“The room looks great,” Ciana said, relieved that it was true.
“We worked on a lot of class projects in here,” Eden said, glancing around fondly. “Any idea if it’ll be a boy or girl?”
“Not yet. But the kids will find out on a sonogram visit. Do you want me to tell you when we know?”
“Yes,” Ciana and Eden said in unison.
They followed Pat out of the room. “Which brings me to another reason for asking the two of you over.” She paused at a small hall table. “Cleaning out Arie’s dresser and desk and all her drawers was hard. But I did it.”
“We would have helped,” Eden offered.
Pat shook her head. “It was a project only I could do. I created a memory box. I figure someday her little niece or nephew might want to know more about Aunt Arie.” Pat’s gaze drifted to an imagined future, then snapped back to the present. “Anyway, in her bedside table she left letters addressed to each of you. Still sealed,” she said, handing each a long white envelope.
Immediately, tears stung Ciana’s eyes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do the clean-out project sooner. If I had, you’d have gotten these sooner. Not sure when she wrote the letters, but it’s on me that they’re arriving so late.”
Eden pressed the letter to her breast. “I’m just happy to have mine, and believe me, I’ll treasure it.”
Ciana nodded, not trusting her voice. She’d read it when she was alone and able to wallow in a good cry.
Eden sat on the bed in Olivia’s former bedroom, a room she’d begun to think of as her own, even though it wasn’t, even though it never would be. In truth she had no home. She held Arie’s letter in her lap, already twice read, and considered what her deceased friend had written.
March, Before I Sleep Forever!
Dearest Eden,
Guilt is a cruel taskmaster, and my guilty feelings are yelling at me. I know what you’re thinking … “Why do you feel guilty, Arie?” Think about it. If not for me getting sick in Italy, you’d be on a walkabout with Garret, or at the very least somewhere on planet earth with him. Don’t shake your head! You know I’m right. That guy’s crazy about you. I know because he told me so, and how could I doubt an Aussie with a smile like his?
So now that it’s established (Garret wants Eden), I’m betting you’re crazy about him too. It might not be LOVE just yet, but it is love waiting to happen.… I see the signs. Trust me. After what you went through with Tony, don’t shy away from love. Garret is in a whole different category from dirtbag Tony.
But I’m wandering off purpose. With guilt weighing on me and with nothing but time on my hands between drug-naps, plus a computer and the Internet, I decided to try and find Garret for you! I know—MYOB. But I can’t. So humor me. Let me tell you what I found.
Except for his magazine articles, he’s invisible. No social websites, no links to his name in Australia. Surprising, but I guess the world’s full of people with no Internet profile. So, I confess, I haven’t found him. (I’ll bet your heart sank to your knees when you read that sentence!) BUT don’t despair. I have found the next best thing: Colleen Galen, the Irish girl in Garret’s group. Who can forget her? Her email address is at the bottom of this letter in red ink, ensuring that you can’t miss it. I would have emailed her myself and pretended to be you, but thought I’d best leave it to you to chase your own dreams. So, dear friend, contact her ASAP. You owe it to yourself to find happiness. Never a guarantee when you catch up with it, but always an adventure looking for it. Be happy!
I love you, Eden!
Arie (BFF)
Of course, Arie had called it correctly. She wanted to see Garret, wanted to know what they might have together. She herself had searched for him, but admittedly, less and less, half-heartedly, and for just one reason: Fear of finding him and having her hopes crushed. She’d been so wrong about loving Tony. She didn’t want to be wrong again. Garret had been amazing, but now so much time had passed since she’d left Italy and Garret without a word of goodbye. Where was he now? Did he even remember her, ever think of her?
Inertia about what to do won out. Eden folded the letter carefully and tucked it away, left the room without so much as a glance at her laptop computer.
Ciana stared out her window watching rainwater gush off the edge of the veranda from a broken gutter. “Farms need rain,” she mumbled, without an ounce of gratitude. After two days of nonstop November rain, she was restless, anxious to ride her horse, longing to be outside in fresh air. She could hear her mother and Eden knocking around in the kitchen and knew that soon something delicious would emerge. Big whoop. What was she going to do on this cold, wet day?
