by Amanda Wen
Garrett’s name formed on the check in Williams’s angular scrawl.
“I … That’s very generous, but I need to think about it.”
Williams’s pen tapped against his checkbook, right on the line where the all-important amount would go. “I’ll even give you ten percent over market value. How’s that sound?”
Ten percent over. Could it fetch that much at auction? The offer would have to come from someone with deep pockets, and Warren Williams was the only one fitting that description who’d shown serious interest.
The developer must have interpreted his silence as a no, because his bushy gray brows arched. “All right. Fifteen percent over.”
“Sir, I—”
“Mind you, this ain’t how I normally do business. Wouldn’t be where I am today if I overpaid for every plot of land I bought. But that’s how special this place is to me.”
Numbers bounced around Garrett’s skull. Fifteen percent over would cover Grandma’s expenses and then some. Leave her a nice little nest egg in case of something unforeseen. After so many years of watching his grandparents scrape the bottom of their meager savings, of worrying about how they’d care for themselves, the idea of that problem wafting away on the warm spring breeze was almost intoxicating.
The scratch of Williams’s pen mingled with the song of a nearby bird. “Here’s my offer. Fifteen percent over, and half now. Consider it earnest money, if you like.”
A number appeared on the line. Garrett had seen numbers that large before, of course, but never on a check made out to him.
“You want to wait for the auction and see if someone wants this land more than I do, be my guest. But we can settle this in a couple weeks and both walk away happy.” Williams tore out the check and extended it to Garrett. “What do you say?”
There it was. That number. A number representing security. Stability. A lifting of the thousand-pound weight he’d carried for months.
Could this be an answer to prayer?
It had to be. It made perfect sense.
So why was his stomach churning? Why did his neck feel hot?
“Do we have a deal, son?”
That number. Regardless of how he felt about it, this was the logical course of action.
It had to be the answer.
“Yes, sir. We have a deal.”
Williams thrust the check into Garrett’s left hand and pumped his right, beaming. “You’re gonna be proud of what we put in here. Real proud. I promise you won’t regret this. Not for an instant.”
But as Garrett looked over the developer’s shoulder at the stately white house, the house that held half his memories, the house he’d just doomed to a date with the wrecking ball …
He already regretted it.
November 16, 1890
Steam bathed Annabelle’s face as she bent to retrieve the bread from the oven. Reveling in the yeasty aroma, she tapped the outside. Nice and hollow. Perfectly done. Crispy crust, melt-in-your-mouth interior. Jack would love it.
She set the loaf on the counter and leaned back, fanning herself with the pot holder. She shouldn’t be working this hard on the Lord’s Day. But after the stomach illness that swept through the house this past week, she was hard-pressed to remember what day it was, let alone observe it. She and Jack had been spared, mercifully, but all the little ones had taken their turn, and her days had become a blur of washing and caregiving, drying and doctoring.
John Patrick had been the last to fall ill, and though he still looked pale today, the worst was over. He even felt well enough to traipse to the creek earlier this afternoon with his father and brother. Out the gorgeous kitchen window, still shiny and new, Jack’s dark hair peeked through the trees, a sharp contrast to Stephen’s light blond and John Patrick’s fiery red.
Annabelle breathed a silent prayer of thanks that God had once again restored the health they usually enjoyed. This bread, and the fish from the creek, would disappear from the dinner table in a heartbeat, and she couldn’t be happier about it.
A rumble reached her ears, and she paused. Was that … thunder? It’d been so long since she’d heard it, she wasn’t sure she’d know the sound. While the drought wasn’t nearly as severe as the one in ’74, the ground bore deep cracks, and their fall crops had suffered. Harvest was adequate, though, and she was grateful.
But thunder? Today?
Another rumble came, louder than the first, and Annabelle tossed the pot holder on the table and stepped out the back door. Sure enough, a thunderhead was forming right over top of them. The air was thick with humidity. Lively with the scent of …
Rain? Could it be?
