
REAGAN TRUMAN SAT IN ELIZABETH LEARY’S OFFICE AND fought back tears. For the past three months she’d been living in limbo. Meals, even sleep lost their rhythm as she moved through the days and nights like the sole passenger on a
never-ending train ride. Thanksgiving, Christmas, even her twentieth birthday had come and gone with her not really paying much attention.
The only relative she had, her uncle Jeremiah Truman, had suffered his fourth heart attack in early October. He was leaving her, not all at once, but an inch at a time. A week before his ninetieth birthday he almost left her in the night while she wasn’t watching.
Slowly he’d recovered—maybe, she reasoned, simply because God knew she wasn’t ready to let him go. She had no memory of her parents, no person who’d loved her before him. No one in the world had even loved her until Jeremiah Truman.
This morning, while tears floated in her eyes, he’d told her to go see the lawyer. There were papers to be signed, he’d insisted. Reagan knew the old man was taking care of her even as she tried to help him.
Foster Garrison was looking after him while she was in town. Foster had been a medic in the army twenty years before and recently lost his job at a clinic because of cutbacks. His wife was picking up shifts now and then at the hospital, but they needed the money Reagan paid.
Uncle Jeremiah’s harsh manner seemed to suit Foster fine. He didn’t waste any words babying the old man or bother listening when Jeremiah fired him at least once a week. Foster’s wife, Cindy, had a kind heart and won the old man over with her ginger-apple pancakes.
Reagan felt like they melted into the house as if they’d always been there. She enjoyed the company and loved knowing Uncle Jeremiah was in good hands when she had to leave the house.
When Jeremiah came home, weak and tired, Reagan moved her desk into the front parlor beside his bed, and moved her bed into what had been a study downstairs. While he napped in the afternoons, she worked on her homework from the classes she took a few nights a week at Clifton College. She spent the mornings running the business, the afternoons studying, and the nights worrying about what would happen when he left her.