The Year of Luminous Love

  “Better.” She had worn the cap because her hair was re-growing and stuck up every which way.

  “And so you’re buying your own horse. Why a wild mustang?”

  “I’ve been partial to them ever since I saw a TV documentary years ago.”

  “For riding?”

  “Maybe a little competition in barrel racing. For fun and state fair prizes. Mostly for riding.”

  “So you can ride?”

  “My friend Ciana taught me, and she lets me ride anytime I want on one of her family’s horses.”

  “And how can I help?”

  “Right this minute I want your advice on picking a good one. Then I need help breaking him to saddle. I love horses, but I need help training one.”

  He spun his hat in his hands. “Got to win his trust first. You’ll have to work with your horse every day once we get started. I’ll be by your side, but your horse needs to bond with you. It can be a slow process in the beginning, so plan on about an hour and a half every day—Sundays off—to come here and work with me. And plan to work on your own too; your horse needs to know you’re the boss.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll be here every day.” She had planned to follow her doctor’s instructions this summer—rest and rebuild her stamina, but now that a horse and Jon Mercer were in the picture, she was doubly motivated to regain the strength she’d lost during the last school year.

  Jon flashed a heart-melting grin and stood. “Let’s get started. Come to the corral and look at your choices. Tell me what you like.”

  At first, Arie saw only a sea of earthy colors, browns, reds, beiges, a streak of black, of manes and tails and head shaking, of hooves working up dust clouds, but slowly the mass took on distinction and differentiation. She watched for a while, then finally pointed toward a couple of the nervous animals. “That roan with the black tail looks good to me. And so does the gray one.”

  “Why?” Jon asked.

  Great, she thought. A quiz. “I like the way they carry their heads. I think their necks look strong.”

  “Very good,” Jon said. “It’s a characteristic of sound mustang horseflesh. They’re power horses; we call them ‘hot bloods.’ They can jump into action, run fast, are quick, and have light feet, making them good for speed events and for working cattle. My horse, Bonanza, is a quarter horse, bred for ranch work, but a well-trained mustang makes a great herd cutter. And barrel racer,” he added with a wink.

  Jon’s knowledge impressed her, and so did his physical proximity. Bill and her dad had walked up to the house, so only she and Jon walked along the fence.

  Jon gestured toward the animals. “You want to pick a horse that has a squarish shape, good legs, and a back long enough to hold a saddle. I’m going to cut the gray and the buckskin. When you come tomorrow, I’ll do a hands-on check while you watch. I can tell a lot about a horse by going over him with my hands, make sure he’s well composed all the way around. The key in choosing horseflesh is balance.”

  Arie’s head was swimming by the time Jon told her goodbye for the day. She watched him walk off, her chest tight and her pulse light as air. She hunted down her dad and said she was ready to go home. On the drive back, he asked, “How’d it go?”

  “Great. I should have a horse picked out soon, but Jon wants me to come every day, early.” Jon’s time to train with Arie had to be early because he was Pickins’s hire and had work to do with the other mustangs the rest of the day. She didn’t care. She’d have met with him at midnight if he’d asked.

  Arie wasn’t like Ciana or Eden. She had to share a car with her mom. Eric had his own truck but acted as if it were a national treasure, so he rarely allowed Arie to drive it. All the way home, she stared out the car window, thinking about the horses but also about Jon Mercer. While years had passed since she’d last seen him, meeting him now and feeling the way she did when she was near him made her realize that her schoolgirl crush had not faded one tiny bit.

  On Friday night, Arie met Eden and Ciana at a popular eatery on the outskirts of town, near the expressway. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, sliding into the booth across from her two friends. A pitcher of sweet tea—the official drink of the South—sat on the table, already down by two glasses.

  Eden poured Arie a glass. “How’s the horse training coming along? Pick you a stud yet?”

  “Nice backside?” Ciana asked. “Good chest?”

  Arie had gone on and on about Jon to her two friends, so she had expected to be teased. She ignored their jibes and said, “Actually, my horse is a filly, and she’s beautiful—a buckskin.” The gray horse hadn’t met Jon’s high standards of confirmation. The smaller filly, the color of yellow sunshine with a black mane and tail and four black stockings and intelligent brown eyes, had won him. The idea that Jon had chosen the horse just for her made the animal more special.

