The Lullaby Sky

by Carolyn Brown

  “I hate good-byes,” Elaine said.

  “Me, too, and I hear a car pulling up by the back porch. I guess it’s time.”

  Elaine picked up the suitcase. “We’ve already had a hug, so don’t walk me to the door and I won’t look back. When I think of Lullaby Sky, I will smile,” Elaine said as she closed the door gently behind her.

  Hannah sat down on the sofa, put her head in her hands, and reminded herself that this was part of the job of helping other women. Good-byes had to be said in order for them to move on with their lives.

  But I’m supposed to be helping them, and I feel like Elaine helped me more than I did her, she thought.

  And that is the beauty of this service, the voice in her head said.

  “Mama, Mama!” Sophie bounced into the room. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist and hugged her tightly. “Since it’s rainin’, does that mean Laney gets to stay another day?”

  Hannah bent to kiss Sophie on the top of her head. “No, baby girl, it means that we can’t have our movie under the stars outside, but we can have a party in our house and everyone can come. Have you invited Nadine and Anna Lou?”

  “No, silly Mama. They can’t come in the house.” Sophie giggled.

  Hannah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Elaine has already gone. You told her good-bye last night, remember? Have you done your job and picked out the perfect movie for us to watch?”

  “I’m workin’ on it. I’ve got two lyin’ on my dresser. I really liked her, Mama. Will she come back someday?”

  “I don’t think so, but we have two whole days’ worth of memories with her, don’t we?” Hannah answered.

  “It don’t seem like she was here that long.”

  “She slept the whole first day and stayed in her room. That’s why it doesn’t seem like we got to keep her longer, but . . .” Hannah paused.

  “I love it when you say but.” Sophie grinned. “That means something good is going to happen, right?”

  “Aunt Darcy is coming to the party tonight and so is Aunt Liz.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Sophie pumped her little fist in the air. “Can Aunt Darcy spend the night?”

  “You can ask her.” Hannah hugged her daughter closer to her side. “Let’s go make breakfast. A rainy day calls for oatmeal with raisins and pecans and brown sugar.”

  “And toast with peanut butter and bacon?”

  “You got it. Race you to the kitchen,” Hannah said.

  Sophie put her small hand in Hannah’s. “Let’s just walk, Mama, and have breakfast with just us like we used to. But when it’s over, can I go over to Aunt Birdie’s and see if she wants to play cards with me this morning?”

  “We’ll call her and see if she has something else planned, but if she doesn’t, I bet she’d love to play cards with you this old rainy morning,” Hannah said.

  After breakfast Hannah donned a bright-yellow raincoat, kicked off her shoes, and headed toward the hangar in her bare feet. The wet grass felt like velvet between her toes, and the scent of wet dirt was as intoxicating as a double shot of Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. She stopped and held out her hands, letting the soft rain fill them until there was enough to bring to her nose to smell it up close and personal. No chlorine. No artificial flavor enhancers. Just plain old rain, straight from heaven, to nourish the earth.

  “That’s what I want if I ever go into another relationship. I don’t want a husband with money. I don’t want fancy frills. I just want someone who loves to walk barefoot in the rain and smell the wet dirt with me.” She splayed open her fingers and let the water run through to trickle onto her feet with the other raindrops.

  “Which will never happen.” She sighed and started walking again toward the hangar.

  She expected to hear the noise of hammers and buzz saws, yet there was nothing but crickets complaining about getting wet and tree frogs singing songs of praise for the glorious rain.

  “It’s all in how you look at it and how you study it, as Aunt Birdie says. What is one person’s blessing is another’s nightmare,” she said as she swung open the door into the office and stepped inside for the first time in a year.

  “Who’s having nightmares? Is Sophie all right?” Travis looked up from a roll of papers stretched out across Marty’s oversize oak desk.

  “She’s fine. I was philosophizing to myself,” Hannah said.