No sooner had the question formed than its answer arrived. On her forearm. Her cheek. The cracked earth at her feet. Splotch after splotch. Delicious, delirious proof of much-needed moisture falling from the sky.
Footsteps thudded behind her. Jack and the boys jogging up from the creek, fishing poles in hand, lines of fish bouncing with each step.
“Stow these for me, would you?” Jack thrust his fishing pole and tackle box into the outstretched hand of young John Patrick. “And Stephen, will you take care of these?” He handed the fish to the boy and took off toward the barn. A moment later, he reemerged, tools in hand and a smile on his face. “The roof was on the list for tomorrow. Thought I had plenty of time for a Sabbath rest.”
“Apparently not.” Annabelle echoed his smile, then whirled with a start. Mercy—the laundry! Three beds’ worth of sheets hung on the line, and if she didn’t hurry, she’d have to wash and dry them all over again.
She poked her head in the door and yelled to the girls to take over supper preparations, then hoisted her skirts and sprinted around back to the clotheslines. But no sooner had she loosed the first clothespin than the sprinkles turned to a downpour.
“Oh no,” she wailed, moving ever faster. But the rain was relentless, and a gust of wind smacked one of the hanging sheets into her face, cold and wet. Grumbling under her breath, she twisted and fought, pushing back the sodden sheet and trying to untangle it from around her waist.
Amid the hiss of rain and another rumble of thunder came laughter.
Laughter?
She looked up, and there was Jack atop the roof, hammer in hand, dimples deep and mouth open in a belly laugh.
Irritation burned. “You’re laughing. At me.”
“No, love,” he shouted. “I’m not. I promise.”
“Liar.” Another sheet wrapped around her.
“I’m laughing because we’ve prayed and prayed for rain, and at the least convenient and most unexpected moment, here it is. It’s raining, Annabelle.” Beaming, he turned his face to the turbulent sky, his skin shining with rain, his hair soaked and clinging to his forehead, and bellowed his joy. “It’s raining!”
Irritation faded to guilt, then gratitude. It bubbled in her chest and pushed outward in laughter to rival Jack’s. Tilting her head back, she stared straight into the deluge and let it fall. It soaked her bodice, her skin, muddied the hem of her dress, drenched the laundry that she’d have to do all over again, but it was too wonderful to care.
Jack was right.
It was raining.
Her laughter growing louder, she held her arms out to her sides and spun in crazed circles. Most undignified behavior for a woman nearing forty, but her joy was too great to contain. Everything had come together. They’d weathered hunger and hardship, limits and loss, but they’d persevered. They’d remained faithful.
And now here they were, the Lord’s blessings showering down on them.
It was raining.
Oh, that it would never stop.
A blinding flash and deafening crack stopped her dance in its tracks, and she leapt back with a startled shriek. Her hand fluttered to her chest, from which her pounding heart felt certain to leap. Mercy, that was close. Lightning hadn’t struck their farm, but the acrid smell lingering in the air meant it hadn’t hit far. Perhaps the Jansens’?
“That was
unbelievable,” she shouted. “I hope the Jansens are all right.”
Jack didn’t answer.
“Jack?” Whirling around, she looked up at the roof.
But he wasn’t there.
“Jack?” Her voice took on a panicked edge, her terrified gaze swept over the property.
And there, half hidden by the house, a sprawl of tangled limbs …
“Jack!” She sprinted toward him.
The sodden sheet she’d been holding fluttered to a puddle of mud, forgotten.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE STRAINS OF Ella Fitzgerald’s “Cry Me a River” spilling from an aqua turntable mingled with the scrape of chopsticks on Styrofoam, the soundtrack to a quick takeout dinner at Sloane’s cozy apartment. Garrett reached across the yellow Formica kitchen table for the container of pad thai, still fascinated by the eclectic mix of vintage finds that comprised her place. The framed movie posters. The antique typewriter on a corner shelf. Her home itself was a museum. One he never grew tired of visiting.