  “You name her yet?” Ciana asked.

  “Caramel.”

  “Like candy?” Eden asked.

  “She looks yummy enough to eat,” Arie said.

  “Sounds as if her trainer does too,” Ciana said, which made Arie blush and her two friends laugh and exchange smug looks.

  “Funny,” Arie said coolly.

  “So, I guess you’ll spend the summer training.” Ciana scooped a tortilla chip through warm cheese sauce. “What about you?” she asked Eden.

  “I’ll be staying at the boutique. You?”

  “The usual—planting, plowing, and mowing. Horses have to eat, and so do Mom and I.”

  “What about you?” Arie asked Eden.

  “I’m going somewhere. Anywhere. Just as long as I can see this town in my rearview mirror.”

  “You’d leave your friends?” Arie feigned hurt feelings.

  “Sacrifices must be made.” Eden nibbled on a chip. “And you? If you weren’t ‘training,’ I mean,” she asked Arie.

  “The art museums of Europe, but that’s been my wish for years and you both know it.”

  “Good thing you have a distraction,” Ciana said. “The trainer, not the horse.”

  Eden giggled.

  Arie said, “How did I get two such funny friends?”

  “Luck?” Eden ventured.

  Arie said, “Well, before you two jokers get too busy, I want you to come out to the Pickins ranch and see my horse. And I want you to meet Jon Mercer. He’s so gorgeous you’ll both start drooling, but just remember, he’s mine. I saw him first.” She looked upward dreamily. “I think I’m in love.”

  “Or in heat,” Ciana joked. Eden and she slapped high fives.

  Arie shook her head. “Why do I put up with this abuse?”

  A waitress stopped to take their order, and Arie opted for soup. As soon as the waitress left the table, Arie said, “Can you come tomorrow? You don’t have to show until nine-thirty. I want you to see Jon and Caramel with your own eyes and become very jealous of my good luck.”

  Both girls agreed.

  “How’s Olivia?” Eden asked Ciana.

  “She’s out of the hospital and back at Evergreen. I never thought I’d be glad to see her there again, but I am. She’s alive. That’s all that matters.”

  “Does she recognize you?” Eden asked.

  “Sometimes she’s her old self, sitting in bed and chatting me up. Other times she thinks I’m an imposter because Ciana is ‘a little girl.’ I never know what to expect when I visit her. I never know how much time she has left.”

  Arie identified with Ciana’s emotions. Having cancer had often made her feel the finiteness of life. “She’s tough. And so are you.”

  Ciana offered a grateful look.

  Arie spent the week in a small corral with Jon by her side and calling to Caramel by name. The horse refused to go near them. “Get her used to her name,” Jon told Arie. “Our goal is for her to come to you when you call her out. Working in this small space doesn’t give her many options.”

  At first Caramel turned her backside to them. “When she does that, wave your arms and chase
her away. She’ll tire of being run off. Eventually she’ll move toward you. It’s called ‘facing up.’ I know shooing her away doesn’t make sense, but it works. Horses are curious. Soon enough she’ll wonder why you don’t want to look at her rear end.”

  They wrapped the Saturday morning session just as Eden drove up to the stables. Ciana was close behind in her old pickup. “Here they come,” Arie told Jon, frustrated over not making much headway with Caramel, who stood in the corral staring at the commotion of vehicles and people. “Now she looks,” Arie grumbled.

  He laughed. “She’s stubborn, but you’re going to win the war.”

  Eden arrived first and Arie hugged her, then pointed excitedly at her horse. Ciana hurried up to the group. At that moment, Jon Mercer turned and looked straight at Ciana, and Ciana felt all the color drain from her face and her breath stop moving in her chest.

  Moments moved like glaciers. For Ciana, time stood still. Arie’s love interest was Ciana’s cowboy, the man she’d left standing outside a diner after one unforgettable night. Memories rushed her like floodwaters, memories of kisses, of touching and holding on to one another’s bodies, of waking with him near her in a cool fresh dawn. Jon’s expression went from genial to stunned surprise.

  “—my best friends.”

