by Carol Grace
He wondered offhandedly if he’d ever get tired of her—of talking to her, listening to her or of making love to her. He couldn’t imagine ever getting his fill. But that didn’t make it right. When Dylan appeared in the clearing, Brandon jumped to his feet, grateful for the interruption, pointed to Laura and motioned for him to be quiet. Then he went off with the boy to look for silver. But they didn’t find any more treasure. The silver had been mined out long ago.
“But don’t give up,” he told Dylan. “Sometimes you find treasure where you least expect it.”
As Laura lay there half-asleep, his words rang in the mountain air.
And she thought about them for a long time afterward. She’d never found any treasure. She wasn’t looking for it. She wasn’t expecting it. She suspected the McIntyre luck had run out with Great-Grandpa.
Chapter Ten
Summer faded into fall. Dylan went back to school, or Brandon assumed he did. True to his word, he never came back to the ranch to finish the tree house. Reluctantly Brandon went out to look up in the tree one day at the half-finished structure and knew he had to complete the work—Dylan or no Dylan. If he couldn’t bring closure to the events of his own past, he could at least finish the tree house. Some day, some child would climb up there and wait for his daddy. A daddy that would be there for him and who wouldn’t let him down.
Brandon set up his sawhorse once again and worked steadily in the autumn sunshine, ignoring his real work, putting off phone calls and leaving e-mail unanswered until he had completed a solid foundation. Four sides, a deck and a roof with overhanging eaves. He was proud of the way it turned out. He wished Dylan were there to see it, because if it hadn’t been for Dylan, he would have torn it down. And that would have been a shame. He wasn’t proud of himself for the way he’d reacted to the boy’s appearance in the tree. The man who threatened to have the house torn down was a stranger to him now.
Maybe one day Dylan would even come back to visit.
Brandon climbed the new sturdy ladder he’d bought at the hardware store and sat on the small deck in the midst of the branches and looked around. It was a wonderful feeling being hidden in the leaves high above the ground. It made him feel young again. It was the kind of tree house he would have wanted as a child. The kind he would have built for his own son. Or for Dylan, if Dylan hadn’t given up on his father coming back. He built this one because he had to. Because something inside him told him he wouldn’t be at peace until he’d done it. Peace. It was so elusive. Sometimes he felt it. Sometimes he didn’t.
He put his hand against the rough bark of the tree and noticed an indentation where squirrels had hidden acorns. There, inside, was a small scrap of paper. He pulled it out. It was Dylan’s note to his father. He felt like a snoop, but he read it anyway.
Dad. I miss you. Wen are you comeing bak? I’m lonly alone and lonesum. We had a move to town. Ill be wating for you there. Com and git me.
your son, Dylan
Brandon held the note for a long time, smoothing it absently with his thumb. He felt his eyes burn with unshed tears. Tears for Dylan whose dad had deserted him. Tears for the family who had to give up their home. Tears for himself who’d been left without a son. Tears for the unfairness of life.
He turned the paper over, took a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote.
Dylan, I miss you. Please come back. I miss you. If I had a son, I would want him to be just like you.
Brandon.
As he wrote the words, he knew they were true. Dylan was everything a man could want in a son. Gutsy, tough and sensitive. He meant it when he said he missed Dylan. He never thought he’d say it or mean it, but he did. He missed his constant questions. He missed Dylan’s enthusiasm and excitement when he got a new video game Brandon had to evaluate for a client. He’d had Dylan do the evaluating. It was made for kids, after all. He missed working with the kid on the tree house. He looked back on those days with nostalgia. He wondered what Dylan would think if he ever came back and read the note? What would he say if he saw the finished tree house? Was it the way he’d pictured it?
He missed Laura, too. More than he wanted to. After the picnic, he only saw her on the road where she gave him a casual wave from the post office vehicle. He hoped he’d receive a package too big for the mailbox, or a certified letter so she’d have to stop and get his signature, but it didn’t happen. What he did receive, however, was an invitation to a farewell party for Willa Mae. He was surprised to hear she hadn’t moved out of her place yet and he wondered where the new postmaster was living.
Even more important, he wondered where Laura and Dylan were living. He had a constant nagging guilty feeling every time he thought of them crowded into a single room at her aunt’s when he had thirty-four-hundred square feet of ranch house to himself. The empty bedrooms, the unused dining room, the empty barn and outbuildings all echoed their reproaches when he passed by.
Where have they gone? they seemed to ask. Who are you?
He wasn’t the party type, but he had to admit he was looking forward to Willa Mae’s. He’d finally get a chance to see Laura again. He parked in front of the post office along with everyone else in town that Saturday evening and climbed the stairs around the back to the small apartment that had been cleared of Willa Mae’s furniture and was now wall-to-wall people.
His hostess greeted him with an air kiss and a glass of punch. She was dressed in wide purple palazzo pants and a black turtleneck sweater. Her hair was streaked with bright orange. When she saw his gaze travel to her colorful hair, she grinned.
“It’s the new me. Do you like it?”
