There were two more newcomers—a woman about fifty, fresh out of rehab, a guy about thirty, here by court order and needing thirty days of signed chits. And then a guy stood up and said his name was Mark. He didn’t add that he was an alcoholic but Sierra thought, We have a winner! His coloring was pale with splotches, he was trembling, his eyes were red and watering. He was a little stooped—his gut hurt. Chances were good he was just coming off a bender. They were going to corral him right after the meeting, she bet. Nothing more was required of him, just that he listen. And he might bolt, but they were already on to him. Something might’ve happened to get him to a meeting. His wife might’ve finally left him, he could’ve lost his job or spent one too many nights in jail. He didn’t look like he’d been in a fight. Just real hungover. As usual, she asked herself if she’d ever looked that bad.
When the meeting was over, people scattered pretty fast. This was, after all, a before-work meeting—convenient. She met a couple of women who welcomed her and told her they hoped she’d join them again and she said she probably would, but she wasn’t sure of anything except one thing—she was going to scope out the locations and times of the meetings around her so she wasn’t searching for one when she absolutely needed one.
Maybe she’d come again. She liked moody Moody for no apparent reason. He might be grumpy but he seemed steady.
She went to Cal’s to explain her new living space and, predictably, he was thrilled to hear she’d be staying at the Crossing.
The next morning she got up extra early knowing Sully would be up, but instead of rushing off to a meeting, she hung around at the breakfast bar until Enid and Frank showed up. After visiting with them for a while, she did a little cleanup in the store, then headed for the garden.
After two hours in the garden she took a nap, read her book for a while, washed some of her clothes and offered to cook Sully’s dinner. And she thought, My God, this is living. There was no television in her cabin, but Sully offered his if she wanted to watch TV. “Just lock the door when you go home,” he said.
“I’m surprised you lock doors around here,” she said.
“I forget most of the time. But lock yours. Every now and again we get a bad apple. Last spring Maggie shot a lowlife who’d kidnapped a girl.”
“Really?” she asked, astonished and impressed.
“I’ll tell you about that sometime when we run out of stories...”
She didn’t think they’d ever run out of stories!
Cal and Maggie were around the Crossing a little bit on the weekend, Maggie more than Cal. Cal worked on making a home every day.
Then came Monday morning and her new job began early. The diner didn’t open until seven but she was required to be there at six thirty to set up. There was training for her, but she’d waitressed on and off so many times over the years, very little instruction was required. There were several early customers who she learned were mostly locals or business owners and workers from the town and a bit later, a few tourists. It was steady but not what she’d call busy. There was competition off the highway and in surrounding towns—bigger places like Applebee’s and Denny’s.
And then at eleven who should come in but Moody. Just the sight of him had her beaming as though she loved him. Someday she’d figure out what it was about her and slightly mean men. Slightly if she couldn’t find a really mean one! She couldn’t put this on her brothers or father. Jed Jones might be nuts but he was sweet. Vulnerable. And the boys had always been kind, to women especially.
“Isn’t this a surprise,” she said to Moody.
“You aren’t hard to track down,” he said, sitting at the counter. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m pretty coffee’d out. Oh! Do you want coffee?”
“You’re very funny, aren’t you?” he asked, not cracking a smile.
“To some people,” she said, grabbing a mug from under the counter. She poured him a cup. “Anything to eat? Breakfast? Lunch?”
“Nah. Just the coffee.”
She took a breath. “You were tracking me down?”
He took a sip. “No, not really. But then I realized you told me where you worked and I come by here sometimes. I thought I’d let you know—there’s a meeting here in town. Seven on Thursday nights at the church. I go sometimes, depending what’s going on.”
“Is that early meeting your home meeting?” she asked.
“I get up early. I like getting it out of the way.”
“Is this a house call?” she asked, teasingly.
“We don’t make house calls,” he said. “We do reach out sometimes, but if you ask me not to—”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s very nice, in fact.”
“Then I’ll take a chance and ask you if there’s anything you need. I’ve been around here a long time. And I’ve been in the program a long time.”
She’d heard at the meeting. “Thirty years,” she said. “That’s a long time, all right. Either you were pretty young or you’re pretty old.”
There was the glimmer of a smile, but it was small and showed no teeth. “Both.”
“Either you know the ropes by now or you’ve been a real tough case.”
This time he did show teeth. He even gave a huff of laughter. “Both,” he said again. “Think you’ll be around awhile?”
“I hope so,” she said. “My brother and his wife are expecting. I wouldn’t want to miss that. But this was a leap of faith. It’s quite a change. A beautiful change, but still...”
“You staying with your brother, then?” he asked.
She shook her head. “My sister-in-law’s dad owns a campground just outside of town and he loaned me a cabin. So I have a place of my own but I’m kind of with family at the same time. It’s private, but...”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Sully’s place?”
“You know Sully?” she asked.
“I think everyone knows Sully. Maggie is your sister-in-law?”
“And you know Maggie?”
