Ghost of Summer

by Sally Berneathy

  Luke looked at Kate, and they both burst into laughter.

  "Papa," Kate protested, "all diapers were white in those days."

  "Which means yours and Luke's matched."

  She laughed again. "Okay, you win! Well, I'd better let you two defenders of justice get back to work. Luke, it was good to see you again." She was surprised at how true her polite comment was, how good it had felt to be with him, and a part of her pulled up short at that realization. She and Luke had their time of friendship, they'd parted, that was over and done, and they couldn't go back.

  "I hope I get to see you again before you leave," he said.

  "I'm sure you will," she replied, but this time she really was only being polite. There was no point in seeing Luke again. He belonged to the past, and nothing beneficial ever came from trying to resurrect the past...especially when parts of it hadn't been very pleasant the first time around.

  "Course you'll see him again," Papa said. "Luke, why don't you drop by tonight for a little porch sitting. Or maybe you and Katie could chase lightning bugs like you used to."

  Kate froze. Was Papa teasing or was he as confused about Luke and her as he had been about Mama two days ago? Did he think they were still children who chased fireflies in the evenings?

  "Sounds good, Sheriff. See you then, Katie."

  Kate fled the Sheriff's office, got into her BMW and drove down the familiar streets with unfamiliar thoughts tumbling round and round in her head.

  She didn't want to see Luke again tonight.

  She did want to see Luke again tonight.

  There was no reason to see Luke again, ever. Not only did he represent a part of her life she didn't choose to revisit, there was still her engagement to Spencer to think about. She wasn't free to spend time with another man, not even Luke.

  Not that she saw Luke in that kind of a light, of course. Well, maybe when she first saw him, but that was before she knew who he was. Okay, maybe even then she still hadn't been able to get her head or her hormones completely straightened out about his identity. But she would, soon. He was just Luke, her former childhood friend, emphasis on the word former.

  Spencer had been completely understanding when she'd suddenly decided to take a week of her vacation early and come to Briar Creek without him. To help her father set up an income tax system, she'd said, which was an out and out lie, and for a final visit with him and old friends before getting married. The last part was the truth.

  She'd just had no idea those old friends would include Luke.

  Not that it would have made a difference if she had known.

  Except she could never have anticipated those inappropriate feelings when she saw her childhood friend.

  To add to her anxiety about Papa, she now had to deal with her bizarre reaction to Luke.

  He hadn't really changed that much, she supposed. His dark hair had always been thick and tousled even right after he'd combed it. His eyes had always been the deep brown of polished mahogany. And even as a child, he'd been tall.

  So what if he'd added a few muscles and some hair on his chest.

  But that didn't account for all the differences. That didn't explain why he exuded an earthy masculinity, why he made her feel yearnings she shouldn't be feeling for someone who was just an old friend, yearnings she didn't want to feel for anyone.

  She was going to marry Spencer. He made her feel safe and comfortable. That was what she wanted.

  She and Luke had once had a very special friendship that had made her feel safe and comfortable.

  For a while, when they were very young.

  Then he'd moved away, and her foolish attempts to hang onto the past had fizzled—as did all such attempts eventually. A person couldn't live in two time continuums at once. People who tried only succeeded in losing the present. She'd had to turn loose of first her mother then her best friend. She'd learned not to look backward. She wouldn't do it now.

  She slowed as she drove past Luke's house. He'd really cleaned it up. The renters over the years had let it run down, but now it looked just the way it had when they were kids—immaculately white and tidy with a new roof, the trellis of roses a happy splash down one side. Well-trimmed hedges served only as a boundary of the yard, too low to constitute a fence. He'd done a lot of work on it.

  She pulled up in front of Papa's house two blocks away and sighed fondly as she got out of the car. It was pretty much the opposite of Luke's house in every respect. Though she'd made repeated efforts to help Papa keep it up, he'd successfully resisted almost every one of them. She had managed to hire a team of painters to paint the exterior of the big old house while he was at work one day, but that was pretty much the extent of what she'd been able to do.

  Weeds—wild flowers, Papa called them—covered most of the yard. Honeysuckle leaned heavily on the picket fence along one side.

  Of course, she had to admit as she went down the cracked sidewalk, their house had never been as well kept as the Rodgers'. It hadn't been a priority with Papa. Raising a motherless girl must have been a full time job, and she couldn't complain about his priorities in that area.

  And if it was her turn now, if Papa was losing it, she'd give back the same love and care he'd given her. Though she wasn't sure she could ever take care of Papa as wonderfully, as lovingly, as he had cared for her. Worse—she wasn't sure she could ever accept the fact that Papa, the rock of her life, might need to be cared for.