  The office had been built according to Marty’s specifications. Like everything he had a hand in doing, it was either big or bust. Given how little he used it, he could have easily been comfortable with a small desk, a phone, and maybe one metal file cabinet. But that was not Marty’s style. An oversize desk that probably cost more than Hannah made in a year at her teacher’s aide job sat in the middle of the floor.

  And yet that wasn’t the way to describe it, either. It sat perfectly in the middle of the room. The distance from one wall to the center of the thing equaled the distance from the far wall to the center. Behind it stood two tall matching oak file cabinets, the keys to the locks hanging on the handles of the top drawers. A desk chair that was probably fancier than the president used in the Oval Office had been shoved over into a corner, and two burgundy leather chairs faced the desk.

  No one had ever sat in those chairs. Not Sophie, who wasn’t allowed to enter the hangar or the office. Certainly not Hannah. Unless . . .

  She gasped so loudly that Travis jerked his head up to check on her. “Are you okay? Does this room bring painful memories? We can go out into the hangar if it does. That’s where Calvin is working with a tape measure so he’ll know how many bins we can put in for his fabrics.”

  “I’m fine,” she murmured. But that wasn’t the truth—not at all. She’d gotten a vision of the pregnant redhead she’d seen in the courtroom sitting in one of those chairs. Had she and Marty made the baby on that desk? The last few times he’d been home, he’d spent more time than usual in his office. She shook her head. Marty might be manipulative and controlling, but he wouldn’t bring a woman to his office in Crossing, because he’d have to explain why he even had a place in such a tiny town. It was far more likely he spent time in his office talking to his new girlfriend on the phone, telling her lies about how he had to work late and couldn’t see her that night.

  Travis rounded the end of the desk and put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t go to that bad place.”

  “What makes you—” she started.

  He put a finger on her lips. “Trust me, darlin’. I can tell when you are going there even if I don’t know all of what happened in those times and places. I care too much about you to ever want you to go back. Shake it off and look forward. Leave the past in a fog where even memories don’t exist.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and leaned into his chest, her ear against his steady heartbeat. “Travis, have I told you today that I love you?”

  Holy smokin’ hell! Had she really said those words out loud? Hannah pulled back and stammered, “I’m sorry . . . I mean . . . I do love . . .”

  “It’s okay, and darlin’, I love you, too. We all do.” He grinned as he pushed his glasses up on his nose. “And I was really getting worried that you didn’t love me at all.”

  “Whoa! Get a room!” Calvin pushed his way into the room.

  Hannah giggled and took a couple of steps back. “Travis was interrupting my trip into the dark world of the past. He deserved a hug for pulling me from the abyss.”

  “Well, dammit!” Cal chuckled. “I thought maybe Cupid made his way through the rain and shot you both with one of his darts. Darts!” His eyes twinkled. “Little silver darts printed on black chiffon layered over a brilliant blue that would make the darts sparkle in the light. You two are an inspiration.” He quickly removed a notebook, wrote down a few words, and shoved it back into the pocket of his khaki cargo shorts.

  “So I should hug Travis more, right?” Hannah asked.

  “Oh, yes, darlin’. If I can get a glorious revelation from one hug, jus
t think what I could get if you—”

  She slapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t go there, Calvin Winters.”

  He removed her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Too soon?”

  “Definitely too soon,” she whispered back.

  Travis chuckled. “He’s in love with Darcy and all this new stuff he’s designing for his next show, so he’s got cupids on the brain.”

  “Maybe I should tell you to get a room.” Hannah cocked her head to one side.

  Cal’s gaze caught hers and held. “I know how close y’all are, but please don’t say anything.”

  “I’ll keep your secret.” Hannah wanted to hug herself. Darcy loved him. He loved Darcy. Until it was revealed, Hannah would simply enjoy knowing that it would happen.

  “Let’s change the subject,” Cal said. “I love this big office. It’s twice the size of the one I had in the city. I’ve already unloaded my files into the cabinets and there’s still an empty drawer. Marty must have known he was leaving. He cleaned all that out. I can’t believe he forgot the airplane.”