“Sierra, I live here. In three weeks you’ll know everyone.”
“And you go to meetings here? In town?”
He nodded. “I think the word is out on me. I don’t talk about anyone else’s business. You going to stick to Leadville?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I did notice they have a meeting for everything in Leadville.”
“That’s for sure,” he agreed. “So, you have a place to stay, know where the meetings are, have family around—that can be good or not, depending. Anything you need right now?”
“Not right now,” she said. “I’ll be looking for a sponsor, but for right now I still have my last sponsor by phone. We talk all the time.”
He took out a pen, grabbed a napkin and wrote his name and cell number on it. “While you’re checking things out and meeting people, here’s my number. Why don’t you use it sometime. Check in with me until you get a new sponsor.”
“I don’t expect to need anything, Moody, but—”
“Then just check in to say hello,” he said. “It’s a good idea to have an anchor or two. Floating around without connections can be risky.”
“Okay, sure,” she said, taking the napkin, folding it in half and slipping it in the pocket of her shorts. “But I’ll probably see you around.”
“How you doing on the steps?”
“Oh, I ran through the steps. I’m spending a little extra time on number eight. And ten—seems like there’s an endless amount of accounting.”
He sipped his coffee. “Remembering more or admitting more?” he asked. When she didn’t answer immediately, he said, “Maybe we’ll have coffee after a meeting sometime. Talk about the steps?”
“I thought that might happen after the last meeting but I guess everyone was
either rushing off to work...or maybe busy with that guy who was having a hard time. Mark.”
“Mark shows up sometimes. I’m always glad to see him,” Moody said. And he said nothing more. It was like a contract. These stories were shared in the meeting but nowhere else. Not everyone played by the rules, but they were expected to, nonetheless.
The bell on the door tinkled and in walked Adonis. Well, except he didn’t have that black Greek hair. His hair was brown and his eyes so blue she could see them from the door. Sierra felt her heart catch. That meant he must be a bad idea. But the sheer height of him and the girth of his shoulders was almost shattering. His T-shirt was tight over his chest and arms; there was a firefighter’s emblem on one pec. She had to concentrate to keep from sighing. She wondered, not for the first time, if absolute beauty was a requirement to be a firefighter.
His eyes twinkled at her. But he said, “Hey, Moody.” And he stretched out his hand toward Moody. “How’s the weather?”
“It’s nice,” he grumbled. “But it’s bound to turn. Connie, meet a new waitress. Sierra this is Connie. Connie this is Sierra.”
“Conrad,” he said. “Connie for short. Nice to meet you.”
That big, meaty hand swallowed up her small hand.
And she gulped.
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
—Voltaire
Chapter 4
SIERRA HAD AN unfortunate history of being involved with men who were not good for her, but a lot of that could be blamed on alcohol. Or maybe she started out with perfectly good men and destroyed the relationships with alcohol. At this point it was pretty irrelevant since there hadn’t been a man in her life in a long time. Nor alcohol. The last one, Derek, had been so toxic and dangerous she not only swore off men, she ran to rehab. No one could get to you in rehab. Just the people you put on your list as approved visitors.
She felt the calluses of Connie’s strong, large hand, looked into those blue eyes and told herself, It doesn’t really matter who he is—I’m off men. But she couldn’t deny it—there was a tingle as his hand enveloped hers.
“Nice to meet you. Do you prefer Conrad or Connie?”
“Everyone calls me Connie no matter what I might prefer. I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“I haven’t been here long.”
“And what miracle had you choose Timberlake?” he asked, smiling. Smiling like a man who thought he might get laid.
“Do you know Cal and Maggie Jones? I’m Cal’s sister.”
The big man’s smile vanished instantly. Nothing like an older brother to make a man rethink his objectives. Funny how that never went away even with age. Sierra was thirty and Cal thirty-eight. You’d think by now a guy wouldn’t be intimidated by a big brother, but it was just as well.
“How do you like it around here so far?” he asked. And there was obvious distance in his gaze. His warm blue eyes cooled way down.
“It’s great. Amazing, in fact.”
“You can’t be staying in that barn,” he said.
“You’re right, I can’t, but not because it’s an unfinished house. Because I really don’t want to live with my brother. They’re newlyweds, for one thing. And I’m crazy about Cal, but he’s my brother. I lived with him long enough growing up.”
Connie laughed. “I’ve felt that way about my brother. I’m here for an order. A big Caesar salad. You know about that?”
“Oh, that’s you? I’ll get it.”
She’d been told it would be picked up. It was ready in the kitchen. She put it in a bag and rang it up for him. He left with a casual “See you around.”
After a few moments passed Moody said, “Want to have coffee sometime when you’re not working? Talk about the program a little bit? Go over steps or something? Take each other’s pulse?”
Hers was a little amped up at the moment. She focused on Moody. “I was kind of looking for an older woman.”