  Papa's big cat, Leo, eased himself out of the porch swing, arched his back in an elegant stretch then strolled over to greet her as if she'd only been gone a couple of hours.

  She leaned down to scratch his ears and rub under his chin. "Hi, big fellow. You been controlling the mouse population?"

  Leo yawned.

  "Come on in. I'll bet Papa's got some kitty treats in here just for you."

  She drew in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders as she opened the front door. Whatever happened, she'd be there for Papa as he'd always been there for her. He'd been the one person in her life who'd never deserted her, never left her, and she wouldn't desert him.

  ***

  Before Papa got home that afternoon, Kate made a pitcher of sweet tea and shoved a chicken with a couple of potatoes into the oven. The house with no air conditioning was hot even though she had turned on the attic fan. No wonder they'd eaten so many sandwiches in the summers of her youth rather than heat the house by using the kitchen stove. Of course, they'd eaten sandwiches in the winter, too...both during her youth and more recently.

  Over the years when she'd come to visit, she'd either picked up something in Tyler on her way in or they'd made sandwiches or gone to the pizza place or the Chinese place on the highway. Sundays after church everyone went to the Grand Street Café for fried chicken. Neither she nor Papa had ever done much cooking.

  But for some unknown reason, Papa now had a kitchen full of food, some of it unusual, like two bottles of white wine, fresh mushrooms, frozen asparagus. Papa had always been a meat and potatoes person. The odd items of food gave her one more thing to worry about.

  She'd chosen to bake a chicken and a couple of potatoes for dinner. That pretty well strained her culinary expertise. She was a computer geek, not a cook.

  She stood at the big old sink tearing up lettuce for a salad when the slam of the front screen door announced her father's arrival.

  "Smells wonderful," he greeted, his heavy footsteps creaking across the wooden floor as he came into the kitchen to give her a hug.

  "I had plenty of food to choose from," she observed. "I've never seen your pantry so well-stocked. You have just about as big a selection as Clifford's Grocery Store, all unopened except for the bread, bologna and cheese. You've never kept this much food in the house, not even when I was growing up. Are we expecting company?"

  She waited tensely for his answer, unable to stop herself from wondering if he thought Mama was going to bring along other family members for a ghostly reunion. She could do all her genealog
ical research first hand.

  He took off his hat, more cowboy style than standard issue for the sheriff, and set it on the table, then pulled out a wooden chair and plopped his stocky frame onto it. Leo strolled in and wound himself around Papa's leg.

  "How'd your day go, Leo?" He scratched the cat's ears and ignored Kate's question.

  When Leo had received his requisite petting and strolled regally out of the room, Papa lifted one foot. "Don't know why I wear these damn boots. They're harder'n hell to get off."

  Kate turned from chopping tomatoes and wiped her hands on a dish towel. "Let me help you," she said, straddling his leg backward and tugging on the recalcitrant boot.

  He had a boot jack upstairs in his bedroom closet, but when she was ten years old she'd seen a little girl in a movie take off her father's cowboy boots. From that day on, she'd insisted on performing the service for Papa. Soon it had become a ritual—a ritual she thought pleased her father as much now as it had pleased her years ago.

  With both boots off, he leaned back and wriggled his toes, one of which protruded through a hole in his sock. He sighed happily. "What more can a man ask for?"

  Socks without holes in them? Kate thought. When she came to visit him or he came to Dallas, they spent their time talking, laughing, eating, going places. She'd never stopped to really assess his lifestyle, to wonder how he got along when she wasn't around. He'd taken care of her; of course he could take care of himself.

  But not forever.

  "Maybe a glass of iced tea?" she suggested, washing her hands.

  "You always could read my mind, Katie-girl."

  She poured the amber liquid into a glass.

  He took a sip and smiled. "Delicious. Just the way your mother used to make it."

  "Papa," Kate began, settling into the chair next to him, "let's talk about mother."

  "Did you have a good visit with Luke today?"

  With a sigh, she stood and moved back to the sink, continuing her dinner preparations, accepting the change of subject. If he wasn't ready to talk, dynamite couldn't force him.

  "Yes," she replied. "We had a very nice visit. But I wish you hadn't asked him to come by later. I thought you and I could spend some time together."

  "We've got plenty of time, sweetheart. I'd've asked him to dinner if I'd known what a great spread you were putting on. We could call him. He probably hasn't eaten yet. We owe the boy a few meals considering how often you ate with his family."

  "That was a long time ago. Anyway, I'm here to spend time with you, not him."

  "If you weren't at his house, he'd be over here," Papa went on as if he hadn't heard her. "I don't think there were too many meals the two of you didn't share."

  "That's when we were children, Papa." She searched futilely through the cabinets trying to find two matching bowls and plates. "Maybe another time," she hedged.