“Stunning,” he said. He meant it. He was stunned.
“Everyone’s here,” she said with a wink. “Including me. I was supposed to leave last month, but one thing after another. You know how it is. What is it they say? Forgotten, but not gone.”
She waved him into the crowded apartment. His eyes searched the crowd. She had to be there. She had to. But she wasn’t. Her aunt was in a corner talking to David Ray, the newspaper editor. They appeared so engrossed in each other, he hated to interrupt, but he did.
“I thought I’d see Laura here,” he said after he’d dispensed with the minimum of small talk.
Her aunt glanced around the room as if for the first time, then drew her eyebrows together in a frown. “I know she was planning to come.”
“Is she still living with you?” he asked.
Her aunt looked surprised he didn’t know. “Oh, no, she’s renting a place outside town. On the old Fleming place. I thought you knew.”
“Where is it? Maybe I ought to go see if she needs a ride.”
They gave him directions and he left the party and headed west on the highway. About three miles from town he saw her truck with the hood up, and nobody in it. Logic told him she was standing next to it on the shoulder, that something happened to her truck, but she was fine. But his heart banged against his ribs and there was a loud ringing in his ears. What if someone had come along…? What if she’d tried to cross the highway and a truck came along and…? If anything happened to her…He couldn’t stand to lose anyone else he loved.
Loved? He didn’t love Laura. He couldn’t. He’d been blessed once in his life with a love so strong, so beautiful, that nothing and no one could ever match it. But sometimes he saw his life stretch ahead of him as lonely and empty as the highway that crossed the state. He pictured himself driving down that highway, the highway of life, his engine opened at full throttle, exceeding the speed limit, searching for something to fill the empty hours, days and years.
He swerved his car and parked it facing her truck, and jumped out.
“Laura,” he shouted, his mouth as dry as the dust that covered the fields on either side of the road.
“Back here.” She came around the back of her truck, her face streaked with dirt, her hair an untidy mess of curls. “Brandon, what are you…?”
The relief he felt almost overwhelmed him. He couldn’t h
elp it. He grabbed her and hugged her tight. At first tense in his arms, her body slowly relaxed and she clung to him.
“I knew someone would come,” she said, her voice shaky. “I didn’t know when or who.”
He held her at arm’s length and looked into her eyes. Those glorious amber eyes that regarded him with a mixture of relief and gratitude and something else. Something he dared not think was anything deeper.
“What in the hell happened?” he asked. As if he didn’t know. As if it mattered whether it was the water pump or the brakes or a broken hose or…He was furious. Furious she’d taken chances with her life. When he’d told her to get the truck fixed.
“I don’t know. The motor was making a terrible grinding noise. It got louder and louder and then I couldn’t steer….”
“The brakes,” he demanded. “Did the brakes work?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God.” His anger disappeared in a flood of relief. “And you’re okay?” He brushed a smudge of dirt from her cheek.
“I’m fine. How did you know where I was?”
“I was at Willa Mae’s party. Your aunt said you were supposed to be at the party. I had a feeling. Why didn’t you tell me you’d moved?”
“I haven’t had a chance. I never see you,” she explained.
“You know where I live,” he said wryly.
“I can’t stop on my route. It’s unprofessional.”
“I wouldn’t want to put your job in jeopardy,” he said. “But is there a rule against being friendly with the patrons?”
“I’ll check,” she said with a smile, “with the handbook. In the meantime…”
He realized they’d been standing by the side of the road talking, and while there was nothing he’d rather do than talk to her and drink in the sight of her like a thirsty man who’d been stuck in the desert for a week, he needed to do something about her truck.
He called Scotty’s Garage on his cell phone. The tow truck came and hooked her truck up. Brandon told the driver to tell Scotty to install a new muffler, water pump, brakes, have the valves adjusted and give it a complete tune-up.
Laura gasped. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Tell Scotty to call me before he makes any repairs.”
“I’ll handle this,” Brandon said tersely. “I should have done it before. I can’t have you driving around in a poorly maintained truck with no phone.” Her eyes widened with surprise as he continued. “Don’t fight me on this. Because I’ll win. If you want to, you can consider it a loan, but this is how it’s going to be. If someone else had come along today…If your brakes had failed…If I hadn’t known where to look for you…” His throat clogged with the images that passed in front of his eyes. Laura lying in a ditch, Laura smashed into the windshield…She had no idea how fragile she was. Or how much she meant to him. He didn’t intend for her to know.
“No. I’m paying for it,” she said. “I’m not going into debt over my truck, and I’m not reduced to charity. Not yet.”
He shrugged. He wasn’t going to stand there and argue. But he was going to pay for the repairs no matter how proud she was. “Now, where to? The party?” he asked.
“Uh…sure, I guess so. Only, I’m a mess. First I was fooling around under the hood, but I couldn’t see anything wrong, so I went around the back to look at the muffler, which had backfired.”
He took her back to the place she was staying, a small apartment over the garage on the Fleming ranch.