Sloane grabbed another skewer of chicken satay, humming along with Ella. He froze, the noodles in his mouth half chewed, heart somersaulting at the sound. He’d always liked the song, but to hear its sultry melody coming from Sloane’s throat …
He must’ve been staring, because she stopped, her cheeks flushed a delicate pink. “Sorry.”
Don’t apologize. But he swallowed the words, along with his bite of pad thai.
“This one’s in our set at Marty’s in July.” She glanced up. “Maybe you could come down for that.”
He’d never been wonderful at picking up hints from women, but that one was so obvious even he couldn’t miss it.
She wasn’t just asking about her gig. About when he planned to visit next.
She was asking about them.
They had danced around the subject all evening, a palpable awkwardness hovering over the scattered takeout containers. She hadn’t come right out and asked him where they were headed, nor had she shared any thoughts on the subject. In fact, since he’d decided to auction the house, there’d grown a distance between them that had nothing to do with geography.
A distance that reminded him of Jenny Hickok.
He’d fallen fast, and fallen hard, when he met her running cross-country his sophomore year. Bubbly, energetic, and driven to succeed, Jenny checked all the boxes on a list he’d never thought to make. It wasn’t long before they were planning their future. They’d go to KU together—he for business school, she for the soccer team and a communications degree—and when he was firmly established in his career they’d get married.
But then Jenny received a soccer scholarship at a small college in Missouri. An offer KU didn’t match, and one she couldn’t afford to turn down. So he altered his plans, revised his vision of the future, and enrolled in a school of twenty-eight hundred instead of twenty-eight thousand.
He hated it. It was too small. Too cliquish. The business school had none of the reputation or connections that KU’s did. And the woman he’d torn apart his life for suddenly had no room for him in hers. First it was bonding with the team, then studying, and by Christmas she’d met someone else. Even worse, Mom’s cancer was back, and his parents struggled to pay both tuition and treatments. He was able to correct course the next year, transferring to the school he’d wanted to attend all along, but he did so with a broken heart and a depleted bank account. Both took years to recover.
And none of that would’ve happened if he’d just stuck to the plan.
Sticking to the plan now meant sustaining things with Sloane via video chats and weekend visits. Maybe they could make that work somehow.
But maybe the distance would be too much. Maybe he’d lose Sloane too. Inch by agonizing inch.
Maybe he’d survive that.
But maybe he wouldn’t.
He swallowed hard and looked across the table, that innocent question about the July set at Marty’s suddenly so much more.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Maybe.
Normally that word was ripe with promise. With hope. With possibility.
But with that close-lipped smile of Garrett’s, the one that touched his mouth but not his eyes, maybe promised nothing but heartache.
She’d wanted to raise the subject—not in an obnoxious, am-I-the-one sort of way—since she had a right to know where she stood. How serious he was about her.
But now she didn’t need to ask. Because he’d just answered her question.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t making long-range plans about them. Not that she’d been looking at wedding dresses or dreaming of babies or mentally signing her name Sloane Kelley-Anderson.
But she’d hoped.
And now those hopes had taken a serious ding, all because of a two-syllable word.
Maybe.
With tomorrow suddenly murky and today too painful to deal with, she retreated into the cocoon of yesterday and the plastic crate of photos and other old things Garrett had brought along with the Thai food.
“Mind waiting on that coconut ice cream?” she asked with a too-bright smile. “That box of stuff is calling my name.”
“Not at all.” He stood, their plates in hand. “Tell you what, I’ll take care of these, and you dig in.”
She was already halfway across the room. “Won’t say no to that.”
While Garrett boxed up leftovers and chucked them into the fridge, Sloane sat on the floor in front of the sofa and tore into the crate. Anything related to Jack and Annabelle she wanted to look through now. So tempting though the 1955 Roosevelt High School yearbook was, it could wait. As could a 1927 issue of the Wichita Beacon.
