“She wants to take the Lincoln. Probably her way of showing people we have different ideas about Bellmeade’s fate.”
Ciana’s face was as dark as the sky outside. “Don’t be too hard on her for wanting something different,” Eden said before Ciana bolted out the front door.
“She can do whatever she wants. I’m keeping our land,” Ciana snapped, and shut off further discussion.
Eden followed her friend outside, deciding that having nothing meant never having anything to fight over. Or for that matter, anything to fight for.
Ciana couldn’t believe her eyes. People were packed in the old courtroom in city hall used for public meetings. All eyes turned to her and Eden when they came into the room. Why had so many people shown up? Hastings’s project didn’t even involve most of the attendees. Her stomach did somersaults, but she squared her shoulders and walked to the front of the room. She sat in the first row directly in front of Hastings’s presentation table as Gerald Hastings and two of his staff hovered around a large covered board propped up on an easel.
Eden slid into a chair beside her. “You sure you want to sit here?”
“Positive. I want to make sure he sees me.” After returning from Italy, Ciana had seen his plans for her property. She’d told him then she wasn’t interested in selling, but the man had ignored her as if she were a small child incapable of understanding his great plan.
Eden said, “Well, he can’t miss you, girlfriend.”
Ciana casually glanced over her shoulder at the crowd behind her. She recognized neighbors, business owners, farmers, teachers—a cross section of Windemere residents. Her gaze stopped sweeping when she saw Jon standing against the wall at the back of the room. His green eyes only on her. He offered a slight nod while keeping his expression neutral. Gratitude flooded her, knowing he’d come for her sake. She saw Bill Pickins, too, and Eric Winslow, who’d arrived without Abbie. Arie’s parents had not shown up.
The mayor interrupted the buzz of chatter by calling the meeting to order. He did some talking about the great turnout of citizens and how this new venture could help the town, then turned the mike over to Hastings.
Under her breath, Eden said, “He’s good-looking. See how some of the women are staring at him? They’re almost panting.”
Ciana was forced to agree. Hastings looked casually polished in khaki slacks and a blue golf shirt. His salt-and-pepper hair was precisely cut. She thought his blue eyes looked cold behind wire-rim glasses. “He’s the enemy,” Ciana fired back softly.
“I’m just saying,” Eden said.
Hastings introduced himself and his staff, offered up his professional background while his staff passed out paperwork to any who wanted it, and most people did. Finally he walked to the easel, pulled the cover off, and discussed his drawings for Bellmeade Estates. People listened. Rumors had swarmed about the project for months, but now as it was being laid out publicly, Ciana felt more threatened than ever. Hastings talked about the economic impact for the town, causing murmurs to ripple through the crowd. He told of how he had built such communities in other states, of how he had persuaded both the Federal Transportation Authority and the Tennessee state legislature to okay a new exit off the existing expressway to accommodate traffic, and of how such an exit would impact the town for the better. He alluded to how much his company had already invested because “that’s how much he believed in the project.”
Ciana curled internally. Of course, the new subdivision sounded like a windfall for the town, economically depressed for years. The new housing and golf course would attract buyers from Nashville and Murfreesboro who would bring money and jobs into Windemere. The only catch was that hundreds of acres of fertile farmland would be sacrificed, changing the face and the purpose of the countryside forever. For Ciana the sacrifice was too great, but when Hastings opened the floor to questions, she clearly saw that for many from the area, it wasn’t. Several of the smaller farms bordering hers were owned by elderly folks with no family interested in or even available to take over their properties, so Hastings’s buyout offer was a path to financial security.
And yet there were townspeople who liked the small-town atmosphere of Windemere and didn’t want unchecked growth that might bring in urban sprawl and worse, crime. Ciana wasn’t alone, but she was clearly in the minority.
Once Hastings finished his presentation, an excited buzz filled the room. Ciana felt tensions rising until she could take no more. Her heart thudded, her palms sweat, but she stood, and looking Gerald Hastings in the eye, she said, “You may build whatever you want. Just not on my land.”