“This is it?” he asked, trying to sound neutral, trying not to sound surprised she would settle for something so humble. Feeling worse than ever that he was living in her house, occupying her ranch when she and Dylan so obviously belonged there.
“Yes. I was lucky to get it. And I don’t know how long we can stay. They usually let their foreman live here, but he took off last week and they haven’t found a new one.”
He waited in the driveway while she went up to wash and change clothes, leaning against his car and surveying the surrounding property. The same purple mountains in the distance, today covered by clouds, the same fields surrounding the ranch house. But what a difference. Now he knew what the Realtor meant when he’d told Brandon he’d gotten the most beautiful ranch around.
The McIntyre ranch, as he realized it would always be called, no matter how long he lived there, had miles of trees planted as windbreaks. The house was designed not just for shelter, but to blend into the landscape, a cool house in summer, thanks to the thick walls, and a warm house in winter, with its southwestern exposure. A welcoming house with its wide veranda and its large picture windows. He hated to think of Laura and Dylan stuck living over somebody’s garage. It wasn’t fair. Of course she hadn’t complained. She wouldn’t. That’s how she was.
When she came down, her face was scrubbed, her dark hair shone and she was wearing a long paisley skirt and a scoop-necked sweater.
He tried not to gape, but good Lord, she was lovely. Even with dirt on her face she was a knockout. He opened the car door quickly before he blurted something like “You look beautiful.”
“Did you notice?” he asked. “There’s a dark cloud hanging over the mountain. Right above the ranch. Isn’t that where your great-grandfather’s mine was?”
“Where we had our picnic?” She turned to look up toward the mountains. “Yes, that’s it. It looks like a storm might be brewing up there.”
“Will we feel it down here?” he asked.
“Not likely. We might get some rain, but there won’t be much, not enough to dampen the ground. Which is just as well. We don’t have the topsoil or vegetation to absorb much water in the high desert.”
A flash of lightning lit the sky as they spoke.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s unusual.”
He glanced at the sky, then back to her. “Where’s Dylan today?” he asked.
“I took him to town earlier,” she said. “He’s going to hang out with a friend today. I dropped him and his bike off at my aunt’s this morning. My truck was working fine. He was wolfing down a slice of sugar-cured ham and biscuits when I left. Imagine that. Dylan even asked to go to her house. What a change in him this summer. He used to complain about her cooking, her antiques—well, you name it, he complained about everything. But now he wants to go there. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t like it where we are now. Too far out of town, too far from his friends. He’s growing up. I hope so. We don’t have much in the way of family, so we must stay close to the ones we have.”
She gave him a quavery smile and he felt a surge of sympathy for her. Sympathy he was sure she’d reject. She’d say they were doing fine. That they were lucky to have an aunt at least and a place to stay. That Dylan would adjust. But he knew how hard it was for her to be uprooted, to move from place to place. He wanted to help her, but he didn’t know how.
“I’m going to pick him up after the party,” she said. “Oh. I don’t have a truck.” She frowned and stared out the side window.
“I’ll pick him up,” he said.
“How?” She swiveled around to look at his almost nonexistent back seat. “You can’t put a bike in this car.”
“I’ll figure it out. Trust me.”
“I trust you,” she said. “That’s not the problem. I don’t want to have to rely on you. I want to be independent.”
“You are independent, but does that mean you can’t accept help from a friend? What happened when my car broke down? Did I refuse to let you help me? Did I carry on about my independence being threatened? No, I let you drive me back and forth to the ranch. I even asked you to.”
“That was different. You can’t come out here and pick me up every morning so I can go in and pick up the van and the mail and start my deliveries.”
“Why not?”
“You just can’t. I hardly know you.”
He pulled up in front of the post office and turned off the ignition. “You hardly know me?” he asked, dumbfounded. How could she say that when they’d been as intimate as two people
could be? Did it really mean that little to her? Was that the reason she’d walked out on him that morning?
Laura was surprised to see his reaction. As if she’d slapped him. All she meant was she hardly knew him, compared to the people of Silverado who’d known her her whole life. She wanted to explain or apologize, but she didn’t know how.
“This is not my day,” she said with a loud sigh. “I should really go home and—” Home. She didn’t have a home. She didn’t have a home and she didn’t have a way to get there if she did have a home. If she wasn’t wearing high-heeled sandals she’d be tempted to walk back to the Fleming ranch, go back to bed and pull the covers over her head.
But McIntyres didn’t shirk their responsibilities. It was her responsibility to at least put in an appearance at Willa Mae’s party. Otherwise it would look like sour grapes. They’d say she didn’t show up at the party because she didn’t get the job. But she owed it to Willa Mae to officially say goodbye to her. She wanted people to think she was just as happy driving the mail truck all over the countryside. It was a chance to give the impression to everyone that they were perfectly happy to be renting from someone. To wipe the expressions of pity from everyone’s face.
She knew it would hurt to see the apartment over the post office and know she couldn’t have it. But she knew by now how to hide her feelings. She knew it would be awkward having to make small talk with the new postmaster, knowing he’d taken her job away from her. But it wasn’t his fault she hadn’t gotten the job.