  "Okay." Papa was silent for a moment. "How about tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow?" She turned to him in frustration, taking in his inexplicably pleased expression. She couldn't refuse, but she couldn't agree either. "Look at this," she pleaded instead, opening the cabinet door wide. "We don't even have any dishes that match."

  "We have service for sixteen. Your mother's china is in the hutch in the dining room."

  Mother's china. It gave her the perfect opening to bring up the subject that had brought her flying down to Briar Creek.

  She hesitated, not really wanting to know, but then forced herself to plunge in. "Do you think mother would mind if we used her china for our dinner with Luke?" She studied him closely as she dropped the loaded question.

  "Of course she won't mind. She's the one who suggested it."

  Chapter Four

  For just a moment the years seemed to slide backward as Luke stood on Sheriff's rickety front porch in the warm summer evening and knocked on the wooden frame of the screen door.

  For just a moment he was twelve years old again, coming to see Katie, his best friend in the whole world.

  For just a moment he could almost believe that tomorrow night, instead of standing at the sink and eating corned beef hash from a can in his kitchen, he'd go home, probably taking Katie with him, and find the big wooden dining room table covered with food, Mom and Dad sitting at either end.

  He heard Katie's familiar, "Come on in" accompanied by a pattern of creaks as her quick, light steps crossed the floor of the old house. Time swirled around him, circled and folded back on itself, and he half-expected an eleven-year-old Katie with short, golden-red curls and shining eyes to appear in front of him.

  But then the sensuous, unknown woman in the fashionable white summer dress opened the door and smiled up at him with Katie's smile.

  Time jerked itself straight, becoming linear again. The warm, secure feeling from the past vanished, leaving his mind filled with the memory of how this woman had felt when he'd so briefly slipped his arm around her waist.

  The whole thing was very disorienting.

  "Evening, Luke," Sheriff called, the sounds of his heavier, slower tread approaching from the dim interior.

  Wordlessly, Katie stepped back, holding the door open for Luke to enter. Was it his imagination, or had she hesitated just a second too long, gazed up at him just a little too intently? Could she read his thoughts?

  He felt a flush creeping to his face.

  The Katie he used to know had been able to sense his thoughts before he spoke them.

  He strode past her into the living room. She might look like a glamorous stranger, but deep inside, beneath those breasts that would just fit into his hands, those curves he yearned to caress, and that hair that looked like somebody had been running his fingers through it, she was still his Katie.

  As the screen door thunked closed behind him, Luke looked around the familiar room and was again possessed by the instability of time. The place was tidier now than it had been when they were children. Books, shoes and various paraphernalia were no longer scattered randomly about, but the furniture could have been the same he and Kate had romped on twenty years ago—except he felt sure they'd totally destroyed that furniture.

  While Sheriff had laid down the law in no uncertain terms about many things, the man had never been particularly concerned with the house, and neither had they. The sofa and chair must be replacements, he decided, though worn to the same faded, nonintrusive condition as their predecessors.

  Leo leaped onto the sofa arm—with no rebuke from Sheriff—and stretched toward Luke, offering his head to be stroked. He wasn't the same cat Katie used to have, of course, but he was big and white and gentle, just like Jingles had been.

  The big man—Luke still thought of Sheriff that way even though he himself now stood a good two or three inches taller—clapped him on the shoulder. "It's cooling off real nice out there. Going to be a great evening for porch sitting. Katie made a fresh pitcher of the best iced tea you ever tasted."

  "You all go on out. I'll bring the tea," Katie said. "Luke, how do you like yours? Do you still want an extra three spoons of sugar?"

  "Nah, I've cut back to two and a half."

  His teasing was rewarded by a smile from Katie—a surprised smile, he thought, as if she hadn't expected to be amused, as if she hadn't been amused in some time.

  Being a systems analyst for an investment company—how had his laughing Katie ever become one of those?—probably didn't provide for a lot of amusing situations.

  "Tonight I think I'll take it straight," he told her.

  She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, and he followed Sheriff back out to the porch.

  Sheriff eased himself onto the top step. The care with which he executed that movement was one of the changes Luke had noticed but hadn't mentioned to Katie.

  Or maybe it wasn't a change. Maybe, as a child, he'd just never noticed that Sheriff had always sat down deliberately and carefully. He was, after all, a big man.

  Not as big as you, and you don't sit so carefully, some annoying little voice
whispered in his head. He shoved the voice aside. Katie's fretting about her father was getting to him, making him look for problems. Sure, Sheriff was a little older, but he was the same as he'd always been.

  Luke couldn't stand to consider any other scenario.

  "You ever able to make any sense out of those records?" Sheriff asked.