When they were growing up, they’d opened presents and had their big dinner on Christmas Day, but now, reluctantly, they’d changed customs so that the married daughters could give their husband’s families a share of the holiday.
So tonight, after a dinner which the two little girls had been too excited to taste, they exchanged gifts. Normally Lynne loved Christmas and tonight she still enjoyed watching her little nieces open the gifts she’d chosen for them, but she also missed that other little girl out in California.
And she missed Moss and the Christmas they’d never gotten to share. She supposed someday she would be able to look back on him without pain and only remember what it had felt like to be in love. Right now she couldn’t even imagine that happening.
Her family, sensing a difference in her since she came home, had treated her more like the grownup she was, though Mom kept dropping by her new apartment just to bring something she thought Lynne might need. Having a successful career of her own hadn’t stopped her from being Mom, not for a minute, and Lynne didn’t mind so much anymore. In fact, the attention the family gave their youngest was comforting these days when she seemed to be bleeding internally.
Everybody but the little girls went to midnight candlelight service at church and, seated with her family, in the flickering light, Lynne finally felt like it was really Christmas.
She hoped Moss in faraway California was having a good holiday. She hoped he was missing her.
A miserable winter passed slowly for Moss, a winter of reliving his years in prison. By spring he had escaped from the exercise room into the outdoors and at first walking, then beginning to jog, worked hard at regaining his physical health.
It was a wet spring, California showing its least attractive face with days of heavy rain and landslides in the southern hills.
Cynthia having faced up to the failure of her marriage and left her lawyers to fight the absurd claims of her former husband to her financial resources, began to date again, but didn’t seem to regard any one man as more special than the other.
Betsy had play dates with friends from school and seemed almost to forget the ranch with its horses and Cynthia’s friend Lynne, who of course had gone back to her own home in the east. They were a full continent away, but now Moss, who was no longer stuck at the age of eighteen with thoughts of the girl he’d lost, sometimes remembered her pretty face, but he tried to dismiss the image. A lovely young woman like that would have no time for a battle-scared wreck like him.
He doubted he’d ever be able to settle down with any woman after everything he’d been through. Right now he had to concentrate on growing well enough to be independent of his sister. The doctors said he was making remarkable progress, but to him it seemed slower than molasses.
The education he’d received mostly from online study during his years in prison had come back, but none of that education seemed to take him anywhere in the real world. He wanted nothing to do with the legal world his studies in law had been meant to take him to. He supposed that in the back of his mind, he’d hoped to learn enough to know how to free himself.
Thanks for that went to his dad, who had never given up. A new memory came into his head. Dad, before he had died, told him he owed thanks to a woman named Lynne Hallam, who had lit the spark that had finally revealed the truth.
Lynne! A faded memory of her visiting him in prison returned to him. He’d been surly and out-of-sorts that day, he recalled, and had given her a bad time. He had long ago let his hopes die down to ashes and had resented anyone who wanted to stir those ashes to life again.
But his father had said she lit the spark that led him to freedom. He was guiltily aware that he owed her an apology and thanks.
Though her sense of missing Moss grated constantly on her consciousness, Lynne was beginning to rebuild a life that was satisfactory on the surface at least.
She’d decorated her little apartment with castoffs from her parents and siblings and a few select purchases like the sleigh bed that she slept in each night and dreamed of Moss.
When she got home from work on this Friday evening, she felt a mixture of anticipation and dread. In the last few months, her siblings had tried to fix her up with a series of desirable young men and she’d refused to cooperate. But tonight David had insisted. He was sure she and his buddy Josh would get along just great. More to stop his persistent demands than because she was anxious to meet this Josh, she’d finally agreed to dinner and theater in the city. The play on Broadway was well reviewed and much talked about and she decided the evening might be good for her. So with an attitude of taking needed medicine, she agreed to a double date with David.
She hadn’t met her brother’s date before. David went from woman to woman, rarely entering into a serious relationship. He said musicians made bad husbands, but she suspected he just hadn’t met the right woman yet.
Josh wasn’t exactly handsome but he had an engaging smile and an easygoing manner that quickly made her relax in his company. She hadn’t been into New York since she got back and enjoyed seeing the lights and activity of the city again. No place on earth was quite like this, she thought, comparing the noisy, laughing crowds in the springtime theater district.
The play was almost as good as the reviewers had said, a revival of something that had been popular when her parents were courting, and they made a late evening of it by stopping for coffee and conversation at a neighborhood spot before taking her home. David and his date waited in the car while Josh escorted her to her door.
She even enjoyed the light kiss he bestowed on her lips and was not displeased when he asked if he could see her again on the next weekend. She didn’t agree, but she didn’t say no either.
For almost the first time she slept without dreams of Moss that she could remember. She awoke and went to her work, feeling refreshed in spite of the short night.