She marched down the aisle, head high, hearing shocked whispers, with Eden scrambling after her.
“Want to talk about it?” Eden asked as Ciana drove them home.
“Looks like farming is a lost cause,” Ciana said bitterly.
Eden felt Ciana’s despair. “Not everybody feels that way. Some seemed to like the town the way it is.”
“You don’t.”
“Not true,” Eden defended herself. “I actually like the gardening and the canning and cooking.”
“But you want to blow this town.”
“Not for the same reasons I once wanted. Think back to when we were in high school. There was nothing to do in our dead little burg.”
“I had plenty to do.”
“And so long as you and Arie were hanging with me, I did too. But when we were fourteen and you both left for the summer, well, that’s when I met Tony, and we both know how awful that turned out.”
Ciana knew. “It was a bad time for you.”
“If Italy hadn’t happened …” Eden let the sentence trail off, remembering how Tony had terrorized their families until a drug deal went bad for him in Memphis.
“We’re both survivors, Eden. And I’ll survive this crisis with Bellmeade. Bet on it.” She turned into her driveway, saw Jon’s pickup truck parked by the barn. Light glowed through the side window.
“Looks like you have company,” Eden said.
Ciana’s heartbeat quickened. “Seems so.” She parked and Eden scurried through the rain into the house. Ciana ran into the barn, found Jon sitting on a beat-up chair and whittling a lump of wood. He immediately stood, folded his pocketknife, and shoved it into the pocket of his well-worn jeans.
He opened his arms and she walked into his embrace, longing to be comforted. “Hey, cowboy.”
His arms tightened. “Hey, pretty lady. You okay?”
“Not really. I—I didn’t expect so many people to be in favor of the project. I thought the land meant more to all of us. Some of those people sounded like they’d won the lottery. Why, they’d sell their heritages without blinking.”
“The dude’s offering folks a lot of money. Human nature being what it is … well, it’s hard to resist the sweet smell of money.”
“Not for me,” she said around emotions stuck in her throat. “Is the whole town against me?”
“Bill’s on your side.”
Bill’s ranch and cattle were on the other side of the freeway, south and west of Windemere and in no danger of being gobbled up by Hastings’s project. “Good to know,” she said with a sigh, and pushed away.
Jon looked into her eyes fiercely. “I’m on your side too.”
Tears threatened to spill out as she tried to shake them away. Beauchamp women were supposed to be tough. Hadn’t Olivia taught her to stand and fight against all odds? “The land is everything, child. You fight for what’s ours. You fight to win.” The words rang in Ciana’s ears. “You don’t have a dog in this fight, Jon Mercer.”
He lifted her chin. “I have something more important at stake. I have a girl I want to keep.”
His words were comforting and well meant, but Bellmeade was her problem, not his. “I won’t change my mind about selling.”
“I didn’t expect you would, but—” He paused. “You could be in for trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Mone
y changes people. I was at the meeting too. Hastings is throwing this town a lifeline to most folk’s way of thinking. I heard them talking. To a lot of them, you’re the enemy, not Hastings.”
She was struck dumb by his words. Her? An enemy? Impossible. She realized people were disgruntled, but they should understand where she was coming from. Bellmeade was a legend, and the Beauchamps were not just its owners but its protectors and guardians. “I just want to keep my land. It’s my land!” She was angry now, not at Jon, but that he’d dug up ugly things and dared to flash them at her.
“I’d like to move in again, Ciana. I can help protect you and Bellmeade.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Protect me? Jon, nothing’s going to happen to me. People will get over it and once Hastings sees I’m serious, he’ll go back to Chicago and forget all about us.”
Jon’s green eyes studied her, his face shadowed by concern. “Don’t fool yourself. The man’s already invested a lot of money in this project. He won’t walk away. Plus the people around here—”
“Are my neighbors,” she interrupted. “I’ve known these people all my life. They aren’t going to come after me.” The idea was so ludicrous that she turned and walked to the stalls where horses stirred because of the raised voices.