  Arie’s voice broke through the ice of silence and snapped Ciana into the present.

  Jon turned to Eden and touched the brim of his hat. When he turned to Ciana, his eyes grew wary, unsure. “Ciana Beauchamp,” he said, repeating her name as Arie had introduced her. “It’s so nice to have a name to put with a face.”

  Ciana caught the put-down aimed at her and tried to warn him with a look that begged, Say nothing! Please, act like you don’t know me. Act like we’ve never met.

  Eden said, “Don’t you mean a face to put with a name?”

  “Sorry,” Jon said. “Us Texas boys sometimes get things bass-ackwards.” He must have gotten her silent message because he turned abruptly toward the corral. “What do you two think of Arie’s horse?”

  Everyone’s attention diverted and Ciana could have kissed Jon. Or not. Not ever again.

  “Isn’t she something else?” Arie asked, apparently oblivious to what had passed between Ciana and Jon.

  “She’s amazing,” Ciana said, careful not to glance at Jon. “Does this mean you’re leaving Sonata for another?”

  Arie touched Ciana’s arm. “Break it to her gently, all right?”

  They laughed, Ciana perhaps too hardily for the humor of the joke.

  To Jon, Arie said, “Ciana’s the friend I told you about who lets me ride one of her horses. She has a huge farm on the other side of town—Bellmeade.”

  “Horses are better riding than tractors,” Jon said with a curt nod.

  His comment made no sense to anyone except Ciana. She jogged to the fence and with trembling knees clambered up and honed in on the buckskin filly. The horse turned her rump toward them.

  “Not very friendly,” Eden said, climbing beside Ciana and leaning over the top fence rail. She wasn’t a horse fan like her friends.

  “We’re working on that,” Arie said, joining them on the fence. She whistled and called out to Caramel, but the horse ignored her.

  “She’s got a mind of her own,” Jon said from the ground below them. “Just goes her own way whenever she wants.”

  Ciana winced at his double meaning and the barb aimed at her. She and Eden fussed over the animal, then jumped down. Ciana steadied herself and faced Jon with Arie standing close to his side. They made a nice couple, Arie with her white-blond hair and blue eyes, Jon with brown hair, streaked gold by the sun and his bright green eyes. She looked at her watch. “Oops! I have to run. Promised Olivia I’d stop off for a visit.”

  Eden said, “Ugh! I have to go into the boutique. Our busiest day and Patty, my coworker, called in sick.”

  “But you two just got here,” Arie said, sounding hurt. “I was hoping you could stay longer, watch me work some with Caramel.”

  “Sorry,” Ciana said. “Come over later, all right?”

  Jon glanced down at Arie. “Lunch?”

  She looked surprised but delighted by the invitation. “Love to.”

  Ciana turned on her heel, her emotions reeling, and headed to her truck. “See you later,” she called, more sociably than she felt.

  Behind her, she heard Jon say, “Count on it.”

  Ciana never knew what to expect that afternoon at the Evergreen Assisted Living Center. Would she see lucid Olivia or childlike Olivia? She wasn’t sure she could face Olivia’s rejection today. Not after what she’d already faced at Pickins’s. Seeing Jon had been like seeing a ghost. Except that he was real. And she was real. And Arie was real. And now Ciana faced choices—of desire and loss.

  On the drive to Evergreen, she’d kept the truck radio blaring to force away the enduring image of Jon’s green eyes appraising her. She had parked, rubbed her temples. After signing in, she gathered her courage and breezed into Olivia’s room with a cheerful, “Hello, Grandmother.”

  Olivia was sitting in a wheelchair in front of a small desk, her laptop in front of her. She looked up, offering a beatific smile. “Ciana, darling. How wonderful to see you. Come kiss me. Why have you stayed away for so ever long?”

  Of course, Ciana had been there the day before, and every day since Olivia had been out of the hospital. Relieved by Olivia’s greeting, Ciana swept over, bent down, and kissed her papery cheek. “Forgive me,” Ciana said, which was easier than reminding Olivia about what she couldn’t remember.

  “I always forgive you, precious girl,” Olivia purred in her honeyed voice. “Barry Boatwright was just here. Perhaps you saw him in the parking lot?”