“I get that. You never know. I might be good in the short term.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”
Sierra was off work at two and was scheduled to work at least two mornings a week, no weekends unless one of the other waitresses asked her to cover for them. The weekends, she was told, were busier in the mornings and the tips better so the waitresses who had been there before she was hired wanted those shifts, particularly the students. Her schedule wasn’t the least bit taxing; she enjoyed meeting the locals. And of course most people knew her brother and absolutely everyone knew Sully.
Sierra had plenty of time after work to do things, like stop by Cal’s to check on the progress at his place, then get back to the Crossing to see what, if anything, she could do to help Sully. Most of the time all he wanted was a little company for dinner, which he sometimes convinced Sierra to make for them. “Just bear in mind, if it ain’t bland and tasteless I can’t eat it. I have to stay heart healthy. I won’t live any longer, it’ll just seem longer.”
“You’re in good hands,” she said. “I’m very healthy.” Now, she thought. And before two weeks had passed, she had Sully nearly addicted to her stir-fry—just chicken, vegetables, broth and some seasoning. She was allowed soy sauce but he was off salt; his indulgence was one drink before bed and she could not join him, of course. It seemed a reasonable trade to her.
Two weeks, though not very long, had revealed some marvelous changes in the land and in Sierra. First of all, she did contact Moody and they did meet for coffee a couple of times. As she learned more about him, she was glad she’d let him talk her into it. Moody’s name was Arthur Moody but no one ever addressed him as anything but Moody, including his wife. He was fifty-eight years old, a biology professor at a private university in Aurora and he was admittedly a late bloomer. “I was busy in my twenties when everyone else was trying to get an education and a start in life. My start came later, in my thirties.” She could do the math—he had been sober for thirty years. That meant that until the age of twenty-eight he was busy spiraling down.
She went to that Thursday evening meeting in Timberlake. She found a nice group waiting there—small, but significant. One of them was Frank, Enid’s husband. Frank was an old-timer, a vet, a man who earned his stripes the hard way. He might’ve been surprised to see her because he beamed, putting those snazzy false teeth on display for her.
She did not tell her story yet, even though she was starting to feel at home. But she couldn’t help thinking about her story. Every day.
* * *
“What was it, Sierra?” The therapist encouraged her to be honest. “What finally sent you running to rehab?”
“Well, there was an accident. I wasn’t driving but it was my car. He was driving. He took me out of a bar, took my keys and was driving me home. He said I was drunk and he was just taking me home. I think he put something in my wine because, seriously, it wasn’t that easy for me to get wasted like that. It was still early. I knew we hit something but I didn’t see it happen. He stopped the car and looked and got back in and drove away. He said it was a cyclist and he left him there. Left him. Left him to die.
“He told me he called the police and said he was a witness, that he saw a woman driver hit a man and leave him. I didn’t hear him call the police. I don’t know if he did. I don’t know if he hit a man or a tree branch or a dog. I was in and out. He told me what he said. I said, ‘But I wasn’t driving!’ And he said, ‘No one will believe you—you have a history.’ And then... And then he convinced me. In a brutal way. In a terrifying way. He said I would never tell anyone anything. Or I’d be sorry.
“So I left my car in the airport parking garage and took a bus to the bus depot. I ran. I went to the farm, the only place I could think of. Eventually I we
nt into rehab, a place he couldn’t find me. Or even if he found me, he couldn’t get to me.”
* * *
Spring was upon the land and the afternoons were often warm and sunny. Just being at the Crossing was the best part. Sierra enjoyed watching her sister-in-law grow that little baby inside her and it filled her with warm family feelings. Being a part of Cal’s new family was precious to her. Cal was intent on working on his renovation but not so much that he couldn’t take a few breaks to see his sister. They often sat atop a picnic table by the lake and talked, or they went for a short hike into the thawing hills that surrounded the Crossing.
Tom Canaday stopped by the Crossing sometimes—maybe for a cup of coffee, maybe a beer after work. His son Jackson came by now and then, sometimes with his dad and sometimes to lend a hand. There were firefighters and search and rescue volunteers and rangers who dropped in on Sully because the drinks were cold and the atmosphere friendly and laid-back.
“This place just keeps getting better looking,” one of the firefighters Sierra had not yet met said, eyeing her keenly.
“Did I remember to mention Sierra is Cal’s little sister?” Sully asked.
There were a few groans in the group. But when Sierra turned her back someone said, “Hell, I can take Cal.”
“Be careful of those smoke eaters,” Sully said. “They come in two flavors—real gentlemen where women are concerned, or they’re dogs. Players. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”
“We’re safe,” she said. “I’m not interested in either type.”
Cal and Maggie didn’t question Sierra’s assertion that she had no room for dating in her life right now. They had other things on their minds. Not only was picking out slabs of stone for countertops giving them fits, they were tending their bump.
“Do we know what we’re having yet?” Sierra asked when she noticed a book of baby names sitting out on the picnic table in their great room.
“Not yet. But soon,” Maggie said.
“No, I didn’t mean boy or girl,” she said with a laugh. “I meant state, city or mountain range!”