Ciana straightened, thinking of the magnificent family ring Jon’s mother had given him to bestow on a complete stranger. She grew anxious. “I’ve never even met her. What if she hates me?”
“She won’t hate you. How could she? You’re a Beauchamp!”
Ciana shook her head, bemused. “That bromide can’t be the answer to everything.”
“Okay, so tell me, what kind of wedding do you and Jon want?”
Ciana told her Jon’s wishes, adding, “I don’t want anything big. And the only people I care about showing up would be Arie’s mom and dad, Eric, Abbie, and the new baby. I just want to get married. I want Jon, plain or fancy.”
“If that’s what you want, then that’s what you shall have,” Alice Faye said emphatically. She reached over and smoothed Ciana’s hair. “One more question. Would you like me to move into town once you’re married? There’s a new condo complex going up—”
“What? You move? This is your home.” She’d never thought about living arrangements until this moment, and to dispossess her mother of the only home she’d ever known would be barbaric.
“Ciana, it’s all right. The two of you may not like having me hanging around all the time. House isn’t big enough. Maybe a change would be good—”
Ciana held up her hand. “I can’t think about this now.”
“Lot of work in this old house.”
“Not now, Mom.”
“Fair enough. But do think about it. Talk it over with Jon. He gets a say now too.”
Ciana slept fitfully, waking and dreaming, her head flooded with thoughts and worries. Her marriage would change everything. Growing up, she had been a bystander, someone looking at Bellmeade from the sidelines, certainly one who belonged, but belonging as a child had belonged, not an adult. True, Olivia’s death had impacted the farm’s dynamic, but marrying meant her life would make a drastic turn. Like the changing of the Swiss Guard she’d watched that afternoon in Italy at the Vatican, the old left … the new came. Her friends would leave. Her mother might move and would one day die. She and Jon would build the future. Doubts assailed her. Was she ready for this? Was she willing to share her heritage, her ownership?
She tossed and turned, twisted the bedding into wads, kicked off her covers, only to grab and pull the sheets over her head minutes later. She stared at the clock that glowed with accusatory, crawling hands. Dawn was coming, and with it a hard day’s worth of work, and her not ready or rested for it. She was still wrestling with her thoughts when a noise made her bolt upright. In the distance, out of the darkness, she heard the unmistakable blasts of a shotgun.
Eden sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the blue duffel bag beside her. All that remains … This bag contained what was left of Gwen McLauren’s worldly goods, the scraps and pieces of her life and existence. Pitifully little. Across from the bed in the motel room, on the dresser, stood the plain gray box that held Gwen’s ashes, a human body, once flesh and blood, muscle and bone, heart and soul, now reduced by fire to a fine gray dust.
When Eden and Garret had returned to Crossroads House to claim the ashes, Liz had also given them the bag, saying, “These were her things. She kept everything she held dear stored in it. Took it with her if she left here, brought it with her whenever she returned.” During the drive from Tampa to Destin in the panhandle, Eden had set it between her feet, sometimes touching the handles, sometimes recoiling from the sudden flop of the handle against her bare ankles. The once-hated duffel that had always taken her mother away was hers now.
Eden sighed. Her and Garret’s motel room was spacious and nicely furnished, and on the ground floor of a beach on the Gulf of Mexico, facing due west. Through the patio doors, a path led over a sandy berm speckled with wild sea oats, and down through powdery white sand to a rolling turquoise surf, where late-afternoon sun glinted off the water.
Garret was taking a long walk on the beach, giving her time to be alone with her memories. As if she hadn’t spent much of her life with them already. He had left her alone out of consideration, to let her go through the contents of the duffel. Like a moth to a flame, her gaze kept drifting to the old duffel bag, a symbol of all her childhood fears and teenage loathing. She decided to wait for Garret before opening it, and when he let himself in the room he looked surprised to see her sitting exactly as when he’d left her. He came to her swiftly, sat on the bed, and took her hand.