At the college where both her parents taught, she worked as an assistant to the dean of fine arts. She loved the department, which was less regimented and more volatile than most other departments. The artists and their students were colorful and original personalities, given to strong loves and hates. Things were never boring.
Before heading to her own desk, she stopped by to see Mom, who looked startled. Tall and slender as were all her children except the petite Lynne, she looked too young to be the mother of four grown children. She brightened at the sight of her youngest daughter. “This is a lovely surprise. Usually I’m the one seeking you out.” A wave of worry crossed her elegant features. “Is something wrong?”
“Just wanted to say good morning.” It was always her mother’s first thought, that something had gone wrong with one of her chicks. None of them would ever be entirely grown up in her parents’ eyes.
Feeling almost cheerful, she went to her desk and began the morning routine of tasks, a large mug of coffee at hand in case she got sleepy after her very late night.
It was half way through the morning when her personal phone began to ring. After returning home, she’d substituted an ordinary ringing for the chirping birds ringtone that only reminded her now of times she’d rather forget.
Her mind still on the problem on her desk, she answered absentmindedly, “This is Lynne.”
“Miss Hallam?” the one voice in the world that could send the blood thundering through her veins sounded in her ear.
“Moss,” she said. Sound rushed through her head, a kind of roaring, and blackness obscured her sight. She bent her head in an attempt to keep from fainting, then reached for her coffee and took a large gulp. Her own voice sounded weak and unfamiliar.
“Miss Hallam,” he said, than corrected, “Lynne. I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m your friend Cyntha’s brother out in California. I just wanted to apologize for my behavior and tell you I appreciated your help.”
She sat in silence, totally bewildered. This didn’t sound like he remembered her. Maybe he was just thanking her for standing by Cynthia in the first weeks of h
is recovery and why would he be apologizing to her?
“I am beginning to recover my memories,” he went on, “and I just remembered when we first met. You visited me at the prison in Kansas and said you thought you had some information that might help me and I was rude and dismissive. Before he died, my father told me that you were a great help. So I owe you both apology and thanks, more in each case than I can find words to express.”
For a minute, she couldn’t say anything. Disappointment flooded her throat, choking her. She’d thought, she’d almost believed when he first started to talk that he had remembered their love.
Later she would tell herself this was good news. He’d remembered what would have seemed to him their first meeting. And she blessed his father who had told him about her.
But right now she was back where she’d been when she first came home to her family. All the progress of the new job, the new apartment, of even going on a date was gone. She was at square one again.
“That’s okay,” she choked out the words. “I didn’t do much.”
She wanted to hold him on the connection, to keep hearing his voice and hoping that in hearing hers he would be transported back to those days at the ranch, but she couldn’t think of what to say. So he said a polite goodbye and the call was ended.
Lynne put her face down on her desk and wept as though her heart would break.
Chapter Twenty One
By July Moss was well enough to get around with only a cane and, bored with inactivity, had gone to work on the vast gardens and lawns of his California home. Cynthia had hired a landscaping firm to maintain the grounds, even as she’d hired a cleaning service and a cook to look after them inside, but being something of a perfectionist, he kept seeing things that needed doing.
Or perhaps he just needed to do something. This was good for him, he decided as he weeded a flower bed. Plants grew fast in the beneficent climate but so did weeds and when he’d finished, he stood up, aching a little but feeling a purposeful sense of accomplishment.
He’d gained a lot of ground in the year since his accident. The tragedy that had happened when he was eighteen was no longer at the forefront of his mind, but as the years he’d spent in prison unraveled in his memory time had finally moved forward so that now, most of the time, he stood firmly planted in today, no longer living back there except for especially bad intervals when he was haunted by nightmares.
The only thing his damaged brain had failed to recover was the last couple of days when the accident happened and his doctor laughingly told him he was lucky to not remember running into a truck. It was certainly not uncommon, he said, for a traumatic injury to be erased from the mind. A year had passed, most likely he’d remembered all he was going to remember.
Now the year ahead would be the time when he would begin a future. His hopes and goals had changed and he wasn’t quite sure where he was headed, but he was damned sure that even though he’d inherited enough money from his parents to live on, he didn’t want to be a playboy rich man. Life must hold more purpose than that and he had to discover the work he wanted to do.
In the meantime, he kept busy around the property and volunteered at a shelter for the needy where he helped prepare meals and serve those who were down on their luck. He and Cynthia were also setting up a trust in their parents’ names to contribute to various causes.
Much as he loved his family home, he couldn’t imagine that he could live here the rest of his life. The estate was too large for the three of them, but he didn’t know how Cynthia felt. Like him, she had much to recover from so maybe she maybe she drew comfort from being here.
Somehow he couldn’t seem to move ahead until he’d recovered those last memories. He leaned against his hoe and drew in a deep breath of the salty air. Not that he expected to ever bring back those last few minutes when he’d sped along the highway in northwestern Oklahoma and stupidly ran into a huge truck.
