He kissed the spot.
“And here.” She pointed to her mouth.
He kissed her with a pressure as light as the brush of a butterfly’s wing.
She thought of a hundred places on her body she wanted him to kiss. “I hurt all over.”
He stroked the swell of her breast above her bedclothes, making her ache to have him kiss her there. But he pulled away and said, “Rain check.”
Reluctantly, she watched him rise. “I’ll probably need more therapy tomorrow.”
Love for her spilled out of his intense green eyes. He said, “Count on it.”
Visitors, flowers, and a dozen cards came during the week Ciana was recovering, taking her by surprise. Maybe everybody in the town didn’t hate her after all. Patricia and Abbie came to visit, as well as some friends who had once ridden with her in the flag corps. The ones away at college texted her get-well wishes. One good thing that happened after her wreck was that the vandalism to her property ceased. “Maybe almost killing me scared them off,” she told her mother.
During her recovery, she received a long email from Eden that read like a continuous run-on sentence, saying she was coming home and that Garret was coming with her and could he have a place to stay and, oh, she was crazy in love with the guy and they were going to eventually work their way across the country so they could see America together but really wanted to hang in Windemere for a while if that was okay.
Ciana told her, “Of course,” and didn’t mention the accident. She also wrote about Enzo’s coming and going and about her finally-out-in-the-open-for-all-the-world-to-see feelings for Jon. She ended by writing, Hurry home. The garden needs planting.
Ciana also had two other visitors. One she knew; the other she’d heard about but had never met. She was snapping green beans on the veranda a few days after her wreck—the farthest Alice Faye would allow her to migrate from her bed—when a red sports car turned into Bellmeade. She watched it come slowly up the tree-lined drive toward her, and with the afternoon sun in her eyes was unable to make out the driver. She set down the bowl of fresh beans as the car stopped a few feet in front of the steps. When the door opened and the driver emerged, her back stiffened. “Hello, Mr. Hastings.”
Gerald Hastings came closer but stayed off the steps. “Miss Beauchamp.”
Ciana wondered where her dog was, and while she didn’t want Soldier to bite the man, it would have been nice to have the animal terrify him. “To what do I owe your visit?”
Hastings looked distressed. “I’m just in from Chicago and heard of your accident. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be just fine.”
“I’m hearing that it may have been more deliberate than accidental.”
“The sheriff has my statement.”
“Miss Beauchamp. Ciana—”
The front door opened and Alice Faye walked quickly onto the porch. “We have nothing to say to you, so turn around and go away.”
“Alice Faye …” He stopped, regrouped. “Are you against me too?”
With effort, Ciana stood, teetered slightly, hating to have him watch her struggle. “You heard my mother. Leave.”
Hastings stepped backward, his gaze darting between the two women. “Are you implying that I had something to do with the accident? I told you, I’ve been in Chicago.”
“I don’t have to imply it, but it can’t help me from thinking it,” Alice Faye said, her brow knitted.
“Now listen here, I’m a businessman with projects all over the country. I’m sorry about what happened, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“Your offer to buy out my farmland most likely had everything to do with it,” Ciana countered, holding her anger like a tight wad in her chest.
The sound of Jon’s pickup turning into the drive and hurtling toward them stopped any argument Hastings was about to give. The truck screeched to a halt, but when the door opened Soldier beat Jon out of the vehicle. “Stay!” Jon commanded. The dog stood at attention, a low growl in his throat, eyes trained on Gerald Hastings, now pale as a ghost, and standing stock-still.
Jon sauntered forward, a rifle against his thigh.
Hastings’s gaze moved from the dog to the rifle. “Now hold on. I just came to say how sorry I am Ciana was hurt.”
Soldier’s growl deepened. Jon touched the dog’s head and he sat obediently. “And don’t think we’re not grateful for your visit, but it’s over now. Best if you left.”
“The accident was not my doing,” Hastings said in a raised voice that caused Soldier to stand again. Hastings went rigid.