“You all right, love?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to do this by myself. Sorry.”
“No problem. We’ll do it together.” His skin and hair smelled of sea brine. His Aussie accent soothed her, helping her find the comfort zone that came with his presence.
Eden set the duffel on her lap. With trembling fingers, she unzipped it, pulled it open, and peered inside. She pulled out the scarf she’d bought Gwen in Italy, saw that it was dirty and torn. She dangled the filmy scarf from her fingertips, saw clearly that street life had been hard on the delicate silk fabric.
“Must have been pretty once,” Garret said.
“It’s garbage now.” Eden tossed it aside, reached into the bag, pulled out a broken compact, worn-down lipsticks, and a shattered eye shadow palette. She grabbed wadded paperwork held together in a stack with a rubber band, along with a bank book and photos. The paper on top was a scrawled note that left Eden all her mother’s worldly goods, including the money that was in the bank. She flipped open a bank statement. Much of Gwen’s portion from the sale of the house was still on deposit. Eden shook her head, felt a flare of anger, followed by sadness. “She was supposed to spend this. She didn’t ever have to live on the streets.”
“Liz said it was going off the meds that drove her to the streets, not lack of money,” Garret reminded her.
Eden thumbed through the photos. The first was an old black-and-white snapshot of people she didn’t know standing in front of a two-story clapboard house, an enormous fir tree to one side.
“Family?” Garret asked.
“If so, she never talked about them.” She raised the photo, searched the blurry faces for any resemblance to Gwen, or maybe even herself. “I think she grew up in Washington State. Like I told you in Australia, she left my father when I was a baby. He was abusive and she ran away … brought us clear across the country on a bus. She had an aunt in Windemere who took us in, but she died when I was two, so I don’t remember her.” Eden looked into Garret’s sympathetic gaze, then quickly looked away. “She wrote me a letter once with some information. I still have the letter, but don’t care about her family. I mean, if they knew she was in a bad relationship, why didn’t they take her in? Why didn’t they help her?”
Eden had no answers, not even a supposition. Garret stroked Eden’s cheek. “Don’t feel sorry for me.” She repeated the warning she had given him while in Australia.
“What’s in the other photos?” he asked, distracting her.
She sorted through them, looked up in surprise. “Me. All of them are of me. School pictures.” She fanned them out on the bed, watched herself morph from a first grader into a high schooler. The last picture was of Eden, Ciana, and Arie in their caps and gowns, looking happy. The series of photos made sense to Eden in a strange way. Photos could be managed, unlike a real flesh-and-blood child. Tears filled Eden’s eyes. She sniffed.
“Looks like she carried them around for a long time.” He picked up one of Eden at age seven. Her hair was a mass of black unkempt curls and a front tooth was missing, but she was smiling cheerfully. “You look happy here.”
“Might have been a good week at our house at that time. Between bouts of mania and depression, life was a bowl of cherries,” she said with a trace of irony. “Who remembers?”
He put the pictures down, took her hands in his, and pulled her up. “It’s dark out. Let’s take a breather and sit by the water. It’s beautiful, you know.”
She wanted to crawl into bed, but she was too drained to argue with him.
He grabbed a couple of l
arge towels and took her through the patio doorway, over the berm and down to the beachfront. She figured the tide was out, because the sand felt hard and packed under her bare feet as they went toward the shore. They walked for a while, until lights from the motels were behind them. The water was too dark to see more than just the occasional white crest of a wave catching light from a partial moon. The sound of the waves was constant, enduring.
Garret spread the towels near the bottom of the berm on the soft part of the sand, still warm from the day’s sun. “Come, love. Let me hold you.”
She needed no urging, and snuggled into his embrace when they lay down together. Without artificial light to interfere, she could see a smattering of the overhead stars. She nestled against his chest. “It’s like all the chapters in a book have ended and I can’t open it again. She’s gone, and so are all the stories I should know. I’m so sad,” she told him.