“And you can’t move in again,” she added stubbornly. Jon had lived in the barn’s tack room and helped with chores before having to take his father home to Texas in March. “Barn’s full, except for my two freeloaders, Firecracker and Sonata. My four boarders will bring in enough extra money to get us through this winter. Come spring, I’ll plant more crops, begin to make this farm productive again. And as you can see, I took out some storage space and built extra stalls. I only wish I had room for more.”
Firecracker’s head pitched over the stall door and Jon obliged her with a scratch on her forelock. Ciana rubbed the aged, whitened muzzle of her grandmother’s former saddle horse in the adjoining stall.
Jon must have realized she’d closed off the discussion, because he walked to one of the new stalls and studied the new horses. “Tell me about your boarders.”
Ciana calmed down, switched gears from the meeting. “This one is owned by a tech guy. A kind of weekend cowboy living in Murfreesboro. Fred doesn’t ride much, says he’s too busy. Just likes owning a horse, I think.”
Jon appraised the dark brown horse. “Hope he didn’t pay much. Animal has poor confirmation.”
Ciana would never challenge Jon’s expertise. One thing the man knew, it was horses. He trained wild mustangs for ranch work, rode broncs for fun. She moved on. “This little bay belongs to a fourteen-year-old girl in town. She’s a sweetheart and practically lived here this last summer.”
“Not too bad.” Jon’s gaze swept the horse head to tail. “Better stock than the first guy’s.”
“And the two others, named Mr. and Mrs. Smith, belong to a nice retired couple in town who just love horses and riding together.”
“Look to have some Tennessee walking horse blood in both of them.”
By now they were standing in the dark, far back in the barn in stillness and shadows. The sound of the animals moving quietly in the stalls, the steady drumming of November rain on the roof, offered a sense of aloneness in the world … just the two of them and no others. Ciana felt time slow. Jon’s nearness ignited memories of how his kiss, the touch of his hands, had once lit fires on her skin. That fire had been between them since the first time they’d kissed on a long-ago summer night. He reached for her. “Don’t walk away from me, Ciana. Please … I want more with you. Why won’t you let me in?”
She had no answer. It would be easy, so easy, to give in, and give herself to him in every way. And she might have—if tiny pricks from their tumultuous past and the unseen future had not surfaced in her head and heart. The warnings stretched like the barbed wire over the fences on her property. Caution. Danger. Be careful. Unable to put into words what she felt, or why she felt the way she did, she stepped away. She had no answer, no way to explain what she herself did not understand. So she turned and hurried outside, leaving him alone in the dark.
Eden was sitting cross-legged in the center of Ciana’s bed when Ciana came into her bedroom. “I heard from Colleen.”
With nerve endings still afire, Ciana dropped onto the bed beside her friend, glad for a distraction. “Tell me.”
“She’s back in Ireland.” Eden twisted a tissue wrapped through her fingers. “They had to quit the walkabout.” She took a shuddering breath. “You see … Garret—”
“Hey, hey,” Ciana interrupted, suddenly anxious for her friend. “Take it easy. Don’t pass out on me.”
Eden sucked in air and willed her thudding heart to slow down. “Garret got sick in Sweden. Double pneumonia. One of his lungs collapsed.”
Ciana put her arms around Eden, frightened over what she might hear next. “Go on. I won’t let go of you.”
Eden nodded, wiped her eyes with the wadded tissue. “Tom and Lorna took him back to Australia. They got him home, but Colleen hasn’t heard anything from them. It’s been over a month. She doesn’t know if he … if he …” Eden broke down once more.
Ciana went cold through and through, the pain of Arie’s April death knifing her heart. Neither she nor Eden could face such loss again. She reached beyond the hurt for Eden’s sake. “Garret’s young and strong. Pneumonia’s curable. If he’s home, he must have family around him to help care for him. Did Colleen have any way to reach him?”
“She—she gave me an email address. It’s Tom’s, but he hasn’t responded to any mail from Colleen. Why wouldn’t he? Unless … unless—”
“Don’t even think bad thoughts,” Ciana insisted. “Let’s email Tom right now.”
Eden held Ciana’s arm in a death grip. “I’m so scared.”