An answer came in a flash. The attic! She’d been wanting to clean it out for months but had steadily put it off. Why not now? She changed into her grubbiest jeans, gathered up a space heater, an industrial strength extension cord, and a few cleaning supplies. In the days when the house had been built, the attic space was accessible through a door in a back bedroom and up a short flight of stairs. She quickly climbed and entered the attic that smelled musky with age, found a light switch that controlled a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and flipped it. The lightbulb barely penetrated the gloom. Cobwebs looped liked forgotten threads over pieces of forgotten furniture that lay like an obstacle course around stacks of boxes, suitcases, and trunks. She shivered in the poorly insulated attic, managed to find an outlet, and plugged in the heater.
“You in here, Ciana?” she heard Eden call from below.
“Unfortunately, yes. Place needs work.” She had to shout above the roar of the rain pounding on the roof above. She glanced up, hoping there were no leaks.
“Want some help?”
Ciana didn’t care about the help, but she’d love Eden’s company. “It’s pretty nasty. You may need a hazmat suit.”
“I know nasty,” Eden called. “Remember I cleaned out Mom’s old house before I sold it. Let me change and I’ll be back in a jiff.”
By the time Eden returned, the heater had knocked the worst of the chill off the air. “Whoa,” Eden said, seeing the clutter. “When was the last time this place was cleared out?”
“No telling, but from its looks, not for a really long time.”
“Any bats? ’Cause I’m scared of bats.”
“Hope not.”
They set to work, first clearing a path to the back where the roof sloped low to the eaves. Ciana said, “I thought you were baking.”
“Everything’s in the oven … bread, rolls, corn bread … your mom’s fixing to stick in a ham when the breads are done.”
“Who’re we feeding?”
“No one except us, and yes, we’re overdoing it.”
Ciana pulled a sheet off an oddly shaped structure. “Look! It’s my old dollhouse. Daddy and Grandpa Charles made it for me for my fifth birthday. I used to play with it all the time, but after they died in the plane crash, it made me sad to be around it. Olivia trucked it up here ages ago.”
Eden ducked down to peek into every room of the house. She’d not known her father, or any of her relatives for that matter, so Ciana’s family history always interested her. “Looks like a time capsule.”
“Daddy loved the fifties.” Ciana bent, shuffled around a few of the pieces of furniture. “If Abbie has a girl, I’ll give it to her.”
“What if you marry and have a girl someday? Don’t you want to keep it in your family?”
Ciana bristled at the suggestion, knowing that the institution of marriage was often an onerous burden to Beauchamp women. Over the two hundred years since the land was originally settled, as a point of pride, most of the female descendants had chosen to keep their maiden name, even when they married. Olivia had been happily married to Charles Samuels, but had kept her Beauchamp name. And when she was just a child, Ciana had promised her grandmother she’d do the same. A child’s oath, but as she grew, it had become easy to ignore involvement with Windemere boys in school, and then its men, and st
eer her own life course. The only bump was Jon Mercer, who had unexpectedly come along and made her feel things that sent her into a tailspin and out of control. “Not every female wants to marry, you know,” she said testily.
“Why are you sounding down on men? Jon do something to set you off?”
“No.” Ciana dragged out the word reluctantly, knowing it was just the opposite. All Jon did was make her want more of him. “I’m just honked about this town meeting. Gerald Hastings has no right coming here trying to change things up.”
“Don’t you want Windemere to grow?”
“Now, that’s my mother talking,” Ciana said, shaking her finger. “It’s all about the money and leaving here.”
“My plan too,” Eden reminded her.
“But you’re still here.”
Eden felt her back go up. “That a problem?”
Ciana flushed. “No way. I’d have cracked up if you’d left after Arie died.”
Mollified, Eden said, “But now Jon’s returned, and you have to make some choices about what you want.”