“No one said it was. But what has been said is that Bellmeade is not for sale,” Ciana told him.
“I’m offering you a lot of money.”
“And I have turned it down.”
“I have investors—”
“Then you might want to tell them to invest in another one of your projects,” Alice Faye said.
“You were never against this,” Hastings told her, looking betrayed.
“Things change.”
Jon raised the tip of the rifle. “And when you get back to town, you might want to spread the news that anyone caught trespassing on this property will be …” He stopped short, grinned, but his green eyes were hard as marbles. “Well, they’ll be dealt with.”
Without another word, Hastings climbed into his sports car and drove away.
Ciana was walking her horse on a lead line in the area around the barn, Jon by her side. Firecracker plodded behind her, and Soldier walked alongside Jon. “She was mad at me when I first came into the barn,” Ciana said.
“Horses can act like two-year-old kids when they’ve a mind to. Where do you think we get the phrase ‘acting like a horse’s ass’ from?”
He made Ciana laugh, which also made her wince. She was getting better, but her broken rib still hurt. “She was probably wondering why I haven’t ridden her, or haven’t come out to see her until today.” She turned to the horse. “You forgive me?”
“Good bet she will.”
Ciana let Firecracker catch up to them, then stroked the animal’s soft nose. “She seems to understand I’m hurt.”
“Horses are intelligent and sensitive,” Jon confirmed, taking Ciana’s hand in his.
The sound of a truck turning into the drive made them all look. “Now what?” Ciana grumbled. “Is the whole town coming in to see my stitches and bruises?”
The truck was painted in camouflage and had a cracked windshield. Jon watched the approach, said, “Never thought I’d see a truck uglier than your old junker.”
“Hey, watch it, cowboy. That old hunk of junk saved my life.”
The truck stopped at the barn and an old man got out, seemingly unfazed by Soldier’s bristling back hairs. Jon told the dog to stand down. To the man, he asked, “Help you, mister?”
The man was short and well-muscled. His potbelly hung over his belted jeans, and long white hair stuck out from under his Tennessee Titans ball cap. “Miss Ciana?” the man asked.
“I am.”
His face looked weathered and grizzled. He held out his hand, “Name’s Cecil Donaldson.”
The name was familiar, but she couldn’t recall why.
“I was Miss Arie’s uncle.”
The man’s voice reminded Ciana of tires on gravel, but the mention of Arie brought back the time when Tony Cicero had been harassing their families. When told that her relatives had put a round-the-clock guard on her house and that someone had shot out a tire of Tony’s SUV in the dark, Arie had said, “That would be my uncle Cecil. He was a sniper in Vietnam, and he can shoot the eye out of a wild turkey at two hundred yards.”
“She spoke highly of you,” Ciana said to the man in front of her. “This is Jon Mercer.”
Cecil gave him a nod. “I know who you are.” Jon returned the man’s nod, and Cecil said, “I heard you been having some trouble out here.”
“Some.”
“I come to help out.”
“How???
? Jon asked.
Ciana put her hand on Jon’s arm to hold him off. There were ways to talk to folks from these parts and issuing a challenge in a Texan accent wasn’t one of them.
“That’s a kind offer, Mr. Donaldson.”
“Cecil,” the man said, giving her permission to use his first name. “I come because I know it’s what Arie would want. Saw her in a dream the other night. She was real as you are. She was standing in the sunlight, her arms crossed, and she told me, ‘You help my friend, Uncle Cecil.’ She’s always been our little angel, so when she speaks to me, I got to listen.”
A lump formed in Ciana’s throat. She saw Arie’s face too, real and soft and smiling. “I miss her too, Cecil.”
The old man cleared gruffness from his throat. “All those years back when she was in the hospital and them docs were pumping poison in her blood that didn’t help no way, our family give her all we could. What we couldn’t give her was the one thing she wanted most: a true friend. Folks were afraid they’d catch cancer if they come around her.” He spat into the dirt to show his disgust.