“Where’s the address? I’ll write it for you.”
Eden picked up her electronic tablet beside her on the bed with shaking hands. “I’ll write it,” she said. “I owe Garret that much.” She looked into Ciana’s eyes. “But please stay with me while I do.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
It took Eden a while to compose a message because her fingers kept slipping on the virtual keys, but when it was finally finished, she let Ciana read it, and then pushed send. As it whooshed off into cyberspace, she felt as if her heart and soul had gone with it. “Maybe it won’t get there. Maybe Tom won’t answer me either.”
“Doubtful. Let’s write Colleen right now and let her know just in case she hears from Tom before we do. That way she can tell him you’re trying to reach Garret. Two messengers are better than one.”
Eden clung to the logic. “You’re right. I haven’t answered her. I just bolted down here when I got her message. I should let her know what happened to us in Italy, and why I didn’t show up that day to go with them. She doesn’t know about Arie.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes.
“We’ll compose a message together. I’d like to say hello too.” Ciana eased the tablet from Eden’s hands, certain Eden’s fingers couldn’t manage a second message just now. “Let me.”
Eden flopped onto the bed, cradled a small pillow against her chest, stared up at the ceiling. “Read it back to me when you’re finished, okay? And … and would you mind if I stayed here a while? I don’t want to be alone upstairs.”
“No problem. Stay all night if you want. I don’t think I can sleep tonight myself.” She glanced at the paper stacks on the floor. “I want to go exploring.”
Sunlight woke Ciana where she lay curled up on the floor of her room, covered by a quilt and clutching one of her grandmother’s old diaries. Eden was sound asleep on the bed. Ciana sat up, stretched sore muscles, rubbed her stiff neck. She had no idea when she’d fallen asleep, but it had to be late morning now because sunlight puddled across her lap. The horses! She struggled up, one leg all pins and needles, hobbled into her bathroom, and splashed cold water on her face.
She got to the barn quickly and d
iscovered that someone had already fed the horses and released them to pasture. The rain had left the ground muddy, and the red clay clung to her work boots. The November air was chilly, but weak sunlight spread across the sky.
Back in the house, she went to the kitchen for coffee.
“Eden all right?” Alice Faye asked.
Ciana eased into a kitchen table chair. “I think so.” She told her mother what had happened.
“Poor girl. Hope this man she likes is well by now. You want some breakfast?”
“Just toast.” She watched Alice Faye slice freshly baked bread and slide two pieces into the toaster. “Thanks for letting the horses out.”
“I put fresh water into the pasture trough for them, but didn’t muck the stalls.”
“I’ll do it.” As the hot coffee warmed her, Ciana relaxed. When Alice Faye placed the toast in front of her along with butter and a bowl of strawberry jam, she asked, “Do you remember a family named Soder? They used to have a farm next to ours on the north end.”
Alice Faye poured herself coffee and sat across from Ciana. “Name’s a little familiar. Why do you ask?”
“Now, don’t get crabby. I know what you think about Olivia’s diaries—which so far have been pretty dull—but that name keeps coming up.” Alice Faye looked uninterested but didn’t interrupt, so Ciana took it as a sign to continue. “She talks about the Soders adopting a boy, some pathetic kid the sheriff found digging through garbage cans in an alley.”
“Awful. But I don’t recall the family or the boy.”
“I found a newspaper article about it tucked into one of her earliest diaries—1936. Olivia was eight. Seems the boy only gave his first name, said he had no parents. Reporter called him a ‘throwaway child.’ Guess the Depression broke up a lot of families.” Ciana sipped her coffee, ate a bite of toast. “Anyway, they guessed him to be about nine or ten and the sheriff was set to take him off to the county orphanage when the Soders stepped up and said they’d take him. The article quoted Mrs. Soder to say, ‘Lord didn’t see fit to give us no kids of our own, so it seems like good Christian charity to take in this one. Like Pharaoh’s daughter bringing that Moses out of the bulrushes.’ Quaint, huh?” Ciana slathered jam onto the second slice of toast.