  “To my knowledge, those cabinets were never used,” Hannah said, eyeing the phone on the desk. She unplugged the thing from the wall. “Where’s your bug zapper, Travis?”

  “It’s at the house, but I can take a look inside that phone without it.” He checked the outlet first, then went on to the phone, where he found and removed the dime-size device hiding in the mouthpiece.

  “One down,” he said. “I guess he wanted to be sure you weren’t using this to make calls to anyone.”

  “Looks like we’d better sweep the office,” Cal said. “And if you are listening right now, Marty, call me if you are interested in buying this airplane that I own. This phone will stay hooked up for two more days. Then the company is coming to remove it and put in a better one with my business number attached to it. So you’ve got two days to call me, then I intend to put the damn thing on Craigslist.”

  “And now”—Travis tucked Hannah’s arm into his—“we will step out of here and into the hangar, where we know we have privacy.”

  “How?” Hannah asked.

  He led her through the open door and nodded toward Calvin, who picked up a remote and hit a few buttons. “Redneck Woman” by Gretchen Wilson blared through two speakers Calvin had set up.

  “With that playing and the rain on the metal roof, he can’t hear anything,” Travis answered. “Where is Sophie?”

  “Aunt Birdie wants to keep her and let me have a day to myself. So I came down here to see y’all and to walk in the rain. I love the feel of wet green grass on my bare feet.”

  He looked down at her toes. “And such lovely feet, too.”

  “Yes, they are. Yes, yes!” Calvin clapped his hands. “I’m going to design a line of clothing and instead of high heels on my runway models, they are going to wear ankle bracelets and toe rings and go in their bare feet. Who’d have thought I could get so much inspiration from Crossing, Texas?” He pulled the notebook out of his pocket again and wrote a few phrases.

  “Don’t get him started on the rain. He’s already got visions of something that Darcy will model that involves raindrops on chalice,” Travis said from the corner of his mouth.

  “You mean challis?” Hannah asked.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Sha-lee, cha-lice. It all sounds the same to me. I know the difference between denim and T-shirt knit, and that’s about it.” Travis grinned.

  “Hey, if you’ve got a few more minutes, I could use a woman’s ideas when it comes to my own loft design. I’m seeing a wide-open space, but Travis thinks I need walls in the bedroom area.”

  “From here it doesn’t even look like it’s been floored. It just looks like rafters to me.”

  “It hasn’t, but this is how it will be once it’s got a floor and stairs leading up to it.” Travis rolled out a length of paper on a worktable and laid scissors on either end. “Once this plane is out of here, I won’t need all the space from here to the ceiling to make Cal’s working room. So we can put up eight-foot walls and the top can be his new apartment. Look at this and imagine a wide-open space up there.”

  Hannah stared at the rough drawing Travis had made, but her mind went back to the early days when Marty’s parents had hired a professional team of carpenters out of Dallas to build the hangar. She’d been excited about the whole thing. Marty wouldn’t have that hour-long drive to his office just south of Dallas, along with the frustrations of the traffic. He would simply fly down to the Ellises’ private airport, one of the company drivers would pick him up and take him to the offices, and then in the evening the process would be reversed.

  It worked that way for a few months, and then Sophie was born and everything went downhill from there. He’d been so disappointed that he didn’t have a son that Hannah promised him one the next year. God must’ve seen the future much better than Hannah, because there were no more children. Possibly because Marty started staying away so much that it would have been hit or miss with ovulation.

  “So what do you think?” Cal asked.

  Hannah sneezed three times in quick succession. Travis quickly pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s dusty in here, but when we get finished it’ll be a fine place for Cal to design, develop his creations, and live in.”

  She blew her nose and then didn’t know what to do with the hanky. It seemed gross to hand it back to him. Should she take it with her, wash it, and then return it?

  “If you’re done with that, I feel one coming on, too,” Travis said.