  “Your attorney? But why?”

  “The family attorney,” Olivia corrected. “I had some family business I wanted him to attend to.”

  Ciana wasn’t sure if Boatwright had actually been visiting or if Olivia had conjured him out of her imagination. “I must have missed him.” She settled into a comfy chair beside the desk. She had known the elderly white-haired man since she was a small child. He never seemed to change.

  “We discussed paperwork.” Boatwright had handled Bellmeade business for many years—bookkeeping, taxes, necessary government subsidy paperwork. Much of the farm’s acreage had once successfully been leased to other growers, but now because of the economic hard times, vegetable planting had fallen off, and so had the leases.

  “What business?”

  “Oh, child, a farm the size of ours doesn’t run by itself.”

  Ciana needed no reminder. She seeded, fertilized, fought weevil infestations, and harvested alfalfa four times a year to feed their horses. The grass had to dry free of mold and dust and then be bundled into manageable bales and stored under tarps in an outbuilding as winter feed. In summer the horses grazed in the pastures, their diets supplemented by alfalfa hay for necessary protein, but the winter months meant a lot more hay and grain—which had to be bought. The back acre garden fed herself and Alice Faye, and Ciana sold any excess to tourists at the summer farmer’s market. She kept the property surrounding the house and stables mowed and trimmed and the chicken coop well maintained, and she made any necessary minor repairs to equipment, fencing, and damaged outbuildings. All hard work and long days.

  “Mama and I are watching over the land,” she assured Olivia.

  Olivia dismissed the remark with a hand gesture. “Alice Faye never gave a hoot for the business end of Bellmeade. But when school’s over for you …” She seemed to lose her train of thought. Alice Faye had brought Olivia to Ciana’s high school graduation, but apparently she didn’t remember it.

  “High school’s over,” Ciana said quickly to fill the awkward silence. “Got my diploma too.”

  Olivia nodded, her expression clouding, as if trying to see something that wasn’t quite clear enough. Don’t go away. Ciana hoped Olivia hadn’t slipped into another time and place, but Olivia smiled suddenly,
returning to the moment. “You’ll go to college. Vanderbilt, is it?”

  “I’ve been accepted.”

  “Of course you have. You’re a Beauchamp.” Olivia made it sound as if the name were a free pass to all of life.

  “Has Mother been by today?” Again Ciana changed the topic quickly, hoping to keep Olivia in the present.

  “My daughter only comes out of duty.”

  “Mother loves you,” Ciana said.

  “Like a dog loves a master who doesn’t kick it.”

  Friction was a constant between the two women, a subtle undercurrent that ran like a fault line through a piece of property. “Mom works with me in our garden every day. Tomatoes are popping off the vines, squash is ripe, and green beans are climbing up their poles.”

  “I miss our garden,” Olivia said.

  Schoolwork never gave Ciana the sense of achievement a vegetable harvest gave her. “Why, Mama’s canning tomatoes and squash once a week,” Ciana told her grandmother. In the kitchen, making breads and pastry, whipping up meals was as close to happy as Ciana ever saw her mother.

  Olivia reached over and took Ciana’s hand. “I’m tired, child. Could you help me to my bed?”

  Ciana jumped up, rolled the wheelchair to the bed, and locked the brake. She helped Olivia stand and then half lifted her into the bed. She fluffed the pillows and made sure the covers were all smooth and tucked. “Snug as a bug,” she said, quoting what her grandmother had often told her at bedtime when she was a child.

  Ciana straightened, but Olivia held tightly to her hand. “Don’t leave just yet.”

  Did Olivia sense that these rare moments of lucidity were as precious as gold to both of them? “I won’t leave. I know,” she added with an inspired smile. “Why don’t I snuggle with you and you tell me a story.”

  The old woman’s eyes brightened. “What story would you like to hear?”

  Anxious to hold on to the moment, Ciana suggested Olivia’s favorite. “Tell me about how you met Grandfather.”

  Olivia beamed. “A wonderful story. Haven’t I told it to you before?”

  “Not lately.” Ciana got on top of the covers, lying on her side so she could watch Olivia’s face. “Did you always know you loved him?” She knew the answer but still wanted to hear it.