Eden had hit the mark exactly. What did she want with Jon? He had once said he wanted land to raise and train horses for ranch work, but she knew he also had a gypsy spirit that liked chasing after rodeos and sleeping under the stars. He had said he wanted her, but would giving in to the simmering passion between them be enough for her? “You should talk,” Ciana said, deflecting Eden’s attempt to pin her down. “What have you done about finding Garret?”
Eden had shared Arie’s letter with Ciana. “Nothing yet. Still thinking of what I’ll say to him—if Colleen even knows where to find him.”
“You won’t know until you ask,” Ciana countered.
Eden shrugged. “In the meantime, I guess the two of us are stuck cleaning out your attic.”
Ciana smiled ruefully. “All right. Personal lives off the table for now.” She shoved several boxes out of the way, exposing an old steamer trunk tied shut with rope. “Here’s a real antique. Wonder why it’s tied up?”
Eden hovered over the trunk with her. “Open it.”
Ciana undid the knot, lifted the lid, and saw that it was filled with books and stacks of paper bound with string. She picked up a paper pile. “Looks like old stuff from school.” She dug deeper, extracted a packet of small books and skimmed several. Her face lit up. “This is my grandmother’s stuff—lesson books from when she was in school. Look at her penmanship. Awesome.”
Eden rooted through the contents and came up with a slim hardcover book. “Look at this! A yearbook from Windemere High School dated 1945. Is that the year she graduated?”
Ciana computed backward. “I think so … it was right before World War II ended in Europe.” She looked over Eden’s shoulder as she thumbed through the pages. The hairstyles and clothing were definitely from the forties. In every picture, girls wore skirts or dresses, boys long pants. Jeans seemed to be earmarked for the poor and the field hands.
“Things sure have changed,” Eden said, not just talking about fashion. Their yearbook had been digital, available for downloading, although she never had done so. Too many bad memories of her times with Tony.
Ciana tossed the lesson books and yearbook back into the trunk and closed it. “Come on, help me drag this down to my room. I want to go through the whole thing.”
“What about the attic clean-out?”
Ciana rolled her eyes. “Get real. Reading through Grandmother’s stuff is far more interesting.”
Together the two of them wrestled the heavy trunk out of the attic and into Ciana’s room on the ground floor.
Once inside Ciana’s bedroom, and winded from exertion, Eden said, “Bet it’s full of secrets.”
“Hope so,” Ciana said with a sly grin. “I always thought she was perfect. Maybe I’m in for a few surprises from prim and proper Olivia Beauchamp and the list of life rules she used to throw out at me. I’ve always wished I knew more about her. Now maybe I will.”
“What’s this?” Alice Faye asked, coming into Ciana’s room later that afternoon.
“Grandmother’s old stuff.” Ciana sat on the floor, sorting through the trunk and organizing the books, letters, old newspaper articles, and diaries into piles.
Her mother watched silently. Finally Ciana looked up. “Want to help?”
“No. Not interested.”
“But it’s full of history, a first-person report of her life and times. Wouldn’t you like to read it?”
“Honey, I don’t care about history.”
Ciana hunched up her knees. Her mother’s attitude about Bellmeade and in particular about Olivia had always baffled her. “Maybe I’ll find something really interesting. Wouldn’t you want to read the best parts if I mark them for you?”
Alice Faye pinched the bridge of her nose, sighed. “Ciana, I know you and your grandmother had a special connection when she was alive, but for reasons I never understood, Mother never really took to me. Growing up with her was hard on me. Giving birth to you was the only thing I ever did that truly pleased her.”
Ciana had heard the lament off and on all her life. And during her own childhood, she had certainly heard Olivia frequently crab out Alice Faye over the smallest thing. As she grew, though, she wondered if her mother had taken to alcohol—sweet tea and gin, her drink of choice—because Olivia picked on her, or if her drinking had irritated Olivia into constant fault-finding. Ciana could make a case for either. Too bad Olivia wasn’t around to see Alice Faye now, all sober and attending AA meetings regularly.