“They were ignorant,” Ciana said. “People know better now.”
“Every kid shunned her ’cept you. You had that big fundraiser and you became her friend.”
Fifth grade. A lifetime ago. Ciana smoothed the toe of her boot in the dirt. “I loved her.”
“And then you took her to Italy. Whooie, that gal talked nonstop when she got home.” A smile cracked Cecil’s face, smoothed out the Etch A Sketch lines of his skin. “She’d wanted to go to that place all her life, and you took her. Fact is, you give her most everything she ever really wanted.” He cut his eyes to Jon, who shifted his stance, then back to Ciana. “None of us ever going to forget that.”
“So how do you want to help out, Mr. Donaldson?” Jon asked, quietly, as if well aware that he had not been granted permission to call the old man by his first name.
“I will watch your fields at night while you’re sleeping.”
“You don’t sleep?”
Cecil eyed Jon full in the face. “Ain’t slept through the night since I come home from ’Nam. May as well make it useful to someone.”
Ciana stepped forward, cutting off any further discussion. “I’d be pleased to have you help out, Cecil.”
He offered a curt nod. “Start tonight.”
She held out her hand. “Man’s shake is his bond.”
Cecil grinned again, shook her hand. “Arie always said you were good people. Even when some in the family said you being her friend wouldn’t last, what with you being a Beauchamp and all.”
Ciana felt her face redden. “Person can choose her friends. She’s stuck with family.”
Cecil grinned big, exposing crooked teeth. “Ain’t that the truth.”
He turned, but before he could walk to his truck, Jon said, “We don’t need anybody killed for trespassing.”
Cecil turned back around, measured Jon head to toe. “You can call me Cecil, too, Jon Mercer. Since we’ll be working together, and because Arie liked you so much.”
Jon looked uncomfortable, so Ciana intervened. “I don’t want anybody shot.” Ciana enforced Jon’s words, before Cecil could turn away again.
Cecil said, “I won’t have to shoot nobody. Hell, when the town hears I’m doing guard duty, there won’t be no more trouble.” He tipped the brim of his cap, and left Bellmeade, his old truck belching fumes from its rusty tailpipe.
Ciana sat on an old worn quilt in the barn’s loft. She watched windblown sheets of falling spring rain through the large cutout window used to pass bales of hay and straw for storage. From her vantage point, she saw the barely discernable line of trees that separated the main property from the new track and corral. The track would be a sea of mud after two days of constant rain, and require resurfacing. More work she was still unable to do.
“Ciana? You up there?” Jon’s voice called from below.
“Come on up.” She waited for him to climb the ladder. When he did, she patted the quilt for him to join her.
“Should you be up here?”
“It’s been two weeks. I’m better. And I’m bored.”
“Takes six weeks for a broken bone to heal.”
“I didn’t know you were a trainer and a doctor.”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I’m hanging out my shingle next week. What are you doing?”
“You mean besides wishing I’d already planted spring alfalfa?” She glanced toward the opening. “Hate to miss a good rain.”
“It’ll rain again.” He looked to the basket of books and papers she’d managed to bring up with her.
“Some of Olivia’s diaries,” Ciana said. “Only good thing about my confinement. I’d given up on them, but now it seems I have time on my hands.” She opened the book on her lap. “Interesting reading. Like peeking through a window into the past; life in the forties and fifties. No TV until the late seventies here at Bellmeade.”
“No television?” Jon lifted Ciana’s hair, kissed the nape of her neck, sending shivers up her spine. “What did people do for entertainment back then?”
“They made their own fun.” She offered a wry smile. “These old books are fragile. And during the war years she often turned them upside down and wrote on the backside of any blank pages, making the ink bleed through. Some pages are unreadable.”
“But still you try.”
Ciana shrugged. “She wrote about everything, so this is a way for me to get to know her better. I’ve tried putting the books in some kind of order, but that’s been really hard. I jump from reading about high school to grade school, or from after Granddad Charles died to when they were dating. She stopped most of her journaling when I was a child.” Ciana riffled through pages of the book in her lap. “Some of it kind of freaks me out, though.”