  She’d barely got it in his hand before he rattled the walls with a big, manly sneeze. “Ragweed must be getting ready to hit all of us with allergies,” he said as he shoved the hanky back into his hip pocket.

  Now that’s a true friend, Hannah thought. Marty would have never shared one of his high-dollar hankies with me. Lord, he would have thrown a fit if I sneezed in the same room with him. But why am I letting him into my head this morning?

  “So what do you think, darlin’?” Cal asked.

  “Truth is I can’t tell heads or tails from this paper, but I’m going to agree with Travis about walls for your bedroom. The rest could be open space, though there will probably come a time when you want privacy.” She jumped to one side and shivered when something gray and furry brushed against her leg. “You’ve got a rat in here.”

  “Not a rat, a stray kitten. It’s gray, and I’ve been putting food out for it. You just spooked her,” Cal said. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come here, pretty girl. Hannah wouldn’t hurt a fly, I promise.”

  Two dark-blue eyes peered out around a stud and blinked several times before the kitten inched her way toward Cal’s outstretched hand.

  “Oh!” Hannah clasped her hands together.

  “We’ve about got her tamed enough that we can give her to Sophie. That way she won’t be so sad about Elaine leaving. She’ll have a kitten to take her mind off the disappointment,” Travis said.

  Cal picked the kitten up and held it close to his chest. “I guess we should ask you if it’s okay to let her have a pet.”

  “She’s wanted a kitten for a long time, but y’all know that Marty was . . . is . . . Lord, I keep talking about him like he’s dead. He is allergic to cats and dogs.” Hannah reached out to touch the little gray kitten.

  Travis threw an arm around her shoulders. “You can hold it, Hannah, and it’s okay to put Marty in the past. It means you are finding a little bit of closure.”

  Cal put the gray fur ball in Hannah’s hands, and it didn’t miss a single second of purring. She held it close to her chest and stroked its soft fur, all the time letting Travis’s words sink in. It might take a while, but closure was happening. Marty had been such a huge part of her life and fears for so long that she couldn’t expect him to disappear all at once. But right at that moment, she forgot all about him as she kissed the kitten on the top of its head.

  Travis removed his arm from her shoulders and started back down the lad
der. “Bring the kitten with you. We’ll keep her in the office tonight and give her to Sophie tomorrow right before Elaine leaves.”

  “Her?” Hannah asked.

  “Yep.” Cal started down the ladder behind Travis. “You’ll need to get her fixed in a few months or else she’ll have kittens. I bagged up some more fabric scraps for you, by the way. You need to have a quilting party when everyone arrives.”

  “Good point. But think about Sophie with a bunch of sweet kittens to play with. And you should know, Elaine has already left.” Hannah eased down the ladder using one hand. When she reached the bottom, both guys were smiling like a couple of possums eating grapes through a barbed-wire fence.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Cal chuckled.

  “Nothing doesn’t put grins like that on your faces.”

  “We like seeing you happy like you were when we were kids, back before you met Marty,” Travis said. “And sometimes all it takes is something simple, like a kitten or—”

  “Or having a whole support group of good friends,” she interjected with a smile.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Travis heard a crash somewhere in the kitchen that startled him in the middle of writing an intense scene for his new book. For a split second, he wondered if he’d imagined it, but then a second crash followed. Leaving his characters in the middle of a crisis, he took the stairs two at a time as he hurried down them.

  With visions of either Hannah or Sophie lying on the floor with a broken arm or worse yet, a broken neck, he rounded the kitchen table so fast that it made him slightly dizzy. His eyes darted around the room. Where were they? Had Marty come back and kidnapped Sophie?

  A sob near the sink caught his attention, and that’s when he saw Hannah sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up and her face in her hands. She held the handle of a broken cup in her hand, and sobs racked her body.

  “Are you okay?” Travis asked breathlessly.

  The floor was covered with glass. “I dropped a coffee cup, and when I reached for it, I knocked two more off the cabinet,” Hannah said through tears. “I know Marty isn’t here. I know he isn’t coming back, but my brain went into instant fear.”