“Well, I plan to read every word,” Ciana announced. “I want to know what her life was like. I want to know about her and Grandpa Charles. I miss her, and this stuff”—she gestured at the heaps—“will help me be with her again.”
Alice Faye crossed her arms, leaned against the doorjamb. “I hope it does. But that’s not why I’m here to talk to you. I want to know if you’re ready for the downtown meeting tonight.”
“I guess.” Ciana stretched out her long legs. She was unsure what to expect, and defiantly not looking forward to it.
“Mr. Hastings will have numbers, statistics … everything he needs to make his case,” Alice Faye said patiently.
“And I have nothing except my determination to say no.”
“You don’t have to say no. You can hold out this house, the barn, and the surrounding pastures and let him buy the rest of the land.”
Anger stirred inside Ciana. Yet she knew she held the upper hand, because the way Olivia’s will was written, neither she nor her mother could sell the land without the consent of the other. In short, it took both of them to say yes, only one of them to say no. “This is the best farmland in the county, probably in half the state. Why turn it into a housing tract?”
“And what are you growing on it except alfalfa hay for a few horses? Most of the tillable land is fallow.”
“That isn’t a reason to sell it! And it would be planted if Olivia hadn’t died and the leases hadn’t tanked with the economy. I’m going to get it up and running again, just like Grandpa Charles and Daddy and Olivia had it.”
“And that takes money,” Alice Faye fired back. “Selling the property to Hastings—”
“Would give us money and precious little land to farm.”
Alice Faye held up her hands. “I don’t want to fight with you about this. I was only asking if you were ready for tonight.”
“I’m ready,” Ciana growled, hands fisted at her sides.
Her mother turned but paused at the doorway and over her shoulder said, “I’m not your enemy, Ciana. But I want things too. And one of the things I want is not to be saddled with this place for the rest of my life. Selling is a way out for me. For both of us, even though you don’t realize it now. Why, you could own a place in Italy and split your time between here and there if you sell. You had a good time in Italy, didn’t you?”
The almost three months she’d spent in Italy with Arie and Eden had been a dream, and she’d spent most of h
er college money to fund the trip without regrets. Italy had been wonderful, a sabbatical. But that was all it was. Reality and Bellmeade were here. This is what she wanted. “Yes, we had a great time in Italy. You should go someday.”
Alice Faye turned. “On what? My butter and egg money?”
Ciana ignored the sarcasm. “Tell you what, Mom. With the first profits I make from farming again, I’ll send you to Italy on vacation.”
Alice Faye shook her head in disgust and walked out of the room.
Eden circled her bedroom like a cat in a cage. She’d emailed Colleen but as yet hadn’t heard anything. Eden had no way of knowing where the walkabout group would be, or even if they were still together. Only the fact that her email hadn’t returned to her with a “failure to deliver” notice gave Eden any hope that it might have landed in Colleen’s in-box. She told herself to remain calm.
She still had a good bit of money in the bank from the house sale and plenty of squirreled-away cash from what had been Tony’s drug cache, but not much else to call her own. Unlike Ciana, she had no roots. Her mother, Gwen, was somewhere in Florida, probably off her bipolar meds and living who knew where. Eden shied away from thinking about Gwen. Too painful. However, she was feeling the pressure of needing to do something with the rest of her life. She couldn’t live in Ciana’s house forever. She needed to make plans for her future. Problem was she had no direction, and until she settled with her past and her feelings for Garret, she wouldn’t have any. She longed to know how, or even if, they fit into each other’s lives.
“You ready? My truck’s warming in front of the porch.”
Ciana’s shout from the bottom of the stairs snapped Eden out of her thoughts. Despite being at loose ends about her own future, she was dressed and ready to go with Ciana to the town meeting, intent on supporting her friend. “Putting on lipstick,” Eden called, grabbing the tube from her dresser and hastily sweeping it over her mouth. She clattered down the stairs to the foyer, where Ciana was prowling restlessly. “Your mom coming with us?”
The Year of Chasing Dreams Page 2