He kissed her forehead. “I’m no stranger to grief, darlin’. I’ve been down that road myself.”
Philip. Eden felt guilty. “I—I don’t mean to make you relive your bad times.”
“No worries. Who else can I share them with? We’re in this together, Eden. Every step of the way.”
She wept a little while he held her close. Together they listened to the roll of the surf. The sound was a salve to her spirit, and Garret a balm to her soul.
After a few minutes, he said, “I have some good news to tell you. Been saving it.”
She pushed up onto her elbows, looked at him stretched out beside her. “I could use some good news.”
“Before we left Bellmeade, I got an email from my former editor. Seems the chap landed on his feet after all. Has a new job in Melbourne with a webzine that’s all about travel. Magazines on the Web are what’s happening in that market these days. No paper, no postage, just a monthly fee and a download. He wants me to send digital photos, too, just like I did when we were in Europe.
“When I told him I was in America, he got all excited. Asked me to pitch him an idea. So I did and he liked it. It’s called An Aussie in Love, all about traveling here with an American girl and seeing the country through our eyes.”
A giggle slipped from Eden. God, it felt so good to smile, to feel a surge of happiness. “Oh, Garret, that’s fabulous. But I can’t write.”
“You won’t have to. Take notes about our travels. Pass them to me and I’ll do the writin’.” He shifted. “A little paycheck comes with the job. I’m starting the series with Bellmeade, with meeting Jon and building the stables.”
Impulsively, she straddled his stretched-out body, resting her palms and knees on either side of him. “We should celebrate.”
He grinned up at her. “I’m in favor of celebrating. We’ll go get some Ambers in one of the bars. Maybe some dancin’? I can wear my boots!”
Her heart felt lighter. Garret was irrepressible. He made her feel whole even though she wasn’t. He chased away the darkness in her head, refilled her heart with hope, gave her back to herself. His effervescence, his love of life, and of her, dragged her back from the edge of grief. “Later,” she said. “I have something else in mind right this minute.”
“I’m open to suggestions.” He traced his finger along her temple and across her lips.
She looked down at him, grew serious. “A while back you made love to me under the stars of your country. And with all the stars looking down on us, talking to us, you said—led me to believe—that you would make love to me under the stars of my country too.” She glanced upward. “Pitiful few stars out tonight, but are you a man of your word, or not?”
In one smooth move, he flipped her onto her back, hovered over her, dipped down, and gave her a long, passionate kiss. “I am a man of my word, my dear Eden. I love you, and there are plenty of stars to testify to us cementing my pledge. And believe me, the stars never lie.”
Several more blasts from the gun shattered the rural night. Ciana threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, her heart racing, her hands trembling. She grabbed the shotgun that she kept in her closet and rushed to the front door. She was tugging on her boots when Jon clambered down the stairs, almost mowing her over. “You heard that?” she asked.
“I heard it. Sounded like it came from behind the tree line, by the track.” He took a second to shove his revolver into the waistband of his jeans, then grabbed the doorknob.
She followed him.
“Where you going?” he barked.
“To the truck with you.”
“Like hell! Stay here.”
She grabbed his arm. “Not going to happen!”
He wrenched away. “There are live guns out there. I don’t want you shot.”
“My house, my rules,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m going with you.”
He growled something unintelligible under his breath that she knew wasn’t charitable and took off toward his truck, parked by the barn. She ran after him, made it in the cab just as he shoved the gear into drive and headed toward the new stables. The ride was rough because the road was nothing more than a pig trail, ruts worn into the ground by tractor wheels. Usually they rode the horses or walked, but taking the better frontage road would have taken longer. “We need to put in a decent road,” she said over the noise of the engine.
At the stables, Jon lurched to a stop. The truck’s headlights nailed Cecil standing beside the stables, his shotgun slung over his shoulder. In the glare he looked washed out and colorless. Jon killed the engine, but not the lights. He grabbed his pistol, told Ciana, “Stay put.” She ignored him and bounded out of the truck. In seconds Jon was beside her.