But something was wrapped in one of those newspapers. She unfolded the ancient, yellowed newsprint and gasped at the sight of a gilt-framed, sepia-toned photograph.
A couple in their forties peered up at her. The man, his hair and mustache ink-black, sat in a velvet chair, while a woman stood beside him, her arm draped artfully onto his shoulder. Her Victorian-era dress bore ruffles and a high collar, and her pulled-back hair was several shades lighter than his. Neither smiled, but the man’s dark eyes shone with a charismatic glint, while the woman’s expression held the same quiet confidence as the older woman in the photo Lauren had found all those weeks ago.
Could it be? It was definitely the right vintage.
Hands shaking, Sloane popped off the ancient frame and slipped the photo from behind the glass.
Granny Annie and Grandpa Jack, 1889.
Confirmation in faded cursive.
“Garrett! It’s them. It’s Jack and Annabelle. I found a picture.”
The roar of her excited heartbeat drowned out any response. There she was. The woman whose story had grabbed her by the heart from the beginning. The woman who’d shaped her, molded her, changed her in ways she could never have imagined.
Sloane grabbed her phone and pulled up the picture Lauren had found. No doubt it was the same woman. The same eyes, though webbed with wrinkles in the older photo. The same poised set of the shoulders, the same tilt of the chin—
Wait. That narrow jaw. That pointed chin. All tapering from a pair of wide-set cheekbones.
Her stinging eyes blurred the image. She knew that jaw. That chin. Those cheekbones.
She saw them every time she looked in a mirror.
It wasn’t much. Frankly, she hadn’t expected anything, given how many generations lay between Annabelle and herself. But here, finally, was something familiar. Something that meant she belonged to someone.
To her family.
She couldn’t wait to show the photo to Marinera.
“Garrett?” She turned toward the kitchen, but he’d already joined her in the living room. He peered at her, head to one side, a small book in his hand. How long had he been standing there?
“I found this picture of Jack and Annabelle.” She thrust it at him like an overexcited five-year-old. “Look. She has my chin. My jaw. I mean, I know it’s no
t much, but … what?”
The somber expression in his eyes cooled her excitement. Wordlessly, he handed her another diary. Tucked inside the front cover was a clipping from the Wichita Eagle, yellow and softened with age.
“I’m so sorry.”
J. F. Brennan Dies in Accident at Home
Jamesville, Kan., Nov. 18—A bereaved wife, seven children, and an entire community are left to mourn the loss of one of its pillars, John Francis “Jack” Brennan, who passed from this life on Sunday after a fall from the roof at the family homestead …
November 19, 1890
At last, they were alone.
Three days. Three full days of friends and neighbors. The parson. The undertaker. The children. Their presence provided comfort Annabelle would doubtless need in the days to come. The weeks, the months—
No. She couldn’t face those.
All she could face was right now.
Right here.
Alone with Jack.
The ceaseless activity had quieted. The children were in bed. What time was it even? She glanced toward the mantel—the mantel he’d carved from a cottonwood that blew over in a windstorm, a reminder that God could create beauty from anything—but the clock was stopped, its endless ticking stilled, its hands frozen at five thirty-seven.
A thoughtful tradition, stopping clocks at the time of death, though she’d never paid it much attention before. It provided a pause, a respite from the relentless march of minutes to allow the bereaved to absorb that moment where hearts shattered and life ceased to make sense. The single instant that tore existence into before and after.
Indeed, it hadn’t taken much more than that. Uncle Stephen assured her that the Lord had spared Jack any suffering. By the time she reached him, fell to her knees in the mud beside him, shook him, said his name, said it louder, screamed it … he was already gone.
Oliver, riding in from a drive with young Kate Emerson, had known at once. He didn’t say a word, but his horror-stricken eyes, the way he peeled her off Jack and ushered her inside, spoke volumes.