What he wanted back was the joy of his release from prison. He could remember being told that his innocence had been proven and that with due process he would be let go, but he didn’t remember that actual day. He wanted to know what it had felt like to leave the prison, to leave Leavenworth and head out on his own for the first time in his adult life.
He ached to feel that again. Somewhere deep inside himself he felt like a person who has forgotten something significant. He wouldn’t be whole again until he had that day of freedom back.
With sudden determination, he laid his hoe carefully down and strode toward the house, convinced that the only way he could recover his lost past was going back to where it had happened. He would rent a car and drive from Leavenworth to where the accident had happened in Oklahoma.
Maybe then he would remember.
Lynne leaned against the fence and watched the black gelding that belonged to Wilda Walsh and her family race against the changing wind. A cool front would be coming through today and she’d learned by now how horses reacted to changing weather by running and running.
She wished she had the skills to be on his back during these wild moments, but had good sense enough still to be contented with the riding lessons Wilda was giving her.
Wilda would never be her best friend, they were too different, but she was a neighbor and if she’d learned one thing from reading Maud’s journals, it was that you could waste your life hating your neighbors. Maud’s mom had reason to dislike her neighbors, but that dislike had led to tragedy for the neighbor’s son and her daughter. Maud would never have had to run away with her lover if the two families had more than a speaking acquaintance.
North and south was a long time ago. The civil war had been decades past even back then. And Wilda wasn’t a blood relation to Edward’s family, she’d simply married his great-great something or other nephew.
Now that Lynne was back as a fully sanctioned caretaker at the ranch with Cynthia insisting on even paying her a small salary, Wilda managed somewhat grudgingly to accept her.
She’d had to come back after talking with Moss last winter. She wasn’t comfortable at home anymore and though her family members had protested, she’d stood her ground and called Cynthia to ask if she could stay at the ranch for a while.
Her friend, well aware of the pain she was in, had been happy to agree. Cynthia called regularly to update her on Moss’s condition. He was better now, able to remember more than the doctors thought likely. But he didn’t remember her and most likely never would.
So she’d come back here to where Maud had lived on so courageously after she’d lost the love of her life. She had lived on and found meaning in her writing and in her child.
Lynne could only hope that by being here she could absorb some of the other woman’s wisdom and find out how to go ahead with her own life.
She’d found work, rig-sitting, which meant she spent several nights a week in a small RV on an oil field site, her presence meant to guarantee against intrusion. In the unlikely case where someone did show up, all she had to do was call for her help. It was an easy job though boring, reasonably well paid, and would help keep her going until her life had settled down.
She was off for the next two nights and happy to be free to spend her time alone at the ranch. Even though her mother’s book was now being printed, she found herself wanting to continue reading Maud’s journals and was now at the point in the writer’s life when her daughter was in her late teens and Maud’s writing was beginning to get some serious review attention. Her scant income was a welcome backup to what she earned from the ranch. Most of her earnings had gone into savings to provide for Jeanie’s education.
She’d read late last night at work and this morning felt the need for fresh air and sunshine, though the weather forecast this afternoon with another stronger front moving through spoke of the possibility of violent storms.
Already, like the black gelding appropriately named Stormy, she could sense the building tension in the air. Wilda had called a few minutes ago to remind her to keep in tou
ch with the weather bulletins because wild Oklahoma weather, usually at its worst in the spring, could break bad at any time. In case of a tornado, she was to remember the old cellar back of the house.
Lynne, who was certain there must be spiders and maybe even snakes in that cellar, had no intention of taking refuge there. The old house had stood for many long years, she was sure it could ride out one more storm.
That afternoon she was absorbed in her latest reading of Maud’s journals. She was in her forties and alone again since Jeanie spent most of her year away at college in the east and often visited friends during vacation. Lynne could tell that she missed her daughter, but even though the mother who used to read her journal was long gone, she still did not reveal too much of her own emotions.
Instead she wrote about the strength that came from standing up to weather and hardship, the spiritual strength of living in close contact with nature. She had several pets, but prime among them was the deer she’d raised from an orphaned fawn.
Maud fought a continual battle with hunters who sometimes intruded on her land, seeking to shoot the protected wildlife. She didn’t accept trespassers peacefully and, if necessary, scared them off at the point of a gun.
A sudden boom of thunder tore Lynne from her absorption in this last of Maud’s journals, reminding her of possible storms.
Being a city girl, she didn’t run to look outside, but immediately clicked on the television to see if any warnings were being forecast. Sure enough, the network game show that came on showed a map of the pan-shaped state in the upper right hand corner of the screen..
All of the western Oklahoma counties from bottom to top were colored red. Checking the guide below, she saw that they were under a tornado watch. She tried to remember what Wilda had told her when she’d been only half listening. A watch just meant that conditions were right for a tornado. If they went to a tornado warning, it meant at least one tornado had been spotted at the county indicated.
The Ghost and Miss Hallam: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 1) Page 16