“What happened?”
Cecil spat, cradled his gun in his arms. “Had some visitors. Two men. They won’t be back.”
He nodded toward the stables, where Ciana saw a gas can sitting on the ground. She gripped Jon’s arm. “Oh my God. Were they going to burn it down?”
“Looks like it,” Cecil answered.
“You scare them off?” Jon asked.
“Better. Filled their backsides with buckshot, and their truck too. Left my mark all over its shiny black doors. Should be easy for the sheriff to track them.”
“Are you hurt?” Ciana’s adrenaline overload receded, and her knees turned to jelly.
He snorted. “They never saw me coming. Be picking buckshot out of their asses for days. Not like I didn’t warn everybody in town I’d be out here at night.”
“You think it was locals?” Ciana hated to face the idea.
“Can’t say.”
Jon walked to the can, squatted, but didn’t touch it. He leaned over it and sniffed. “Gasoline, all right. Would have made a hell of a fire.”
All their hard work up in flames. Ciana tasted bile, and fury. She wanted to shoot the men too.
To Ciana, Cecil said, “They were driving a badass big truck with off-road tires and hunting lights ’cross the roof. Bet it’s the same one that forced you off the road awhile back.”
Her stomach roiled. Jon returned to her side, put his arm around her waist. He shoved his pistol back into his waistband. “Come on to the house and we’ll call the sheriff.”
She touched her pocket, realized she hadn’t brought her cell phone. She nodded, crossed her arms, hugged herself for warmth. The two of them walked to Jon’s truck. She stopped, turned to Cecil. “Thank you.”
He grinned. “Satisfaction guaranteed. Fools shouldn’t have messed with this old army grunt.”
“Come with us. Least I can do is give you some coffee.”
His weathered face broke open in a grin. “That would taste mighty good right now. I’ll drive up in my truck and meet you there.”
She glanced nervously at the can left beside the wood structure.
“We need to leave things as they are for the sheriff. These guys won’t return,” Jon insisted. The first streaks of dawn had lightened the sky in the east. Stars were disappearing, and the night was giving way to grayness. “They’re like roaches—they only come out in
the dark. Light makes them scatter.”
When they got to the house, Alice Faye was in the kitchen dressed in her bathrobe, and the smell of freshly made coffee saturated the air. “Tell me,” she said, worry creasing her face when Ciana and Jon came inside. Jon headed for the wall phone.
“Before we do, Cecil Donaldson is on his way up,” Ciana said. “In case you want to change.”
She arched an eyebrow, stood firm. “That old man’s seen plenty of us old farm women in our bathrobes in the mornings.”
The words and their implication startled Ciana. Cecil? Good grief! Had Alice Faye been one of those farm women? Ciana didn’t dare ask.
“Tell me what happened,” her mother demanded, just as Cecil knocked on the back door.
Alice Faye let him in, got him a clean mug, and gestured to the pot while Ciana told her what she knew. Her expression turned grim as she listened. After Jon hung up and announced that the sheriff was on his way, Alice Faye ordered everyone to sit at the table, and started fixing breakfast. Ciana was certain she couldn’t eat a bite, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it, and sent her to the hen coop, guarded by Soldier, to gather fresh eggs. In no time the smells of country ham, fried eggs, and baking biscuits, turned the morning into another normal day.
The Southern way, Ciana thought. In times of great stress, feed people. In truth, once the platters of food were set on the table, and because of her restless, sleepless night and harrowing morning, her appetite returned with a vengeance. By the time the sheriff arrived, she felt fortified and ready to deal with what had happened.
“We’ll catch those sons of bitches,” Jon said in her ear as they went out to meet with the sheriff and his deputy.
Ciana nodded, but questions gnawed at her. Who was behind the terrorism? And what would happen when the truth came out? Was it really neighbor against neighbor, as Jon had once suggested? Or was it sinister men for hire, intent on driving her to her knees and taking by force what she would not sell?