Ghost of Summer

by Sally Berneathy

  "Why did you get divorced?" After his description of Cindy, Kate felt as if Luke had divorced her rather than Cindy.

  And he had, in a manner of speaking, hadn't he, when he left her?

  Luke's jaw squared and thrust outward. He looked away from her, over the yard again. He didn't want to talk about his divorce, but she knew he would...because she'd asked.

  "Actually the real question isn't why we got divorced but why we got married in the first place. I met Cindy right after we moved to Houston. She lived three doors down from me. We became friends but we were both right at the age where we were starting to notice the opposite sex. So our friendship always had an edge. I guess you'd say it was more like a game than a real friendship, like we were striving for the same goal, but we were on opposite sides." He shrugged. "I know that doesn't make any sense."

  "It does," she assured him.

  "We went through the stages...friends to dating to going steady to getting engaged to marriage to total indifference and divorce. She had an affair. I caught her. She told me she didn't think I'd ever loved her."

  "Did you?"

  Had she really asked the question or only thought it?

  Luke was silent for several heartbeats. Finally he looked at her, his eyes searching her face as if for answers she was sure she wouldn't have even if she knew the question.

  "I don't know. I know losing her didn't hurt nearly as much as losing you did, losing my best friend."

  It was her turn to look away, toward the yard, the serenity of the trees and flowers. She felt as if Luke was probing her mind, as if he was silently asking how she felt about Spencer, if she'd ever loved him. She didn't want to think about that right now.

  "Is that why you're so worried about your mother, because you married Cindy and lost her friendship when you got a divorce, so you think that could happen to your mother?"

  "You have no idea what it feels like to go through a divorce, to end up with a big, fat zero where you once had a relationship."

  Yes, she had a real good idea. That's what had happened to her when Luke left.

  She rose abruptly. "It's getting late. I know it's safe to be out after dark in Briar Creek, but I'm pretty night blind. I'd better go home."

  He stood beside her. "I'll walk with you."

  Her heartbeat quickened as she looked up at him. The shadows had deepened, and his eyes were dark and unreadable. His ebony hair was even more tousled than usual. He wore a tank top that showed every muscle in his magnificent arms and chest and most of the dark, curly hairs on those arms and that chest.

  Yes, the insane thought ran through her head, walk me home like we're sixteen and you never left me, and when we get to my door, come up and wrap me in those arms and kiss me until we both lose all common sense.

  Well, they weren't sixteen and he had left her. He'd even left her replacement, Cindy.

  "That's not necessary. I'd rather go by myself. Give me some time to think."

  She left the porch and started down the walk.

  "Good night." His deep voice crossed the evening air and caressed her. "I'll call to be sure you get home all right."

  She turned around to see him standing at the top of the steps, one sculpted arm extended with his hand resting on a column. His faded blue jeans wrapped snugly around his long legs, exposing those muscles as clearly as the shirt exposed his bare arms. He was every inch a man, and it would be impossible for any woman not to notice. She couldn't upbraid herself just for noticing.

  "I'll be fine. You don't need to call." She slipped her cell phone from her purse and flinched. "I forgot to charge my phone last night. It's dead." She'd been too interested in thinking about Luke, about furnishing his house.

  "I know your dad's phone number. It hasn't changed." He grinned.

  She laughed. "No, it hasn't." She turned and walked away.

  "Thanks for sharing some summer with me." His words were soft as the evening breezes.

  She hesitated. But if she turned and looked one more time, she might lose the smidgen of control she had left. She might very well run back up those steps and throw herself into those arms.

  Something she couldn't do because she was engaged to Spencer.

  Something she couldn't do because she wasn't at all sure how Luke would react...at least, ultimately. She was pretty sure about his immediate reaction. She knew he wanted to kiss her. She'd be willing to bet that the thought of making love had crossed his mind.

  But if they ever went that far, she would be irretrievably lost...and he could be gone again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Kate arrived home, she heard the sounds of waltz music, a little scratchy as if from an old vinyl record, drifting through the summer evening. Looking up toward Papa's window, she saw that he was once again dancing by himself.

  She stopped halfway up the walk in front of the house, concealed by the gathering dusk and the overhanging branches of a catalpa tree, and watched him.

  He hadn't turned on the light in his room, but it wasn't completely dark in there either. Maybe he had some sort of night light she'd never noticed.

  Even from this distance she could see how tenderly he gazed at his partner, the protective way he held her. She could feel, as if it were palpable, the love emanating from them.

  Him, not them.

  There was no partner. Papa was dancing with and looking at empty air.

  Her imagination was getting away from her again.

  As she watched him, her heart swelled with love and a touch of wistfulness. Papa had such an amazing capacity for love.

  But there was no point in her getting all wistful over that. Papa's capacity had taken him over the edge. Unable to deal with Mama's loss, he'd imagined her back with him.