“How so?” He made lazy circles on her back with his broad hand. His touch was gentle and soothing.
The rain hammered the barn’s roof. She felt a sudden twinge of family loyalty, reminded herself that this was Jon she was talking to. He already knew some of the Beauchamp history—the story of Charles bringing Olivia a bag of apples the day he decided he wanted to marry her. He knew about Charles Jr. dying in the tractor accident when the boy was twelve too. Maybe he needed to hear more about her family, warts and all. She stared out at the driving rain. A boom of distant thunder sounded. “Mom’s always had a thing about Grandmother not liking her.”
“Her own daughter?” He sounded skeptical. “Alice Faye’s the best!”
“That’s not how Olivia made her feel. They—um—they used to fight over me. For my attention. Sometimes I felt like a rag doll pulled between them.” As the child of an alcoholic, Ciana had resented her mother and had turned to Olivia many times instead of Alice Faye. She dropped her gaze. “And I regret to say that I often took advantage, played them against each other.”
He stroked her shoulder. “What kid wouldn’t?”
“Don’t make excuses for me. I was a brat. Mom used to tell me about feeling rejected by Grandmother when growing up, but I blew it off, told her it was her imagination. Today I read this entry.” Ciana stared down at the book in her lap, the veil of her hair covering the side of her face. “It’s dated January, 1960. Mom was just three months old. Listen.”
Charles woke me in the middle of the night holding the baby. “Honey, can’t you hear her crying? She was in her crib screaming.” He was trying to comfort the baby and she was whimpering and mewing like a newborn cat. Then he sat on the bed and tried to hand her off to me, but I wouldn’t take her.
“Put her back,” I told him. “Let her cry it out.”
He looked like I’d slapped him. “She’s just a baby, Livy. She wants her mama.”
I couldn’t take her. I’m hardly able to look at her, and there’s no way I can tell Charles that. “You take care of her. Fix her a bottle,” I told him.
“You nursed Charlie. Why not her?”
I crawled under
the covers. Losing Charlie is still as raw a wound as the day he died. But it’s more than that. How can I tell my husband that I do not love this child? That I cannot love this child? And it has nothing to do with our Charlie dying.
My husband thinks that the baby was a godsend. A gift from heaven to ease our pain. How can I tell him this baby may be a curse?
Ciana looked up at Jon. “Makes a strong case for Mother’s point of view. Don’t you think? Why couldn’t she love my mother?”
He shook his head. “Maybe she had that kind of depression women get after giving birth.”
“Postpartum depression. I thought about that, but there are other entries where she dismisses Mom. It became a sore spot between Olivia and Granddad. He adored his little girl, my mother. He couldn’t be around much, though. He and Grandpa Jacob were always working the farm, or traveling to sell their crops.” Ciana shivered.
He put his arm around her. “You cold?”
“No … just a creepy feeling. Grandmother used to say the feeling is due to someone walking over a grave.”
“No more sad talk. I want to ask you something before Eden and this Garret fellow arrive day after tomorrow and life gets crazy around here.”
She pulled away, arched a shapely eyebrow. “So ATV attacks on my fields, broken fences, an accident that hammered me, and night patrols by man and beast don’t qualify as crazy life to you?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Point taken.” He reached into his shirt pocket, extracted a small red velvet pouch, and held it out. “Then before there are any other complications or distractions, please take a look at this.”
Intrigued, she took hold of the soft material, undid cording holding the bag closed, pulled it open, and dumped the contents into her other hand. Her breath caught. In her palm lay a band of gold, that even in the weak gray light, glimmered enough for her to see intricately carved images of birds and fruit.
Her heart skipped a beat and her gaze flew to Jon’s. Words jammed in her throat. Rain pounded on the roof. A gust of wind swept moisture through the opening and Ciana felt the wetness on her skin, her hair, in her eyes.