  If she were honest with herself, she'd have to admit that she had inherited from him that capacity to love with all her heart. However, she'd dealt with her losses differently than Papa had. Instead of losing her grip on reality, she'd put it all behind her and turned away from giving her whole heart ever again.

  As she watched him move about the room, a vision flashed through her mind of Mama and Papa dancing before Mama was killed. She frowned. Was it a real memory or just something she'd conjured up from Papa's stories and the scene before her?

  It was a real memory.

  Maybe she'd been too young to recall many details of life before Mama left, but she suddenly realized that she did remember that wonderful feeling of being totally secure and loved, and the agony of having that feeling yanked away.

  Luke hadn't been her first lost love. Having already lost Mama had made losing him that much worse.

  She shuddered in the warm summer evening and tried to shove those memories back where they'd been stored all these years.

  But then—

  For just an instant as Papa turned slowly in the dance, she thought she saw the outline of a woman...not flesh and blood, but more like an outline of light.

  He turned again.

  She'd been mistaken, of course.

  It was only Papa.

  Her imagination, filled with thoughts of Mama, had almost fooled her.

  The way Papa's did him.

  Yes, she had inherited from him that ability to love too much and be hurt too deeply.

  She lowered her eyes, walked briskly up the steps and into the house.

  She was just starting up the stairs when the phone rang, the noise shrill and invasive in the quiet house with the only sound Papa's old-fashioned music.

  She ran to answer the phone, to stop it from disrupting his dance. It had to be Luke. She'd told him it wasn't necessary to call, but he'd always been overly protective.

  She snatched up the receiver before it could ring again. "Luke?" she asked breathlessly. Damn it, she was thrilled that he'd called, she couldn't wait to hear his voice.

  A moment of silence. Then— "Kate?"

  It took her another moment to recognize the voice. Not Luke.

  "Spencer! Hello! I di
dn't expect to hear from you until you got back from your trip."

  "I'm back. It's Thursday."

  "Oh. Yes, it is, isn't it? I've been so busy, I lost track of time."

  "I understand. I'm only too well aware of how easily that can happen."

  "I've just been up at Luke's house. That's why I called you Luke when I answered the phone. He was calling...I mean, I thought he was calling to see if I'd made it home safely." Why was she explaining when he hadn't even asked?

  "Luke? Isn't that the deputy who spent the night with you at your place in Dallas?"

  Coming from anybody else, the comment might have sounded like a sarcastic taunt, but Spencer's voice was so even and emotionless, she knew he was simply stating a fact. She'd always admired that about Spencer, his lack of jealousy, his calm, rational approach to everything. She'd just called him by another man's name, the same man who'd spent the night alone in her condo with her, and he wasn't upset in the slightest. Spencer was reason and logic personified.

  Tonight, for some reason, that annoyed her rather than comforted her.

  "Yes, that's Luke," she said. "I've been helping him pick out furniture for his house. His mother and step-father are coming to visit tomorrow."

  "I see. When are you returning to Dallas? I really need you back up here by Sunday night. Can you be here by then?"

  That would give her plenty of time to visit with Luke's mom, and she'd planned to leave Sunday morning anyway. She needed to be back at work on Monday. There was no reason the word yes should stick in her throat like that.

  "Probably," she finally said.

  "Probably? Kate, I need you here on Sunday evening. We've got a potential client flying in from Japan. The word is, he's very big on family. Brewer, Carmichael, Britton and I are meeting with him over dinner, and they're all bringing their wives. I need you to be with me. I thought that's why we agreed to get married, to help each other."

  Kate considered Spencer's words for a moment. That had been part of their agreement, but she didn't recall that it had been stated so baldly.

  "Kate?"

  "I'm here. Of course I'll be there for the dinner on Sunday evening." Suddenly that was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

  She didn't want to stay here, couldn't stay here much longer. She was already getting in over her head, sharing summer with Luke, expecting him to call. If she hadn't been a strong-willed person with years of practice at maintaining a level head, she could already have become emotionally entangled with him. The physical part, that tugging of her hormones, would disappear when she got away from him, so she should get away as quickly as possible.

  But the thought of going back to Dallas, to a business dinner with Spencer, had about as much appeal as a cold, greasy pork chop.

  After she hung up the phone, she stood looking at it for several moments. Something was wrong with her. Something was very wrong. She'd worked so hard to get all areas of her life in order, and now everything in the personal area seemed to be shifting, falling into unrecognizable patterns, like the random patterns of a kaleidoscope.

  Her head and her emotions were playing tug-of-war with her. She knew which side she was pulling for.

  Or at least she used to know. She knew which side she ought to be pulling for.

  She climbed the stairs then hesitated at Papa's door. No music came from within. She thought about knocking softly to wish him a good night, see him for a moment and absorb some of the unquestioning love and peace that always emanated from him. But she didn't want to disturb him with her problems.

  Before she could walk away, the door opened. Papa stood there, his face overflowing with compassion and love, as if he knew exactly what had happened to her since he'd left her at Luke's, exactly what was going on in her muddled brain and heart.

  Without a word, he took her into his arms and held her the way he'd held her as a child...only now they were both standing rather than him squatting to her height.

  She wrapped her arms around him, and even though she'd grown, Papa's middle had, too. Her hands met at just the same place on his back they always did.

  She pressed her cheek against the soft cotton of his shirt, the metal brad on his pocket forming a cool spot near her chin, and sank into the comfort of his constant love. Papa's essence, a gentle scent that evoked images of mountains and trees and this house, surrounded her as surely as his arms. An intermittent thread of lilacs drifted in and out.

  "Papa, I'm so confused."

  He patted her back. "You think you are, but you're really not." He was silent for a moment, and she had the odd notion that he was listening. "Mama says if you listen to your heart and ignore all that other crap, you'll find the answers."

  Kate drew back from him and laughed. "Papa! Mama would never say crap!"

  He grinned mischievously. "Okay, I may have edited a little bit."

  She kissed his leathery cheek. "Good night, Papa. I love you."

  "I love you, too, Katie-girl."

  In her room, she fell immediately into a deep sleep, lulled by that scent of lilacs. Her last conscious thought was that she really should do some research in the field of aroma therapy and find out the exact effect of the fragrance of lilacs. It must be a potent one.

  Mama sat on the edge of Kate's bed.

  Kate knew it was only a dream, but she was pleased to see her mother again. She smiled sleepily up at her. "You didn't really say crap, did you?"

  Mama rolled her eyes. "Your father. He's incorrigible. I said you should ignore all that extraneous clutter. After all these years, I should know better than to use one of what he calls my six-bit words."

  "All these years?" Katie tried to think. Something wasn't quite right, and she needed to ask Mama about it, but her mind shied away from whatever it was. Mama was here. That's all that mattered. The rest was extraneous clutter.

  "Yes, your father and I have been married forty-five years, you know." Leo jumped onto the bed and Mama began to stroke him, head to tail, as he did his invisible hand routine...except Kate could quite clearly see Mama's hand moving along Leo's back. Well, actually, Mama's hand wasn't all that clear. In fact, Leo's hair where she stroked him seemed to rise into Mama's hand a fraction of an inch.

  "I almost didn't marry your father," Mama said, and Kate's attention swung from the cat back to her.

  "Not marry Papa? How could you not marry Papa?"

  "I was young and scared. I hadn't known him long, not nearly as long as you've known Luke, and I'd never been more than twenty miles away from home." She brushed a hand over Kate's eyes, making her skin tingle and her vision become slightly unfocused. "My high school class took its senior trip to Dallas. I was living in Willoughby then, and even though it's only fifty miles south of Dallas, most of us had never been there. One of the places we went was the Dallas County Courthouse. A handsome young deputy sheriff from Briar Creek County was hurrying out the door and ran into me. He put his arms around me to keep me from falling, and I did fall then, head over heels in love with your father." She smiled. "He admitted to me later he ran into me on purpose so he could get to meet me. He didn't have to admit it. I had no trouble figuring that one out. He had a note already written, and he tucked it into one of my gloves. Young ladies weren't properly dressed on a trip without gloves and hats in those days."

  "What did the note say?" Kate asked. At least, she thought she asked the question. She wasn't positive that her mouth moved, however.

  "It said, 'Will you marry me?' And then his phone number and the words 'Call collect.' I did, of course. We talked every night, but never for long. He said he had to save money to buy us a house. I'd laugh and tell him he was being silly every time he talked about marriage. We'd only met the one time. But we both knew that was enough. After a month, he came to Willoughby to stay a week and get my family's permission to marry me. They gave it, of course. They knew how much I loved him. And who could ever say no to your father? But then after he left, I became terrified of leaving my home and
family, going away to a strange city. I thought about it for several days. The fear didn't go away, and I didn't see how I could leave them. I considered breaking off the engagement, but I couldn't imagine not being with your father. A month later we were married."

  The dark room—how had she been able to see Mama if the room was dark? But dreams didn't have to make sense. The dark room faded into trees and grass and sunshine and people in retro-sixties clothes. It was like a black and white movie that had been colorized, except these colors were vivid and real.

  Mama, young and beautiful, her red curls only partially subdued by the white veil, came out of the small church on Papa's arm. He was young and handsome and beaming in spite of the obvious discomfort of wearing a tuxedo. Mama wore the gown Kate had seen so many times in pictures and in the attic. The couple stopped at the top of the steps, and Mama tossed her small bouquet, then they ran to the street amidst a shower of rice.